“Memorializing Steve Jobs in 2012, Tim Cook was most impressed with the Apple co-founder’s ability to quickly change his mind [as always, edits and emphasis mine]: ‘He would flip on something so fast that you would forget that he was the one taking the 180 degree polar opposite position the day before. I saw it daily. This is a gift, because things do change, and it takes courage to change,'” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note.
“Mulling those wise words, I can’t help wonder what other Apple changes of mind are awaiting us. We’ve already seen hints of a U-turn with recent iPad Pro developments. With its Smart Keyboard and Pencil it’s the ultimate toaster-fridge apostasy, an alternative to Mac (and other) laptops, an unofficially acknowledged answer to Microsoft’s hybrid Surface device family,” Gassée writes. “How far will reversals go?”
“I’ll start with something I consider unlikely: The introduction of tablet features to the Mac. For Mac laptops, Apple has issued a strong edict: The ergonomically correct way to use a laptop it to keep your hands on the horizontal plane, no lifting one’s arm to touch the screen, no matter how tempting,” Gassée writes. “The MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar keeps our hands where they belong, on the desk.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple does touch right and, as usual, other companies do it wrong – as we’ve been patiently explaining for many years now:
To us longtime Apple watchers, Cupertino seems to be saying, “Multi-Touch on the screen only when trackpads are not part of the device.” – MacDailyNews, November 19, 2008
Does it make more sense to be smearing your fingers around on your notebook’s screen or on a spacious trackpad that’s designed specifically and solely to be touched? Apple thinks things through more than other companies… The iPhone’s screen has to be touched; that’s all it has available. A MacBook’s screen does not have to be touched in order to offer Multi-Touch™. There is a better way: Apple’s way. — MacDailyNews, March 26, 2009
“You want a laptop running on (loosely speaking) an ARM processor that combines a multi-touch interface with classic keyboard/trackpad cursor control? The iPad Pro is almost there,” Gassée writes. “oaster-fridge jibes aside, making the iPad a hybrid tablet laptop doesn’t feel like a 180-degree change of mind so much as a natural evolution, something users have longed for.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote nearly a year ago:
Here’s an idea: Apple could sell iPad Pros as they do now, and for those wanting a “Mac,” Apple could sell them the macOS-powered display-less keyboard/trackpad/cpu/RAM/SSD/battery base unit. Attach your iPad for the display and off you go, you Mac-headed truck driver! Plus, you get to use the iPad’s battery, too, extending battery life to provide a truly all-day battery for portable Mac users. Detach the display and you get your iOS-powered iPad back, same as always.
Too outside the box? We’d love to be able to take our 12-inch iPad Pro, mate it with this theoretical Mac base unit, and turn it into a portable Mac. Right now, we carry 12-inch iPad Pros and MacBooks in our backpacks. Guess what’s redundant? Right, the displays. We don’t need to carry two screens on the road. The iPad Pro’s screen would do just fine, thanks.
Buy the Mac base on its own (for those who already have 12-inch iPad Pros) or buy it as part of a package (get a new 12-inch iPad Pro at a nice discount when you buy it with the Mac base). Imagine if Apple had unveiled this headless MacBook that you use with your iPad at their iPad event this past fall. What would the narrative about Apple be like versus what it is today? With such a product, would Apple have missed its revenue and profit goals for the year, causing Tim Cook and other high-level Apple executives to have their compensation cut? How many more 12-inch iPad Pro sales would such a product have generated? Enough to return iPad to unit sales growth, we bet. And, how many more Macs would have been sold, too?
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s Craig Federighi explains why there is no touchscreen Mac – November 1, 2016