“No one has yet figured out what the iPad is for,” says a former Apple executive
According to former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee, after all these years the iPad has remained essentially an immature and imperfect product.
It’s not an iPhone and it’s not a MacBook. He only knows what he is not, Balto’s Boris would say. And it is precisely for this reason that, according to former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee , the iPad would remain an immature product after all these years, and despite the strides made to bridge the gap between tablets and laptops.
In his blog Monday Note, Gassee explained that he believes the iPad is a half-successful product that, after all these years, still hasn’t managed to find its true innovation. “The point is that users still don’t know what the iPad is for, and maybe Apple should too,” he said.
“ What, exactly, is an iPad ? Is it a bigger iPhone or a Mac with compromises?”, he continues, and then recalls Steve Jobs’ vision: “it will have to find its place between the iPhone and the Mac”, prophesied the late founder of Apple. And the problem is precisely this: according to Gassee, the iPad hasn’t found that place yet.
Even the iPad Pros, despite their power, are still not able to match the level of completeness and productivity of Macs. And yes, some models now cost even more than MacBook Airs.
Going back to Steve Jobs , the former Apple manager argues that iPads have not yet found their dimension, that is a set of functions and uses in which they are better than laptops and better than iPhones. “If iPads are never preferable to iPhones or MacBooks, then they have no real reason to exist.” Perhaps – Gassee wonders – we could start with iPadOS , which to date is not yet able to offer the versatility of MacOS. And, in fact, it seems that things are bound to change in the immediate future.
