If you feel like it’s a matter of time before the iPad and MacBook become one and the same device, similar to the Microsoft Surface, there’s at least one person in the know who will tell you you’re wrong: Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Speaking to the Irish Independent newspaper, Cook said that Apple would not make a “converged” Mac and iPad.
“We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad,” said Cook. “Because what that would wind up doing, or what we’re worried would happen, is that neither experience would be as good as the customer wants. So we want to make the best tablet in the world and the best Mac in the world. And putting those two together would not achieve either. You’d begin to compromise in different ways.”
But that doesn’t mean both Macs and iPads won’t continue to resemble each other in new and interesting ways, when it makes sense. That’s especially true with iPads, which are starting to rival the power and speeds of MacBook Pros.
“It’s true that the difference between the X86 [personal computer] and the A-series [Apple iPad architecture] is much less than it’s ever been,” says Cook. “That said, what we’ve tried to do is to recognise that people use both iOS and Mac devices. So we’ve taken certain features and made them more seamless across the devices. So with things like Handoff we just made it really simple to work on one of our products and pick it up and work on the next product.”
This, of course, follows Tim Cook’s famous (and quickly downplayed) diss against the Microsoft Surface, which he called “deluded.”
I count myself in the seemingly large camp of people who barely uses his iPad anymore, so I don’t really want my Mac and iPad to converge. What do you think?
Source: Independent
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
11 responses to “Yo, Tim Cook hates the idea of a Mac/iPad hybrid”
I use a Retina 5K iMac at work all day and when I get home I spend most of my time on my iPad. I only really go to the iMac for things the iPad can’t do like a website with flash or printing/scanning.
Never. I love my Mac for most my computing but still use my iPad for lounging around reading articles, quick emails, controlling audio in the home, cooking, travel, the list goes on. Both have a HUGE place for me and neither could be replaced… especially by one device trying to do both.
I also have a Surface 4 that work got me.. its awkward and downright silly as a tablet. Though I really really tried to use it, Its been sitting on the corner of my desk collecting dust.
Funny, I have the exact opposite experience. Got myself a surface pro 4 and it’s my Go to pc/tablet now. Because of the 12.3 inch screen, I have more screen real estate and can do whatever I need on that with access to all traditional windows programs. Also, can dock to my 23 inch dual monitors and get work done and it becomes the best in class desktop. With the dual usb and pen support, it works very well. My Ipad is collecting dust. Actually, it’s not collecting dust. Gave it to the little ones to break :)
I too find this funny, I bought a sp4 on launch day and it was one of the worst new computer experiences I have ever had, blue screen’s, mouse cursor disappearing, touch screen freezing, short batter life and display driver crashing. I returned it the next day thinking bad hardware, then followed forum’s and after a couple week’s and some firmware releases picked up a second one. I found some of the bugs were fixed but more added. I continued to need to reboot the thing multiple times a day just to get the keyboard back and to resolve other things. The thing that really bothered me is the tablet experience was just not good. In tablet mode, there are just not enough universal apps and the ones that are there are not as good as IOS or Android. I hated the fact if I used the universal apps most would stop playing if you switched to another app as well. Using the SP4 in PC mode was also not good as things like the keyboard would not auto pop up as it does when in tablet mode and the desktop mode is just not geared for touch. After a week of using the SP4 I found myself using it more of a laptop than tablet mode and reaching for my iPad again. I returned the second sp4 and bought a Macbook. This experience was all about compromises which is what Apple is trying to say.
Cook seemingly said, “So we want to make the best tablet in the world and the best Mac in the world.” Why, then, do we see that, since 2011, the iMac has been of lower quality? OK, they have upgraded a few parts and made the shell look thinner on the edge, but at the expense of soldered in RAM, soldered in GPU and CPU, glue, proprietary screws, virtually useless connectivity (99% closed shop Thunderbolt which is useless for the majority of consumers, OK you may find a use for it if you are a power user professional and need extra storage but that is about it,) etc. We cannot use our expensive iMacs as monitors for games consoles or anything except – yes you guessed it – another Mac. It is like the confectionary sales, in this example chocolate. Recently they have reduced the amount of cocoa butter used and substituted inferior, cheaper products (Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate), so the end product is not even the so-called vegolate that Cadburys were accused of selling some years ago. Same story with Apple, cheapening the product whilst incrementing the price.
The smeared finger prints on Macbook and iMac screens across the globe speak much louder than Tim Cook does in this interview…. we all live in a touch world these days and ironically it was this very realisation which the original iPhone used to redefine the original smart phone market last decade. Apple arguably “created” the touch OS and so for Apple to now be “cute” or in “indignant denial” about future convergence of iOS with OS X gets increasingly hard to take seriously as windows 10 continues to gain market share and whilst Apple users juggle multiple devices whilst their competition have a raft of new and innovative ‘full OS’ touch software and touch hardware options.
Remember the arguments from Apple about why 4″ was the max/ideal size for a smart phone screen (then the 6/6S phones were released with Android users laughing because they had had large screen phones for years), despite the Newton (with stylus) remember Jobs saying words to the effect that ‘a finger is the best pointing device, we don’t need pens/styluses’ and he laughed at pens as being a crazy idea. Now iPad Pro has ‘pencil’ (which needs a tip eraser by the way) and Apple have been forced by the market to back track again.
Actually, there is no shame in Apple getting these types of decisions wrong but the longer Apple takes to realise these types of mistakes, the more problems and frustrations it causes for many Apple fans who miss out on the more innovative features offered by other touch hardware/software competitors. Apple must know that they need to give their ‘full OS’ users a similar touch experience to that which other OSs offer otherwise Apple risks increasingly marginalising itself as merely an ‘iPhone company’ rather than growing as a “computer company” which, after all, is Apple’s heritage. Touch screens are no longer novelties, touch capability is almost ‘assumed’ these days… Come on Apple, don’t make universal touch take too long or OS X will loose momentum and iOS just isn’t powerful enough to compete with full OS computers long term.
I have a feeling that Tim Cook will be eating these words in the future (he always does!). Apple WILL produce a hybrid device in the future when the maket forces them to. They have AWAYS caved to the market in the “Jobs-less” era, i.e. smaller iPads, larger phones, watches, and now larger iPads with a stylus and a keyboard, and probably smaller phones again next year. ALL of these products have been driven by market demand. (Most of these products would not be in existence if Jobs was still around. But, we would probably have a real, bonafide Apple television if he was. He had the power to negotiate deals that the current leadership lacks.)
You are absolutely correct. Microsoft is stepping up in the game and will cut into Apple customers. I thought that Apple will be first to have one OS on all devices. I can’t wait to have iPad pro running real mac OS with usb-c. I need power of real mac with MAC OS X in iPAD format. It is crazy to fragment OS like iOS, MAC OS and now Apple TV OS. One OS is way to go and Apple will realize that one day. They are just afraid that the new hybrid device would cut into iPad sales. They are so stubborn!! THey never wanted to release bigger iPhone and iPhone 6 Plus and 6S Plus probably most desired size in iPhone. 10″ is not that great size, too heavy for reading books too small to do any photo editing. I love Apple but I am afraid one day they will start going down if they don’t response to market. I think device like surface pro 4 running any iOS app and MAC OS app is desperately needed and it would be one of their best sellers.
Hopefully he means he won’t do a hybrid OS, but this iPad Pro I believe was a missed opportunity. What this iPad pro should have been is a detachable screen for a laptop running OS X that when detached functions as an iPad. What Apple’s Tim Cook has been doing lately (with the exception of the Apple Watch) is just make things smaller or bigger and add a few gimmicks to it. No innovations.
I can do everything and more on my MacBook Pro.
Not sure why everyone is looking to consolidate every taste and need into one type of fruit that everyone should have to eat…..Mobile devices (like Ipads) use low power A series RISC processors that seems pretty snappy when used with certain types of tasks, but if you tried to implement the complex operations a x86 CPU can be coded to do (in OSX or Windows) you’d see how limited and slow the Aseries CPU is. Get what you need to do the work, OSX, Windows, multi-OS Parallels, iOS whatever. But very clearly they are all different and have their unique ecosystems and uses. At best you could port iOS over to the more capable CPU but it would be a nightmare for the millions of app developers. And OSX would never be ported to ARM since it would be nearly impossible to get performance without sacrificing function.