Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The iPad will kill the Macbook.
- Thread starter Ijustfarted
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Pro, air, everything.
just give it a few years. 6-7 years tops.
I already know all of you will call me retarded but maybe a few years later someone could bump this and say "you know what, that guy ijustfarted was right."
At the currently productivity level of the laptop compared to what the iPad will be in the next 6-7 years, yes. However, I am sure that laptops will become more efficient and perform tasks which the iPad may not be able to do. I do feel, however, that after a few years the iPad and the MacBook will be integrated into a uniform device. Then again, all this will only matter if the world doesn't end in 2012.
Yeah. Its kind of annoying (and hypocritical) the way people are rooting for there to be a single Apple system. When people complain about how the iPad is limiting due to the lack of file system, true multitasking, slower input etc then people yell "Well, its simplified for consumers dummy" but then in the same breath they also say "The iPad is the future and MacBooks are going to disappear".
In the end isn't it better to have MANY options for computing? A standard iPad for the "consumers", an iPad HD for the Pro level iPad users, a Macbook Air for basic computing and a Macbook Pro for heavy duty workloads. Im just not sure why anyone wants to converge these products with clearly different usage scenarios into one thing.
Who needs ports when you have iCloud.
Absolutely. Because there are no places on earth where you can't access the internet at broadband speed.
Killing is wrong.
Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab.
(Couldnt resist. Favorite movie ever. XD)
No, I don't think so.
I'm a big fan of the iPad. Its a revolutionary way of accessing and working with digital material. Its fast becoming the preferred tool for millions of businesspeople, students, scientists, and consumers.
But its never going to "kill" the laptop in general, and the MacBook in particular.
The things that a MacBook (or any laptop) does particularly well: provide a physical keyboard, acess to the file system, large amounts of local storage, relatively open hardware, etc. - are precisely the sort of things that would fatally compromise an iPad.
That doesn't mean that many people aren't going to get an iPad instead of a laptop. Someone who just wants to do light e-mail, websurfing, casual gaming. But there are always going to be people who need to write and edit large, complicated documents: legal briefs, marketing plans, graduate theses. And for them the laptop's "killer feature" (its big, physical keyboard) is going to be the deciding factor.
I'm a big fan of the iPad. Its a revolutionary way of accessing and working with digital material. Its fast becoming the preferred tool for millions of businesspeople, students, scientists, and consumers.
But its never going to "kill" the laptop in general, and the MacBook in particular.
The things that a MacBook (or any laptop) does particularly well: provide a physical keyboard, acess to the file system, large amounts of local storage, relatively open hardware, etc. - are precisely the sort of things that would fatally compromise an iPad.
That doesn't mean that many people aren't going to get an iPad instead of a laptop. Someone who just wants to do light e-mail, websurfing, casual gaming. But there are always going to be people who need to write and edit large, complicated documents: legal briefs, marketing plans, graduate theses. And for them the laptop's "killer feature" (its big, physical keyboard) is going to be the deciding factor.
Point well taken. If there is any single product in the Apple line that's likely to disappear, it's the MacBook Pro. But it won't be killed by the iPad but by an extended MacBook Air line, i.e. larger, slimmer, lighter, more powerful versions of the new MacBook Air portables. But will they be called "MacBook Air's" or "MacBook Pro2's?" That's a marketing, not an engineering question.
Frankly, I doubt seriously that Apple will seek to "beef up" iPads beyond a certain point. There is simply no advantage in cannibalizing Apple's laptop sales (and their apparently much larger profit margins) by adding much beyond eye candy (i.e. retina display) to the iPad. Not to mention the fact that a phone OS can only go so far before it runs out of juice.
That doesn't mean that more powerful tablets won't emerge. But they're likely to come from competition among manufacturers using the Android or forthcoming Windows Mobile OS. That's because those manufacturers have to compete with one another in terms of differentiating features and both Android and Windows provide a far better base for offering features like true multi-tasking than iOS.
At the rate that laptop processors and components are shrinking, and mobile processors are growing more powerful, we'll eventually see a convergence of the tablet and laptop technologies. The wheels are already in motion for this to occur, though not by Apple.
From a hardware standpoint, Asus is already bridging the gap with the EEPad Transformer (made possible by the mouse pointer support by Android), and from a software standpoint Windows 8 is being built around a touch-centric platform.
I think it will be less than 6-7 years before we see a more wide-spread convergence of tablet and laptop technologies....the iPhone was released just 5 years ago, and look how far mobile technology has already come.
Within 5 years or less, I'd expect that touch-screen laptops with the ability to remove the screen to use as a tablet will be common-place (similar to the EEPAD Transformer). It'll be awhile longer before laptops, including the macbook, go away completely, however....particularly in regards to the Macbook Pro. Most productivity applications still need a trackpad/mouse and keyboard to be effective, and the Macbook Pro line is heavily utilized by people who need a mobile workstation. ie....It would be next to impossible for me to do any modelling in excel on a touchscreen tablet without a physical keyboard! Also, gaming on a tablet is good for casual games, but hardcore gamers know that nothing beats the precision of a keyboard and mouse (not even a gamepad).
From a hardware standpoint, Asus is already bridging the gap with the EEPad Transformer (made possible by the mouse pointer support by Android), and from a software standpoint Windows 8 is being built around a touch-centric platform.
I think it will be less than 6-7 years before we see a more wide-spread convergence of tablet and laptop technologies....the iPhone was released just 5 years ago, and look how far mobile technology has already come.
Within 5 years or less, I'd expect that touch-screen laptops with the ability to remove the screen to use as a tablet will be common-place (similar to the EEPAD Transformer). It'll be awhile longer before laptops, including the macbook, go away completely, however....particularly in regards to the Macbook Pro. Most productivity applications still need a trackpad/mouse and keyboard to be effective, and the Macbook Pro line is heavily utilized by people who need a mobile workstation. ie....It would be next to impossible for me to do any modelling in excel on a touchscreen tablet without a physical keyboard! Also, gaming on a tablet is good for casual games, but hardcore gamers know that nothing beats the precision of a keyboard and mouse (not even a gamepad).
Last edited:
In the end there will be as many options as are viable. Looking at the situation in 2016 or 2017 from the perspective of 2011 immediately causes a knee-jerk "they're going to take away what??" But there will be as many options as the market will bear and 2016 usage dictates.
Pro, air, everything.
just give it a few years. 6-7 years tops.
I already know all of you will call me retarded but maybe a few years later someone could bump this and say "you know what, that guy ijustfarted was right."
i doubt. keywords: screen real estate. that is one thing the ipad doesn't have and i ain't about to type manuscripts and edit data on a friggin i-pad.
Oh I hope not. "Thin" makes sense on a tablet since they're hefty and trimming any weight benefits the end user since you hold it up with one hand. But "Thin" on notebooks is a gimmick that doesn't really benefit as much as some pretend because on a desk then a 13" Pro has the same footprint as a 13" Air, but the Air is missing some key features like DVD, Gigabit Ethernet, FacetimeHD Camera, Security Lock, Mic In and inexpensive high capacity hard drives. Those are all features that a consumer can live without but do Pro's really benefit from "Thin" if it costs them some essentials?
If Apple slims down the Pros then thats fine, just as long as they don't make it so thin that a standard 2.5" HDD can't fit because a 256GB SSD costs $300+ while a 500GB 7200rpm HDD costs under $70.
Nobody's saying the 2011 iPad will become the MacBook of 2015-2016, it's that the devices will gradually merge. Certainly not preposterous to think that a larger touchpad computing device will show up one day.
I completely agree. That's why I went with the 13 MBP over the 13 Air. Yea you save 2 pounds. Yes you get the SSD. BUT you also have the same footprint (which matters more to me as I'm a college student and you don't have infinite space on the desk; also, 2 pounds of difference is negligible) and you are restricted on storage (which will impact those who use Bootcamp) and future upgrades.
If it's on a desk, it only has to be so small; any more reduction at the cost of performance is just illogical at that point, especially when you have to pay MORE for the product. (The 13 MBA should NOT be 150 more than the Pro after education discount. That's just ridiculous.)
A larger trackpad than we already have? Or do you mean a device like the iPad that has more functionality... a mix between OS X and iOS?
Given the popularity of MBA's it's not to hard to envision laptops "improving" into tablets. We need to stop thinking of "today's" anything as being just a slower, less feature-laden version of tomorrow's same device. You don't need too much of an imagination to see some version of a tablet evolving into a more feature-complete computer. OS 10.7 is certainly working in the direction of blurring the lines between the two.
You have to remember that Apple enjoyed a decade of getting customers used to interacting with their technology in a keyboardless manner. By the time the iPad came out there were tens of millions of potential customers for whom no learning curve was necessary (not that using a tablet is rocket science).
There is evolution involved, even if we can't readily see it.
Right, but in the same manner we have to stop thinking that todays new gadget is replacing something old.
Lines definitely will be blurred but there's plenty of room in the market for a distinct notebook and a distinct tablet and in a decade I'll likely still have a need for both.
I used the ipad for about 80% of what I do on the computer.
I have having to always sync it tho (I'm always moving music/movies back and forth)
icloud should fix that for the most part
I have having to always sync it tho (I'm always moving music/movies back and forth)
icloud should fix that for the most part
I'm pretty sure we can see it, I think you have to look at the practicality of it all as well.
Tablets are great, but they can't solve the MAIN reasons people get laptops.
Unless there's a kickstand, I'm not holding that and a case.
Unless we can morph glass, people are going to want/need a physical keyboard.
Until we grow 20 percent larger, we are going to want a larger screen.
Unless it comes with a screen protector, that screen is going to get scratched/broken eventually.
What I think the "best" way to I guess, step forward with this all encompassing "mobile" computing, is for somebody, and I'm sure Apple could do this with the large marketshare, is to create a dock. A dock that lts you dock your phone, tablet, thumb drive, hard drive, anything, and load the entire OS on a screen right there.
Think about it. You could take your entire setup anywhere with you. Like the Atrix dock but actually good, with hardware inside, that lets you plug your computer, iPad, iPhone, Android handset, anything into it and it just loads a desktop experience.
That would be the future.
You're right, a lot of people don't mind using the iPad and its onscreen keyboard, but how much of that use is actually relevant? Important? I'll be damned if I see a college student typing papers on it. It's useful and you can get accustomed to it, but there is no physical feedback. It will never be completely adopted because it simply isn't practical for actually doing extensive types of work.
Exactly. Until something super crazy comes along (the whole nation wide docking system or some relevant thing I posted above or something like that), we are going to have these types of computers. They are the most practical and useful forms of computing, that's why they are here.
Instead of a separate screen, keyboard, and mouse, they put it all together. And still a trackpad isn't as good as a mouse. You can only go so far before we need head and eye tracking.
I Agree
I think the iPad will definitely replace MacBooks as we see them today purely because they are so much cheaper than a laptop and they can do almost as much...
I think the iPad will definitely replace MacBooks as we see them today purely because they are so much cheaper than a laptop and they can do almost as much...
Similar feelings. I use both the iPad and a MBP 17". The iPad has many good attributes; small, lightweight, long battery life. However, I'm gradually picking up subtle differences in how I view things on each platform. The MBP is better for digging deeper into things, for producing more detailed work. I like the ability to touch things on the iPad but there is a different way of thinking about things when using a cursor that is sometimes more conducive to intellectual tasks.
The upshot is I like both but for different applications.
Your points are all well taken. I have a Dell Workstation that's close to six pounds and I couldn't replace its functionality with anything currently on the market in the "thin and light" category at almost any price, much less at a comparable cost.
But that doesn't mean that SSD's won't decline in price and increase in capacity. And it doesn't mean that chips won't increase performance and draw less power in the process. Those two developments will enable manufacturers to eliminate or downsize fans for cooling and use lighter batteries. DVD players are already an endangered species and will soon be found almost exclusively as standalone external devices. Carry one if you like; leave it at home or don't even buy one if you don't. High capacity drives? I sympathize but as cloud storage improves in both capacity and availability, a 500 gig drive won't seem nearly as indispensable.
All of that implies larger, faster, more powerful "thin and light" laptops at approximately the same price point as the current crop. Now you may feel that the difference of say, 1.5 kilos in weight is a nit. But I can guarantee you that dragging those three extra pounds through airports all day is no nit.
Not saying that dinosaurs like you and me won't be inconvenienced. I still have a drawer full of diskettes that I really need to get around to tossing sometime. But that's the way of the world.
this is about how i feel about it. i have replaced a lot of what i do using my ipad, but there are still a few things that i have to pull out my laptop for. i can do minor html/css work with codosaurus, but for anything serious i prefer something more powerful. flash is self explanatory, until it dies there are some sites that aren't ipad compatible. i can't watch any of my amazon unbox purchases at the moment, which is a bummer. i wouldn't try and write on the ipad, but it's not really what it's for. i also don't know how i feel about the cloud, i'm using dropbox to store files right now, but there are some things i don't really want there, and i'm not always able to connect to it anyway.
so i dunno, add some speed, adapt flash or kill flash off, add some storage, maybe one day it'll replace laptops. it would be nice, it's a much easier device to use on the fly than a laptop is, even a light one.