There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not the iPad Pro can replace your Mac as a primary device. I think the simply answer to that question is, yes, it can. However, for me, the bigger question is do I want the iPad to replace my Mac? The answer to that question is, no.
I always see stories about people forcing themselves to use an iPad to see if it can replace their laptop or desktop computer. If you have to force yourself to substitute one device for another, then you’re not ready to make that switch. Forcing yourself and then talking about the dismal results or deficiencies or a product doesn’t help anyone.
There are a tremendous number of people out there that can use an iPad as their main computer. Those that surf the web, check email and social networks, and other touch oriented tasks where the iPad excels. There are those that can do complex tasks on iPad and use it as an everyday computer. This number is growing all the time.
I’m not suggesting the iPad isn’t powerful, because it is. The iPad Pro is more powerful than most of the PCs on the market today. What I am saying is that if you truly want an iPad to replace your Mac, it can. However, I just don’t think we are there yet.
iPad Pro pushes the envelope even further by opening up an entirely new category of users for iPad. There has never been a more powerful tablet and by bringing in creatives and professional people, iPad will grow.
I don’t believe we are ready for a single device to be our only computer. This is where I think Microsoft has fundamentally misjudged the market. They are trying to push a single device on consumers, and they don’t want it—yet.
The separate operating systems for touch-enabled devices and Macs is definitely the way to go in today’s market.
I’m very happy to have my iPads be complementary devices to my Macs. Maybe someday soon, I’ll be saying I’m happy to have my Mac as a complementary device to my iPad, but I’m not there yet. I suspect I’m not alone.
That’s not a knock on iPad, but more a simple truth of where we are with technology in 2015.
If you want an iPad to be your only computing device, then do it, it’s certainly capable. If you don’t, there is no reason to force yourself into it. Be happy with a Mac *and* an iPad—I am.
My perfect home computer would be a Mac Pro, with an iPad Pro as a “dumb” screen (for OS X), that I can then detach and walk away with, running iOS.
I’m not convinced that we’ll forever need two OSes.
What I am convinced of is that iOS could eventually grow to meet the Mac’s needs, whereas if OS X were to be shoehorned to meet the iPhone and iPad’s needs… well, Apple’s already pared it down and started expanding it. Maybe in another 10 years it will be there. Maybe not.
Until then, who cares? I like my iPad. I like my Mac. I’ll continue to use the appropriate tool for a job (for the most part; sometimes I’ll just use whichever is in reach!).
It’s important to note, I think, that this is the opposite approach to what Microsoft has taken. Microsoft has forced their big OS onto smaller devices. Apple has split the core of what they need out of their big OS to a smaller OS, and gradually expanded that OS. I think Apple’s approach was more dangerous and more brave and is paying off for them.
iPads are good for a great many things but they just aren’t sexy from a hardware standpoint. The iPad Pro is the first iOS device with storage speeds approaching desktop/laptop performance …circa 2011. They can replace beefier computers for people who don’t stress today’s non mobile systems. I’m a computer enthusiast ….an iPad is closer to a toy than a tool.
It’s not really a matter of “dangerous”-ness. The reason MS shoehorned everything together was their attempt to bootstrap the lack of apps on mobile/tablet by tying the platforms together. In other words, entice developers to build Modern apps that work on all platforms, have a huge userbase on desktop to be the sales pitch, and get a tablet and mobile story for free.
Unfortunately, the implementation didn’t quite match expectations at both a user experience (complicated dual-mode UI) and at a technical level (Windows Phone took years to catch up, the first Surface devices were poor). Windows 10 is somewhat better, but the damage has been done.
It will pay off for Apple, because they’re thinking into the future. Most kids (and a lot of non-computer people) these days have a mobile phone and use it as their primary computer, if not their only computer.
An iPad Pro is not going to be seen by them as a limited device, instead they’ll be liberated by all the new stuff they’ll be able to do with it – in an interface and method of interaction they’re already familiar with.
And that’s the key… familiarity. It is what keeps current PC users from accepting the tablet as a computer – it’s an unfamiliar way of working. There’s no files to organize. There’s no widows to organize. There’s no ports to plug external devices into.
But people moving up from a mobile phone aren’t used to any of that anyway – and most of them won’t even want to learn it.
I don’t understand how two things built on the same UNIX foundation on devices claimed to be desktop class can’t eventually converge.
I also don’t understand why with the iPad I can’t use BTMM to connect my iPad back to my mac like a kind of SmartTerminal.
Or why I can’t have a Macbook Pro or MacBook Air chassis into which I can slide my iPad Pro or iPad Air respectively.
There is no reason why Apple can’t deliver this except for segmentation strategy.
I think there a is room for convertible devices that could well have a names like MacBook Pad Pro and MacBook Pad Air that would sell above the price points of their non pad brethren.
The bulk of these comments clearly demonstrate why “technologists” and “futurists” often collide…tho the former very often believe they are the latter 🙂
In less than two years these comments will seem very, very silly 🙂
This is already possible with Parallels Access. Even as optimized as it is for this task, it really drives how why Apple hasn’t done anything like this, and likely never will. Cocoa isn’t a touch UI/UX. UIKit is 🙂
^ All of this. Very much on point.
This is primarily an issue with software availability, learned use patterns and well, being raised on a paradigm that is over a quarter of a century old.
Seriously.
It isn’t “bad” or “wrong”…it is simply different and humans are creatures of habit. These same discussions happen whenever there is a fundamental technology shift…and people simply forget history and historical patterns. Virtually no one pines for things the way they were before they were, but “back then” people bemoaned ‘the end times’…especially when it comes to Apple platforms…ADB…SCSI…USB…the removal of floppy disk drives…opticals…ridiculous ‘smartphones’ without physical keyboards…
This is all just another phase of the same thing. 🙂
You’ll see. ‘Convertible’ devices are a stop-gap effort to slow the inevitable…but it will not be slowed. There really aren’t any tasks you do on a computer that can’t be done and completed on iPads anymore, outside of maybe developing software of certain types…but even that problem is being addressed, right now, several different ways by different small teams of developers around the world.
You can either be in front of the change, with it or behind it, but it is/has already happened anyway and it doesn’t matter if a certain subset of people like it or not…because consumers are responding without regard to what people invested in “the old way” of doing things really think 🙂
I love using both and find that I’m “productive” in different ways on all the Apple platforms (iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Mac).
True there’s no BTMM app for iPad, but I use Screens (and Screens Connect on my Mac) which functions basically the same as you’d expect BTMM to. Works great.
To be clear, the danger to Apple was over before the first iPhone was released. Probably before it was publicly shown.
I’m sure there are all kinds of issues with trying to converge a desktop OS and iOS, but I’m looking long term and, in my scenario, I really don’t know why we wouldn’t want to be able to use a tablet like a desktop.
I want to have the ability to run it like my present desktop when not used as a tablet. That would let me plug it into a dock which would let me use multiple screens (and other devices). I presently have a 24″ and 21.5″ monitor with my iMac.
Programs would be an issue, of course, and that would certainly slow progress down for awhile. Would take some real effort to have the power and flexibility of a desktop version and interface and also bring up a touch interface with, probably, a different set of capabilities when used as a tablet.
Still, long term, that’s what I’d like to see.
if you need a truck, it’s not a good replacement. if all you need is a car, it’s a fine replacement. like for my mother.
Troll Trope #2 — anything Apple makes is “a toy”.
get real. next.
I’m a little mystified as to WHY people want iOS and OS X to converge somehow. I have a very good OS that allows me to do all kinds of traditional computing things – super large spreadsheets, writing code, etc
Some of those things aren’t going to ever be better on a touch device (writing code, working wth a spreadsheet).
Some, though, while be better – Illustrator and the like would be WAY better on an iPad Pro probably.
Why not use the right tool for the job versus trying to force one thing to do the job of two? I mean, do any of you actually own a spork?
I don’t need the two OS to seamlessly melt into one. I would however prefer to carry a single instead of two devices and use it in the mode that is more appropriate for the given moment. What I would love to see for the iPadPro is a keyboard that resembles the new MacBook without screen and battery. If that could somehow attach in a smart and elegant way to the Pro, use the iPads power source and show a retina Mac desktop, I’ll be all over it!
I don’t want an iPad as my only computer ever. Touching the computer is just not ergonomic for work. My hands are in a different pane.
In the very long term, they probably will converge a little more. We don’t know how much is in common under the hood already, and there’s no reason it won’t continue to evolve that way.
But a different way of holding a device and using it very naturally results in different UI and UX, and it’s foolish to try to build a single UI that handles each. You will never hold an iMac to your ear.
” don’t understand how two things built on the same UNIX foundation on devices claimed to be desktop class can’t eventually converge.”
It’s not a question of “can or cannot”.
It’s more one of “should or should not”.
Why should there be a “one size fits all” platform, when one size does NOT fit all. Some people needs are met by a car, some by a truck, some use each when appropriate.
Trying to converge both together has been tried. Google images of “Subaru Brat” to see how well that turned out.
Two years? That’s a long time for internet comments.
It usually takes two minutes for that to happen. 🙂
“I don’t need the two OS to seamlessly melt into one.”
Everything else you said contradicts this sentence.
One magic device, two magic OS. Where’s the contradiction?
“What I am convinced of is that iOS could eventually grow to meet the Mac’s needs”
WHOSE Mac needs? Yours? Mine? I need a fully accessible filesystem and the ability to install arbitrary software (I do front end dev) like Node, Python, Jenkins, etc. That’s a niche need – why make iOS do all of that when they already have an OS that I can use?
As I said elsewhere in this comment thread, I don’t understand the infatuation with convergence. When I cook, I don’t have just one knife to slice everything. I don’t use a single pan and expect it to do everything from stir-fry to soup. If I work on my house I don’t have just one tool that I expect to cut, hammer, sand etc. So why are people so incredibly set on having one device for the entire universe of computing needs?
“WHOSE Mac needs?”
A vast majority, which they’re not at yet.
I think the biggest problem with iPad Pro is that, unlike the other iPads, you use it in landscape mode most of the the time. This means that camera is on the side of the screen for apps like Skype and Fuze.
Eh. I don’t think needs are that simple. Rather, it seems there are multiple populations that each have some needs in common with others but also special needs.