That raises an interesting point: Is it the existence of the iPad Pro that prevents Apple from moving forward on touch screen laptops. Introducing a touch screen MacBook could completely kill the iPad Pro and I'm not sure that Apple want to lose that market.
Still it could be that they still firmly believe that touch screen on laptops are unnecessary and provides a poor user experience, something that I happen to believe that they would be right in.
Apple does not keep two products around that fill the same niche. If the iPad were upgraded to serve as a true laptop alternative (surface pro style), they would get rid of the laptops.
I don't think they are though. The current ARM chips in the high-end iphones and ipads are too powerful for mobile. They don't make sense from an investment standpoint (why not spend that hardware effort on rejuvenating the mac line which can make more money?). They make a lot of sense as a midway point to a performance tier where the A series can serve as a laptop chip.
They should come out with an iPad model that has a permanently attached keyboard and huge trackpad, and then do away with the touchscreen part entirely and make the OS just better all around for serious work. I bet they would sell a lot of those.
I'm glad someone brought this up. I always feel like I'm just stupid or missing something important when people start talking about the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement. As far as I can tell, it looks like it would be a huge pain in the ass to use anywhere other than on a stable flat surface.
And yeah, having to constantly clean a screen that big would drive me crazy. I'd much rather work in an environment where there's no expectation on the part of app developers that I have a touchscreen.
This post is about the new iPad Pro release, though. The iPad Pro itself isn't that different from a regular iPad - it has a keyboard and stylus, but the same OS and mostly the same apps. In that regard, Apple was already cannibalizing its laptops with the iPad for a certain set of use cases. The iPad Pro doesn't go much beyond that.
The optimism is in framing the above as "not yet" and that's fine, but that is optimism.
Apple shows no signs towards being interested in selling a touch screen laptop. They steer people to their iPads for that and have indicated otherwise for their laptops. Rightly or wrongly.
An iPad Pro and a MacBook Air have the same core hardware - even the same M1 CPU. Add a keyboard and they look really similar except that the iPad has a touchscreen!
But there are lots of hybrid tablets and touchscreen laptops. What makes the iPad an amazing device for me is its outstanding software library (e.g. Procreate) and the Apple Pencil.
I could certainly imagine Apple bringing its Pro apps - notably Final Cut, Logic, and XCode - to the iPad. But I can't imagine
Apple opening up iOS any time soon any more than I would imagine Nintendo opening up the Switch.
I don't think Apple cares enough about a line of products that make us less than 10% of their CPU line to go through the engineering effort to create ARM based laptops.
I think it's more likely that Apple will make iOS more flexible on the iPad and make it a true laptop alternative.
Well, they have the iPad Pro with keyboard cover already. Who's to say that they couldn't make that into an actual laptop product, replacing their lower-end macOS devices?
Also, none of your quotes mention the impossibility of making an iOS device with yet another different form factor. It merely says that they won't merge the two OSes. Plus, even if that weren't the case, it wouldn't be the first time that Apple went back on a public statement while rebranding the backtracking as the invention of a whole new computing paradigm.
Apple will probably never do that. They are probably painfully aware than iPad Pro and Macbook Air feature set and use cases overlap but as long as they keep each of them sufficiently different,they can sell you a laptop and a tablet.
Why would they cannibalize their own products while they face no competition in the tablet market?
An iPad Pro is essentially a laptop with a shitty OS and some missing hardware. They already have the laptop. They just won’t make it work, for obvious reasons.
Somebody mentioned on here a few days ago that it's possible Apple would kill their laptop line entirely. I scoffed at the time, but this article has made me wonder. If the iPad offered the same screen, had better battery life, was just as fast if not faster and had a more stable OS... why wouldn't they kill their laptops entirely? Their laptop sales are a small and shrinking portion of their business.
so we're against any notebooks now, as a typical user only ever needs a tablet? great, you've confirmed Apple's strategy across PCs and iPads (incl. the iPad Pro).
they're abandoning the Air and cheaper lines for that very reason - the iPads and iPhones are good enough now.
MPBs are now a testing ground for new inputs (Touchbar) and port unification. Eventually they all add a full touchscreen keyboard, once it can do haptic response (see the iPhone7 home button for a preview). first the Touchbar will become haptic, so we're at least 2 iterations away from it.
Actually more likely that this thing then ends up in the iPad product line, fully destroying the classic PC line. but who knows.
This article is bi-polar, which summarizes my feelings on the topic as well.
I'm in the same boat as the author and have been trying (slowly) to move towards using an iPad full time. Compared to a couple years ago the apps and UX have improved significantly, however, (for me) using the iPad still feels more like a very specialized tool, compared to the more general utility of a Macbook.
I realize that for general productivity the iPad works best with a keyboard attached, a mouse, external storage. Adding more hardware. But then you have a MacBook in disguise ...
I'm guessing we'll never get a Macbook with touch screen and Apple Pencil support? But it does seem like the iPad has been slowly optimizing itself to fill that role.
Apple could have made the iPad a convertible laptop long time ago. They just chose not to. It's not like Apple is waiting for some technology to emerge that will enable the iPad to be more like a laptop.
Apple straight up does not want people using iPads to do laptop things. They don't want people substituting their $999 Macbook Airs with $329 iPads.
I doubt we will ever see a laptop running iOS. iOS was designed solely for a touch interface. At the same time, apple has been outspoken about not wanting touch screens on laptops because of ergonomic issues and other things.
Me too would love the iPad pro + Macbook thing. I would bet decent money it's in the pipeline but they are squeezing profit from Macbook lines just because they can. Next up i reckon will be a touchscreen Macbook, which is well needed i reckon. Then what you describe.
The more they make the iPad Pro a laptop, the less convinced I am that we couldn't have a touchscreen laptop with Apple Pencil support.
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