Unity on 2021 iPad Pro

Unity is a great tool for artists no matter if working in film, television or games. Is there any plan to bring Unity to the iPad Pro with it’s M1 processor, Thunderbolt 3, support for 6K video and up to 16GB RAM?

 

Why does this post read like you're trying to sell Unity on a Unity forum?

 

It's not a matter of power. The iPad OS restrictions plus appstore rules makes such a thing as a full blown game engine editor pretty much impossible. Apps cannot generate native code, for starters, which is why you cannot use an iPad to create iPad apps.

There are mobile programming IDEs, but they are usually toys to mess around and learn coding, limited to javascript or other interpreted languages, or merely allow you to edit files which you upload elsewhere for compiling.

 

Below are the clauses which stood out to me the most but there are likely others you could make a case for.

 

A much better tool is a PC with a wacom pen.

 

Only if you're happy giving up the mobility for a desktop or many of its key features for a laptop. The OP only listed a few of its key features. Tablets often have high resolution displays but this one has a max sustained brightness of 1,000 nits with a peak of 1,600 nits with 2,596 dimming zones and it's a high refresh rate at that.

While you can hit most of that with a desktop monitor you won't be seeing that many dimming zones. Most displays only have a few hundred. The iPad Pro has a sufficient number that you won't be able to see them on an individual basis unlike most if not all monitors on the market.

This entire generation of Apple hardware has achieved something no previous generation has. It's made me want one of everything they've released.

 

A good PC-monitor can dim to correct ISF-level.

 

Once again when the best monitors only have a few hundred dimming zones it's relatively easy to spot where the brightness starts and stops.

 

ah you mean LED backlight? Isnt the iPAD OLED?

 

Mostly. A device can have a high number of LEDs for its backlight but if the control circuitry has to manipulate them in large batches it somewhat undermines the quality. Most monitors divided their LEDs up into around 400 batches while the iPad Pro has 2,596 batches.

 

I think its more important that the monitor can reach ISF calibration in the ambient lighting of your office. But yeah. I would love for OLED monitors to become a thing wo se can drop backlighting all together.

Cheap of apple not to have a OLED in their tablets

 

One of the main limitations of OLED has been brightness. The iPad Pro uses Mini-LED which is brighter for now.

 

Also the M1 only beats AMD 5950x at one "task" and that is geekbench, which is a synthetic bench. So I would say a desktop with Zen 3 is still more productive than a M1 device. But, I guess a better compararision would be a Zen 3 laptop, havent looked that how they stack up against m1

 

Only an idiot would purchase an iPad Pro expecting performance on par with a high-end desktop CPU. Once again like I mentioned above choosing a desktop here means losing mobility while choosing a laptop means losing features like the fantastic display.

 

You must be reading a completely different press release than me.

 

My One Plus 8 Pro has 1,444 nits so its definitely getting there, Though its AMOLED, I would die for a 27" OLED monitor @ 2560x1440

 

Just be aware you would be losing brightness. Below is the review for the latest generation of OLED and it's max sustained brightness is between 700 and 800 nits. It's likely it will eventually get up there but it'll be a while.

https://www.reviewed.com/televisions/content/sony-a90j-oled-tv-review

 

As long as it can reach ISF in my office ambient lighting I'm happy. Which they can at 1000 nits without tonemapping. So were are there soon.

edit: I wonder what a LG OLED at 27" could output. Should be able to yield better panels at lower sizes?

edit: also nits is not everything, my JVC N5 projector can output aroudn 200 nits in HDR mode. Meaning it needs to tonemap. But the picture quality is insane. Far more pleasing image than any TV

 

You can do this via RDP session to a PC

 

iPads having the full functionality, capabilities, and almost the same performance of the Apple Silicon Macs is more than inevitable at this point. It's just a matter of Apple removing the restrictions of iPadOS by essentially merging the worlds of iPad and Mac. Similar to what Microsoft tried to do with Windows 8, without all the drama, restrictions, and a much sleeker operating system. You can switch from iPad mode to Mac mode seemlessly, similar to a phone switching from landscape to vertical viewing. It's not rocket science. The exact same chip inside the iPad is also in all the Apple Silicon Macs.

I think Microsoft is eventually going to really push for a similar experience with their Surface Tablets running on ARM processors (no, the current models aren't anywhere near as capable due to terrible performance and 64 bit limitations).

 

All indications are Apple will be increasing restrictions on their Macs to bring the two platforms to parity, rather than the other way around. I would not bet on Apple removing any restrictions from iPads.

 

iOS still goes to great lengths to hide it's underlying file system from it's users. And it's entirely touch-centric. And apps are heavily sandboxed. I don't think you're going to be seeing serious dev tools running on iOS any time soon, even if the hardware is pretty amazing.

(It's a shame, because the iPad Pro seems that it would now be quite capable of running a full MacOS, which can run iOS apps on M1 devices. So it could potentially offer the best of both worlds - a great touchscreen tablet experience, and also a full 'serious computing' OS when you attach a keyboard and mouse/Pencil. I just don't think this is something that Apple are likely do)

 

I would get frustrated using a consumer targeted hardware/software as a workstation

 

What's wrong with laptops?

 

Why are you in this thread then?

 

I'm interested in M1 chipset

 

Ah. I'm somewhat interested too but I'm much more interested in seeing what it leads into with future generations.

Shame Apple isn't the type of company to allow third parties to use their chips.

 

Yeah, watching Apple control their ecosystems with an iron fist has been very depressing for an old school Apple fanboy like myself. They undoubtedly push innovation in a wide variety of ways, but they have also normalized closed hardware and software platforms.

 

LG has a 27" OLED monitor coming soon, the 27EP950B. There are not many details available, except the USA price of $2,996.

They already have a 32" version, the 32EP950B ( https://www.lg.com/ca_en/desktop-monitors/lg-32ep950-b ) with a brightness of 250 cd/m2 and HDR 400. So not that bright.

I've not heard if they have got around burn-in on static content for long periods of time. I love my Panasonic OLED TV, which is a few years old with no sign of an issue, but I use it very differently to my monitors.

 

That sounds low for a OLED, they usaly sit around 600 - 800 nits.

 

An alternative would be a web based Unity frontend with a Unity server. Those sorts of things are allowed on the app store.

At that point probably better to stream the desktop over.

I think what would be a step in the right direction would be to improve Unity's CLI, where it's possible to quickly run tests, compile code, generate csproj files, etc., then you can at least work on the code or configuration portion of your project via SSH.

 

I want to say that not every can buy high end laptop or PC. Even iPad pro is very pricey, but for some it may be more worth than buying similar priced laptop. For example. my friend is UX designer and he is mostly using his new iPad pro, for his job. But his 2012 MacBook pro is barely alive. We are trying to make games in our free time. But because his cool iPad can't run Unity and his barely alive MacBook, sometimes crashes. We are very slowly going forward. In addition, he is more comfortable using tablet pen when mouse.
I won't say that iPad Unity should be able to have all the functions that PC has. I don't think it would be good to build on iPad, but dev and more likely designers would more comfortably use lightweight and easily transportive device when Static PC or big laptop.

 

You obviously didnt bother actually reading the thread? Its not about anything you mentioned: its the fact that the iOS app store + iOS OS rules explicitly prohibit unity from making a version that could run on iOS.

This was stated very clearly above and discussed.

So everything you said is great, but completely irrelevant.

 

I bought the iPad Pro M1 for drawing, because I was tired of being wired to a computer. And I'm glad I did.
Clipstudio Pro on iPad Pro with working extremely well and it was cheaper than buying the Wacom MobileStudio Pro

 

there is Codea https://apps.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171
So could have UnityLite as well?

but more likely Unity would make cloud based (remote) Unity editor,
so in theory that could be accessed/used from any device.. *with really expensive monthly fee

 

Run Unity in AWS or similar cloud, connect to it from ipad....

 

I think I have an idea to make this possible, watch this space as they say