Pro in Apple world means more powerful hardware + extra niceties. Not a different ecosystem.

12.9" pro's the best comic book reading device on the market, by a mile, AFAIK. Comfortable to hold, can display two-page spreads at very nearly full life-size.

It's great for PDFs and sheet music for similar reasons.

Gotta admit, though, if they made a 12.9" non-pro at least $200 cheaper than the 12.9" Pro, I'd have that instead. I don't need the horsepower.

If it is only "very nearly", wouldn't something larger like an s8 ultra be better? Also "by a mile" is a stretch. It might be better but all $1000+ tablets are reasonably close enough to be happy with any of them.

I've used a lot of Android tablets, low end to high, and developed software for them. They're awful. Crashy, glitchy, bad battery life. I don't think we'll see a true iPad competitor until/unless a new OS enters the market—Android's had a long time to get its shit together, and evidently just can't. Wish someone would give it a shot, because I'd love to see that market better-served.

Yeah, yeah and you literally died. This is HN and not reddit, you are better than that.

I have exactly no clue what you mean.

5 years ago I would have mostly agreed with your statements about android tablets, but since then Samsung has created a family of very acceptable tablets imho.

Maybe I'll try one from their newer line at some point. I haven't had a big pile of Android test devices around me on the daily in about 4 years (the consistent "Android's finally good now!" cry with each Android release and major-vendor product launch, followed by that never turning out to be true, for the entire decade I was doing mobile dev before that, is why I'd assumed nothing would have changed by now) so it checks out if they have in-fact finally made a good one (the older Samsung tablets were... not good) I might have missed it.

Last time I was guided by "no really this higher-tier Android thing is finally good, actually" advice was about a year ago, with the Nvidia Shield, though, so I'm... hesitant.

If I see one in a store, I may poke at it, read some reviews, see how their app store's looking these days for categories I care about. Could use a second largish tablet for the kids—or maybe a new one for me, and they can have the big iPad full-time. Having just one decent vendor in the mobile market blows (fucking Apple still won't add multiple profiles/icloud-logins to iPadOS, so annoying) so I'd be thrilled to discover that's changed.

16:10 is an abomination.

4:3 does happen, just coincidentally, to damn-near match the aspect ratio of a 2-page spread on a comic, too (~1.3 width/height on an open comic book, 1.333... for 4:3, 1.6 for 16:10) which means a larger screen in a wider ratio might not actually be any benefit (or not enough to justify the extra weight/unweildiness, perhaps) for that particular narrow use case.

Which, it's a very niche and specific thing, but still, if we're talking "what's the very best device for that exact thing, disregarding all other concerns", having a 4:3 screen ratio's an advantage over all the other common ones.