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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

I think they've done the math on this one. They very heavily segment the market and most Apple users own several Apple devices. They fundamentally don't believe in the idea of one device being all things. This is also why their laptops don't have touchscreens.

I also don't think you can't bring all this to a device like an iPad and not alienate part of the existing market.

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Apple's representatives have said, I believe under oath, that they don't know and don't calculate how profitable the App Store is [1]. So, keep that in mind when asserting whether or not Apple has done the math on something; for better or worse, nowadays I believe its for the worse far more often, they love operating on vibes.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2024/04/17/app-store-is-profitable-apple....

Apple’s lawyers advised them that they can provide that statement. It’s probably a weasel word, technically true statement.

Apple also hasn’t been afraid of cannibalizing their own market in favor of one with a bigger upside (eg iPod -> iPhone). It’s not that Apple has an aversion to multi-use devices, just that there is more upside to not having them.

Let’s take touchscreens for example. Apple doesn’t sell laptops with a touchscreen. Why? You suggested that it was because a touchscreen would threaten iPad sales.

I think that’s wrong and that the answer is simpler than that.

Apple doesn’t sell touchscreens because they want thin and light laptops. Touchscreens are heavy and thick. The math isn’t “adding a touchscreen will threaten iPad sales”. The math is “the market for a touchscreen laptop is smaller than the market for a super thin laptop”. Apple sells more laptops because they are super thin than they ever could if they added a touchscreen.

Why don’t they add a touchscreen as an option, you ask? Because they would need to have a different case to fit the touchscreen. And that would add more cost for not as much benefit.

Macbook displays are already covered with glass, I don't think adding digitizer to it would make it any thicker.

I think this argument would hit a little harder if Apple hadn't just released their thinnest device ever that is sporting both a touchscreen and a dual layer OLED that's better than any of their laptop screens. I've never broken out the calipers but imo most of Apple's thinness comes from the body and not the screen. You could probably find a number of touchscreen laptops with similar thickness displays. On top of that you could compare the weights of non-touch and touch models, the 15.6" LG gram for instance gains 0.03lbs in the touch model.

You have it wrong. Apple doesn’t fundamentally believe in selling one device (do-it-all iPad Pro) as opposed to selling two (Mac + iPad). The segmentation is a business decision, nothing else.

Apple have multiple iPad lines and could easily limit a desktop class OS to the iPad Pro, a move I can almost guarantuee would alianate noone.

iPad Ultra [mode or device].

How do describe what it means to be an iPad? This is something that Apple cares about. If you have an iPad that is fundamentally different [more or device] then it's not really an iPad anymore.

The word iPad is already overloaded:

  iPad
  iPad Mini
  iPad Air 11/13, USB3
  iPad Pro 11/13, USB4
  iPad Pro 11/13 1TB+, USB4, 16GB, extra CPU core, matte [Ultra?]

Optional Pencil, wired thin keyboard, wired magic keyboard+trackpad, wireless (less secure) 3rd party keyboard cases, external display with Stage Manager, virtual desktop with Sidecar, Lockdown mode for more security, HDMI input as standalone monitor, USB ethernet, realtime audio descriptions of live camera feed, Center Stage auto-follow human during video conferencing, ... the list goes on.

Yet when someone picks up an iPad, regardless of specs, it's fundamentally the same experience. Same with all the iPhones and same with all the Macs.

Do they actually care? This sort of discrepancy has never bothered them before.

(see how the "Air" used to mean "ultra-premium thin and light", but now the iPad Air is heavier than the Pro, and the MacBook Air is just a brand they slap on the entry level MacBook, a model so entry level it's now sold at WalMart -- and the 15' Air is only 90 grams weight difference than the 14' Pro)

(see the "Apple Pencil" and how it means like 4 different things, with 4 different feature sets, and needs a product matrix spreadsheet to know which Pencil is safe to use with any given iPad)

See how "Apple TV" is both a hardware product (Apple TV 4K) and a service (Apple TV subscription) and an App (the Apple TV app, available on iOS, but also Roku and others), and a platform (the "Apple TV platform", where you can load other streaming services like Disney+ or Hulu or Paramount, into the Apple TV platform, which lives inside the Apple TV app, on your Apple TV device).

The MacBook Air is passively cooled; Pros have fans.

Except for the iPad Pro (which has no fans), and the iPhone Pro (which has no fans), and the AirPods Pro (which also does not have any fans).

"Pro" meaning "has active cooling" only works on 3 out of the 6 things currently labeled "Pro".

granted, I think they've invested so much into trackpad quality and software support, so much so that I think touchpad Macs are moot. On a PC laptop, where the trackpad is lowest bidder/afterthought, yeah, it kinda sorta makes sense but Mac touchpads are basically touchscreens without having to lift your arms.

No, they are nothing alike touchscreens. The whole and only point of a touchscreen is that you touch the actual visible thing on the screen (you touch the screen). Track pads, as good as they are, have 0 to do with that.

Just imagine if they offered a Mac without a keyboard, just the trackpad and the screen.

I wouldn't say they're nothing alike. The gestures developed for MacOS and the trackpad are paradigms derived from iPhone touch screens - swipe, pinch, zoom, tap to click (if turned on). And for the Mac, cognitively, at least with the cursor, the trackpad surface maps intuitively into the area of interest on the screen.

I agree, typing on a trackpad "keyboard" would suck, but on a Mac w/ a built in keyboard, that's superfluous. And who actually enjoys typing on an iPad on-screen keyboard?

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