Microsoft Keeps the Faith
Despite the early laughter, Microsoft kept the faith, waiting for advances in hardware to make it all work. Apple. however, seems to have caved and is now trying to convince us that the iPad really is a better PC.
Microsoft, which used to have iPad envy, is now in a position to cleverly puncture the balloon of Apple’s new messaging conceit. Here it is.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=o_QWuyX8U18
The Next Big Thing
I don’t know how much farther the situation with Apple can go before things break. That is, if iPad sales remain in negative growth, the best fit line heads towards the zero axis. Despite what Apple is doing to save the situation, the iPad could end up like the iPod: sales too low to report.
No doubt, that’s a priority for Apple. The question is, how far can Apple go and what can it achieve with changes to the technology and its own thinking? If TV ads that try to convince us that the iPad is a more capable PC don’t work, what’s next?
In my mind, this puts the kibosh on the demise of the Mac and the rumors that the Macintosh (or perhaps just the MacBook/Pro line) will switch to the ARM processor. It also introduces the question as to whether a 2-in-1 system, a MacBook-like device that has both an Intel and ARM processor with a detachable display that can boot as an iPad makes any sense at all. The iPad, in isolation, could conceivably end up being a secondary device that never does fulfill Mr. Cook’s “clearest expression.”
No one has the answers. For the time being, customers are going to purchase the device that they believe has good quality and gets their work done best. The 2016 MacBook Pros with macOS Sierra, expected soon, will augment the already strong MacBook sales. That’s something Apple doesn’t want to throw away.
The only thing we can count on is that Apple will continue to watch the marketplace and customer acceptance of its products. What will be crystal clear in 2019 is only a murky vision right now. Even though not much with the iPad has gone as planned lately, it will remain an essential tool for many.
Perhaps it’s Apple’s turn to keep the faith and wait for the hardware and software to vindicate its own early vision.
John (& Bryan):
Without doubt, something is fuzzy and out of focus, although in my view (no pun intended) it is not Apple’s strategy for the iPad. That the normally incisive voices at TMO, which peal clarion-like against the background of the bemused white noise of muddled analysis and click-bait artistry, should wax ambivalent about the messaging and marketing strategy of the iPad, and to some extent, embrace MS’s marketing message that Apple is a Johnny-come-lately with their version of MS’s toaster-fridge, suggests fumbled messaging by Apple.
I see this very differently.
While I concede that many very knowledgeable and intelligent analysts believe that the post-PC era was/is about a PC replacement device, and that since the iPad, including the Pro models, do not replace the PC in use case and functional capacity, the iPad has therefore failed as a PC replacement, I see this as fundamental misconception.
One consequence of this fogginess is that it creates a climate in which equivalence can be drawn between two quite distinct devices (the iPad and the Surface Pro) that can compete in the same niche in which many formerly PC-exclusive capabilities can now be done by touchscreen capable devices. For some analysts, this appears to be an attempt to move beyond the PC, and because both have a touch screen and both can use a keyboard, and since MS had their dedicated keyboard first, Apple is merely following after MS. And that both are trying to create post-PC toaster fridge.
Where even to begin?
I suggest that we begin with context, namely the long game of building a comprehensive platform that Apple appear to be doing (and which TC appears to be arguing, however unsuccessfully https://www.macobserver.com/columns-opinions/the-back-page/tim-cooks-apple-ambitions-include-health-care-everything-part-life/). This platform includes an integrated and functionally complementary system of devices and services that free the user from conforming their work and play to the limitations of a single device (the PC) to working and playing in a wide arena that enhances not only productivity, but creativity and the joy in doing so.
In my view, this is what the post-PC era is, and nothing that I have seen from Apple or heard in any address appears, again in my layman’s view, to contradict this. In that endeavour, the iPad is born. And because that platform includes many capable options, Apple can take their time to develop and extend the capability of this device and evolve its role in that platform. Will this device appeal to everyone and even address the same needs for each individual? Of course not, but bear in mind, we are in an arc that will be measured not in fiscal quarters, but likely in generations, and a generation has already been born that is being reared on the touch screen. Make no mistake, Apple know this, and hence the investment in iOS. It is the future, which conceptually is not synonymous with, ‘the Mac and OS X are not the future’. This is not a zero sum enterprise.
As to the specific advert in which Apple demonstrate a specific use case in which the Surface competes, to me it is clear that Apple are saying, ‘Ours is a robust and versatile device. If what drives you to want the Surface is this feature set, then behold. We give you, the iPad. It does that, too. And then some’. The ‘and then some’ includes that fact that it is a fully functional device without any add-ons, something that cannot be said for the Surface.
All this is to simply say that, as this platform continues to expand, and the iPad itself becomes more capable, its use case amongst a nascent clientele will co-evolve into something this present (and passing) generation can only dimly suspect, but cannot replicate because we’re simply not there yet.
It’s not about ‘keeping the faith’, but like Magellan, reading the currents and knowing where you’re going, to that pass in the South, even if no one else can quite see it as you do.
That’s not faith, but the knowledge-based execution of a plan.
It’s still relative though. “Real work” on an iPad Pro to me REQUIRES the large one. For painting and illustration there is never enough screen real estate, so for me the 9.7″ is a compromise.
I don’t think Microsoft had the right idea all along at all. The 9.7″ iPad is as nearly a perfect computing device for what it was designed to do as anything designed before or since. A Surface or iPad Pro are a different animal, a hybrid of the tablet and laptop. They’re both a compromise for either function. When I do “real work”, I have the 9.7″ iPad right next to the laptop. It takes no reconfiguring. I have the right tools for whatever it is I need to do. Why compromise?
Re-posting.
Hey guys! I don’t comment much, but read you guys frequently and enjoy the podcasts quite a bit. 🙂
Now that that’s out of the way. Could John please point out to me when Apple started shipping OSX on the iPad? This, IMO, is the point of the “what is a computer” commercial. Apple is not selling a toaster/fridge until they sell a Surface like device aka a tablet that runs an OS designed for a mouse.
I am the market that Apple was aiming that commercial at, except I replaced my MacBook Air with an iPad Pro as soon as I could get my hands on one. I use it as my “computer”. But, for teaching, its better than a MacBook because of the pencil, in conjunction with presenting things in class. I think Microsoft, and John and Bryan, unfortunately missed the point of the Apple ad. That’s still apples fault, though, for not making the point clearly enough. I don’t see flailing for a correct vision for the iPad, but an evolution of the ipads capabilities that made it suitable for me to replace my Mac (and Apple highlighted this reality in an ad).
I agree with you that they messed up, especially with the Pro, but I think they screwed up by not promoting what it really was and how it was revolutionary. The iPad Pro is a visual creative device that finally realized the potential of the original iPad as a digital art/illustration platform. It’s a creative professional’s tool that is a companion to their desktop, not a laptop replacement. The fact that the Pencil exists proves that point in my opinion. But someone got scared by the Surface and tried to promote it as a do-all machine and all that succeeded in doing is muddy what the Pro was for and make it compete with the MacBook Air for no reason.
BTW, the auto-login feature on MacObserver still doesn’t work.