Over the last few weeks, since the iPad Pro came out, Apple CEO Tim Cook has often stated the iPad Pro could replace a laptop. While I believe there is some truth to this, after using an iPad Pro for some time now, I am starting to wonder if this positioning is completely accurate. When the original iPad came out, I bought a third party keyboard and used it as a laptop for short trips and in meetings to take notes. I even wrote a few columns on it and, over all, liked using it is as a pseudo-laptop. However, when I needed to do “real work” and was dealing with large documents, extensive spreadsheets and managing my media and images, I always went back to a Mac or a Dell XPS laptop for these heavy lifting tasks.
One of the more proactive and important bloggers is Jean-Louis Gasse, a former Apple exec and one of the most insightful people writing about the industry. Early this week, he posted an important perspective on the iPad Pro in his Monday Note where he questions Tim Cook’s positioning and suggests the iPad Pro is better suited for specific tasks instead of an “all things for all people” laptop.
Here is a short excerpt on his view but I highly suggest you read the entire piece since it is excellent. As an aside, it is worth subscribing to his blog since he always has an important perspective on our tech world:
Cook’s insistence that his iPad Pro is a replacement for his laptop is presumably sincere, but it’s misguided and unnecessary. The equivocations, justifications, and vague statements about the iPad Pro are easily resolved by a For What/For Whom question, by investigating the Job To Be Done
You work with architects, civil engineers, materials, fixture and appliances suppliers, kitchen and bathroom installers. Your iPad Pro is flat on a table while you sketch a design for the architect to flesh out, you scribble annotations on drawings and budgets, you redraw a layout by superimposing a layer on the original. The iPad Pro does more than replace your laptop.
You work for a wallpaper manufacturer and design pattern after pattern; you browse vintage nature photography for old hunting scenes, extract images that can be stylized as part of a new collection, add color swatches, overlay line drawings. The iPad Pro and its Pencil are your friends.
Before: a horizontal tablet and stylus for input, a PC with a vertical display.
Now: the computer, the display and the tablet are one – and you take it with you.
Horace Dediu put together a neat video in which he explains “The new iPad is like nothing we’ve ever seen before” and, a bit cheekily, makes the case that it truly is a desktop computer, as in a device that’s best used when laid flat on the desktop, as in the examples above.
Why, then, do so many of us — and I have been in this camp — insist on seeing tablets through PC goggles? We can meditate on the dangers of knowing too much, too deeply; we become prisoners of our deep-rooted beliefs. In a recent Monday Note on Killer Cultures, I referred to the revered founder of Digital Equipment, Ken Olsen, who said he knew people bought PCs, but sincerely didn’t understand why. His company’s All-In-1 productivity software running on a large remote machine covered all his needs. Looking at the iPad Pro, how many of us fail to see outside of our world?
In a recent piece, Living In Different Worlds, Benedict Evans concurs and concludes [edits and emphasis mine]:
“We’re all prone to apply old mental models to new things when they look like the old things. […]The challenge for a new thing is that you can fall into one of two traps – either you try to map it to the old mental model, or you decide that, since it has no existing mental model, it’s useless. So, the automobile is compared to the carriage, Uber is compared to taxis, digital cameras to film cameras, and smart watches to Rolexes. But sometimes there is no model. […] all of us have that same disconnect whenever we try to understand something new.”
Fortunately, we have children. In a Tech.pinion post titled The iPad Pro: The Start of Something New, Ben Bajarin tells us how his 12-year old daughter took over his iPad Pro [edits and emphasis mine]:
“So I should not have been surprised when my daughter started playing with the iPad Pro for a few hours and came back and showed me all the things she had done: movies she made, photos she took outside (which she edited/mashed up using the different apps she also uses in creative projects at school) and taking advantage of the unique benefits of the Apple Pencil. With nearly everything she showed me, I had to ask her how she did it. I had no idea some of the apps on iPad were as powerful as they were, enabling her do things I didn’t think were possible […]”
Presenting the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement for “many, many people”, or asking “why would you buy a PC anymore?” doesn’t shed much light. If you prepare complicated documents, proposals, financial filings, you should stick with a Mac or a PC.
Apple execs are fond of metrics such as the number of new iPhone buyers coming from the Android world (30%). Why not say that the iPad Pro will helpfully replace a laptop for 60%, or 25% of conventional personal computer users? In keeping with Steve Jobs’ Far Better At Some Key Things formula, why not say that the iPad Pro is a great laptop replacement for graphic designers, architects, mechanical engineers, musicians, videographers…and that the audience will grow even larger as new and updated apps take advantage of the iPad Pro’s screen size, speed, and very likable Pencil.”
Gasee is right on the money with this analysis. While I am not an artist, architect or civil engineer, I can see how the iPad Pro would be a godsend for use in their daily work and its potential impact on other major vertical markets could be significant. I understand why Apple would not want to create a marketing campaign for the iPad Pro with such a narrow focus but I suspect these will be the top buyers of the iPad Pro at first.
But there is another market Gasse does not reference directly I also see having some legs when it comes to adoption of the iPad Pro — the broader enterprise market. Apple clearly began their work with IBM to port 100 of their top mobile apps and management tools over to iOS long before the iPad Pro came out. This is clearly the device these apps work best on. The IBM tools are very rich and can be used across many IT apps to handle all types of mobile management and app integration issues. More importantly, IBM has become an important sales force for Apple and brings a direct sales team who will sell Macs, iPads, and iPad Pros to IT customers around the world. Yes, some of these IT situations will be for vertical applications, but it is my understanding that IBM plans, with Apple’s help, to take these to the heart of IT to provide advanced mobile solutions.
The iPad Pro has only been out a short time and availability of the Pencil and Keyboard is still limited. Which means it may take some time for it to find an audience sweet spot. I do sense its impact first will be on many vertical markets and eventually gain strength in IT and Higher Ed where a 13-inch tablet meets specific needs. I am just not sure it can really replace a laptop in its current form but am open to being surprised with its overall market appeal eventually.
I totally agree with your opinion that the IBM partnership and other vertical markets are more important than the marketing message that iPads will replace laptops, in the *long* term.
However, criticising Apple or Tim Cook for positioning the iPad incorrectly suggests that both you and Gasse completely fail to understand the pressure Tim Cook must be feeling from years of double digit sales decrease, and the difficulty of turning this around.
Please consider; how many more iPads do you expect Apple to sell to vertical markets in the following year? Will it be enough to offset the rapid decline in sales to consumers which is in the magnitude of millions of units lost per quarter?
Yes, the application of iPads to the vertical markets is much more compelling and easy to understand. However, in most cases you are selling to customers who never used computers in that context before. This makes adoption slow due to “chasm” dynamics. Add the fact that the addressable market is still small. This makes it unlikely that we will see rapid sales increases in the order of multi-million units per quarter. Focusing solely on the vertical markets is financially irresponsible as a CEO.
On the other hand, the market of laptop users who don’t use them for advanced tasks, those who only use laptops for web browsing, writing some basic reports and emails is huge in comparison. Since these jobs are well defined and accepted, the “chasm” dynamics are less severe. Even if you can convince a much smaller percentage, even if the value proposition is smaller, since you can effectively communicate the “laptop replacement” message to a much larger audience, the absolute number of sales the you can gain short term are likely to be higher than the vertical approach.
Here you see two very different approaches that Apple is taking. The vertical approach in collaboration with IBM is the long-term approach; the approach that requires the iPad to go through the “chasm”. This approach benefits from a “whole product” approach which can be provided through IBMs consultation services. However, even with IBM’s size, this approach doesn’t scale. It takes time.
The “laptop replacement” approach is the other one. This aims for the short-term and builds upon the already accepted role of laptops, which has mass market appeal.
Tim Cook is pushing the “laptop replacement” message, but only as a part of Apple’s multi-pronged approach. It is the one that has more short term impact.
“Why, then, do so many of us — and I have been in this camp — insist on seeing tablets through PC goggles?”
This is key, though, right? Sometimes it isn’t just PC goggles, but also about PC workflows. A lot of the people in the referenced professions have spent not just money, but thought and time on equipment that, like milk and sugar in one’s coffee, has struck this balance of habit, equipment, and efficacy in how they produce work. Maybe the iPad Pro will easily swap into that workflow, maybe not. Otherwise, Cook is expecting people to rethink their entire workflow.
Framing a device as a PC replacement is a bit of a two edged sword. Traditional PCs are a declining market. So why try to frame something as a PC in any form?
On the other hand, as Cook likes to point out, 80-90%of the things we do on a PC does not need the things that a traditional PC form factor brings.
On the other hand, traditional PC form factors bring imposed work flows and usability dynamics. Tablets offer new opportunities in how we do things that could open new efficiencies, both in the mechanics and the psychologies of how we do work.
On yet ANOTHER hand, even if new, traditional PCs over-serve our needs, it is still cheaper to buy even older Macbooks than a new iPad or iPad Pro. Even the Surface has the pricing problem.
What was strategically great about Steve Jobs’s positioning of the original iPad is that it fit in-between, not just in tasks, but also in Apple’s product line up.
Maybe Cook thinks the iPad will become to Mac what the iPhone was to iPod. But the iPhone was never positioned against the iPod.
Just as MS has trouble defining the Surface, I think Apple is going to have/having trouble defining the iPad Pro, at least in non-verticle positioning.
Personally I think both Apple and MS should ditch the whole desktop/laptop PC references. It won’t really cost them time in building a customer base. But it is costing them how people think of these products plus how people think of them as companies.
Joe
About that 80-90%… The missing 10-20% means I *still* have to have a real PC/laptop. Since I’ve got that PC, does it make sense to get a PC-y tablet instead of a tablety tablet, ie something big (but unwieldy), powerful (but expensive), versatile (but complicated) ? Isn’t that diluting what makes tablets attractive to start with, while at the same time still not succeeding in displacing a real PC ? Car analogy: a Civic with a truck-like “bed” still isn’t a truck, you’d never take that off road nor carry lotsa bricks with it.
I’m not sure Apple’s “almost but not quite” approach makes sense. For now it’s not significantly worse than Windows’ lack of tablet apps, and Android’s reluctance to go all-in on Desktop; but both are moving towards convergence, and in the mean time there are dual-boot tablets that do offer the best of both ecosysworlds.
I’d bet on a phablet-style reversal in 2-3 years, if MS’s and Android’s convergences start showing success.
And how much of that 80-90% is already being done on smartphones? The more I think about it the more I think Jobs had the better position, and likely expectations, for iPad.
Granted as MS has shown, and as Naofumi discusses below, the professional/enterprise market is a significant base. But it will be a long arch of development and deployment, as As Naofumi and Mr. Bajarin points out. I just don’t think using “laptop replacement” as a selling point is going to push iPad Pro.
Traditionally Apple’s advertising was better than most other PC and tech companies because their ads tended to focus on what people did with the devices. Even the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials had that layer of what a Mac can do, backhanded compliments to PCs notwithstanding. Even the iPP demoes did well showing what people can do with the extra horsepower and Pencil.
IF iPP is better at most laptop tasks than laptops, people will figure that out for themselves. And if it is better, it won’t be because it is a better laptop. It will be better because it is NOT a laptop, and also NOT a smartphone.
I do wish journalists would stop saying Cook and Apple declare the death of the PC. They haven’t.
Joe
Very well put. I must lake the ever so slight exception to your statement…”Traditional PCs are a declining market. So why try to frame something as a PC in any form?”
A PC is not defined by it’s market size, it’s defined by what it does. Apple is attempting to get PC converts. A noble cause, to be sure. Not everyone needs a PC, but it’s disingenuous (by Apple) in the way they attempt to blur the lines.
In this context, the PC, or rather the laptop in particular, is defined by what and how it is used, as that is what is being addressed—the subset (80-90%) of PC uses.
Joe
That is, until a non-technical person tries to do something on a tablet (thinking it’s a PC), that a PC does well, but a tablet doesn’t. We’ve all used screwdrivers as hammers in a pinch, they never do a good job. 🙂
Over-generalizing aggressively: computers used to be tools to run MS Office, now they’re tools to run Facebook. That does change the requirements a fair bit ^^
Remember dedicated word processors like Wang? :-0
I never used those, but the father of a friend of mine had the Amstrad dedicated wordprocessing machine. An excellent way to make sure we kids didn’t mess it up ^^
Only $800-ish, a steal at the time.
Not the physical screen corners, but the screen image. But you are just baiting. And I bit.
Joe
Yep. The famous “… but do it with a computer” innovations :-p
???
Joe
Which has now become “on a mobile device…”
Trendy… that’s fashion, not function, and will always be a copycat game. All different shades of cerulean blue, which is hot this season…
I was referencing his earlier accusation of Apple being “trendy”.
Joe
I just realized Apple are doing one thing different from Samsung, which has adjusted its lineup over the several years they’ve had a pen-enabled line. Starting from a pen being included in their highest-end phone and their highest-end tablet, Samsung ended up splitting and building up its pen products into a complete and separate, high-end Note line over a variety of sizes (8, 10 and 12″ currently, add 5.7″ for the Note phone), complemented by the exact same tablets, pen-less in the Pro line, and of course, Samsung being Samsung, a cornucopia of other tablet lines, including the higher-end S ones but mostly lower-end.
Long story short, for Samsung Pen is a separate line, offered in a complete range of sizes, always high-end, and never forced upon customers, who can buy a strict equivalent with no pen support.
It’s interesting Apple are not using that part of Samsung’s experience (they’ve dutifully copied each and every other Note feature, except hover and the pen slot). Like for force touch, Apple seem to be sprinkling features over their products a bit randomly, or limiting choice to force upsell. I’m wondering haw many customers will by buying an iPPro w/o pen, or wished they could buy a Mini Pro w/ pen.
Do you speculate the pen creates the “pro” in the iPad Pro? What other reason to buy the iPad Pro?
bigger screen, faster processor (depending upon the apps you run), support for “full-size” keyboard, better multi-tasking / split view experience.
Apple seem to be starting exactly where Samsung started at: add a pen to their biggest, highest-end offering, so the Pen is not the only Pro exclusive feature, but also size, performance, RAM, battery, sound, even multitasking+windowing I think ? Though no force touch and no good camera, for some reason (why would graphic artists want to take pictures or do something that could use touch force sensitivity ? … oh, wait…)
People keep complaining about no Force Touch on iPP, but maybe the technology required to integrate Force Touch & Pencil capability onto the same screen is not ready yet.
Maybe Samsung is capable of bringing new features to its whole product line very quickly, but as far as I can tell, Apple takes its time. For example, Apple has been very slow to bring Retina displays to its Mac lineup, the first one being the Retina MacBook Pro in 2012. They still sell the non-Retina MacBook Air, which is likely to be replaced by the Retina MacBook introduced in 2015.
Given Apple’s pace, I think it would be better to ask the same question a couple of years from now. I’m expecting that the Pencil will be added to the next iteration of 10.4 inch iPads, but maybe force touch will take a bit more time.
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