When Apple CEO Tim Cook and several of his deputies take the virtual stage next week to announce new iPads, they will spend a lot of time talking about specs. If the rumors are true, we’ll get new iPad Pros with OLED screens and thinner cases, new Airs with faster chips and a correctly placed front camera, and a few new accessories. Even before they come out, I can tell you with certainty that these are the best iPads ever. But after all these years, I still don’t know how to tell you if you should want an iPad. Or what you want to do with it.
Of course, this has always been true. The iPad is the jack-of-all-trades in Apple’s lineup, a great device in many ways that still seems increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops. For the past decade-plus, Apple seems to have been enamored with the idea of the iPad as a shapeshifter – a device that can be exactly what you need at any time. The company loves that the iPad’s use case is difficult to determine and that it means different things to different people. It’s a fun, good and ambitious idea: The One Gadget To Rule Them All. However, the way to achieve this is not to improve the chips, move the buttons or redesign the rounded corners. The focus is less on the iPad itself and more on the things you connect to it.
There’s a chance accessories could be the star of the show next week. Just look at the surprisingly unsubtle invitation to the Let Loose event: Usually there are tea leaves to read and we have to try to decipher vague shapes, but this time there’s just an Apple Pencil front and center. According to reports, we’ll likely see a new pencil at the event, with interchangeable magnetic tips for different uses and a new “press” gesture for quickly adding objects to your artwork.
The focus on the Pencil makes some niche sense: the iPad is nothing more than a large touchscreen, and the only Apple device that lets you draw and write in this way. Apple’s AI researchers have been working on tools to help artists and animators in their work, as well as a system for creating art linked to an AI model – you type it, it comes into being; You edit, it refines. For anyone into this type of visual art, a super-powered pencil could be incredibly tempting.
According to rumors, Apple is also launching a new Magic Keyboard that will make the iPad even more laptop-like. The new model will apparently be made of aluminum and have a larger trackpad. (Hopefully it’ll stop falling apart easily, too.) A better keyboard doesn’t immediately make the iPad a great laptop, but I’m not sure Apple wants to make a great laptop. There are already a lot of them! I’m not really on the “put macOS on the iPad, you cowards” bandwagon either. The MacBook is great. I think the modular potential of the iPad is actually much greater.
If Apple wants to get there, it needs more accessories – a lot more accessories. The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on whenever you need it. Give gamers a controller and an external GPU. Give the music lovers a speaker station and the smart home fanatics a set of buttons that connect to various devices. The photographers need lenses; The spreadsheets require a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple still needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself – a device known for its long lifespan and one that few people use to its full potential – and more time making it more than just a tablet . (Also, a bonus for Apple: It’ll be a lot easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don’t need it.)
The ultra-modular vision for the iPad is tempting and I hope Apple continues to embrace it, but it’s nearly impossible to make happen. Just ask Essential how it went building a device and accessory ecosystem. Or ask Google. Or Asus. Or Fairphone or Samsung or Motorola or Blocks or Phonebloks or any of the other companies that never made it. It requires developing software that can be all things to all people, all the time, and hardware that is beautiful, thin, light, durable, and fully remixable. I’m not even sure this is all possible, but I know the iPad and iPadOS aren’t.
The problem with the iPad’s all-in-one approach so far is that you can’t just build a device that’s reasonably okay in all areas and then hope that’s enough. The reasonably good device already exists – it’s your smartphone! The iPad needs to be more than that: more flexible, more powerful, more durable, more useful. That’s a tough thing to put into a device, but Apple has actually done a pretty good job. The harder part is building the ecosystem – and developing the software that can support it. You need something that’s suitable for both power users and newbies, for hobbyists and simpletons, for people who love keyboard shortcuts, and for people who would rather never type again.
You can’t just build a device that’s reasonably OK in all areas and hope that’s enough
Ultimately, Apple’s biggest problem may simply be math. The current iPad Pro starts at $799, which is already more expensive than some MacBook Air models. Want a cellular connection so you can use iPad anywhere? That’s another $200, but it takes a good modular device. The current-generation Pencil costs an additional $129; the Magic Keyboard, another $299. (I don’t know what the new models will cost yet, but Apple isn’t really in the habit of making things cheaper.) That’s $1,328 for the full iPad experience, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what this device can do with the right accessories and app support. And when Apple has introduced new accessories, it has usually only caused more confusion.
Where does this all lead Apple? Plugged in. The iPad is great, it’s a success, it’s a great device, I love the iPad, but the iPad seems to be stuck in an endless upgrade loop without ever really getting better. I suspect we’ll see a lot of iPadOS-related news at WWDC next month – that’s where Apple usually talks about its software, and all signs point to a big focus on AI. The iPad could be a natural place to provide many AI features, particularly in image and video editing. However, when it comes to next week’s announcement, we’ll likely be hearing a lot about OLED screens and chip upgrades. But pay attention to all the devices in the iPad universe that aren’t the iPad itself. If Apple wants to make its tablet the world’s best device it could be, it needs to be equipped with accessories.