My Chromebook cost about 20 percent more than the keyboardcase alone, and I'm writing this comment on an i7 laptop with 8 gigs of RAM and a GeForce video card, which cost less than the pad and case. I get that there's some appeal in entering the Apple ecosystem, but for my needs, I don't think it's a "shot across the bow" of very many actual, full-featured laptops that I'm allowed to actually install stuff on.
(edit: Aaaand while I was looking up my laptop's specs, everyone else made the same comment as I. Leaving here in case it helps.)
The price point is more like (a little under) the at-release Surface Pro than popular Chromebooks (its a little cheaper than the Chromebook Pixel, but that's not really the big seller -- the popular models are at the low end.)
Both by form factor and price, this seems more to be competing more with the big "pro" tablets that the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (slightly cheaper) and the Surface Pro (3 was slightly more expensive at release, 4 probably will be too, 3 is slightly less expensive right now) than Chromebooks.
And the Pro 3's pen/drawing experience has received pretty good reviews after some early software jitters.
Also the Surface stylus isn't in the same league. So you'd have to compare to something like the N-Trig stylus which is an extra $50.
Cheaper? Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).
The Surface Pro 3's pen is an N-Trig... Yeah, so not $50 more, included right in the box. And it has reviewed excellently by artists.
> Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).
You have absolutely no basis for claiming that the Apple pen and cover are superior. Literally nobody has reviewed them, you haven't used them, nobody you know has used them, and you didn't even know they existed two hours ago.
So yes, I have a basis for claiming that - one based on the hardware used and direct experience with the competition.
Nope, scissor-switch. It is mechanical.
They used to sell one called the Touch Cover which is likely what you're describing, they don't anymore (discontinued, years ago).
> the Apple one is already better.
Because, why? You haven't used the Surface Pro 3 (as evidence by your own posts), you haven't used this (as evidence by the fact that nobody outside of Apple has), and you keep making basic mistakes about how both work.
This is like the N-Trig remark all over again.
I know, I was saying that the Apple one was better based on my experience with their Dome Switches vs my experience with the Surface keyboard.
You fail at reading comprehension. Just because you can't read, don't blame me.
(Really, you do have sysadmin access, if you care enough. My iPhone has a profile on it put there by my [big, enterprise-y] employer, which gives them the ability to do pretty much whatever they want—including side-loading applications. I'm surprised nobody has used the "corporate-owned device" method to build an App store yet.)
Do you mean this? http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/it/management.html
I see no mention of being able to side-load apps.
That means a machine like my primary work computer is like 8 low-end laptops. This new iPad is the cost of 2–3 low-end laptops.
This is basically Apple saying "let's make a Surface with a bigger screen and do it the Apple way".
It's weird seeing Microsoft participate in it.
Other than size, there's not much that Android tablets need to respond to, there's already been large high-end Android tablets with great pen input (no angle detection, but they're all Watcom class).
What I think was most interesting here was the incessant pitch that this is a productivity device not a media consumption device.
For the full experience you're looking at:
$800 for the pad
$100 for the pencil
$170 for the keyboardcase
And we're in low-end laptop territory without necessarily cannibalizing their laptop business, but it fires shots across the bow of also increasingly popular Chromebooks which are around this price point.
Edit: for people confused, I meant a low-end Apple laptop not a Windows machine, which are much cheaper. This is priced to barely overlap with the bottom-end. The pricing ensures the two segments are partitioned.