I have a lot to argue with in that casual review (not even an informed review).
"Pretty hard to argue with that article. "
The reviewer said he bought it sight unseen (!), then was surprised at how big it was (!).
He said he's owned "every" version of the iPad, but sold his last iPad in order to buy the iPad Pro.
(Did he pay for it or did a magazine pay for it?)
Sounds like he was either a die-hard Apple fan or was making the purchase in order to write a snarky review. (In contrast to Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware, AnandTech, that class of review sites.)
I've bought exactly two iPads: one of the early ones (may've been the first rev) and then the first "Retina" model, which is what really fulfilled the promise of the iPad for me. I use it to read newspapers, magazines (all free on the Web), books, PDFs, ePubs, and of course to check my mail, read sites like this, and generally do "consumption" things with it. It does that job well. I don't even feel the need to buy something smaller, though I used a Kindle Fire a few years ago and it also worked well for these sorts of tasks. I sometimes travel with it---for sure on vacation trips, but often for meetings with friends (where I expect no reason to do a lot of typing on a keyboard). But increasingly I find my iPhone 6, not even the Plus, to be adequate for travel.
(I've stuck with the iPads for the usual reason that I've been familiar with the Mac/IPhone ecology, not the Android/Google ecology, so why fiddle with an alternate OS?)
I think the "use case" for the bigger iPad plus the Pencil is for professional or even amateur artists. These have been the folks who have so far reacted the most enthusiastically. Comparisons are made to the Wacom line. (I have a Wacom that's about 2 years old. I seldom use it, but it comes in handy with drawing uses, which are rare for me.)
As to this reviewer who thinks execs and other meeting-goers will mostly skip the iPad Pro, I agree with this. Most casual users of tablets are just that, casual users. They don't need a large tablet and stylus or Pencil. (And I've misplaced more than one Wacom pen over the years, so the expense of the Pencil is a reason for people like me to skip it. If I were a heavy user of Illustrator, or Freehand, or whatever painting and drawing programs are popular today, I might consider the iPad Pro. But only after looking at it carefully! In person.)
Many of us were saying this months ago. The reviewer apparently leaped before he looked.
I see a LOT of tablets in use by reporters, interviewers, delivery services, medical people, car mechanics, etc. Almost anyone who once used a clipboard now carries a tablet. This was the expected market. It saturated as expected and there are not really many compelling reasons to replace a functioning tablet with one that is slightly faster or slightly smaller (or larger). Especially for schools, hospitals, police departments, restaurants, etc.
--TIm
