The new iPad Pro superimposed on a MacBook Pro screen
Following reviews saying that iPadOS limitations mean the new iPad Pro can’t easily replace a MacBook Pro, Apple insists the two devices are complementary.
However, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal got to press an Apple executive about how hampered the iPad Pro feels with iPadOS. And how even though in certain circumstances the new iPad Pro can actually out-perform a MacBook Pro, she says it can’t be someone’s sole computing device.
“We don’t see them as competing devices. We see them as complementary devices,” Tom Boger, Apple’s vice president of iPad and Mac product marketing, told her.
Specifically, Boger says that in Apple’s mind, the iPad “has always been a touch-first device.” By contrast, the Mac in all its forms is for what he described as “indirect manipulation,” that is working using accessories like a keyboard and trackpad.
“Oh, I can’t say we never change our mind,” he replied. There have been rumors about a touchscreen Mac for years.
