Quo vadis, iPad?
How the Tablet category can level up from a secondary device to a primary one
They still don’t get it.
Among the last things the iPad needs to become a better device are:
- Even more performance
- Even better display
- 5G
Now that’s the marketing copy straight from Apple’s website — the first things they want you to know about this product:
The last iPad already had stellar performance. To paraphrase Craig Mod: These iPads feel like they strapped on a rocket engine to a Homer Simpson car. You can’t utilize the power.
Instead the iPad’s future will be decided at WWDC. It will be decided with software.
You can put it bluntly like The Verge:
People are only talking about macOS on the iPad because iPadOS is a failure. macOS is more than 20 years old (the underlying UI paradigm is almost 40 years old), wasn’t designed with Touch or Stylus in mind, and has less developers on its platform.
And yet, people want it badly instead of iPadOS.
Ideally Apple’s solution would be smarter and more nuanced than that, but in the meantime lots of users (me included) would happily buy.
That’s failure.
Not the iPad (the product) is the failure, it’s iPadOS (the software OS). I guess “let me boot macOS” will become the new “just give me a new cheese grater Mac Pro”.
Be aware that migrating Mac apps like Final Cut to iOS alone won’t do it. Apps in itself are already pretty powerful. The change needs to be a layer deeper in the stack.
What went wrong?
The reasoning is multifold. Of course, the App Store vessel plays a role. Not so much in the sense of inflexible pricing models, more in what you are allowed to do. If devs were able to alter system-wide things like multi-tasking, maybe a better version would have won. If users were able to install software aside the App Store, the 30% cut would matter less.
I explored my own thoughts and think it boils down to a missing transition path or let’s say missing backwards compatibility.
Today I read another interesting angle from Dan Hon:
some workflows are just *hard* and needlessly frustrating right now. The UI doesn’t get out of the way.
I think perhaps one way to look at the iPad is that of course it isn’t just a content consumption device. People are clearly creating content with it. But it’s a focused content creation device right now, where your work+work product is in a single, self-contained app.
In a way, I think this might explain why the iPad is doing great in creative industries but less so in *handwaves* knowledge-worker roles? You’re researching stuff, several Excel spreadsheets open, multiple Google docs? That’s *painful* on iPad OS.
The same with video calls: If you can focus on one window with your grandparents in it, that’s great. If you want to share your screen, write meeting notes, check some status page and see your coworkers, well…that’s not so great.
In comparison Microsoft’s strategy of trying to bundle the laptop with the tablet wasn’t that bad in 2011 and certainly isn’t in 2021. I said the strategy, not necessarily the resulting products.
I tried using a Surface as my main driver and I failed. You can read the full story here. In short:
Unfortunately, even the slowest and cheapest tablet out there does the job of being a tablet better than a Microsoft Surface.
Yet I’m still not on board buying two devices (tablet and laptop) for tasks that overlap at least 80%. Money is an issue of course, but how about seamless transitions or doing “tablet stuff” in parallel? Like going from researching multiple Word documents and browser tabs on the desk to switching to a YouTube video on the couch. Or like scribbling a drawing in a meeting while having the notes from the last meeting open on another screen.
The best form factor to date should be the Surface Book. A laptop with a detachable screen — or a tablet with an optional, “real” (as in has the sturdiness of a laptop) keyboard.
Ironically, it is Apple that proved this form factor right with the release of M1 MacBooks.
The big thing with M1 Mac’s is not the better performance — it’s the longer battery life while having said performance. I removed the battery indicator from my status bar completely. Paired with Instant Wake it feels more like an iPad.
(By the way, enjoy the time till the M1X comes out because it will never be easier to recommend a computing device.)
What made the 2-in-1 concept of the Surface hard to use is solved in the Apple world. The Mac now has Tablet-like hardware with superb performance & battery life on a powerful Desktop OS with devs who are eager to build for it. So an Apple 2-in-1 would be the true incarnation of the concept.
Or let’s take a different angle. Who would complain if the MacBook Air M1 would get a sister with detachable touchscreen (without the need for “Touch Alternatives”)? What percentage of customers would choose the 2-in-1 model?
With Launchpad, the Big Sur redesign, Rosetta and iPad apps, you don’t have to alter anything and it still would be a better UX than the Surface’s “tablet mode”.
With Apple software and hardware this form factor would be the dream.
It’s frustrating to notice all the building blocks that are right there, all in one company, but that company doesn’t want to combine them — mainly for business bottom line reasons.
It’s even more frustrating when you are desperately waiting for a breakthrough (from the Microsoft or Apple ecosystem) year after year at least for a decade. I sincerely thought I wouldn’t write this article in 2021, re-hashing the same basic principles as for example LKM did in 2014. But now I forecast another retweet of this issue with the hashtag #WWDC2021:
As every year, I keep my hopes up for some reveal. But I’m not as optimistic as when I wrote The iPad Turnaround in 2019.
A MacBook in the Surface Book form factor doesn’t sound as far fetched as an iPad that can boot MacOS, but features the same result.
I could foresee a future where the iPad (and therefore the tablet market) gets handicapped, because a MacBook Air with touch is what people want.
Sometimes Apple gives in to what people want, see larger smartphones. But only sometimes.
