USE PROCREATE APP FOR IPAD PRO
USE PROCREATE APP FOR IPAD PROFESSIONAL

The problem is that, based on the cost and limitations of iPadOS, itвЂ™s hard to recommend buying one based on the idea of possible future capabilities. The new M1 iPads feel as though they were designed with the future in mind.

USE PROCREATE APP FOR IPAD PROFESSIONAL

So, for professional use, I personally donвЂ™t understand the use case for the higher-spec iPad Pros.ДЇor Procreate, thereвЂ™s currently no advantage to the higher-spec models, either because of the 5GB cap on RAM.

USE PROCREATE APP FOR IPAD PRO

For $100 more than the price of the 12.9вЂі M1 1TB, 16GB RAM iPad Pro, I could purchase a far more useful 13вЂі Macbook Pro with identical specs. With the new iPad Pros, Apple has created a device with extraordinary potential but has significantly hamstrung it via the limitations of iPad OS.

In fact, because of all of these considerations, I opted to return the 1TB model that I had purchased. No updates to this limitation were mentioned at the 2021 WWDC Apple event in June so, at this time,В I wouldnвЂ™t recommend the expensive higher capacity (1TB or 2TB) devices unless you absolutely need that amount of storage. With the available RAM capped at 5GB, however, you will not get any improvement with the largest capacity devices that have up to 16GB of RAM (the 1TB and 2TB models).

The new M1 chip improves performance (itвЂ™s the same chip that is in Macbooks and the new iMac!) and you may get a boost in the number of layers you can work because of the increase in RAM (depending on how much your existing device has). Technically speaking, based purely on the specs, the new M1 iPads sound amazing. This means that, with Procreate, no additional benefit is gained from a device that has 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB. Luckily, this issue was quickly resolved with a recent patch, but we then learned that the Apple operating system was capping the RAM usage available for individual apps at 5GB. This meant that initially, I was able to use significantly fewer layers than I could with my 5-year-old iPad Pro with 1/4th of the RAM. After my initial testing, though, I was quite disappointed.ДЄt first, the M1 iPad was not recognized by Procreate and the app treated t as though it had only 2GB of RAM. In fact, because I use my device professionally I ordered the new 1TB model and was excited for it to arrive. When Apple announced the newest iPad models in April, based on the specs alone вЂ“ new M1 processor (the same chip thatвЂ™s in the latest Apple laptops) and up to 16GB RAM вЂ“ I thought, вЂњThis is it вЂ“ itвЂ™s time!вЂќ This is one of the reasons I initially wrote this post вЂ“ to help you make an informed decision, just as I wanted to. The chart below shows the results for canvases up to around 70MP.ДЄfter owning my current iPad Pro for around 5 years, I have been interested in upgrading. I multiplied the width and height of each canvas to get an overall resolution and converted to megapixels (MP) for easier to read numbers (i.e. I used 2 different iPads, each with 1GB of ram (the orange line (and blue line which overlaps exactly with the orange), an iPad Air 2 with 3GB of Ram (the grey line), and an iPad Pro with 4GB of ram (the yellow line). 1000px x 1000px, 2000px x 2000px, 3000px x 3000px, etc) I noted how many layers were possible on each device. Since I have access to a few different iPad models that IвЂ™ve owned over the years, I thought I run a few comparison tests (is it wrong that I was actually excited to collect data and make some graphs?)ДЇor all of the iPads that I had access to, I created canvases of increasingly large size (resolution) in Procreate until the program returned an error that that canvas was too large.ДЇor each canvas resolution (i.e. Meaning that getting the same iPad model with a higher storage capacity wonвЂ™t make a difference.вЂќ вЂњвЂ¦itвЂ™s RAM that determines the maximum layer count for a given canvas size. When I confirmed that RAM was the primary spec that impacted how many canases you could use in a Procreate drawing, I was curious to identify what difference the amount of RAM would actually make.ДЇrom an official moderator in the Procreate forums:

Use procreate app for ipad