Do You Need a MacBook?

One of the topics that many tech blogs have been focused on concerns the lack of truly entry-level, up-to-date Mac models for the consumer market. The MacBook Air line has only been given fairly basic speed-bump upgrades in the last few years, and still lacks a Retina screen like the rest of the laptop line; and at this point the less said about the Mac mini, the better.

With the last couple of ARM A-series CPUs for Apple’s iOS platform, more and more folks have speculated that since as of the A9 we now have ARM CPUs that rival or even exceed the Intel CPUs in the Air line of laptops, perhaps Apple’s ultimate aim is to ditch Intel completely (in the consumer market, at least) and incorporate their own processors into the entry-level Mac line instead. One could certainly see Apple rolling out a “FAT 64” executable model akin to the transition between 680×0 and PowerPC chips in the ’90s. That would enable a single application to run on either ARM or Intel.

However, the iPad Pro line seems to weaken this argument somewhat. Think about it for a second — here’s a hardware lineup that is equivalent to low- and perhaps even moderate-end Intel laptops, with a wide assortment of productivity and entertainment applications. Also, the platform is extremely low-maintenance, and arguably the most secure presently available (with a couple of outstanding security embarrassments, that — let’s be honest — were more user-error than anything inherent in the design).

Let’s also put ourselves in the subjective position of a “typical home computer user,” ok? Most people are not hardcore gamers, and if they play games at all, they’ll be on either their cell phone or a dedicated console in their living room. On a related note, most people are not professional or even hobbiest programmers, so they lack a need for a development suite or, say, a command line for SSH-ing into their AWS to compile (if you have no idea what I just said, I rest my case). Most people also do not edit professional feature-length films or albums, or model and render extended CGI animations. Instead, the average user needs the following:

  1. a basic office suite for writing a resume, or perhaps a letter, making a household budget spreadsheet, and maybe, just maybe, creating a slide presentation;
  2. email access;
  3. web access (generally known as “the internet”) that grants them the ability to view Facebook, shop Amazon, and pay bills online;
  4. some method of streaming video and music;
  5. and finally, the ability to play casual games to pass the time.

I might throw in VOIP capability here, too, since there’s a prevalence amongst younger users for Skype and FaceTime on occasion.

Let’s be honest, though; those last two are generally moving to cell phones rather than computers, joining photography and video recording.

So, looking at the list above, every use case has already been addressed on the iPad line. Heck, you don’t even need a Pro model to handle that stuff; $429 will get you a regular iPad with 128GB of storage that can easily handle each of those bullet points. Couple it with an cheap, external Bluetooth keyboard, pony up $10 a month for the additional 2TB iCloud account, and you pretty much have everything you need to be a member of the digital elite. As a bonus you also get an extra pair of cameras. And since this is iOS, there’s no way for errant users to accidentally reformat their drive, or even infect their machine with malware. Say goodbye to playing IT support for your relatives!

Now, tech blogs galore have entertained the notion of using iPads as replacement computers. They of course scoff at this, because [no command line! no Steam games! no Visual Studio!], but that misses the point that 95% of the population doesn’t care about those things. They simply want to binge Netflix, watch cat videos, and get advertised at by Facebook and Google — that’s it (well, there’s p0rn, too, of course, but let’s ignore that for the purposes of this rant, shall we?).

I bring all of this up because yesterday this happened:

Regardless of what neckbeards and frustrated hobbiest users like me may want, this is the future of personal computing. This perfectly encapsulates the “computer as appliance” approach that Steve Jobs envisioned with the original Macintosh back in 1984. Just as I don’t know a carburetor from a brake pad, and I don’t care as long as my car runs, so too does the average computer user not know the difference between RAM and a SSD, and not care as long as their machine boots up. The specifics don’t matter, they just need to get things done.

iPads do this right now, and will get even better at it as future models are released. You don’t need a “real computer” anymore to get things done; this piece of glass does everything most people want.