When's a computer not a computer?
Some thoughts on the current state of tablets
Ah, Apple events. I love it when they roll around because, almost without exception, they provide me with Excellent Material™. Plus, I’m a little bit of an Apple fanboy. Or as much of a fanboy you can be for a trillion dollar company that’d grind me into a paste and feed me to pigs if it thought that’d be a more profitable path than selling me things.
Anyway, an event took place on Tuesday. It was about iPads. If you want to know specifics, you can head here. If you want a faster round-up, here it is: the new iPads are slightly better than the old ones. Boom, information transmitted.
It wasn’t the devices themselves that caught my attention though. Instead, it was the new Magic Keyboard that the company claims is just as good as MacBook keyboard.
And that? It struck me as an unbearably ridiculous comparison.
I was a relatively early adopter of iPads. I had a second generation model I adored until it was quite rudely robbed. Tablets then disappeared from my life for a few years. Until COVID (remember that?). In around 2020, I hosted a digital event and was given a modern iPad to use. And lord oh lord oh lord oh lord it rocked my fucking socks off.
I was enamoured. This, I told myself, was the technological puzzle piece that’d finally make sense of my silly little life.
So I got one. And it’s good. I enjoy it, but overall? It’s a niche device. I use it for reading comics and watching exercise videos. And all I can say for certain is a keyboard that makes typing on an iPad more like a MacBook won’t change that.
The issue is that tablets like the iPad occupy too much of a middle ground. They’re not as convenient as a phone, nor as flexible as a computer — and it’s that latter part that’s particularly galling.
I have an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard and trackpad, meaning that with a touchscreen it actually has more input methods that a laptop. Despite this, there’s almost nothing that’s easier to do on tablet than a computer. Sending an email? Editing an image? Browsing the internet? Doing anything that’s not drawing on a screen?
Laptops are better. And it makes no fucking sense.
These days, an iPad is as powerful as many computers… so why can’t you use it like one? Imagine an iPad with dual operating systems. You can use iPadOS when you’re holding it, and, if you attached the Magic Keyboard, it can boot into macOS mode. Make it an actual computer.
Of course there’ll be issues — battery life in particular — but where there’s a will there’s a way. Unfortunately, there’s zero will. Apple simply has no reason to do this financially. If an iPad suddenly acts like a MacBook, then people not only get confused, but also probably buy one or the other, rather than both. And Apple wants you to buy both.
Did you see the iPad advert this week? Where various musical instruments and creative tools were crushed?
This video aimed to sell shit works as a better teardown of the issues with Apple than thousands of articles do. Here, it makes it clear that the company has no interest in you or people or humanity in general. It’s a behemoth that wants to squeeze every penny out of you it can.
We live in a wondrous time, but rather than selling tools that could make our lives easier, Apple pushes products. The only reason an iPad isn’t a laptop competitor is profit.
So when’s a computer not a computer? When it’s an iPad. And that sucks.