I was skeptical about getting a Linux tablet because of the worse battery life and less polished overall experience, but having a desktop Firefox with all add-ons, my text editor of choice, and the ability to open a terminal and run whatever I want really more than makes up for it (Plus GNOME is a pretty good tablet experience out of the box these days as long as you broadly stick to their 'official' apps).
Felt the goal was to overtake Mac during the 2015-2019 era, all the real engineering focus was on iPad, the Macs were underpowered and not really fit for purpose.
Why would Apple choose a platform where they don't get 30% of every Creative Cloud sub when they could have had that.
Only reason they backtracked was because Mac sales didn't fall off and the iPad just isn't that good to do real work on.
Everything in Apple is designed to silo off the two product groups.
An "iPad with MacOS" would just shift revenue from the MacOS division to the iPad division, losing a MacOS customer and probably NOT gaining a iPad customer (as he would have purchased an iPad anyway).
Just as much as developing an MacBook convertible is not an issue of user experience but an issue of unnecessary cannibalization of iPad sales...
From mid-to-late 90s onwards a mobile phone was basically an essential item.
I was never tempted to buy an iPod, but combine the phone and iPod and give me internet access to boot... sold.
Before the iPhone there were already phones which could play music and access the web. I even remember some Motorolas which interacted directly with iTunes. The iPhone didn’t succeed just by smooshing those together.
Either way, that’s neither here nor there, the point is precisely that Apple didn’t shy away from cannibalising their own product.
The point is that TODAY the PC line and the iPad line of Apple are quite notable silo'ed to very specific usage-patterns.
There is no technical reason for that, but the distinct commercial reason that there is nothing to gain in terms of revenue or profit by combining the two products into one.
They both sell fine and at great margin separately, there is little to gain by building an iPad Pro that is 2000 USD and supports the use-cases of both a 600 USD iPad and a 1600 USD MacBook respectively.
Quite bluntly: You want the iPad to be convenient in a workflow as far as possible, and then SUCK really bad in a way only a fully synchronized Macbook can fix.
The iPhone was an iPod combined with an iTunes store, allowing the user to buy content without being in front of a PC, and only buy from Apple.
It was an iPod and a Browser that could be sold in huge volumes via a carrier.
Ah yeah. And a Phone.
Apple is building the hardware, and they decide that the Pencil use-case a iPhone user may have shall not be covered by buying an Apple Pencil, but by buying an iPad (and a Apple Pencil)
They also decided for a while that all their premium iPhones shall have "Force Touch", an entirely unique display technology only for iPhones to sense pressure without the potential of additional accessory sales.
These are all valid decisions. They are not a charity, they operate to maximize the profit they can gain from each customer.
The iPad has the big "issue" of barely needing to be replaced with new models, as most use-cases are consumption-oriented and there are no real disrupting sales-driving requirements for iPad media consumption.
So the Pencil was created to drive the proposition towards Media CREATION, because people would buy a new, more-expensive iPad then and requirements for that segment are constantly increasing (better pencils, lower latency, more-demanding apps).
Also in the past year: iPhone increases focus on Media recording with more-complex video features, iPad is tagging along with demanding Media processing use-cases
Do not think it's possible. Traditional Mac computers can win in so many ways
Apple isn’t afraid to cannibalise its own products. They did exactly that with the iPhone in regard to the iPod. If someone is going to displace one of your most successful products, it better be yourself with something even more outstanding.
It would have been in Apple’s best (financial) interest to have the iPad cannibalise the Mac because they’d have more control and earn more money from app sales.
Tantalizingly close to perfection with one glaring flaw is extremely frustrating!
Obviously not for full time use, but as something you can plug in if you're traveling, it's amazing
see also https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code