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Should You Buy the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 or the iPad Pro?

September 10, 2015

Apple has announced its new product line for the coming year. One of the announced products is the much larger iPad Pro. Over the next several weeks we should see a lot of testing and comparisons of the iPad Pro to the Surface Pro 3. The SuperSite for Windows already has an initial comparison. The iPad Pro has better screen resolution and a better rear camera, but worse front camera, than the Surface Pro 3. The storage capabilities fall short of what’s available with the Surface Pro 3 and there is no option for memory expansion with the iPad Pro. There’s a micro SD slot to expand storage capacity with the Surface Pro 3. Cost is an issue as well.

The biggest differentiator is the operating system. Obviously, the iPad Pro runs iOS (version 9 initially). While you can get a version of Office for iOS, your choices of other business applications is limited. The Surface Pro 3 runs Windows 10 so you can install any application software that is written for Windows. I don’t think the iPad Pro is going to get a lot of traction, especially given its cost, limited storage options and inability to run a majority of business applications. At least we can run QuickBooks, our billing software and other Windows applications on the Surface Pro 3.

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