Federico Viticci, on MacStories:

In practice, I find the iPad Pro’s new design appealing for a couple of reasons. Visually, it’s striking. Whether I’m holding the iPad Pro and using the multitouch keyboard or typing at a desk with the Smart Keyboard Folio, all I can see is a screen that elegantly reaches the corners of its enclosure and embraces them. It’s beautiful, and a testament to Apple’s terrific work on Liquid Retina displays. Again, compared to older iPads it instantly feels like the future, available today. The new iPad Pro elicits the same feeling of last year’s switch from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone X, albeit at a much bigger scale.

Like the iPhone 4 (Retina) and later the iPhone X (“all-screen”) were the two major stepping-stones to the future, the 2018 iPad Pros’ design make it feel like a completely new visual experience — a first since the original iPad from 2010. Realistically, nothing much has changed, but it feels like we have the future in our hands.

From an ergonomic standpoint, I also believe the new design makes it easier to hold the 12.9″ iPad Pro in both landscape and portrait; particularly for portrait orientation, I find typing with my thumbs on the software keyboard sort of possible again, whereas the old design with the thicker bezels on each side often resulted in giving up thumb-typing on the large iPad after a few minutes.

Federico states that thumb-typing is “sort of possible”, which makes me glad I went for the 11-inch model. I probably wouldn’t have thumb-typed this post on its larger brother, either going for an external keyboard or my MacBook Pro instead.