5 ms·

The new iPad Pro already benchmarks as high as some of their recent laptops (Yes, I know the thermals are different, etc but bear with me here) My bet is that

The new iPad Pro already benchmarks as high as some of their recent laptops (Yes, I know the thermals are different, etc but bear with me here) My bet is that over the years iPad Pro will expand to do more and more of the jobs that people traditionally use MacBooks (or laptops in general) to do. We'll eventually see a world where most people have iPads, not laptops - thereby relying on A-series chips, not Intel, to get their work done. iPad sales are already encroaching Mac sales, and Apple already acknowledges that for most people, the iPad is enough to be their primary computer or soon will be (you can see this in their communications and commercials). I know it might be difficult for a somewhat technical (and maybe a little bit older) community like HN to imagine, but this is one of my strong beliefs with regards to Apple's product lineup. I truly think the iPad Pro is the dark horse that no one will see coming (especially given that Apple themselves hadn't really focused on iPad deeply for the first couple years of its existence).

stale2002 8y ago
I really don't think so. Whether or not the iPad pro has good hardwear is irrelevant. What matters is that it is missing and extremely important feature, which is a mouse and keyboard. I don't care how powerful a keyboard is if I can't use a physical keyboard and mouse for it. Power can't beat UX, and boy is the keyboard good UX when you compare it to tablets or phones.
- askafriend 8y ago
  This sounds like the kind of argument people made when the iPhone had a software keyboard and every other smartphone had a physical tactile keyboard. What I think you're missing is that the world will evolve in ways to accommodate a mouse-light interface or evolve to include it if it becomes obvious that it's mission-critical (it's not at all obvious today, despite legacy thinking). Neither version of the future precludes the iPad at all. Just look at the new gestural interface on the new iPhone X/XR/XS devices. It makes navigating the OS effortless and super fast in ways that it simply wasn't before. Before it, people were saying that it's too slow to navigate on a mobile device. How many other innovations like that are coming down the line? We don't know. I say this as someone who's used an iPad Pro along with the Keyboard Cover for quite some time. No, you won't be able to type on it for hours and hours. But you'll be able to type on it for an hour or so consistently. That's a BIG deal, and changes A LOT. It's only going to get better from here. There are a lot of apps that support countless keyboard shortcuts, including Google's whole G Suite, Office 365, Lightroom, and the upcoming full version of Photoshop in 2019. If you asked me 3 years ago if I thought the iPad would replace Laptops, I'd tell you probably not. Apple had done little to differentiate it from the iPhone lineup in terms of iOS or even hardware features. But with the iPad Pro specifically, I think things have taken a real turn and Apple is signaling that they're ready to focus on taking it from a media consumption device to a more productive, mission-critical device. 120hz refresh rate, full digitizer, Apple Pencil, the new integrated keyboard cases, a new focus on pro apps, and a ton of improvements to the actual UI/UX to make multitasking and app-switching easier....etc etc. These were all the things that were missing for a long time. But Apple is finally doing all the things needed to move iPad in a direction where people will choose it over laptops at an increasing rate. The kicker is this: Apple announced recently during WWDC that iOS apps will work on MacOS. Many of their new stock apps in MacOS Mojave are just ported iOS apps. They are truly and confidently doubling down on iOS and iPad. That's my personal prediction and belief anyway.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    Phones never replaced laptops though. Phone are useful, and yet will never ever replaced the desktop, solely because of screen size. You can't magic a full screen monitor on your phone. Yes, iPads could be useful for some circumstances, but power was never the limiting factor. Take an iPad from 5 years ago, and you have something that works just as well for all iPad usecases. My point is that I don't think anyone could imagine sitting 8 hours a day, typing away at an iPad. For office work, a mouse and keyboard is essential. How can you possible spend hours typing away at something that doesn't have a keyboard? And the vast majority of office usecases involve lots and lots of typing and mouse usage. An iPad being useful is not the same thing as replacing office work.
asdff 8y ago
I still don't think the iPad is enough even for most consumers. The competition for the iPad pro is the surface, which has more I/O that people would actually use (see that nice USB-A port and headphone jack?) but importantly comes with a full featured OS that everyone has been using for decades. I could see people moving to a surface type device over a laptop because it has a full featured OS, but iOS is just too limiting. Look at how ridiculous the 1 foot iPad looks with two fingers worth of space between every icon; its just too rigid of an OS to support all the different workflows people might have in their jobs. I think people have used iOS long enough to see that it's pretty limited as far as file management goes. The great multitasking of the iPad is still limited to split screening just two apps, a big step down in productivity from even classic MacOS of the 90s.
- askafriend 8y ago
  I think Surface is part of the future too. I think Surface and iPad will dominate traditional laptop sales in the next decade. They each represent 2 different opinionated views of productivity/creative-focused computing (just like the 2 different opinions of Android vs iOS in mobile computing). I think you're right that today the Surface does far better in the IO department and IO is a dealbreaker for a lot of people. But again, the world isn't standing still, and Apple just released an iPad Pro with USB-C....that's definitely signaling something. We don't have to make this a conversation about Apple. I think the whole industry is moving in that direction. Interestingly, I don't have the same belief in ChromeOS. I don't think it'll ever be truly competitive with the Surface or iPad lineup partly because Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the desktop/laptop market. It'll be easy and tempting to move to a Surface device that can do so much more than ChromeOS without changing your existing workflow from Windows. Android? Well, Android tablets have languished for a very long time - it's basically a dead market walking. The problem isn't so much the hardware languishing as much as it's the software ecosystem that languishes as a result. Even if the Android ecosystem catches up hardware-wise, it'll be a while before the app ecosystem gets kickstarted again.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
    I think the Surface turned out to be a better product. I used to think phones and tablets would be defined by lower performance but extremely energy efficient. And any learning from these low power designs would leak to desktops and laptops, but with more power to play with, they would be faster. But now we’ve got these very powerful iPads and iPhones, but they exist in a limited ecosystem. The Surface may not have the fancy A12 SoC but the entire line up seems to have intel cpus and run Windows. And their product lineup seems to be a single platform with increasing capabilities. Tablet, better tablet, laptop, better laptop. But you can run all the same stuff. I’d love Mac OS in an iPad right now that can use the same binaries.
int_19h 8y ago
"Tablets are on the way to replace laptops" has been a claim ever since the very first iPad was released. The numbers don't show that, however. Laptops are still selling strong, and tablets haven't taken over.

stale2002 8y ago

I really don't think so. Whether or not the iPad pro has good hardwear is irrelevant. What matters is that it is missing and extremely important feature, which is a mouse and keyboard. I don't care how powerful a keyboard is if I can't use a physical keyboard and mouse for it. Power can't beat UX, and boy is the keyboard good UX when you compare it to tablets or phones.

askafriend 8y ago
This sounds like the kind of argument people made when the iPhone had a software keyboard and every other smartphone had a physical tactile keyboard. What I think you're missing is that the world will evolve in ways to accommodate a mouse-light interface or evolve to include it if it becomes obvious that it's mission-critical (it's not at all obvious today, despite legacy thinking). Neither version of the future precludes the iPad at all. Just look at the new gestural interface on the new iPhone X/XR/XS devices. It makes navigating the OS effortless and super fast in ways that it simply wasn't before. Before it, people were saying that it's too slow to navigate on a mobile device. How many other innovations like that are coming down the line? We don't know. I say this as someone who's used an iPad Pro along with the Keyboard Cover for quite some time. No, you won't be able to type on it for hours and hours. But you'll be able to type on it for an hour or so consistently. That's a BIG deal, and changes A LOT. It's only going to get better from here. There are a lot of apps that support countless keyboard shortcuts, including Google's whole G Suite, Office 365, Lightroom, and the upcoming full version of Photoshop in 2019. If you asked me 3 years ago if I thought the iPad would replace Laptops, I'd tell you probably not. Apple had done little to differentiate it from the iPhone lineup in terms of iOS or even hardware features. But with the iPad Pro specifically, I think things have taken a real turn and Apple is signaling that they're ready to focus on taking it from a media consumption device to a more productive, mission-critical device. 120hz refresh rate, full digitizer, Apple Pencil, the new integrated keyboard cases, a new focus on pro apps, and a ton of improvements to the actual UI/UX to make multitasking and app-switching easier....etc etc. These were all the things that were missing for a long time. But Apple is finally doing all the things needed to move iPad in a direction where people will choose it over laptops at an increasing rate. The kicker is this: Apple announced recently during WWDC that iOS apps will work on MacOS. Many of their new stock apps in MacOS Mojave are just ported iOS apps. They are truly and confidently doubling down on iOS and iPad. That's my personal prediction and belief anyway.
- stale2002 8y ago
  Phones never replaced laptops though. Phone are useful, and yet will never ever replaced the desktop, solely because of screen size. You can't magic a full screen monitor on your phone. Yes, iPads could be useful for some circumstances, but power was never the limiting factor. Take an iPad from 5 years ago, and you have something that works just as well for all iPad usecases. My point is that I don't think anyone could imagine sitting 8 hours a day, typing away at an iPad. For office work, a mouse and keyboard is essential. How can you possible spend hours typing away at something that doesn't have a keyboard? And the vast majority of office usecases involve lots and lots of typing and mouse usage. An iPad being useful is not the same thing as replacing office work.

asdff 8y ago

I still don't think the iPad is enough even for most consumers. The competition for the iPad pro is the surface, which has more I/O that people would actually use (see that nice USB-A port and headphone jack?) but importantly comes with a full featured OS that everyone has been using for decades. I could see people moving to a surface type device over a laptop because it has a full featured OS, but iOS is just too limiting. Look at how ridiculous the 1 foot iPad looks with two fingers worth of space between every icon; its just too rigid of an OS to support all the different workflows people might have in their jobs. I think people have used iOS long enough to see that it's pretty limited as far as file management goes. The great multitasking of the iPad is still limited to split screening just two apps, a big step down in productivity from even classic MacOS of the 90s.

askafriend 8y ago
I think Surface is part of the future too. I think Surface and iPad will dominate traditional laptop sales in the next decade. They each represent 2 different opinionated views of productivity/creative-focused computing (just like the 2 different opinions of Android vs iOS in mobile computing). I think you're right that today the Surface does far better in the IO department and IO is a dealbreaker for a lot of people. But again, the world isn't standing still, and Apple just released an iPad Pro with USB-C....that's definitely signaling something. We don't have to make this a conversation about Apple. I think the whole industry is moving in that direction. Interestingly, I don't have the same belief in ChromeOS. I don't think it'll ever be truly competitive with the Surface or iPad lineup partly because Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the desktop/laptop market. It'll be easy and tempting to move to a Surface device that can do so much more than ChromeOS without changing your existing workflow from Windows. Android? Well, Android tablets have languished for a very long time - it's basically a dead market walking. The problem isn't so much the hardware languishing as much as it's the software ecosystem that languishes as a result. Even if the Android ecosystem catches up hardware-wise, it'll be a while before the app ecosystem gets kickstarted again.
- 2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
  I think the Surface turned out to be a better product. I used to think phones and tablets would be defined by lower performance but extremely energy efficient. And any learning from these low power designs would leak to desktops and laptops, but with more power to play with, they would be faster. But now we’ve got these very powerful iPads and iPhones, but they exist in a limited ecosystem. The Surface may not have the fancy A12 SoC but the entire line up seems to have intel cpus and run Windows. And their product lineup seems to be a single platform with increasing capabilities. Tablet, better tablet, laptop, better laptop. But you can run all the same stuff. I’d love Mac OS in an iPad right now that can use the same binaries.

int_19h 8y ago

"Tablets are on the way to replace laptops" has been a claim ever since the very first iPad was released. The numbers don't show that, however. Laptops are still selling strong, and tablets haven't taken over.