I broadly agree with this thesis - I don't think there's a "betrayal" of a vision (and even if there had been, who really cares?) - but I do think Apple's vision has got muddled.
My problem is we're not all talking about the same thing when we talk about "The iPad". Right now, on sale today, there are four iPads to choose from. No, not different colours, or memory sizes - you need to make a choice between the Mini, the Air, the Pro and the regular iPad.
Want a desktop? Cool, you've got the iMac, the Mini, the Studio, and the Pro. Within each of those you have choices on processor, memory, storage and more.
Or maybe you just want a phone. Cool. Want the 16, the 16e, the 16 Pro, or the 15? They're all on the Apple store right now.
None of these have anything on the Watch (Series 10, Ultra 2, SE, Nike or Hermes).
I think it can hard to work out where each device sits in your life, but then there are spectrums and overlaps between them, and this is confusing for the consumer. Should I buy a high-end phone and spend a little less on an iPad and see it as just a bigger screen? Or should I get the last generation phone, splurge on an iPad Pro, and then maybe I don't need as much in the way of a Mac?
When you're selling a lifestyle, you need to be coherent. It used to be the case that Apple was coherent, but this choice is making customers confused.
I'd love to see a paired back offering and have more clarity and delineation. Do that, and this "is an iPad a laptop replacement?" becomes a more redundant question, and this idea of "betrayal" can go away.
From Apple's point of view, Apple Vision (Pro) is the ultimate platform. That's why I think they were so convinced in developing it. If VR/AR headsets follow the same transition we had between the first gigantic mobile phones of thw 80s and the pocketable ones of the 2000s, I could seriously see Apple throwing out all their consumer lineup (phone, watch, ipad, macbook) and only have a Vision device. This would solve all the problems regarding different experiences.
I think people get this idea that Jobs shaped Apple by dumbing things down, which is not true. For example OS X shipped from the beginning with a Unix shell, which is way harder to use than GUI; this is something that Jobs added to the Mac. But it’s hidden in an app and probably most folks will never interact with it at all. It’s like the deep end of a swimming pool: there if you want to do some specialized stuff, but anyone can ignore it and still have a great time in the pool.
The idea of a stylus for drawing on the iPad must have been there from the start because Wacom was already financially successful and a popular Mac accessory. Their Cintiq monitor/drawing tablet predated the iPad by about a decade. Apple’s leadership must have been aware of it.
I honestly thought the touch bar was introduced into the laptops as 'test' iteration before it leading somewhere, and maybe partly with the ipad pros. For on-the-move prosumer use in music, video, and image editing I can see a lot of use for fully customisable hot buttons, especially combined with the pencil.
As it is, they're in a weird space. It's better to buy an air than the ipad pro + pro keyboard, the price of which is eye-watering. My ipad is now a very expensive screen for watching Tv in bed, and playing the odd bit of roblox to keep endgaged with my kids. I'm not going to bother typing anything on it... it's an absolute chore compared to my phone because of worse ergonomics due to it's size.
As a gateway device for AI... something maybe there's an interesting use case to be discovered but I'm not bullish on the value proposition of them going forward.
It still remains a crippled user experience in many ways:
- PDF reader: Preview would be a nice addition to the set of default app, but you have to choose between the very basic viewer tied to Files.app and various viewers with many schemes to get into your wallet.
- Files: I know a lot of apps rely on databases, but we still have to use files every now and then. The Files.app is very clunky for what I consider a solved problem.
- The weird stage manager: Even on a 13" screen, it's hard to manage more than two apps side by side. Why not introduce a simple workspace manager a la GNOME if they user want to save a particular set of windows.
- Profiles: Even browsers are adding them these days as they recognize that people have a faceted life. Instead we have custom notification settings. The ipad is not that personal of a device. It's closer to the Apple TV than my laptop in terms of privacy.
> When Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010, he wasn’t trying to freeze technology in amber.
Well it's 15 years later, their rules have only ever voluntarily-changed to carve out more fees for themselves and the software you're not allowed to use appears to be banned "forever".
His vision was a closed ecosystem with massive fees and no competition, even changes to the laws around the world haven't really disrupted this:
> One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things.”
I’ve had an iPad since 2013, and went through the phases of thinking it was awesome to unnecessary. Then I was gifted an iPad Pro last year with the Apple Pencil and everything changed. It’s now my favorite Apple device by far, and exactly for why the author describes; it’s become a digital canvas that enables an input function unavailable anywhere else. If you’re skeptical, you really need to try one out for a brainstorming or creative activity. (Yes, I know that paper still works for this, too.)
Steve was aiming at creating “a single piece of glass you can use to read email on the toilet.”
Obviously that goal was achieved but the direction the iPad went in was different than its minimalist and cheap original trajectory.
Adding a stylus and all the ‘Pro’ stuff confused what the iPad originally was, and now it’s more closely aligned with a new form-factor MacBook with a limited OS.
Maybe Steve would have gone a different way, but perhaps all computing devices are destined for the same convergent evolution … a kind of carcinization of form factors and purposes.
I remember when the first iPad was in development, there was a lot of speculation about how Apple would solve the "large touchscreen keyboard" problem. Typing on a large touchscreen was hard, just blowing up a iphone keyboard wouldn't cut it. It'd be too large for thumb typing, but you also couldn't type on it like a physical keyboard, it would be awkward hovering over the touchscreen and you couldn't hold it while you typed.
Tech sites and bloggers talked about how Apple cared too much about the user experience to just release a big keyboard, and how we were about to see a revolutionary new keyboard design. There was speculation about split keyboards, radial keyboards, and more. People weren't sure how Apple was going to fix the keyboard issue, but it was going to be magical.
Finally the actual iPad reveal came, and it was just literally a giant iphone keyboard. Jobs showed how to type on it by balancing the ipad on his knees, and hover hand typing onto it.
Honestly that was the point where my opinion of Apple started to decline, it honestly wasn't even that big of a deal, but it changed them in my eyes from a revolutionary tech company into one that just wanted to appear revolutionary. I've never quite been able to separate that initial disappointment from the iPads, and that disappointment is still the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see one or read an article about them.
An interesting contrast here is to how the other side handled things --- Windows for Pen Computing elegantly integrated a stylus into a desktop OS, and things progressed with fits and starts, with a marked upthrust with Microsoft's Tablet PC effort on Windows XP, and then Windows 8 --- but since Fall Creators Update, the stylus has been dumbed down to an 11th touch input, and it takes a bit of effort to get it to do anything other than scroll in a web browser (use Firefox and set a specific option to disable this).
If Apple would make an iPhone which supported the Apple Pencil, I'd be inclined to replace my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, and the pair of an iPad Pro and MacBook w/ an Apple Pencil controlling Sidecar seems workable enough to replace my Wacom One, and presumably the iPad would be portable enough to replace my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 --- but that still leaves my Kindle Scribe....
Steve Jobs promised that killing the Newton would result in devices which would justify that, but I'm still not seeing a Newton replacement from Apple, and the Scribe is about as close as I've gotten (and I wish Amazon would add a smaller model, or better still, engineer a phone case which included an e-ink screen, Kindle functionality, and had a Wacom EMR stylus and which would extend/replace a phone screen (replacing allowing for usage in direct/bright sunlight)).
There's a whole series of Apple panic articles out there that I just don't get. I feel like there's these tech news fads and once they start they just have to keep going. Most of them seem to ask wildly empty questions / problems.
I don't think even Steve would expect that after he was gone anyone would do exactly what he wanted many years ago.
I find it strange how we talk about "visions" for companies like they are real things. Like when a company has a "mission" or a "vision", do people actually think that's real?
There is no vision other than making money, and I don't mean that as a rail against capitalism, it's just simply how it is. Steve Jobs didn't even let his own kids use iPads, I don't think Steve Jobs felt the iPad had any value other than monetary.
I like the iPad as a device, but there is no "vision" there, there is no overriding view of the future of computing or anything like that. It's a product. A nice product, but there is no vision, from Jobs or anybody else.
16 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 34.4 ms ] threadMy problem is we're not all talking about the same thing when we talk about "The iPad". Right now, on sale today, there are four iPads to choose from. No, not different colours, or memory sizes - you need to make a choice between the Mini, the Air, the Pro and the regular iPad.
Want a desktop? Cool, you've got the iMac, the Mini, the Studio, and the Pro. Within each of those you have choices on processor, memory, storage and more.
Or maybe you just want a phone. Cool. Want the 16, the 16e, the 16 Pro, or the 15? They're all on the Apple store right now.
None of these have anything on the Watch (Series 10, Ultra 2, SE, Nike or Hermes).
I think it can hard to work out where each device sits in your life, but then there are spectrums and overlaps between them, and this is confusing for the consumer. Should I buy a high-end phone and spend a little less on an iPad and see it as just a bigger screen? Or should I get the last generation phone, splurge on an iPad Pro, and then maybe I don't need as much in the way of a Mac?
When you're selling a lifestyle, you need to be coherent. It used to be the case that Apple was coherent, but this choice is making customers confused.
I'd love to see a paired back offering and have more clarity and delineation. Do that, and this "is an iPad a laptop replacement?" becomes a more redundant question, and this idea of "betrayal" can go away.
The idea of a stylus for drawing on the iPad must have been there from the start because Wacom was already financially successful and a popular Mac accessory. Their Cintiq monitor/drawing tablet predated the iPad by about a decade. Apple’s leadership must have been aware of it.
As it is, they're in a weird space. It's better to buy an air than the ipad pro + pro keyboard, the price of which is eye-watering. My ipad is now a very expensive screen for watching Tv in bed, and playing the odd bit of roblox to keep endgaged with my kids. I'm not going to bother typing anything on it... it's an absolute chore compared to my phone because of worse ergonomics due to it's size.
As a gateway device for AI... something maybe there's an interesting use case to be discovered but I'm not bullish on the value proposition of them going forward.
- PDF reader: Preview would be a nice addition to the set of default app, but you have to choose between the very basic viewer tied to Files.app and various viewers with many schemes to get into your wallet.
- Files: I know a lot of apps rely on databases, but we still have to use files every now and then. The Files.app is very clunky for what I consider a solved problem.
- The weird stage manager: Even on a 13" screen, it's hard to manage more than two apps side by side. Why not introduce a simple workspace manager a la GNOME if they user want to save a particular set of windows.
- Profiles: Even browsers are adding them these days as they recognize that people have a faceted life. Instead we have custom notification settings. The ipad is not that personal of a device. It's closer to the Apple TV than my laptop in terms of privacy.
Well it's 15 years later, their rules have only ever voluntarily-changed to carve out more fees for themselves and the software you're not allowed to use appears to be banned "forever".
His vision was a closed ecosystem with massive fees and no competition, even changes to the laws around the world haven't really disrupted this:
> One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things.”
Obviously that goal was achieved but the direction the iPad went in was different than its minimalist and cheap original trajectory.
Adding a stylus and all the ‘Pro’ stuff confused what the iPad originally was, and now it’s more closely aligned with a new form-factor MacBook with a limited OS.
Maybe Steve would have gone a different way, but perhaps all computing devices are destined for the same convergent evolution … a kind of carcinization of form factors and purposes.
https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/06/With-...
Tech sites and bloggers talked about how Apple cared too much about the user experience to just release a big keyboard, and how we were about to see a revolutionary new keyboard design. There was speculation about split keyboards, radial keyboards, and more. People weren't sure how Apple was going to fix the keyboard issue, but it was going to be magical.
Finally the actual iPad reveal came, and it was just literally a giant iphone keyboard. Jobs showed how to type on it by balancing the ipad on his knees, and hover hand typing onto it.
Honestly that was the point where my opinion of Apple started to decline, it honestly wasn't even that big of a deal, but it changed them in my eyes from a revolutionary tech company into one that just wanted to appear revolutionary. I've never quite been able to separate that initial disappointment from the iPads, and that disappointment is still the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see one or read an article about them.
If Apple would make an iPhone which supported the Apple Pencil, I'd be inclined to replace my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, and the pair of an iPad Pro and MacBook w/ an Apple Pencil controlling Sidecar seems workable enough to replace my Wacom One, and presumably the iPad would be portable enough to replace my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 --- but that still leaves my Kindle Scribe....
Steve Jobs promised that killing the Newton would result in devices which would justify that, but I'm still not seeing a Newton replacement from Apple, and the Scribe is about as close as I've gotten (and I wish Amazon would add a smaller model, or better still, engineer a phone case which included an e-ink screen, Kindle functionality, and had a Wacom EMR stylus and which would extend/replace a phone screen (replacing allowing for usage in direct/bright sunlight)).
I don't think even Steve would expect that after he was gone anyone would do exactly what he wanted many years ago.
There is no vision other than making money, and I don't mean that as a rail against capitalism, it's just simply how it is. Steve Jobs didn't even let his own kids use iPads, I don't think Steve Jobs felt the iPad had any value other than monetary.
I like the iPad as a device, but there is no "vision" there, there is no overriding view of the future of computing or anything like that. It's a product. A nice product, but there is no vision, from Jobs or anybody else.