I use iPads mainly to hold music scores, and at the time, the Roland Piano Keyboard just would not hold a laptop securely.
Since then, I got a Yamaha Clavinova to replace the Roland and there always was the real piano. While both will hold a laptop securely, laptops are expensive displays. If I change from the iPad Pro, it will be to a mini with a 17 inch monitor, even bigger. Both of which are unused at this time, with earlier technology.
Until ios becomes MacOS (and not the other way around), an iPhone or iPad is vastly less productive (and vastly more frustrating) for me. Simple operations like getting an image URL are basically impossible except for McGuyver tricks (mailing myself the image) And I keep email off the iPad, to help focus on its intended use.
> getting an image URL are basically impossible except for McGuyver tricks
Assuming you're talking about an image in the browser? Long press, drag it to the address bar, that'll load the image alone and you can copy the address from the bar.
Fair point, but I can’t stop wondering whether the crux of the issue wasn’t the OS and the decisions that go back to iPhone or iPod. I can’t recall the details, but they tried to get MacOS to work and then decided to go with the alternative. I can only speculate on both that MacOS must have had a mobile story/dream since Newton and more so after nexstep.
So I wonder if what the article is pointing at wasn’t actually the inability of merging iOS and MacOS fully more than anything.
This article is framed as if Apple planned all this, and I don’t think that’s the case.
It me is seems Apple thought the iPad would be the way of the future, not for everyone, but for most. Jobs compared Mac’s to trucks, while most people would be well served by a car (iPad).
This was a bold prediction, but not completely unreasonable. A lot of people these days use their phone as their primary computing device, in many developing countries, the phone is likely their only device. If this is serving so many well, it isn’t crazy to think people would want a larger version of that for doing more involved tasks.
However, phones themselves got bigger, and the iPad fell into this place where it wasn’t as convenient as a phone, but not better or different enough to make it worth moving to from a phone.
The addition of all the laptop-like features to the iPad was Apple’s slow realization that its place in the market didn’t make as much sense when devices like the iPhone Pro Max exist.
I know some people who absolutely love their iPads, though I was never one of them, despite many attempts. So it seems they have their place, it’s just not as widely adopted as initially predicted (at least not yet).
As phones have grown and the iPad and MacBook line has been blurred, I think Apple needs to evaluate where the iPad fits in the lineup and what it should be to make it better than both a phone and a laptop at some things that customers care about and make that definition clear. It could be that adding laptop features to the iPad was a mistake, maybe that was Apple forgetting what the device was and caving to what people wanted it to be… but it doesn’t seem like it will ever be what people want until it runs full macOS without being locked into the App Store.
Carving out a new category isn’t easy. Apple wasn’t the first to try to make the tablet happen, they were just the most successful. But it seems it’s a category that’s still trying to figure out what it is. I don’t think I’d frame that as gaslighting, as the article tries to do.
I'd disagree that the article frames that Apple planned this.
But Apple did spend 10+ years pretending that the iPad was the computer of the future, despite all evidence to the contrary.
It also went through a long period where it actively under-invested in the Mac as it thought it could somehow migrate everyone onto iPads, despite protestations from most existing Mac users.
It also took 6 years, from the release of the first Apple silicon Mac, to actually realise that there is no reason that a Mac laptop needs to have a starting price of $999. In this period they had all of the hardware and components that could have easily made a cheaper low-end laptop Mac... as evidenced by the same hardware being sold a lot cheaper when they put it into an iPad.
So at least for the last 5 years, the failure of the iPad and the lack of a cheaper laptop Mac, has all been due to Apple's strategic missteps and biases.
To then release the MacBook Neo without those missteps being acknowledged is fine.
But it's been obvious to anyone with the slightest amount of insight that the iPad is not the future of computing. Apple should have also realised this and corrected course a lot sooner than March 2026.
About 10 years ago a guy was hired to be a change agent for a big section of the IT org where I work. We tried to voice concerns, but many things seemed to fall on deaf ears. He seemed arrogant, like he thought he knew it all. Some years later, after some re-orgs, his project was on its way out and we ended up on the same team. The topic of this early days came up a few times. What he said made a lot of sense, and I think applies here. While he did apologize and say he should have listened to us more and he learned a lot from that, he also talked about what is required for change. For real change to occur, there needs to be a certain amount of arrogance to push against the status quo. The person looking to affect change needs to believe wholeheartedly in the vision being sold. Without that, the project would be destined to fail.
Similarly, for the iPad to succeed, Apple had to believe in the vision they were selling and not waffle. This has to go on long enough to really give the idea and fair shot to grow and exist.
One of my biggest gripes with Microsoft is how quickly they’ll kill a platform. I think this is why they have so much trouble launching them. Even if I loved someone Microsoft released, I would be very hesitant to buy in, because they have been so quick to kill off their products in the past without giving them a real chance. I don’t have that same level of fear with Apple. I expect to get a long life out of an Apple device, even as an early adopter. That reputation matters and it gets built by riding these things out and seeing if a decades-long bet pays off. That isn’t something that can be known quickly.
Though I do agree, it seemed like they could have made a cheaper MacBook a long time ago, but when a keyboard is added to a iPad, it can be as much or even more expensive than a MacBook, so who knows. Some of it could have been allowing the supply chain to mature and recovering R&D costs for another big bet, which was Apple Silicon.
Maybe it is the case that if phones hadn't kept getting bigger then tablets as a category would be more popular as a computing device?
Realistically though a tablet kind of feels like a small TV these days, which is a screen with some apps on it for media consumption. Most people have a TV already for big media consumption, and then their phone will suffice for small scale media consumption, so tablets are a very niche thing for people that have the money and don't feel like using their phone for whatever reason.
In the Win 8 I thought Microsoft was visionary in integrating the tablet with the PC and in particular had a better vision than either Apple or Google. On the other hand I had a lot of weird ideas that turned out to be wrong or irrelevant: like I thought that 2-in-1s and other hybrids were just insane, like a conspiracy to confuse flight attendants, that Synoptics must be lording over the industry using patents to force every device to have a (worse than useless in my mind) trackpad, that the laptop hinge only existed because of the airline industry, or that the trackpads and insanely expensive cases with special-purpose keyboards just existed because there is so much QRM [1] at the consumer electronics show (CES) that you couldn't expect to demo something that depends on a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
Around that time my hackathon kit was a bottom-of-the-line Android tablet with a $5 plastic clip and a cheap bluetooth keyboard and cheap mouse and with $75 of client hardware I would connect to a $2 hour machine in AWS and have a machine that was so sleek it made macbooks look clunky in comparison and also vastly more powerful than the bulky desktop replacement laptops and the gaudy gaming laptops -- it turned heads.
People thought my kit was fashionable but that's all the agreement I got with my vision. Laptops still have hinges, there is no resistance against crap trackpads [2] and those expensive cases, people are still surprised you can use a keyboard and mouse with your iPad, etc. I believed in Win 8 and told people "just hit that damn windows key on your keyboard" but I think I was the only one.
[1] ham radio jargon for "radio interference"
[2] even mac-ers admit that Apple trackpads are at best tolerable
What a terrible narrative for an article. A failed marketing campaign - no matter how long - doesn't mean a company is full of "hypocrisy". It just means that people were not convinced. This is not any different than every other failed product in the marketplace.
Stop telling me what things aren't!
I got an iPad Pro a while back.
I use iPads mainly to hold music scores, and at the time, the Roland Piano Keyboard just would not hold a laptop securely.
Since then, I got a Yamaha Clavinova to replace the Roland and there always was the real piano. While both will hold a laptop securely, laptops are expensive displays. If I change from the iPad Pro, it will be to a mini with a 17 inch monitor, even bigger. Both of which are unused at this time, with earlier technology.
Until ios becomes MacOS (and not the other way around), an iPhone or iPad is vastly less productive (and vastly more frustrating) for me. Simple operations like getting an image URL are basically impossible except for McGuyver tricks (mailing myself the image) And I keep email off the iPad, to help focus on its intended use.
> getting an image URL are basically impossible except for McGuyver tricks
Assuming you're talking about an image in the browser? Long press, drag it to the address bar, that'll load the image alone and you can copy the address from the bar.
My experience is it doesn’t work all of the time because many websites add their shenanigan Javascripts to restrict the selection or extracting images
Alas, there's the screenshot.
I never would have thought of that.
Thanks!
Fair point, but I can’t stop wondering whether the crux of the issue wasn’t the OS and the decisions that go back to iPhone or iPod. I can’t recall the details, but they tried to get MacOS to work and then decided to go with the alternative. I can only speculate on both that MacOS must have had a mobile story/dream since Newton and more so after nexstep.
So I wonder if what the article is pointing at wasn’t actually the inability of merging iOS and MacOS fully more than anything.
This article is framed as if Apple planned all this, and I don’t think that’s the case.
It me is seems Apple thought the iPad would be the way of the future, not for everyone, but for most. Jobs compared Mac’s to trucks, while most people would be well served by a car (iPad).
This was a bold prediction, but not completely unreasonable. A lot of people these days use their phone as their primary computing device, in many developing countries, the phone is likely their only device. If this is serving so many well, it isn’t crazy to think people would want a larger version of that for doing more involved tasks.
However, phones themselves got bigger, and the iPad fell into this place where it wasn’t as convenient as a phone, but not better or different enough to make it worth moving to from a phone.
The addition of all the laptop-like features to the iPad was Apple’s slow realization that its place in the market didn’t make as much sense when devices like the iPhone Pro Max exist.
I know some people who absolutely love their iPads, though I was never one of them, despite many attempts. So it seems they have their place, it’s just not as widely adopted as initially predicted (at least not yet).
As phones have grown and the iPad and MacBook line has been blurred, I think Apple needs to evaluate where the iPad fits in the lineup and what it should be to make it better than both a phone and a laptop at some things that customers care about and make that definition clear. It could be that adding laptop features to the iPad was a mistake, maybe that was Apple forgetting what the device was and caving to what people wanted it to be… but it doesn’t seem like it will ever be what people want until it runs full macOS without being locked into the App Store.
Carving out a new category isn’t easy. Apple wasn’t the first to try to make the tablet happen, they were just the most successful. But it seems it’s a category that’s still trying to figure out what it is. I don’t think I’d frame that as gaslighting, as the article tries to do.
I'd disagree that the article frames that Apple planned this.
But Apple did spend 10+ years pretending that the iPad was the computer of the future, despite all evidence to the contrary.
It also went through a long period where it actively under-invested in the Mac as it thought it could somehow migrate everyone onto iPads, despite protestations from most existing Mac users.
It also took 6 years, from the release of the first Apple silicon Mac, to actually realise that there is no reason that a Mac laptop needs to have a starting price of $999. In this period they had all of the hardware and components that could have easily made a cheaper low-end laptop Mac... as evidenced by the same hardware being sold a lot cheaper when they put it into an iPad.
So at least for the last 5 years, the failure of the iPad and the lack of a cheaper laptop Mac, has all been due to Apple's strategic missteps and biases.
To then release the MacBook Neo without those missteps being acknowledged is fine.
But it's been obvious to anyone with the slightest amount of insight that the iPad is not the future of computing. Apple should have also realised this and corrected course a lot sooner than March 2026.
About 10 years ago a guy was hired to be a change agent for a big section of the IT org where I work. We tried to voice concerns, but many things seemed to fall on deaf ears. He seemed arrogant, like he thought he knew it all. Some years later, after some re-orgs, his project was on its way out and we ended up on the same team. The topic of this early days came up a few times. What he said made a lot of sense, and I think applies here. While he did apologize and say he should have listened to us more and he learned a lot from that, he also talked about what is required for change. For real change to occur, there needs to be a certain amount of arrogance to push against the status quo. The person looking to affect change needs to believe wholeheartedly in the vision being sold. Without that, the project would be destined to fail.
Similarly, for the iPad to succeed, Apple had to believe in the vision they were selling and not waffle. This has to go on long enough to really give the idea and fair shot to grow and exist.
One of my biggest gripes with Microsoft is how quickly they’ll kill a platform. I think this is why they have so much trouble launching them. Even if I loved someone Microsoft released, I would be very hesitant to buy in, because they have been so quick to kill off their products in the past without giving them a real chance. I don’t have that same level of fear with Apple. I expect to get a long life out of an Apple device, even as an early adopter. That reputation matters and it gets built by riding these things out and seeing if a decades-long bet pays off. That isn’t something that can be known quickly.
Though I do agree, it seemed like they could have made a cheaper MacBook a long time ago, but when a keyboard is added to a iPad, it can be as much or even more expensive than a MacBook, so who knows. Some of it could have been allowing the supply chain to mature and recovering R&D costs for another big bet, which was Apple Silicon.
Maybe it is the case that if phones hadn't kept getting bigger then tablets as a category would be more popular as a computing device?
Realistically though a tablet kind of feels like a small TV these days, which is a screen with some apps on it for media consumption. Most people have a TV already for big media consumption, and then their phone will suffice for small scale media consumption, so tablets are a very niche thing for people that have the money and don't feel like using their phone for whatever reason.
In the Win 8 I thought Microsoft was visionary in integrating the tablet with the PC and in particular had a better vision than either Apple or Google. On the other hand I had a lot of weird ideas that turned out to be wrong or irrelevant: like I thought that 2-in-1s and other hybrids were just insane, like a conspiracy to confuse flight attendants, that Synoptics must be lording over the industry using patents to force every device to have a (worse than useless in my mind) trackpad, that the laptop hinge only existed because of the airline industry, or that the trackpads and insanely expensive cases with special-purpose keyboards just existed because there is so much QRM [1] at the consumer electronics show (CES) that you couldn't expect to demo something that depends on a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
Around that time my hackathon kit was a bottom-of-the-line Android tablet with a $5 plastic clip and a cheap bluetooth keyboard and cheap mouse and with $75 of client hardware I would connect to a $2 hour machine in AWS and have a machine that was so sleek it made macbooks look clunky in comparison and also vastly more powerful than the bulky desktop replacement laptops and the gaudy gaming laptops -- it turned heads.
People thought my kit was fashionable but that's all the agreement I got with my vision. Laptops still have hinges, there is no resistance against crap trackpads [2] and those expensive cases, people are still surprised you can use a keyboard and mouse with your iPad, etc. I believed in Win 8 and told people "just hit that damn windows key on your keyboard" but I think I was the only one.
[1] ham radio jargon for "radio interference"
[2] even mac-ers admit that Apple trackpads are at best tolerable
What a terrible narrative for an article. A failed marketing campaign - no matter how long - doesn't mean a company is full of "hypocrisy". It just means that people were not convinced. This is not any different than every other failed product in the marketplace.
I’ll be honest, I had a hard time getting through the LLM writing