The convergence of handheld and lap/desktop is inevitably going to happen. The question of course is when and how, and we can agree it won’t be soon. As such, the Surface Studio does seem to be a working prototype or proof of concept than an actual shippable product, it didn’t try to solve some fundamental ergonomic issues that should be obvious from the get go. Similar issues are on the Surface Pro/tablet hybrid as well, while the hardware is somewhat there, the interfacing methodology still needs work, and the need for Windows to stay compatible to a sea of older programs out there isn’t helping. But I see MS’s intention being admirable to say the least, in contrast to Apple who constantly acts like their solution is already the best there is, you take it or leave it. Just look at the touchbar.
The Wacom Cintiq/Intuos is a good example where a modularity approach on PC works, leave the dedicated peripheral maker with decades of expertise to do what’s best for the task. So that’s that. The iPad Pro while not working as seamlessly with a PC as the Cintiq, the fact it runs a sandboxed OS with strict API means the overall experience is actually more tightly laid out, and it shows. Both approaches have a place, but I consider Apple being the one who needs more work, to push this feature set into the rest of the ecosystem.
I consider myself being in the “Cheese Grater camp”, I like the flexibility and piece of mind, since my work covers wide variety of multimedia tasks where industry trends change by the week. I still have a bunch of working Macs that are older than 10 years old lying around, just a few months ago repurposed a MP1,1 into a Snow Leopard file server. But for the main work machine, I don’t necessarily need the compute performances that many others of this forum need, I currently use just a 5K iMac, but I can clearly see the benefits of having a halo product much like how the Cheese Grater did. If the Cheese Grater form survived post-2012, I am sure I wouldn't have considered an iMac being my primary machine, just the flexibility to not be locked by the built-in screen alone.
My issue with Apple is that, they seemed determined to back out of number crunching pro spaces, while not taking enough risks on the convergence front. OS X is not as stable or reliable as 10 years ago, and its approachability hasn’t moved forward much. Their hardware offerings are getting much less a value purchase than a sunk cost in style now. During its peak in the early 2000’s Macs excelled on both fronts, and now they are stagnated on neither.
