Ben Bajarin quotes one of his first public columns, “From Click to Touch – iPad & the Era of Touch Computing,” published in 2010:
It is interesting to have observed the barrier to computing a keyboard and mouse have been for so long. I was always amazed at how older generations stumbled with a keyboard and mouse, or how the biggest hurdle of learning computers for my children was the keyboard and mouse. Even my youngest, who had issues with the mouse and is just learning to read, is operating the iPad with ease and engaging in many learning games she couldn’t on the PC with the traditional peripherals. Think about the developing world and the people who never grew up with computers the way we in America have with a mouse and keyboard. How much more quickly will they embrace touch computing?
“Mobile operating systems like iOS and Android abolish the need for tech literacy classes yet still yield the same potential end results in creativity and productivity as any desktop OS,” Bajarin writes. “We are several years down the road. My concern is tablets have not gained as much ground on the PC as the PC has gained on tablets. It’s true iPad has tens of thousands of dedicated apps and both iPad and Android tablets are utilized in enterprises for mobile workforce computers but, when it comes to the average consumer, they are still not turning from their PCs to iPads.”
“This is a year where Apple needs to take great strides in software around iOS for iPad if they want the iPad to become more than it is today and truly rival the PC in the minds of the consumer,” Bajarin writes. “While tablets have no doubt grown up, they still have a little more growing to do if they want to truly challenge the PC and Mac.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in November 2015, “Given what the average users do, Apple’s iPad is what ‘personal computing’ for the average user should’ve always been, had the technology existed back when Steve Jobs first delivered personal computing to the masses.”
Apple’s next-gen iPads coming this year, along with iOS 11, will make Apple’s Multi-Touch computing even more accessible to even more would-be traditional computer users.
Yes, barring untimely death, we’ve considered that the last Macs we’ll ever buy could come within 5-10 years. We expect to definitely buy one more round of Mac desktops and notebooks and at least one more round after that. That’ll be 5-10 years right there. iPad Pro and iOS can already replace our road Macs, but as longtime Mac users, we have ingrained habits and therefore remain much faster on our MacBooks than on iPad. Younger users (under 12 or so) have no such issues and can usually blow us away iPad to iPad, but we are getting better and faster all the time. Old habits will die hard, but they will die eventually.
That said, of course, beyond 2026, we’d love to see the Macintosh and macOS live on in some capacity (professional machines; “trucks,” if you will) for many more years!
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And, as we wrote back in mid-November 2015:
iPad Pro can replace the vast majority of people’s MacBooks because people never had an alternative to a MacBook to accomplish what what they use a personal computer for: Web browsing, email, light word processing, music-video-photo storage and playback, and maybe some messaging (but they do most or all of that on their iPhones or iPhone wannabes).
Note: Obviously, we are not talking about our readership which skews heavily toward techies who use their Macs for far more than the vast majority of current personal computer users.
For the vast majority of people even a crappy low-end Windows laptop is vast overkill for what they do. Therefore, the headroom for iPad remains virtually limitless, especially as Apple’s A-Series chips, iOS and iPad apps become ever more powerful.
This “iPad pause” will not last forever.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s next-gen 10.5- and 12.9-inch iPad Pro lineup not coming until May-June – February 24, 2017
Apple debuts new Twitter-themed ad campaign for iPad Pro – February 17, 2017
Apple iPad’s bright future – February 9, 2017