Why the iPad Pro could be good for Microsoft
For the iFans eagerly awaiting Apple's new iPad Pro - half tablet, half laptop - rejoice, it will be here in time for Christmas. But this is no cheap stocking filler.
The Pro is available for pre-order this Thursday,   November 12, and will be available in stores "later this week". We assume that probably means Friday. 
The kicker? The Wi-Fi only model is $1249 for a relatively small 32GB of storage; up to $1699 for 128GB and SIM-enabled.
Or you could get an 11-inch MacBook Air for $1399.
If you want the iPad Pro in the larger capacity with add-ons, you're looking at over $2000.
There's a stylus called the Apple Pencil priced at $165 (that thing Steve Jobs said Apple would never do); and a $269 Smart Keyboard in "charcoal grey", so you can laptopify it. Sort of. (The Pro still runs Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, not its desktop system, OS X.)
Apple also announced pricing for Apple-branded covers in charcoal grey and white, at $89 in polyurethane or $129 in silicon.
Meanwhile Microsoft's 12.3 inches Surface Pro 4, the latest in the line of laptop-tablets (tabtops?) that Microsoft has been pumping out for years now, starts at $1349 with stylus included and 128GB storage.
Microsoft's much more powerful Surface Book, also set to ship before Christmas, starts at $2299 - but this includes stylus, keyboard, and 128GB storage.
Apple's regular iPad Air 2 is just $959 for 128GB storage, or cheaper for smaller capacities.
But with a 12.9-inch Retina display and 64-bit A9X chip, the iPad Pro is Apple's biggest and fastest tablet yet.
James Cuda from Australian company Savage Interactive, which created the award-winning iPad illustration app Procreate, said the iPad Pro would give artists a more immersive experience and allow them to create "massive" artworks up to 16K in resolution.
"This new level of definition allows for large format printing and exceptionally detailed artworks," he said.
If you want to match an iPad Pro with your new rose gold iPhone 6s, however - tough. It's currently only available in silver, gold and "space grey", although it would logically follow that a rose gold release, which has been popular in the latest iPhones, will be on the cards at some point.
Technology research firm Telsyte says Australians were lapping up - if you'll pardon the pun - the trend towards two-in-one laptop-tablets, with sales set to triple in the next two years from around than 500,000 to nearly 1.5 million.
Straight-up tablets such as standard iPads slowed 16 per cent in the year to   June 30 compared to the same period last year, Telsyte research shows.
Apple maintains the market lead in Australia with 48 per cent of the market, compared to Android devices with 38 per cent and Windows-based devices at 14 per cent.
Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi said Apple would have a fight with Microsoft on its hands in the two-in-one space.
"Windows-based tablets and 2-in-1s will benefit from an upgrade cycle that started with the arrival of Windows 10 and is expected to continue into 2017," he said.??????