Review: Apple's iPad Pro Serves as a Powerful Business Companion

Getting Down to Business (Apps) on Apple’s iPad Pro

Unboxing the Apple iPad Pro Wi-Fi + Cellular tablet is not all that different from the same process with an iPhone. In fact, if a user already has an iPhone, probably every app running on it will sync over to the iPad Pro. Any app than runs optimized on the iPad will continue to do so on the Pro too, just at the larger screen size.

Those users who have shied away from using Apple’s standard business productivity suite on smaller screens may be able to embrace them now on the Pro. In fact, many of Apple’s business tools have also recently improved.

Pages

For example, the iOS version of Pages now acts much more like a traditional word processor, with tools automatically showing the character count of articles with and without spaces. There are some nice extra features as well, such as the ability to view and restore all changes that have been made to a document over time and by various users when collaborating. It even has some Apple-only features, such as letting users take photos and videos for inserting into their text without first having to leave Pages.

Compatibility with Microsoft Word documents is also much less of an issue for this retooled version of Pages. I imported Word documents with some pretty complex charts and graphics into Pages, and they looked perfect after a brief conversion. Documents created using Pages on the Pro can also be converted into Word’s .docx format and even password-protected for extra security.

Numbers

The Numbers spreadsheet program for iOS works flawlessly on the iPad Pro, making full use of the larger screen. It also provides historical editing capabilities and is compatible with Excel.

Keynote

The Keynote presentation app for iOS is probably going to be the biggest addition for users moving from an iPhone to the iPad Pro. Keynote can’t be used effectively on a tiny screen, but it works great on a Pro, and the new streamlined file format makes it easier to share Keynote presentations using Gmail and Dropbox. You can even beam presentations from iPhones for editing on the iPad, and then back to the phone for transport if you want to leave the weightier Pro behind.

Microsoft Office

If a business needs to have the full version of Microsoft Office programs, there is an Office for Mac version available (CDW price: $219) that runs well on the iPad Pro, though Office and Apple programs were perfectly compatible in all testing.