I’ve been using the latest M1-powered iPad Pro for a few months now, and its new features have impressed me. I upgraded from a 10.5” iPad Pro, so this model was improved in many ways besides performance.
The M1 chip moved the needle for me. I have some huge Excel spreadsheets and Word manuscripts that bogged down both my iPad and 10th Gen Intel laptop. The A10X chip in the old 10.5” iPad was no weakling. Even today it is fine for most users’ needs.
However, when I used extremely large spreadsheets with complex formulas, I might hit the enter button and sit and wait a minute for the numbers on the screen to refresh. I also have a book manuscript that I’ve been working on for a while with hundreds of pictures in it. My M1-powered iPad Pro is the first device I’ve used that can handle this huge file without hanging up all the time.
I’ve been so impressed with the performance of this iPad Pro that I can’t help but ask, Why do people still buy laptops?
I switched to the iPad Pro because I like to work away from a desk. I prefer to sit in my recliner or in a reading chair where I can put my feet up. Being able to remove the keyboard is another big plus—not an option with a MacBook. An iPad Pro also allows you to switch back and forth between portrait and landscape mode. When I’m reading a long article or online shopping, I always prefer portrait mode. This just isn’t possible on a MacBook.
I could go on and on about the hardware advantages of the iPad Pro over the MacBook, but that’s not my focus here. My question is, Why do people still want laptops? If a laptop shopper answers “It’s because the laptop allows me to be more mobile,” that makes no sense to me because an iPad Pro beats the laptop in mobility. An iPad is lighter, it has cellular connectivity, it has more flexible cameras, better FaceTime, and pencil input. Above all, the M1 chip is more powerful than most Windows laptop chips.
If a laptop shopper answers, “I need a bigger screen, more power, and I sit at a desk all day,” then that doesn’t make any sense to me either. In my office, we all tether our laptops to external monitors so we can spread out our work. No one uses their laptop screen or keyboard 99% of the time.
Even if you do want to sit at a desk, the tablet offers advantages. I can raise my iPad Pro to eye-level more easily and keep my keyboard where it’s comfortable. It’s delightful to use a mouse and keyboard of my choosing while my iPad Pro sits at a comfortable height. You can’t do that with a laptop unless you get a separate keyboard, which negates one of the reasons that people buy laptops—to have an attached keyboard.
So, if you want a machine to sit at a desk all day, why not get a desktop machine with more ports, more power, and gigantic monitors? For the few people for whom an M1 chip isn’t powerful enough for them to do their work, why get a machine that has wattage limited due to battery concerns? Apple made a big deal at the keynote unveiling of the M1 Pro and Max chips, illustrating how Apple could get comparable power at much lower wattage levels. But that left everyone wondering “What if there were no battery concerns?” Could Apple silicon not just be comparable to the most powerful Intel chips but be much faster? Perhaps in a future desktop machine.
So I keep coming back to this puzzle. If you’re a creative who needs maximum power, why would you choose a machine with wattage limits? Or, if you prefer mobility, wouldn’t you rather have a device more agile than a heavy laptop with a hinged keyboard and no modem?
Why do laptops need to exist anymore? It isn’t for something as minor as ports, a relic of the past. The future is wireless connectivity, and ports add a lot of cost to manufacturing. I used to model laptop profitability for Gateway computers, and ports were one feature that really made the cost of a laptop go up and not just on the front end. Ports made up a disproportionate amount of after-sale warranty claims. Trust me when I tell you, hardware manufacturers hate ports and can’t wait until they can exterminate them all.
Maybe the laptops soldier on because we’re still in this in-between stage where the tablet software isn’t full function yet. I’m convinced that Apple will continue to steal MacBook functionality and bring it to the iPad Pro. Next feature on the list is proper monitor-out functionality. This is really one of the last items that the iPad needs for the dam to break and start moving people to tablets in droves.
The vision of being able to move from your couch to your desk and work from your monitors and full-sized keyboard is really the dream. Only the tablet can go in both directions. You can’t pick up your laptop from your desk and comfortably walk around the house with it.
The other reason that this shift hasn’t happened yet is because the lifecycles on laptops are much longer than for mobile devices. In fact, laptop lifespans are closer to that of a car than a phone.
I think most people acknowledge that the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) makes logical sense and that gas-powered vehicles are doomed in the future. But that is a future decades away. Gas-powered vehicles still make up the vast majority of all the cars that you see on the road. They also still dominate in sales. Why? Because the lifecycle is much longer, and it’s difficult to change public buying preferences.
The EV vs internal combustion engine battle strikes me as parallel to the tablet vs laptop battle. The tablet is the logical form factor of the future, but laptops still command the market. The EV is in the same situation.
Desktop computers make more sense for power users, and tablets make more sense for mobile users. Laptops are temporarily protected by software barriers that are coming down soon. The laptop form factor is the internal combustion engine of the computer industry. The tablet is the logical form factor for the future, but like ICE cars, it’s a long slow transition.
However, when I used extremely large spreadsheets with complex formulas, I might hit the enter button and sit and wait a minute for the numbers on the screen to refresh. I also have a book manuscript that I’ve been working on for a while with hundreds of pictures in it. My M1-powered iPad Pro is the first device I’ve used that can handle this huge file without hanging up all the time.
I’ve been so impressed with the performance of this iPad Pro that I can’t help but ask, Why do people still buy laptops?
I switched to the iPad Pro because I like to work away from a desk. I prefer to sit in my recliner or in a reading chair where I can put my feet up. Being able to remove the keyboard is another big plus—not an option with a MacBook. An iPad Pro also allows you to switch back and forth between portrait and landscape mode. When I’m reading a long article or online shopping, I always prefer portrait mode. This just isn’t possible on a MacBook.
I could go on and on about the hardware advantages of the iPad Pro over the MacBook, but that’s not my focus here. My question is, Why do people still want laptops? If a laptop shopper answers “It’s because the laptop allows me to be more mobile,” that makes no sense to me because an iPad Pro beats the laptop in mobility. An iPad is lighter, it has cellular connectivity, it has more flexible cameras, better FaceTime, and pencil input. Above all, the M1 chip is more powerful than most Windows laptop chips.
If a laptop shopper answers, “I need a bigger screen, more power, and I sit at a desk all day,” then that doesn’t make any sense to me either. In my office, we all tether our laptops to external monitors so we can spread out our work. No one uses their laptop screen or keyboard 99% of the time.
Even if you do want to sit at a desk, the tablet offers advantages. I can raise my iPad Pro to eye-level more easily and keep my keyboard where it’s comfortable. It’s delightful to use a mouse and keyboard of my choosing while my iPad Pro sits at a comfortable height. You can’t do that with a laptop unless you get a separate keyboard, which negates one of the reasons that people buy laptops—to have an attached keyboard.
So, if you want a machine to sit at a desk all day, why not get a desktop machine with more ports, more power, and gigantic monitors? For the few people for whom an M1 chip isn’t powerful enough for them to do their work, why get a machine that has wattage limited due to battery concerns? Apple made a big deal at the keynote unveiling of the M1 Pro and Max chips, illustrating how Apple could get comparable power at much lower wattage levels. But that left everyone wondering “What if there were no battery concerns?” Could Apple silicon not just be comparable to the most powerful Intel chips but be much faster? Perhaps in a future desktop machine.
So I keep coming back to this puzzle. If you’re a creative who needs maximum power, why would you choose a machine with wattage limits? Or, if you prefer mobility, wouldn’t you rather have a device more agile than a heavy laptop with a hinged keyboard and no modem?
Why do laptops need to exist anymore? It isn’t for something as minor as ports, a relic of the past. The future is wireless connectivity, and ports add a lot of cost to manufacturing. I used to model laptop profitability for Gateway computers, and ports were one feature that really made the cost of a laptop go up and not just on the front end. Ports made up a disproportionate amount of after-sale warranty claims. Trust me when I tell you, hardware manufacturers hate ports and can’t wait until they can exterminate them all.
Maybe the laptops soldier on because we’re still in this in-between stage where the tablet software isn’t full function yet. I’m convinced that Apple will continue to steal MacBook functionality and bring it to the iPad Pro. Next feature on the list is proper monitor-out functionality. This is really one of the last items that the iPad needs for the dam to break and start moving people to tablets in droves.
The vision of being able to move from your couch to your desk and work from your monitors and full-sized keyboard is really the dream. Only the tablet can go in both directions. You can’t pick up your laptop from your desk and comfortably walk around the house with it.
The other reason that this shift hasn’t happened yet is because the lifecycles on laptops are much longer than for mobile devices. In fact, laptop lifespans are closer to that of a car than a phone.
I think most people acknowledge that the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) makes logical sense and that gas-powered vehicles are doomed in the future. But that is a future decades away. Gas-powered vehicles still make up the vast majority of all the cars that you see on the road. They also still dominate in sales. Why? Because the lifecycle is much longer, and it’s difficult to change public buying preferences.
The EV vs internal combustion engine battle strikes me as parallel to the tablet vs laptop battle. The tablet is the logical form factor of the future, but laptops still command the market. The EV is in the same situation.
Desktop computers make more sense for power users, and tablets make more sense for mobile users. Laptops are temporarily protected by software barriers that are coming down soon. The laptop form factor is the internal combustion engine of the computer industry. The tablet is the logical form factor for the future, but like ICE cars, it’s a long slow transition.
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