New iPad Pro ad hammers home Apple's ongoing laptop replacement theme
Apple on Monday released a new ad on YouTube, "5 Reasons iPad Pro can be your next computer," once again trying to sell people on the idea that the tablet can replace a laptop workflow.
The video argues that the Pro is "more powerful than most computers," and extremely versatile, being a "scanner, camera, editing suite, notepad, cinema, music studio, book, and a computer." Other bulletpoints include available LTE support, a simple interface, and the creative possibilities of the second-generation Apple Pencil.
The ad's language is notably different from earlier iPad marketing, which tried to distance iPads from regular computers while competing with them at the same time. At one point the company referred to iPads as ushering in a "post-PC" era, and in November 2017 the company aired its infamous "What's a computer?" ad, often lampooned for being out of touch with reality.
The new ad would seem to be a reversal, embracing the "computer" label in order to be seen as serious hardware. That approach is also reflected to an extent in the new Pro's design, since it now uses USB-C instead of Lightning, opening up compatible accessories. Not all USB-C accessories will work though, and iOS has yet to gain an open filesystem.
The video argues that the Pro is "more powerful than most computers," and extremely versatile, being a "scanner, camera, editing suite, notepad, cinema, music studio, book, and a computer." Other bulletpoints include available LTE support, a simple interface, and the creative possibilities of the second-generation Apple Pencil.
The ad's language is notably different from earlier iPad marketing, which tried to distance iPads from regular computers while competing with them at the same time. At one point the company referred to iPads as ushering in a "post-PC" era, and in November 2017 the company aired its infamous "What's a computer?" ad, often lampooned for being out of touch with reality.
The new ad would seem to be a reversal, embracing the "computer" label in order to be seen as serious hardware. That approach is also reflected to an extent in the new Pro's design, since it now uses USB-C instead of Lightning, opening up compatible accessories. Not all USB-C accessories will work though, and iOS has yet to gain an open filesystem.
Comments
Mr Cook should just tap his heels together three times and repeat:
”I don’t have Steve’s Reality Distortion Field”
”I don’t have Steve’s Reality Distortion Field”
”I don’t have Steve’s Reality Distortion Field”
Edit: I can can see the future myriad parody versions already.
edit2: to replace computers the tag line should be “better than a computer”. But only once it is true. We aren’t there yet.
The ipad doesn’t yet offer enough of a marriage between functionality and paradigm shift to justify Apple’s claims. But fear not, the problem is software limitations, which can be fixed.
edit: a more apt comparison at this point of iPad development is the Newton. A great device destroyed by advertising that over promised, prompting derisive parodies and leading ultimately to the Newton’s untimely demise.
If the point is to easily assemble files in folders per project or task basis, then there is the Files app and iCloud. One no longer needs to keep Pages documents in the Pages app’s directory, these days have long gone. Yet iOS does not prevent anyone from using third party file storage and sharing systems, such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. There’s no sharing in Cloud Drive but alternatively Apple provides full collaboration in its productivity apps, which is multiple times better than that primitive form of collaboration called file sharing.
The usability iOS is so unbelievably wonderful that Steve Jobs made the iPhone a reality, just remembering that will resume all that reality distorsion field saga.
Apple has no claims to be justified further, hundreds of millions of sales prove that. Attacking the platform just on the basis of a marketing narration is futile, because the products are there, sales reports are there and there is not even a competition in the iPad case after eight years.
At Apple the hardware team is running circles around the software team.
The kids today do stuff with pictures,music and words. They don’t spend their time doing file admin.
Then you should remember how the command-line-interfacers poopoo'd the Macintosh as a GUI "toy". Just as the mainframers said of the PC. The techno-priest class always poopoos the next set of tools.