iPads are great at being iPads

A new iPad has been released! Millions of people are getting an update to the device they know and love! All is well…or is it? I have been watching a lot of information about these new iPads and heard that they are awful. They don’t run macOS, and they aren’t laptops. If you want a thin, light laptop device that runs macOS, you’ll be very excited to go to Apple’s website and click “MacBook Air.”

Ok, I’ll cut the snark and get to my point. I have to admit it was nice to get all that off my chest. In all actuality, the number of people screaming about iPads being bad devices because they run iPadOS are the same people who buy the most expensive iPad every few years because it’s shiny, forget about it in a month, and go back to using their Macs. These pundits don’t use iPads; even if they got macOS, they probably never would. iPads are not Macs, and I’m happy they aren’t. As Steve Jobs said in 2011 during the release of the iPad 2, post-pc devices are where liberal arts and technology meet.

iPads help people create unique content they could only do with a large canvas. The Apple Pencil is a device that allows artists to draw directly to a digital format in ways that wouldn’t have been dreamed of 20 years ago.

iPads are excellent content consumption devices. A large screen can be easily carried around the house to watch streaming content like YouTube, MLB, and Netflix. I love taking my iPad out on the deck and watching baseball while I grill. Having YouTube on a large screen next to me while I do chores around the house is fantastic. It keeps my phone from getting its battery drained and offloads some idle usage to a secondary device. The next time I pick up my iPhone, I can be safe knowing that the battery life will still be high because I just watched my two hours of video game npc unemployment reports on my iPad instead of my phone. My iPad has also gotten me back into reading again in a big way. I love having a device with an infinite library of books that can be quickly loaded and carried around wherever I go. No device can give me the same feeling my iPad does whenever I sit down with a nice cup of coffee on a park bench and read the latest book that has grabbed my attention.

Tech YouTube Pundits Don’t Know What They Want

Whenever you have an autistic-driven fixation on a specific topic like I do, you tend to watch a lot of content about it. When it comes to Apple devices, rumors, and organizational speculation, I’m constantly in it. YouTube and Twitter are a constant drip-feed of hyper-specific dialog regarding everything Apple. Once you have been watching enough of this content, you start to see the holes in the logic.

For years, I have heard that the iPad lineup needs to be simplified. iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro are indeed the spaghetti sauce of tablet computers. While some markets grow and thrive with access to many variations of a similar product, others do not. It’s easy to help my mom understand the difference between meat-flavored and garlic-flavored pasta sauce. It is MUCH more challenging to attempt to describe the differences between the iPad and the iPad Air. This idea that Apple was confusing its target demographic was popular and widespread throughout 2022 – 2023. I heard echoes of this sentiment in almost every piece of content I saw relating to iPads. And then…the latest iPad Pro was announced…

The 2024 iPad Pro was announced with a tandem OLED screen and the debut of the flagship M4 processor. This device is packed to the gills with awesome tech, and I understand why so many tech fans want to get their hands on it. In their rush to scramble towards the latest shiny object, they forgot what they were chasing. iPads are tablets. Their identity is a tablet that runs a mobile operating system. For some reason, when the tech pundits unboxed their shiny new toy, they were upset that it was the product that was advertised. This “iPad Pro Isn’t a Mac” narrative happens with each new iPad Pro release and surprise, it happened again.

The same pundits arguing for iPads to be simpler were starting to argue that iPads should be MORE COMPLICATED. They started saying things like, “Let iPad Pro run macOS!” or “Let iPad Pro dual boot between two operating systems!” What happened to things being too complicated? Dual-booting an operating system is a complex proposition for most people. Many people need help understanding what an operating system is, much less understanding that a device could switch between two of them.

If these YouTubers had their way, we would have an iPad lineup consisting of two operating systems, a mind-numbingly confusing thing to explain to customers, and likely the most un-Apple thing I could think of. On top of that, think about what this would do to macOS in general. An operating system that has to be used with both keyboards/mouse and touch means that the operating system has to have large buttons and bigger text. The operating system becomes a dumbed-down toy version of what it once was. If you want iPads to be Macs, just buy a Mac. These people weren’t using iPads before, and they aren’t going to use them anymore.

Not Every Device is Made for You

In closing, it’s important to realize one thing. This idea is applicable to not just tech but life in general. You are not the target audience for everything. Whenever you see something that isn’t for you, it’s ok to admit that and move on. Does it sting that the newest, shiniest thing isn’t something you can use daily? If you want to be on the bleeding edge of technology, it does. I desperately wished I could use an Apple Vision Pro, but it just doesn’t fit my workflow (and it’s way too expensive for my budget). That being said, it takes a lot of humility to accept that other people are getting enjoyment out of something that you aren’t and to be happy for them about that. 

So that’s a wrap! This is my first post in a long time, and I hope you were able to follow my narrative. If you did, please leave a like on this post!