When the iPad Pro was released in 2015, Tim Cook gave an interview expressing how he imagines people will respond to the new Pro tablet:

Cook insisted that “the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people” who will “start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phone.”

Finding a quote this direct is interesting, because in Apple’s marketing they never really come out and declare the iPad as a laptop replacement. They have, however, come out with some fun and interesting ads dancing around that point over the years. As someone that leans more into the “third category of device” perspective, I’m not a huge fan of the “iPad must replace a laptop” line of thought, but its fun to revisit some of this stuff. So let’s revisit some of it:

What’s A Computer?

Ahhhh….the infamous “What’s a computer” ad. Few Apple commercials from the past 15 years get people worked up as much as this one. I’ve always thought this commercial was cute and fun, but it seems like a lot of people find it pretentious. It seems to really tap into whatever it is that gets some people so upset about the idea of someone using an iPad…as a computer.

The ad does a really good job of showing how well the iPad floats between a phone and a laptop. Especially the non-obnoxious way the cameras are used. The thrust of this video is highlighting versitility as a tablet, cycling between touch, keyboard, and stylus inputs. It’s showing you why you want the product, but doesn’t seem to be going after more common laptop use cases.

Looking back this ad now, the only nit-pick is that whole slamming the iPad down to collapse it thing. I can’t imagine ever being that rough with any of my technology, especially something that expensive.

The Ultimate PC Replacement

This is one of the weirder ones. When Apple introduced the 9.7 inch iPad Pro in 2016, Phil Schiller got on stage and proclaimed that this model of iPad specifically was the ultimate PC upgrade for users with PCs older than five years old. I remember a number of journalists getting offended that Apple was suggesting using a machine that was five years old was sad. Definitely a misstep.

When Apple says “PC” in this context, they meant “Windows PC”. And sure, these days PC == laptop. So this is probably the closest they’ve actually come to actually saying an iPad can replace a laptop. But I always read this as more of a jab at Windows.

I can admire their confidence, and I think its safe to say today that an iPad can handle the things most people do most often on a computer. But back then? iPadOS wasn’t even a thing yet. We’d just gotten the first iteration of multitasking on iPad. We didn’t even have drag and drop yet. It was probably a bit early to pit an iPad against a Windows PC.

Faster than X% of Portable PCs Sold in the Last Year

With the iPad Pro, Apple started making performance comparisons against some percentage of portable pcs sold in the last year. We don’t really have any information about how Apple came to this metric. I’ve always assumed that this is mostly looking at the sub $500 pc market, which at this point would have been dominated by Intel Celeron class hardware.

You could argue saying the iPad Pro is faster than most portable pc’s is Apple saying that it can replace a PC. I always saw that metric as them just bragging about how their chips were faster than most PCs, while be efficient enough to go into a fanless tablet enclouse. Especially since, at the time, they were still reliant on Intel chips that weren’t exactly…meshing well with Apple’s thin laptop enclosures (we didn’t know how good we had it in that department).

Steve Jobs: Cars vs. Trucks

Steve Jobs’ last (to my knowledge) interview was very interesting and gave a lot of insight into Apple’s views on various topics. One of the most memorable sections came when Jobs was asked if the iPad, and the tablet in general, would replace a laptop. Make sure to watch the clip above if you haven’t seen it, because I can’t really do the cars vs. truck metaphor justice.

I fully acknowledge that the future he described hasn’t yet come true, if it ever will. While the iPad has come a long was in just 14 years, there’s still a number of major software titles that haven’t been ported to iPadOS. The utility of a computer comes from the software it runs, and its hard for a machine that doesn’t run the apps you need to get things done to be your primary anything. So the laptop remains, and gets stronger, having learned many lessons from both the smartphone and tablet form factors.

Most relevant to this post was that Jobs didn’t see the PC/laptop ever going away, but rather diminishing in relevance for the majority of users. The rest of us. On some level, I think that has happened, but its been the smartphone that’s brought about that future. The average person lives their lives on their phone, not their PC. There’s a good chance the Mac or PC you have is just for work, possibly provided by your employer. Pretty much everything else a normal person does can be accompished on their smartphones. I don’t have any stats on the number of people that just own a smartphone, but I imagine in some countries, the smartphone is likely the easiest and cheapest only device many users have for computing.

The Magic Keyboard

You could make a pretty good case that the very existence of the Magic Keyboard, and Apple’s other various keyboard cases, is them making a statement that the iPad can replace a laptop. With the new, aluminum Magic Keyboard was declared to feel “even more like a MacBook”.

But the Magic Keyboard is very much still an optional accessory. Its high asking price and Apple’s continued insistence that iPad apps be touch first will keep it that way. So while the Magic Keyboard makes an iPad look an awful lot like a laptop, the iPad is still at its best without it. The keyboard came late enough in the iPad’s life, that many apps don’t take advantage of keyboard support by adapting to the dynamic cursor, or adding keyboard shortcuts.

The initial first party keyboard for iPad was built around the portrait orientation, but every subsequent dock or keyboard case has been landscape oriented. I view that as more of a “meeting people where they are” kind of approach. The landscape, laptop-y setup is a form factor people are very familiar with. Part of the versatility of iPad is that it works really well in both orientations, and it’s unfortunate that none of Apple’s cases take advantage of that. Thankfully, third parties are starting to step up in this area.

Those are the ways I remember Apple kinda/sorta marking the iPad as a laptop replacement.

But what really cemented the “tablet is supposed to replace a laptop” idea in the minds of tech media…..

Surface Pro 3: the Tablet That Can Replace Your Laptop

Positioning the tablet as a 3rd category of device between the laptop and smartphone was always going to be a huge marketing challenge, especially as the laptop was just becoming the de-facto form factor for a computer. The Surface line was Microsoft’s response to the iPad, and the company decided to lean into everything the iPad wasn’t. Where Apple decided to extend their touch based OS to the tablet, Microsoft continued its existing strategy of using Windows.

‘The tablet that can replace your laptop’ was the official tagline for the Surface Pro 3, which enlarged the roughly 10 inch display to a more expansive and productive nearly 13 inch display. It was the first Surface that felt like it might be able to fulfill that promise. There used to be an old saying that Microsoft doesn’t get anything right until version 3, so maybe its not a coincidence that the Surface Pro 3 was the first truly compelling model.

Its success solidified the idea in the minds of the tech press that the tablet was supposed to replace the laptop. That was its reason to exist. And they’ve run with it ever since. I don’t think we’ll ever see an iPad review again that doesn’t question whether or not it can replace your laptop.

Conclusion

Sometimes the iPad is (sort of) marketed as a laptop replacement. Sometimes it’s marketed as a unique kind of device. Being something of an in between product can make iPad difficult to clearly market, but it’s fun to look back at some of the ways Apple has tried to communicate its value over time.