Om had some interesting things to say in the article. Personally, I use both iPad and Mac, but I use them in different ways. I think each device is suited for, and excels at, their own set of unique tasks.
Om Malik on the iPad vs. Mac debate
Om had some interesting things to say in the article. Personally, I use both iPad and Mac, but I use them in different ways. I think each device is suited for, and excels at, their own set of unique tasks.
what debate? different tools with different use cases.
what “feeble upgrades” of the new MBP? every review I’ve read said its an awesome machine.
Om Malik — well inside the techie echo chamber, and sinking into Walt Mossberg alarmist territory for remaining relevant.
As an owner of both, the iPad is for Netflix and web surfing and the Mac is for using Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite.
The reason this debate is so stupid is that it is not iPad versus Mac! It is iPad versus iPad+Mac. I don’t know any Mac users who don’t also have iPads. There may be some hardcore novelists whose fingers are glued to their MacBooks, but even then they likely have an iPad as a book reader. iPads already outsell Macs by a large margin.
I agree 100% with Om Malik. I don’t want another desktop computer. I don’t want another Mac. I don’t ever want to use Windows. But I still need either a MacPad or a Surface Pro to go along with my iPads and iPhone. Not versus my iPads and iPhone.
My clients pay me to run apps like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator all day, with a digital pen and workflow automation scripting and a UNIX Web development stack.
Not sure if everybody knows this, but not only is iPad Pro missing all of that software, iOS is specifically made not to run that kind of software as a security feature.
So just like Om, I have an iPhone. Just like Om, I have an iPad Pro, plus an iPad mini. However, unlike Om, I also have to have a Mac. Unfortunately, the Mac hardware has stagnated such that there is no Mac that is an improvement on the Mac I already have.
So the debate is not iPad versus Mac. It is just an outcry from those iPad users who also need a Mac:
“why has the Mac hardware line stagnated such that it is just the same horses from 2006, but now slightly faster?” (and with a set of ports that is probably less practical than the 2006 versions)
“why is the company that introduced multitouch 10 years ago the only PC maker whose PC lineup comes from an alternate universe where multitouch was never invented?”
“why have so few Mac apps been ported to iPad Pro, even from hardcore Mac-only developers?”
“why did you create possibly the best digital pen ever, but deploy it only for iPads, when the vast majority of pen users and apps on the Apple platform are Mac users and Mac apps, with about a 25 year history?”
“why does Apple tell me I don’t need multitouch on my next Mac, but they have been making Logic Remote and Final Cut Remote apps for over 5 years now?” there are many Macs that only run Final Cut or Logic or Photoshop all day long —should be able to buy an iMac for $4000 and install Logic and just touch the iMac like a mixing desk — even the current stand works for that
So for me it is all about the horrible state of the Mac. The Mac is so bad that it had become hip for creative people to go to the Microsoft Store and look at the Surface line and do some quick calculations and figure out that a Surface Pro 4 and an iPad Pro and an iPhone 7 are actually the best hardware for them. MacBook Pro requires a $1200 graphics tablet and a desk to put it on. It is really hard to put down $4000 for MacBook Pro and $1200 for tablet and sit at a desk like it is 2006 when you can spend just the $1200 on a Surface Pro and slip it next to your iPad in a knapsack and go and keep using your old MacBook Pro at your old desk for the much rarer times when you will be at the desk. And when you are, you can use iPad Pro, Surface Pro, and MacBook Pro.
During the comeback, I just bought a new Mac notebook and a new Mac desktop for about the same price every 3 years along with AppleCare and sold the old ones. The new ones were always significantly better. So much so that they would change the way I work and make me unquestionably faster, better, with the same effort applied. In 2010 I went to MacBook Pro plus iPad. But in 2013 I went shopping to replace the MacBook Pro and even when I doubled my budget, the new machine would have the same RAM as my old machine, as well as much less SSD storage. Even maxing out the SSD, I would have had to carry an external disk. So I did not buy. I never once thought my 2010 MacBook Pro was too thick. What I thought about it was I needed it to be more beefy because my other Mac is now an iPad. I wanted it to get touch because my other Mac is now and iPad. The 2010 MacBook Pro not only had more SSD capacity than 2012 and 2016, you can replace the DVD drive in the 2010 with a 2 terabyte hard disk for Time Machine or with even more SSD if you like, or you can replace it with more battery. They should be making Macs that are more configurable and truck-like than ever because we have iPads now for the one-size-fits-all stuff.
So if iPad Pro is maximum 4GB RAM, 256 GB storage, I want to get a MacPad Pro to go with that, and it should have 32GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. That is what the app platforms need. If the Mac has to be twice as thick as the current MacBook Pro, I don’t care. For thinness there is iPad or MacBook. And I need the same touch and pen on both because I am going to use both of them with my same hands and both will be used for my profession which is art, not typing.
Also, during the comeback, each new notebook would exceed the previous desktop. If I bought a Mac Pro in 2013, the 2016 MacBook Pro should be able to replace it with the same compute power but now portable. But the minimum RAM of 2013 Mac Pro is the same as the maximum RAM of 2016 MacBook Pro. I am still going to have to manage the RAM each of my apps can use in 2017 like it is f’ing 1997.
The problem is ultimately at Apple. They are indulging themselves in hardware design for the sake of hardware design now that Jony Ives in the lead creative person, and they are totally ignoring the 99% of computing features that are in software. So they wanted to make MacBook Pro fit in the same box as MacBook Air and they wanted to use all Thunderbolt 3 ports for their own satisfaction even though the main benefit of that port is to be on every single device and iPads and iPhones don’t have them. They are not starting at the user and figuring out what to put in the user’s hands to enable them to work better. If they were, they would have put touch across the line because they would have noticed that it is the software that dictates whether I use an iPad or Mac at any one moment, not the hardware. At the hardware level, iPad and Mac should be the same, except Mac should be about 8x beefier. The hardware I need to run an awesome iPad drawing app is there right now, but the hardware I need for the suite of drawing/painting/coding Mac apps that iPad specifically is not trying to replace for security reasons is not there. It is not there because it is the same exact hardware for my same exact hands except with much beefier compute power. Yet the Mac has evolved in this decade to get smaller and thinner while maintaining the same basic power, and the interface has not evolved at all. The TrackPad and mouse are by far the slowest part of the device. The CPU sleeps most of the time while you roll an egg across the screen with a spoon.
So let’s just be clear that the Mac lineup is not meeting the needs of Mac users who already have iPads. The Mac versus iPad thing is only really a MacBook versus iPad Pro thing, where the lines naturally overlap (smallest Mac versus biggest iPad.) For all the other Macs, there is no iPad replacement. And unfortunately, no modern Mac replacement also. That is why you see so many Mac users looking at Windows PC’s with actual lust, even though we know the Microsoft software is not as good. The Mac hardware is that unsuitable for most Mac users.
At Apple Store right now there ought to be 4 tables, all with the world’s best touch computing devices, because the thing that Apple is known for more than anything is touch:
1) Watch in 2 sizes
2) iPhone in 3 sizes
3) iPads in 3 sizes
4) Macs in 3 form factors (MacBook, MacPad, iMac) all with touch (Mac Pro gets replaced by a Thunderbolt dock accessory from a third party that adds CPU/GPU/storage to any Mac)
… and with the effort you save on that more-compact lineup, you make sure that all the accessories in the store work with all Apple devices in the store, not just some. Give the Mac a Lightning port if you need to.
Longtime Mac users will buy 1 device from each table. Significantly more people will buy 1 device from 2–3 tables, but even though they might have skipped the Mac, they will watch movies and listen to music and use apps on their devices that were made on Macs.
Suddenly the Mac would have a reason to exist again other than the mechanical keyboard: it is for when the biggest and baddest iPad Pro is not nearly enough. Same hands, same user, same multitouch screen and pen sensors and wireless mechanical keyboard support, but much bigger apps, much more flexibility, much more configurability, and about 10–20 years more software sophistication in most apps. (For example, if you port GarageBand for iOS to the Mac, it would be 20 years behind the feature set of Logic Mac — same with Photoshop for iOS, that is at least 20 years behind Photoshop for Mac.)
So the people who think we as a society won’t need “computing trucks” anymore are just completely wrong. We need them as much as ever, because we can’t disregard 20 years of advancements in core software tools just to get touch and ARM. The iPhones and iPads expanded computing further because they are cars, but they did not and do not replace trucks until they run all the truck software. But to do that, they would have to become the trucks that most people and use cases do not want.
I think the ultimate effect of iPhone and iPad on Mac/PC will not be to replace them entirely. Instead, I think Mac/PC evolves from being shrunken-down server/mainframes into being beefed-up iPads. I look at Surface Pro and I see “iPad Truck” (want) and I look at MacBook Pro and I see “Server To Go” (do not want, even though I use bash and httpd daily.)
So if we need both cars and trucks, then just as we need iPads to be modern cars with all the technological advancements of the past decade, we need Macs to be modern trucks with all the technological advancements of the past decade.
I can’t believe that things got so bad with the Mac that pleading for the Mac to take advantage of the last 10 years of technology is somehow controversial. And Apple is like, “here is your 2006 Mac over again in 2016, except refined to be faster compute-wise, but with the same slow user interface, and refined to be thinner, but now you’ll have to carry external storage and dongles.” No improvement. The computer still sleeps most of the time while the mouse cursor is pushed around the screen, and the bag you carry your notebook in is the same thickness as 2006 because now it has 4 or 5 things in it, not just a notebook, because those things migrated out of the notebook and into your case to make the notebook thinner. But because you still need those things for the entire life of the notebook, they are not actually gone. They are just much more inconvenient and easier to lose and break, and at additional cost because Macs somehow get more expensive as they lose ports, and the dongles are also expensive and easy to lose and have to be replaced. And you no longer have a Swiss Army Knife of ports on your notebook to match what comes up at various locations — feature — and in fact cannot even connect to an Apple display without dongles.
Apple spent probably a billion or more dollars and uncountable person-hours during this decade turning the iPod nano music player and fitness tracker with accessory watch strap ($249) into the Apple Watch fitness tracker and music player with included watch strap ($249.) I wish that 1/10th of that effort had been put into reimagining the Mac for the post-iOS world.
Maybe they have been reimagining the Mac secretly and it just is not ready. I will he happy to eat my words, but the point still stands that they are too late. The MacBook Pro introduction was embarrassing. There are articles from the day before knocking Microsoft for introducing Surface Studio right before MacBook Pro, saying that creative users will unquestionably fall in love with the Apple goodness and forget Surface, but this time that did not happen because Apple just did the 2012 MacBook Pro over again: we made it thinner and more expensive and better in a few ways but not better overall. And that is after the 2010 model outsold the 2012 side-by-side. They doubled down on shrinking the same enclosure and upping the price and not putting in touch or pen sensors.
If I buy Surface Studio or Surface Pro and add it to what I have now, I get a good bang for the buck. I can explain the ROI very easily. I get no bang for the buck from any Mac in the store right now. Nothing will change if I update my MacBook Pro to the newest one except it will be a little faster and require dongles. For $3000 or $4000 I can’t explain the ROI. It is better to add a Surface Pro that adds all-new capabilities that I have never, ever had, like the pro Adobe Photoshop in my lap for 8 hours in a plane seat. Can’t do that with a Mac because they all require an external graphics tablet that requires a desk. Surface Pro costs less than the graphics tablet I would have to buy to go with a new MacBook Pro. Instant ROI because I can work 100% on planes for the first time.
What is really disappointing is that at one point in 1983 or so, Steve Jobs was trying to get seconds shaved off the Mac boot time because he recognized that a few seconds multiplied by a boot up every day multiplied by millions of users was going to waste thousands of human lifetimes. And in this decade, we are going to waste millions of human lifetimes screwing around with dongles because Apple no longer wants to do transitions. It shows such disrespect for the user. Why can’t they put 2 Thunderbolt 3 on the other side and leave the “Classic” ports where they are for 3–4 years while the accessories catch up? They can call them Classic ports and say they will go away next time and that lights a fire under accessory makers while also giving them time to respond, to prepare the cabled environment for the future Thunderbolt 3 -only notebooks. The first iMac did not have 4 USB and nothing else and you had to buy 3 dongles to get the other ports that were needed at the time. They bragged about a 3 step setup: 1) plug AC into wall power, 2) plug modem into phone jack, 3) there is no step 3. If I buy 2016 MacBook Pro, I am going to go to a client’s studio or office and take a desk where there is a GigE on the desk that connects me at bare minimum speed to the resources I need to work, and I am going to reach for my Apple GigE to Thunderbolt 3 dongle (which replaced my Apple GigE to Thunderbolt 2 dongle, which replaced my Apple Ethernet to USB dongle) and it won’t be there because it is plugged into the Gigabit Ethernet at my previous client’s office. So in 1998 there was no step 3 because you were connected easily, and in 2018 we are going to have no step 3 because you literally cannot connect because you don’t have the dongle.
GigE is not exotic or obsolete or being phased out in graphics, music, video. FireWire is common in music studios. SD is still a fact of life in not just photos but also music. But 2016 MacBook Pro has none of that — it has the same ports as the latest Windows PC’s instead!
I would love for someone who has access to the numbers to tally up the cost of removing GigE from MacBook Pro in 2012. How much was spent on USB, Thunderbolt 1, Thunderbolt 2, and Thunderbolt 3 dongles, and how much time it takes per connection per user, and compare that to the time and money Apple saved by removing the port over which Mac users get their gigantic video clips and so on. Don’t forget the people who wrote all the tech articles “How to connect your 2012 MacBook Pro to the Gigabit Ethernet it needs daily via dongles” and the articles to explain that article and the tech support and the retail staff and the users themselves who never wanted to know any of this at all, we have work to do, just need to plug in this GigE cable and get some gigantic creative assets over the super fast wired network.
If Apple announced tomorrow that they are spinning off Mac, Inc — I would cheer. No CEO of a PC company would go into 2017 with a touch-free lineup of 2006 PC’s with 2026 ports. If he did, the board would fire that CEO. At Apple, though, I guess it is OK because either Windows sucks or it improves iPad sales or both. Kinda sad for the computing platform where most of the world’s consumer apps, music, movies, artwork, and books are made.
You had me until your second paragraph.
You had me until your third paragraph. Om’s a bit precious, but I think the Mossberg comparison isn’t quite aligned for me.
I have both as well. Use the iPad Pro for artwork and travel. The Mac for everything but MS Office and Adobe.
“I don’t know any Mac users who don’t also have iPads.”
Then you should enlarge your circle of friends. There are many. And there are many who only have iPads and no Mac. Not everyone can afford multiple devices. Just as importantly, many have ditched iPads since the big iPhones came out. If you use iPads primarily for consumption, the big iPhones are pretty good substitutes.
I think there’s quite a bit of truth in both Gruber’s and Brooks’ arguments.
Many of us long time Mac users who have evolved a workflow on the Mac find it difficult if not impossible to re-create it on an iPad, even a high end iPad with a bluetooth keyboard.
For me, it comes down to two things: editing text in Mac OS is both familiar and easier for me than it is in iOS and I spend a lot of time writing and editing text. I like a hardware keyboard and if I can have it, a mouse for moving a cursor around. And, working on photographs and printing them in my workflow needs a Mac, less for the applications, more for the control, with the mouse and with things that are in Mac OS that make that control easier.
If I had to have a single tool it would always be a Mac and as others have said here, a Mac and a large (or even not so large) iPhone is enough. But, I have a MacBook Pro, an iPad Air II and an iPhone 6s and they’re all in use. The iPad gets the least use though: watching movies on planes, staying connected on trains (personal hotspot off phone) and, most importantly, reading while sitting on the toilet.
The bottom line for me is, no matter how “Pro” the iPad gets, it’s still an iPad and for me, has real limitations for the things I do with my digital tools.
This debate seems premature to me. I’ll be back when there’s higher level of input and software parity.
In the meantime, I’m going to be thinking a lot about the impact of the MS Surface Studio.
hey i did say “sinking”.
but the techie echo chamber is real. it’s inhabited by names we know and doesn’t represent most people, at all.
FFS TLDR – if you can’t express yourself succinctly then i’m not going to invest in what you say.
i quit at stale notebook hardware. it’s a mature product, that is almost perfect. what do you expect apple to do? add fins? apple doesn’t do different for different’s sake.
No argument there. But there are differences in style, even among that pack of noodleheads. 🙂
Yep, precisely what I thought. I couldn’t use an iPad for the work I do. Other can. The projection of one’s needs or preferences to a larger trend is increasingly annoying.
Learn to be concise.
And this MacBook Pro I’m typing on? The new one? It’s significantly better than the 2013 Air and FAR better than my 2011 Air or the previous 2009 MacBooks. So the point about the upgrades not being noticeably is BS.
What you’re running into is the fact that laptops are a mature technology so, aside from speed increases and some other improvements, you’re not going to see radical changes.
MacPad? You clearly don’t understand the challenges in that and the inherent compromises.
Wait, I can get FINS? Sign me up!
I think the Studio is a brilliantly targeted device. Because it’s so brilliantly targeted, though, its appeal is limited. Unless you want to draw on a large screen and want to have the folding behavior it’s vastly overpriced for the power you get. But if you want or need that stuff? The power is secondary and I imagine it’s a very attractive choice.
“The bottom line for me is, no matter how “Pro” the iPad gets, it’s still an iPad”
Too early to draw rigid conclusions about iPad, IMVHO.
I don’t agree. The iPad is 6 years old. It will change, of course, but I thinks some of its limitations (and advantages) are baked into it being a touch device that is, mostly a single app view.
The thing is…we’re all different. For some the iPad will work just fine for everything. For others not, but they’ll find it has a niche in their lives. And for some, it doesn’t fit at all.
It’s worth remembering what software was and wasn’t available when the original iPad shipped. Same goes for iOS developments and hardware like the Apple Pencil.
Lots of runway left for this platform.
Oh I agree… I just think we’re in the early maturity part of the iPad… But I;’ve been wrong before 🙂
What rick said below. To each his or her own.
We all have different needs, and different work flows. There are phenomenal tools on both platforms and when I use any device from Apple it still feels like it’s magic.
You had me until the fourth word. 😉
Could you elaborate?
For instance, what do you use on the iPad Pro for artwork?
And everything BUT office and Adobe?
Why not office and Adobe on a Mac?
It’s tried and true, even if it is becoming a bit stagnant.
Right, it really is that simple. At least for now.
Publisher.
Let’s all face it, that in a nutshell, is the difference.
Touché.
Hell, that is a lot of txt.
You complain that Apple’s Mac hardware has not significantly improved over the years, and you could be correct. You then complain about lack of touch on said Mac/iMac, which has NOTHING to do with hardware advancement. Touch is about the software… and possibly the lack of finger prints on a screen.
That is infatuation, not the difference. Infatuation clouds judgment. I feel it too sometimes when using Apple products. But I try hard not to engage in rational debate when under that spell.
The debate is thrust on us by Mac-centric users like Gruber who regularly beat the “iPad can’t replace a MacBook for real work” drum and believe (falsely IMO) that Tim Cook is quietly trying to kill the Mac and force iPads on everyone.
Setting aside the “Cook is killing the Mac” fear mongering for a moment, Om is positing that an iPad can in fact replace a MacBook for real work for the vast majority of users if you’re willing to adapt your work style to it rather than trying to make it work just like a MacBook.
FWIW: I use a MacBook Pro at the office, hooked up to a 4k display to do my work. However, while I used to bring it home daily and on the weekends, I now rely entirely on a iPad Pro, Smart Keyboard, and Apple Pencil at home. The more and more I come to rely on it, the more I find myself siding with Om.
I personally wouldn’t use the word “magic” or magical as many people often do in reference to Apple.
In fact, I have never used it in relation to Apple. I would probably say elegant or better designed.
I think John’s post is still a decent summation.
This falls under the category of “Just because a blogger writes about it doesn’t mean it’s read-worthy.” Om Malik is a writer who doesn’t get technology.