The Surface Pro feels like it could be the saviour of Microsoft’s hardware arm.
It makes me look wistfully at my iPads and wish once again that Apple had made the iPad run OS X, instead of being a large ‘broken phone’.
Take the Air, make the keypad detachable , and make the screen touchable.
C’mon Apple, you can do it! 
[quote=227926:@Jeff Tullin]Take the Air, make the keypad detachable , and make the screen touchable.
C’mon Apple, you can do it! :)[/quote]
I think they simply do not want to.
iPad and Suface has another focus. While Surface is a PC with touch-input, the iPad is a normal tablet.
With Surface you can probably do your work better, while with your iPad your are faster and finger-friendlier.
Only with the iPadPro (which you can pre-order from tomorrow), Apple changes the focus more direction work. With the pencil and the keyboard it becomes more a Surface. The future will show if this was the right way (because Surface is more efficent).
I simply cannot understand why they didn’t take the opportunity to put a port of OS X on the iPad Pro. Seems like it will have the horsepower needed for it. To avoid the Windows RT debacle they could have put the iOS simulator on it to allow users to run all iOS apps. Apple seems to have solved lots of the problems with diverse HW platforms (Intel and ARM) and the framework(s) seems to be up for the job.
While I would like a Mac OS X tablet, I believe Apple has made a clear choice of separating its desktop OS from the mobile one. It goes as far as iOS staunchly refusing to recognize a mouse, while pairing happily with the Blue Tooth keyboard. Steve did not only despise the stylus, he apparently hated the idea to see a mouse connected to his beloved iPad baby. Until the shadow of the authoritarian genius subsides, I doubt extremely much we will see any Mac OS X tablet. Or touch enabled Mac OS X for that matter.
That said, being from the keyboard and mouse generation myself, I do enjoy very much the current MacBook, and even if I have an iPad, an Android tablet and a Transformer PC/Tablet in my collection, my prefered choice for travelling remains the MacBook.
Think about the horror of using the Xojo IDE with an iPad 
Surface is extremely adept with touch, and has nothing to envy an iPad when it has no physical keyboard. That is, unless you have deep preventions against Windows.
BTW Apple is not the only one who has different systems for computers and mobile. Google has kept Chrome OS and Android separate until now.
My wife purchased one of them fancy iPad airs. You know, one of those wafer thin “dying to be bent” devices. She also purchased a protective folder to put the Air into. Now her wafer thin iPad Air is as thick as war and peace. I would need a cray XMP to figure that logic out.
Use a VPN app and log into your Mac from the iPad. Try to use it like that for a while.
Completely unnecessary. For over a year now I just chuck my iPad Air into my rucksack when I do the shopping or go out, and it just needs a wipe and it looks like new. Even the original iPad 1 which has been passed down within the family (and been treated quite harshly at times. Kids. Need I say more?) looks and works like new. Absolutely insane build quality.
They should hand cars,tanks and aircraft over to kids for durability tests.
Michel you are correct, although I don’t think Tim Cook is. From an article on ZDNet this morning:
Tim Cook: Customers don’t want a combined iPad and MacBook
The chances of seeing an OS X tablet any time soon have been dashed as Apple CEO Tim Cook says that customers don’t want Macs and iPads to converge.
“We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad,” Cook said during an interview with the Independent__ie. “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.”
I tend to agree with Tim Cook’s view. The iOS influence as been enough sorrow to Mac OS X users. Touchification of a desktop OS can lead to the Windows 8 debacle.
On the other hand, I do believe there is future in the transformer concept of a laptop with a detachable screen. Which is pretty much what iPad Pro is, except it needs a mouse and as anybody who has used Windows touch knows, even a stylus does not do the job right. And even less having to point the finger.
We have not seen the end of such iterations…
For our niche its not adequate
When you consider that the group here is not “average users” its easy to see that for the vast majority of people the iPad is great as is
It allows for easy consumption of content - Facebook, email etc - exactly what it was intended to do
Thats why they’ve sold a couple of them
[quote=230135:@Norman Palardy]For our niche its not adequate
When you consider that the group here is not “average users” its easy to see that for the vast majority of people the iPad is great as is
It allows for easy consumption of content - Facebook, email etc - exactly what it was intended to do
Thats why they’ve sold a couple of them :)[/quote]
Indeed there are a lot more people listening to music than people playing an instrument. In terms of revenue, we are completely anecdotal to Apple.
I think it has a lot more to do with there have really been no full O/S alternatives that were workable. Windows 2-in-1’s are really just figuring it out in the last year or so, and is a good part of the reason iPad sales fell 19% in the last fiscal. 2 years ago, I was content with an iPad for the couch and a desktop PC for work stuff. My next computer is a high-end Surface and the iPad will be passed along. But I agree, there may be too many consumer-level users that an iPad will do the job, to make Apple want to do an OSX tablet.
To most of them - there will be a billion new users in the next year or two and the majority will be on mobile phones not iPads, Surfaces or laptops of any kind
Where do YOU think the money will be ?
Since MS doesn’t report unit sales #'s this is speculation
Cheaper android alternatives that are “good enough” would be just as plausible
Phablets instead of an iPad would be plausible
I’m sure there’s a ton of factors
It’s “speculation” by a lot of analysts in many articles I have read. Hybrids certainly aren’t going to supplant the iPad or Android tablets, but if a tablet is mostly a device to consume web, music, movies, gaming content and do email… and your work computer will do that with ease, why would want to maintain 2 devices? Form factor clumsiness and app selection is what has been holding 2-in-1’s back. The first problem is solved.
Apple alone sold 21 million iPads - all other android devices sold many times that
At best MS sold around 1 million surfaces
And since they don’t report sales numbers beyond revenue no one has a clue whether thats up or down or sideways.
What we do know is revenue is up but then so is the base price of a surface. So did they sell more of them or just charge more ?
For a certain segment it will be a useful device
For the vast majority ?
I dont maintain two devices
One rMBP with a handful of drives
Why ? Because a surface cant do what my rMBP can at any price. Nor can an iPad. Or android
Neither do a lot of others. They have just a smart phone or iPad - it does everything they need.
But then I’m not an average consumer & neither are you
The 21 million iPads sold attest to that
And dont get me started on analysts and what a useless bunch they are … regardless of company they are analyzing.
That’s 5.5 years of iPad sales. MS really didn’t have a sellable device until the Surface Pro 3 18 months ago. Ever pickup an original Surface or the Pro 2? Yecch. Maybe you can enlighten me, how do I turn on the Touch screen and detach the keyboard on my rMBP? 3 years into it, still can’t figure out how to do that.
About the same way you run OS X on a Surface