The man who brought us Microsoft Windows, Explorer and Outlook looks at the iPad Pro’s Magic Trackpad and sees the history of computing repeating itself.
From “iPad Pro Gets a Trackpad!“— a 21-part Twitter thread archived on Medium:
Is this the “convergence” everyone has been waiting for? A “2 in 1” or a tablet or a toaster-refrigerator? Did Apple capitulate? Some context on evolution of devices
Hardware evolves just like software but we don’t often see it the same way. We’re used to talking about the cycle [of] software bundling and unbundling, but hardware does the same thing. Every new generation of hardware begins this cycle anew…
With the introduction of a form, the debate immediately begins over whether the new form can take over or whether it is a substitute for the old one.
Tech dialog is rather divisive over these questions (dodged by marketing). “It can never work” or “It will eventually work”.
The first one of these transitions I remember is the introduction of portable computers. Out of the gate, these were way less powerful than “PCs”. The debate over whether a portable can “replace” a “PC” was in full force…
The evolution of new forms almost always follows the surprising pattern of *adding back* all those things from the old form factor.
So all those portables, added more floppies, hard disks, then expansion through ports/docks, and then ultimately CPUs as powerful as desktop…
Then we wake up one day and look at the “new” form and realize it seems to have morphed into the old form, capabilities and all.
All along the way, the new form is editing, innovating, and reimagining how those old things should be expressed in the new one.
So here we are today with an iPad that has a trackpad. Many are chuckling at the capitulation that the iPad was never a real computer and finally Apple admitted it.
Laptop, Apple has invented the laptop.
My take: My next computer will be a MacBook Air, despite Apple’s best marketing efforts. Cue the video:
Wait. Does this mean Sinofsky is admitting that the iPad is a computer? That it’s on a par with laptops?
And how, pray tell, did this miracle happen? Why, Apple added a trackpad to it’s attachable keyboard! That’s all it took!
Suddenly, Apple can add all future iPads with trackpads to their count of true computers! And all they had to do was add a trackpad!
Amazing! Why, this will drive people in hordes to purchase these suddenly far more useful devices! Sales will skyrocket as folks abandon all other computers, since now the iPad does literally everything any other computer cam do!
/s
Apple positions the iPad as a super powerful device. They are selling against, in order:
1) Your older iPad.
2 The foldable Android phones.
3 To a degree, windows and surface.
Folks who love the Mac have many great options, including used Macs.
Horace Dediu addresses this perfect-paradigm notion in his recent “The Critical Path” podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-critical-path/id442816705?i=1000468946183
In it he circles the facets of input that the iPad Pro now provides that now make it a supreme and uniquely custom computing device. Starting from the top at its introduction:
1) touch
2) physical keyboard
3) camera
4) voice
5) pencil
6) touchpad
7) LIDAR
These new input methods should more properly be construed as yet more functional facets added to an initial diamond.
Maybe a closer-to-perfect paradigm?
Hardly a haphazard cobbling striving to be some lame dream promise of a decades-old computing past.
All in a carry akin to a pad of paper.
https://youtu.be/w0P0FQ770dE
Proof positive. ‘nuff said.