If Apple actually exits the PC era years from now, then I expect an iPad Pro-like platform will host an iOS-based XCode (or whatever they call it when it is re-

If Apple actually exits the PC era years from now, then I expect an iPad Pro-like platform will host an iOS-based XCode (or whatever they call it when it is re-targeted to iOS). It can be a bumpy 3-5 year transition, about the time it took for OS X to stabilize the transition from the MacOS user experience. We won't know until it happens. Jobs-Apple never articulated what they see for their users going forward on a strategic scale, the vision is only laid out at the product introduction, and only tactically-constrained forward optics are shared. So far Cook-Apple seems to follow the same behavior in this regard. I think the tail is wagging the dog if Apple goes down that road. A lot of shareholders and customers are impatiently pushing Apple for The Next Innovation, but ironically I suspect a steady-as-she-goes Cook-style CEO is exactly what they need for the next 4-6 years because I see us in a hardware technological interregnum that takes time to mature. Apple's innovations have usually come from a confluence of the right hardware maturation cycles to capitalize upon software waiting in the wings for the hardware to catch up. The innovation and revenue has been hardware-based but it can just as easily be software- and services-based, but Apple hasn't chosen to monetize yet. At the moment, the hardware-oriented tail is wagging the entire organization, as they seek out the next innovation category in another piece of hardware, when seeking hardware might be the wrong question to ask in the first place. Battery and charging technology is an especially big obstacle right now for them. Apple Watch is the Mac 128K of Apple's smartwatch category due to that obstacle. They're making uncomfortable engineering tradeoffs in the latest MacBook Pro (if you believe Schiller's explanation, which I do) due to that obstacle.