The iPad Pro is a vision for the future — we’re just not there yet
I was reading an interesting article by Jean-Louis Gassée earlier this week (The iPad Turnaround is Coming). I recommend you check it out and also subscribe to Monday Note if you have an interest in technology and journalism.
It was on the back of Jean-Louis Gassée’s article that I wanted to share a few of my own observations about Apple’s tablet vision from a business perspective.
We don’t upgrade our iPads like our iPhones. Stop thinking we do.
Whilst I’ve got an iPad Pro for business purposes the iPad that gets the most use in the house is the original iPad Air released in November 2013. It works just fine.
Its screen is fine. Its battery is fine. Its ability to stream media and run apps is fine. It’s basically fine!
And why shouldn’t it be? In November of this year it will just turn 4.
4 years seems like a decent length of time to expect to own a digital product without wanting to upgrade it.
In fact, the more you think about it, the more the 1–2 year phone upgrade cycle stands out as the exception rather than the norm.
The iPad Pro still lacks Pro software and a viable App Store business model.
This is a chicken and egg scenario and one I wish Apple would address as a matter of urgency.
The App Store works as follows:
- Buy a piece of software from the Apple App Store.
- Forever own it — including free access to all updates.
This just doesn’t work for Pro software.
Not only do business users expect to pay monthly / annual costs for access to key software, vendors rely on this business model to incentivise them to build the right kind of software.
As it stands we’ve got the following negative feedback loop:
- Businesses evaluate the iPad Pro but find it doesn’t have all the necessary software — outcome: they wait for things to change.
- Vendors can’t adequately commercialise their endeavours with the current App Store model — outcome: they wait for things to change.
Something needs to kick-start this situation and that something is Apple. Build more appropriate business software pricing capabilities into the App Store and the apps will come.
Touch as a primary interface is fatiguing.
I switched to the iPad Pro for 3 months when it first came out. My initial experience mirrored the messaging from Apple — this was the future of computing. However, after month 1 I realised I was more tired than usual at the end of the day and by the end of month 3 I was pretty fatigued. The ergonomics of being in a permanent touch-first world don’t scale well.
“But it works fine for our iPhones?” I hear you cry. Sure, but how many long documents do you type on your iPhone? How many presentations do you create on your iPhone? Come back to me after a month of 10–12 hour days using the iPad and lets talk.
But I still believe the iPad Pro is a vision of the future and here’s why…
You don’t need any technical training to use one.
I watch people young and old simply pick up an iPad and hit the ground running. They are simple and intuitive to use. People even get the concept of the App Store straight away. In fact they get it so quickly it causes some problems for Apple.
I’ve seen happy iPad users buy MacBook Pros only to be confused that they can’t get their iPad apps on their MacBook — it’s a different App Store? Somewhat ironic.
But coming back to the iPad, the ease of use is a killer customer flywheel.
“Please make my technology harder to use” Said no-one ever.
Touch is a very natural interface — its development cycle just isn’t finished yet.
For most laptop users touch has been a critical interface for years. Many of us are used to laptop trackpads and those of us using Apple laptops have access to some pretty advanced touch features. Transitioning to the iPad feels natural and builds on this touch heritage whilst taking it to the next level.
The problem with touch though is pretty straight forward: It’s right when it’s right and not when it’s not. Why should we be forced into an interface paradigm? Why can’t we have the best of both worlds?
I think this is a dilemma that faces all tablet manufacturers right now. Apple has taken a no track-pad (i.e. mouse) stance whereas Microsoft has kept the track-pad on their Surface tablet line.
We’re still working out the next generation of user interfaces and it’s not clear which approach is right yet.
The humble computer mouse was invented in the late 1960s. Apple arguably made it mainstream in the 1980s. That means it took 20 years to get the ball rolling with the mouse (pun intended). Even then I think we can all agree it probably took another 10–15 years before people were actually happy with the interface.
Building new interface paradigms takes time and we’re just at the beginning of this journey with touch.
The iPad Pro is the perfect device for cloud-first computing.
Cloud-first computing is the principle that all software and data live in the cloud. It’s controversial and I’m not saying it’s right for everyone.
The promise is: All your data and all your apps whenever you need them, wherever you need them.
The reality: Our Internet connections and data plans (for the truly mobile) aren’t quite up to scratch yet — they aren’t fast enough or cheap enough for the cloud-first promise to really be delivered.
I was having a meal with some friends recently and I wanted to show them a cloud-archived video from my photo library. We gave up because the load time was too long. That shouldn’t be the case in 2017.
Analysts say the problem is that people don’t know where the iPad fits in between a laptop and a phone — I think it’s the technology that’s the problem, not the people using it.
Most people I know don’t walk around discussing what product category a device fits into. Instead they focus on the specific tasks they want to achieve. I get the sense that consumers are waiting for the industry to work this out rather than the other way round.
And in some sense the iPad Pro is dangerously close to delivering on three key customer flywheels:
- Easy to use — no training necessary.
- Natural interface — touch creating new interface opportunities.
- Cloud-first — All apps and data wherever, whenever.
There are issues as outlined above but I’m sure Apple is working hard to resolve them.
The velocity of change in smartphones might have been unique. We probably shouldn’t measure everything against this metric.
It’s now commonplace to view the speed of technological change through the prism of what happened with the smartphone. But the reality is that the smartphone might be a unique beast when it comes to the volume of units involved and the subsequent economies of scale that market can drive. It probably isn’t the right benchmark for the iPad.
Returning to Jean-Louis Gassée’s article, he highlights that iPad revenue in 2016 was $19B, and that if the iPad was a company it would be 149th on the Fortune 500 list. Those are strong numbers.
The concept of tablet computing clearly resonates with people. As with all innovation, it’s back to the technology companies to fine-tune it and deliver the vision for the future to the users of today.
