Apple's Next Hit Could Be a Microsoft Surface Pro Clone

theodp writes "Good artists copy, great artists steal," Steve Jobs used to say. Having launched a perfectly-timed attack against Samsung and phablets with its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Leonid Bershidsky suggests that the next big thing from Apple will be a tablet-laptop a la Microsoft's Surface Pro 3. "Before yesterday's Apple [iPad] event," writes Bershidsky, "rumors were strong of an upcoming giant iPad, to be called iPad Pro or iPad Plus. There were even leaked pictures of a device with a 12.9-inch screen, bigger than the Surface Pro's 12-inch one. It didn't come this time, but it will. I've been expecting a touch-screen Apple laptop for a few years now, and keep being wrong.

Comments

Perfectly-timed?

[ts383]

Someone will have to explain how putting out a device that immediately gets eclipsed by a Note 4 counted as a perfecry timed attack against Samsung

"Perfectly timed"?

[QuietLagoon]

Seems to me that Apple is playing catch-up in the phablet arena. Apple was late to the party and lost the toehold because of its tardiness.

Re: Perfectly-timed?

[kaladorn]

An as an aside: As far as Surface goes, where's my affordable coffee table sized version? I kept seeing the ones they used in demos and early experimental development and THAT is what I want from Surface - an affordable, robust, coffee table sized touchscreen that can be married to many very cool applications and data visualizations.

Microsoft, where is this? I don't give a crap about small tablets or notablebooks (or convertibles). I want the big mid-livingroom coffee table you developed and I want it to be affordable in the consumer space.

Re:ipoo

[occasional_dabbler]

Strange. Apple makes the best products

Best?

For whom? By what standards?

They make some very good products and have a consistent and effective design language but they are as much a fashion company now as a technology one.

Perfectly-timed?

[slashdice]

The only difference between samsung and every other android manufacturer is the advertising/carrier kickback budget. Samsung can't compete on the low end because it destroys their profit margins. Meanwhile, the low end android manufacturers are quickly becoming mid/high end android manufacturers because that's where the money is at. It's the same story as IBM PC industry, except it took 10 years instead of 30.

Re:It's the OS, Stupid

[dgatwood]

Correct. With that said, although it is derived from OS X, there are some key differences that make it less than ideal for use in a laptop-like environment. In particular, pointing devices become a problem, in part because iOS doesn't really support them, and in part because apps aren't designed in ways that would work well with mice even if it did.

IMO, any usable hybrid device would really need to run the full OS X stack when in laptop mode, with UIKit running in a full-screen Simulator window when used as a tablet. Otherwise, it's just an iPad with an attached keyboard, which isn't really any more interesting than an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard.

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I never use the trackpad, it's useless. I use the active stylus heavily. OneNote is amazing. Before that I'd used a LiveScribe pen, and various Samsung Note devices. Nothing compares to the Surface Pro with OneNote.

Re:It's the OS, Stupid

[dgatwood]

It isn't the idea that is bad; it is the implementation. One device with two distinct interfaces is a recipe for epic failure. But a single, unified interface that can take input in more than one way is useful, assuming you can get developers to adopt it. Mind you, it isn't a game-changer, and it isn't something that would be useful for every app, which makes it a hard sell, but that doesn't mean the concept lacks merit.

For example, if I had a full-scale laptop with a touchscreen:

• In audio editing apps, I could just reach up and nudge three or four sliders at once, rather than click each of them one at a time. When I need to mute every channel but one, I could reach up and drag across the buttons. And so on. Because mixing isn't something that most people do frequently, you wouldn't have the "gorilla arm" problem. With that said, if you do find yourself doing a lot of mixing, you could always spin the screen around and use it as a tablet, all without interrupting what you're doing, changing apps, moving the content from one device to another, etc.
• In photo editing apps, you could swing the screen around flat, then treat it as a pressure-sensitive art tablet (using either finger press spread or a stylus to detect pressure). Then you could switch back to the normal mode to work with type layers, adjust layer effects, etc.

An iPad can theoretically do both of those things, but lacks the CPU power, storage capacity, and pointing precision to do aspects of either task well. And although you can buy physical control surfaces and digitizer tablets or use an iPad as a controller in conjunction with your laptop, that's nowhere near as convenient as having it all in a single package, and being able to just reach up and interact by touch occasionally.