MacBook Pro to iPad switch.

Spit · 23 Jul 2017 at 23:01

So, I'm debating switching from a late 2013 MacBook Pro 8gb to a new iPad Pro 10.5 inch.

Lightroom and photoshop are simply too slow to warrant actually using it, I'd rather use my desktop. So the MacBook is left unused, for photography, most of the time. Whereas Lightroom is lightening quick on the iPad, although limited in its featured. Also without having the ability to shoot tethered and having to faff with a cf card adapter to the iPad somehow.

Any thoughts on this?

Raymond Lin · 24 Jul 2017 at 01:08

Have you seen this?

Spit · 24 Jul 2017 at 01:20

Raymond Lin said:
Have you seen this?

Yes, great video! It was the the video that started the idea of switching over. But, I was wondering if any photographers here had hands on experiences with switching over.

The main disadvantages I can think of straight away is the limited Lightroom use, and not being able to shoot tethered at all. I'm also wondering how many iPads you can log into your photography creative cloud subscription.

Minstadave · 24 Jul 2017 at 02:31

I'm going to have to give this some thought, just went through a days shooting at work on a reasonably well specced Windows laptop (i7 dual core, 8GB RAM, SSD) and LR is dog slow. Scrolling through the catalog and having to generate 1:1 previews for each file to check if they're sharp or not is painful.

Spleen Sauce · 24 Jul 2017 at 08:08

Lightroom does seem to be getting slower with each minor release. It's got so bad now that my preferential approach is to use my iPad Air 2 in the first instance unless I need to do anything more serious - so I definitely see a use case for switching over, if I had the cash to splash I'd be picking up the 12in iPad Pro I think.

Spit · 24 Jul 2017 at 15:45

Minstadave said:
I'm going to have to give this some thought, just went through a days shooting at work on a reasonably well specced Windows laptop (i7 dual core, 8GB RAM, SSD) and LR is dog slow. Scrolling through the catalog and having to generate 1:1 previews for each file to check if they're sharp or not is painful.

I've a half decent pc, 6600k 4.2ghz, 16gb ddr4, gtx 1070, ssd and Lightroom, as you say, is painfully slow still. But iPad pro seems to be very snappy,

Spleen Sauce said:
Lightroom does seem to be getting slower with each minor release. It's got so bad now that my preferential approach is to use my iPad Air 2 in the first instance unless I need to do anything more serious - so I definitely see a use case for switching over, if I had the cash to splash I'd be picking up the 12in iPad Pro I think.

If I do switch, the 12.9 is obviously lovely due to its size, but I don't think I can justify the extra money on a bigger screen. I could get a 10.5 with an apple pencil for around the same price as I sell the MacBook for.