iOS vs. Windows – Input and Office

Even the best can’t touch laptops

• The tablet market is dying and its failure to take over the laptop market means that it is likely to continue being squeezed and not even the new iPad Pro will be able to save it.
• The new reviews on the new iPad Pro are in and while they are, as expected, universally positive, they also point out that it is still not a replacement for a laptop.
• This comes hot on the heels of the news that the tablet market is still shrinking at a rate of 10% YoY (see here) with volume slowly concentrating at the top.
• This is largely due to large screen smartphones making it increasingly unnecessary to carry a separate tablet which is, after all, simply a smartphone with a giant screen.
• The view was several years ago that all productivity would move to touch-based devices making a keyboard and mouse unnecessary.
• The thinking behind this was that school children and students are increasingly doing all their homework on tablets and that they would take this preference with them into the workforce.
• This has not happened in any way that I can see.
• Even when one visits the youngest new start-ups in Silicon Valley, Shoreditch, Berlin or Shanghai, almost everyone is sitting behind a screen that has a mouse and a keyboard attached to it.
• The same is true for the youngest recruits into the existing enterprises and organisations globally.
• I think that this is for two reasons:
  • First, and foremost, Productivity: Touch-based input is simply not very good for most productivity-based applications.
  • These sorts of applications require precise clicks that are not possible with a finger alone.
  • Furthermore, selecting, dragging and contextual based menus are more clumsy to use quickly and easily using a finger rather than a mouse.
  • Consequently, I think that in the enterprise, and with prosumers, the mouse is here to stay as touch is a very poor replacement.
  • Second, Office: which is by far the most important productivity suite of applications in use today.
  • Office is available on iOS and Android but anyone who uses it seriously will know that for real productivity, it needs to be running on Windows.
  • Office on Mac is reasonable, but its functionality and performance remains a version or two behind what is available on Windows.
• Consequently, Tablets do not deliver the right input systems nor the optimum performance of the key productivity apps to really make any inroads at all into the laptop market.
• I do not think that content creators have any particular loyalty to Windows, it’s just the superior offering of Office and all of the corporate legacy software that keeps them there.
• If I had a 15-inch iPad Pro that supported a mouse and ran full-fat Office flawlessly, I would have no hesitation in switching away from the Surface Book 2.
• This is because the Digital Life piece of iOS is so much better than anything Windows can offer.
• However, because iOS is so much weaker on core productivity, RFM continues to run 100% on Windows.
• The net result is that the new iPad Pro is an excellent, nice looking iOS device that excels at content consumption and can do some content creation (pen-based mostly) reasonably well.
• This means that tablets still have no hope of challenging the laptop market and they look certain to continue declining with concentration continuing among the top players.
• I would not want to be anywhere near it.