When the iPad first came out I was sorely disappointed that it was not a tablet Mac. I had dreamed about that and even now still wish that is what it would have been.Last week Apple introduced a couple new iPads and a new Pencil, but I was hoping they would introduce a new iPad Mini as my old iPad Mini 4 is getting pretty long in the tooth.
A little history: Basically the iPad is an oversized iPhone without the cellular telephone capability. My wife however loved the idea and wanted one. Eventually she reverted back to the iPhone as the screens got larger and I inherited her iPad. I grew to love it as a media device and for short trips as a laptop replacement. I ended up with a iPad Mini 4 after replacing the original iPad with an original Mini and now I also have an original full-sized iPad Pro. The Pro is great for watching movies on the patio or doing presentations but the iPad Mini is much more adaptable for travel purposes like using it on a plane, in a car or at a meeting. It is showing its age however and I would like to replace it with a newer Mini but so far it is still the newest one, even after 3 or 4 years.
To this day however what I really want is a true Mac tablet or convertible. The Surface Pro has shown how well such a device can be done. I went to the Dark Side and bought an original Surface Pro and keyboard case. While it is not my beloved MacOS, Windows 10 seems to be pretty decent, well as far as Windows could be. I actually did need a Windows laptop at the time anyway as my MacBook Pro I had didn’t have the memory to run Parallels to my satisfaction.
I would trade my iPad Pro and Mini as well as my Surface and MacBook Air for a true Mac tablet, especially if I could have at least 16 GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.
Imagine a MacBook convertible with a keyboard cover, a 1TB SSD, 16 GB of RAM and an iPad Pro style Retina screen that can run all my MacOS applications and Windows too. Combine this with online storage and syncing and one can have his cake and eat it too. We can call it the MacPad, and perhaps even come up with a way to run both MacOS and iOS apps on the same device. Sign me up for one for me and one for the wife!
I would make the “MacPad” in a couple screen sizes; about 10-11 inches for high portability and a “Pro” sized one of about 14 inches or so. I don’t know if the removable magnetically attached keyboard cover of the Surface is patented by Microsoft or not, if it is there would likely need be some sort of hinge or alternate cover connection. Apple is innovative enough to figure an elegant way to do this. The rotating keyboard/cover used by some Windows machines is nice but fragile. The Surface’s solution where the only thing in the cover is the keyboard and it is removable is much better. The kickstand of the Surface is brilliant, I would however have looked for a way to make it work in Portrait mode as well. If the MacPad could have all this I would be a happy camper!
The N9JIG Blog 