A better SOC improves the workflow for music production, 3d modeling/sculpting, illustration, video editing, and probably many other pro workflows I'm not thinking of at the moment.
The fact that the iPad is a shitty development platform doesn't mean that it lacks pro features or people can't make use of the improvements to the CPU/GPU.
That as the article shows, are not that good because iPad OS sucks in lots of areas that Pros needs (e.g. File manager for people doing video editing).
I strongly agree with almost everything Federico complains about in this article, especially file management like you mention. It is a pain point. It doesn't mean iPads aren't great for a lot of these things.
I have different nitpicks about any system I use; it doesn't disqualify it from being legitimately good for X task.
> I strongly agree with almost everything Federico complains about in this article, especially file management like you mention. It is a pain point. It doesn't mean iPads aren't great for a lot of these things.
I think there is a difference between being "great" and "usable". I consider iPad usable for all those tasks, but to be great you actually need to offer more features to Pro users. Right now, the only Pro usage I think iPad are great is drawing, but in this case you can even get by with a first or second generation iPad Pro.
But maybe I am nitpicking, you are right that iPads are ok for some Pro users, but great would be too much.
I guess 'great' is pretty subjective. I think it's a great platform for musicians because it does things that either can't or aren't done on other platforms. One such example is the various touch interface based synthesizers like Borderlands Granular. It actually takes advantage of the form factor because it can assume it's a touch-based interfaced, unlike with Mac or PC.
It's not that it can't be made on PC; there's plenty of PCs with touch screens, but it's not.
It's also just very competent as a music making device in general. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass dealing with samples on iPadOS and iOS, which is why things like AudioShare [1] exist to help deal with the lackluster file management. But in most cases, you don't really need to touch that. There's a ton of great synthesizers, drum machines, and various different styles of music production groovebox/launchers/loopers/daws/mixers on it that just don't exist on other platforms. You can also use it to augment other platforms, through things like Logic Remote [2] or LK [3], which turns your iPad into a controller interface for Ableton Live.
It's not perfect, but neither is the Mac. or Linux or Windows or any other platform that is used for making music. I still think it's great, though.
The fact that the iPad is a shitty development platform doesn't mean that it lacks pro features or people can't make use of the improvements to the CPU/GPU.