The Innovators Dilemma[1] is a great book for thinking about announcements like this. A "disruptive innovation" does something really well such that some people

The Innovators Dilemma[1] is a great book for thinking about announcements like this. A "disruptive innovation" does something really well such that some people want it, but it is inferior in many ways to the market leaders. The market leaders can even laugh at the weak alternative and wonder why someone would want it. Over time, though, the "inferior" solution gradually meets more and more of the needs that were previously served by the market leaders... and eventually it wins (if the stars align and all that... but the examples in the book show how companies can be blind to the disruptors). Starting with the iPhone in 2007, on the surface Apple was disrupting phones/smartphones. But it was also music players. And then cameras. And, with the iPad, computers. When I first saw the iPad, I thought "someday, this will be the perfect computer for my mom". That time came when they added printing. Really, what they started disrupting in 2007 was computing in general. With iOS, they're trying to make an interaction model that works better for today's use cases than what we had before. The iPad Pro is one more step along the line of replacing our computers. Clearly, iOS devices are inferior to Macs for our (Hacker News readers) needs. Today. All of that said, it's an interesting race to see which model "wins" between Microsoft's "blend the old and new worlds" and Apple's "clean break". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma