The story of computing has been one of converging more and more services into one place, as the video “Evolution of the Desk” from Harvard’s School of Computing illustrates below.
With so much overlap now between things you can do on a smartphone and on a desktop computer, there’s been much talk of convergence between the two. Google, for instance, is widely thought to be working on bringing its mobile platform Android together with its “browser only” operating system Chrome, which is found on its Chromebook laptops.
And with Apple’s latest iPhones sporting “desktop class” processors, it’s only natural to think Cupertino might also be planning to merge its mobile and desktop platforms into one.
It’s not.
“We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Irish Independent on Sunday. The efficiency of having to tote around just one device for everything is certainly attractive, but designing such a device would come with too many compromises, Cook said.
“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," he added. "So we want to make the best tablet in the world, and the best Mac in the world. And putting those two together would not achieve either. You’d begin to compromise in different ways.”
Last week Apple’s latest iPad Pro went on sale starting at $799. Apple executives have said that the company isn’t trying to replace laptops with the larger, more powerful tablet device. Microsoft, in comparison, is much more explicit in touting its Surface Pro tablet as a laptop alternative. Reviews of the iPad Pro also suggest the device doesn't have all the productivity tools and usability features you’d hope to find in a laptop.
Still, Apple claims that its iPad Pro is faster than 80% of the PCs that shipped in the past six months (not including its own desktop computers). That and the Pro’s ability to run two applications side by side makes it look as though the Pro has the potential to yank tablets out of their current bracket of consumption (useful for entertainment and games), and put them more firmly into that of production.
Apple’s vision for the Pro seems a bit confusing, though. The tablet comes with "desktop-class" hardware that in many cases is better than recent desktop computers. But the Pro also runs on the same iOS you’d find on an iPhone.
Cook’s latest comments suggest Apple has no intention of killing off its desktop OS so that it can focus solely on a converged, iOS, or a converged device. Instead, Apple’s latest mobile devices are borrowing from the powerful hardware specs of the Mac, while retaining the iOS platform, however limited that may seem from a productivity perspective.
“It’s true that the difference between the X86 [a type of processor used in most laptops and desktop computers] and A-series [the chips used in Apple’s mobile devices] is much less than it’s ever been,” Cook told The Independent. "That said, what we’ve tried to do is to recognize that people use both iOS and Mac devices. So we’ve taken certain features and made them more seamless across the device.”
Cook cited Apple’s Handoff feature as an example. This is a feature which allows a Mac to automatically transfer an email or document someone is working on to an iPhone or iPad, or vice versa, so long as the devices are within Bluetooth range of each other.
Cook added that the iPad Pro had become his primary working computer when he travels, alongside his iPhone. Back in the office though, it sounds as though he's still using a desktop computer.
