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Comment by peatmoss | Hacker News Reader

The iPad Pro is the future of Apple. I am beginning to suspect that general purpose computing has no future apart from Linux—and even then, those of us clinging to it are going to start looking a lot like Amiga enthusiasts who’re keeping their old machines alive by sheer force of will.

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John Gruber made an observation countering this narrative[1]

To sum it up; looking around you don't see people in coffee shops using iPads (or any tablets)--it's all laptops. Even though iPads have outsold laptops by a significant margin for years now.

As a bit of a tangent (also mentioned by him); anyone who is productive on an iPad Pro uses a keyboard. Apple has refused to add touchscreens to laptops, but iPads with keyboard suffer this exact problem. So something still needs to evolve.

I see iPads/phones replacing the entertainment needs a general purpose computer used to fill and maybe Apple gets out of general purpose computing. This is also happening for "light" computing needs in business; like POS and inventory. But I don't see any sign that a PC going away at all for workhorse tasks just yet.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/06/13/ipad-trackpad-i...

> Even though iPads have outsold laptops by a significant margin for years now.

Actually they barely ever did, and the peak is past. For example in 2017 there were about 164 million laptops sold versus 161 million tablets of all types.

In 2007 it was 109 million laptops and zero tablets.

I was thinking about Apple Laptops vs iPads since the whole assertion is that Apple is giving up on computer hardware because iPads will replace them. The best numbers I could find [1][2] is that Apple sold 19 million Macs (desktops and laptops) and 43 million tablets in 2017, with similar numbers the previous year. My point still stands: if Apple is betting that so many iPads are starting to replace the functionality of traditional computers and they're selling very large numbers of them, how come they're rarely, if ever, seen where we see them in public use such as cafes?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276308/global-apple-mac-...

[2] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/05/4q17-ipad-vs-other-tabl...

It's hard to imagine when there is still, like, active PC gaming communities and PCs are so important to office work.

I remember seeing a lot of this take when people were buying up iPads, but I think there are real limitations -- tablets are just not really good for doing work.

I very much hope you are right and I am wrong. The iPad Pro seems to be trying to mitigate some of those issues—at least for the growing segment of the populace who’d prefer to do everything on their phone.

I don’t like where Apple is going, but I can easily see a Macbook a generation or two out whose software is more iOS than macOS, and whose character is pretty locked-down / appified.

Nah, Mac OS dev tools are far too *nix-based. That's assuming Apple values its developer base.

Tablets are perfectly capable of doing work - tablet operating systems on the other hand....

If Apple would just add support for pointing devices and if they would allow access to arbitrary files stored on USB devices via the Files app, the iPad could serve the needs of most people.

So basically if they turned it into a laptop

Yes. But with a much more consumer friendly OS. It would be easier to add laptop capabilities seamlessly to iOS than touch screen capabilities to OS X.

I don't see how you figure. Windows 8/10 does the latter and it works fine. Yes, controls in applications not designed for touch interaction don't work well without a mouse and keyboard, but again, I contend that a keyboard and mouse are much more suitable for productive work.

Windows 8/10 don't "work fine" as a touch screen OS. Most programs people use everyday still use menus that are not optimized for touch and there is still a special "tablet mode". Even parts of the OS itself are not geared fortouch.

If you aim to replace office productivity apps you're going to run into the exact same problem

There is already both Microsoft Office for the iPad and Apple's iWork suite.

Yes, and they provide a fraction of the functionality.

The question is how many people use the missing functionality? Also, office development is not static. MS is continuing to add functionality and with the better scriptability coming with iOS 12, iOS will get more powerful.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

Nobody uses all of the esoteric features of Office, but most people use at least a few.

Are there professionals who use an iPad for the majority of their work beyond sending emails and interacting with web apps/their mobile clients?

I rarely see the people who bought in on the iPad revolution almost a decade ago use their iPad beyond light browsing and sending emails.

To me, it seems to have replaced the morning paper more than it has laptops.

I don't disagree with you about the fate of general purpose computing, but I doubt the iPad Pro is the future. I think pfranz[1] makes a good point about laptops, but that doesn't mean that laptop has to be a Mac. Given the change in name for Apple Books, I get the feeling that an iOS, ARM-powered laptop called the iBook is that future.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313710

> The iPad Pro is the future of Apple.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that iOS is the (present and) future of Apple. All arrows seem to point in this direction. It's a mobile, run-anywhere world that Apple sees as the future.

In that vision, MacOS machines are a cash cow business. And the corporate playbook for those is min-investment, max harvesting.

Not at all.

Someone has to write all the software, and they're not going to be writing it on an iPad. Even with an external mouse and keyboard.

The iPad Pro is a general purpose computer by any meaningful definition of the term "general purpose computer".

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