This week, Apple is expected to have new products via press release or YouTube video, leading up to a March 4th in-person “experience” where the tech press will be able to have hands-on experience with the new products.

We’re expecting the 12th generation iPad (A18?) and an updated iPad Air (M4), but what’s likely going to be the most exciting product announced is a new, colorful, low-cost MacBook.

If we zoom out and look at the year as a whole, 2026 is going to be very interesting for the iPad. Not because of a revolutionary update (though I am excited about the OLED iPad Mini), but because of some of the other products, like this MacBook, that Apple is releasing.

This year, the iPad is going to be under its biggest assault ever, but not from a competitor like Samsung or Microsoft (does the iPad really have competitors at this point?).

These attacks are coming from Apple itself.

You see, the iPad has generally maintained a few unique value propositions in the Apple ecosystem since its inception. It’s been more capable than an iPhone, cheaper than a MacBook (setting the iPad Pro aside for a minute), more portable than a Macbook, and with the right accessory, Apple’s answer to a touchscreen laptop.

Each of those value propositions is getting challenged by products that Apple is rumored to be releasing this year. This will, of course, lead many a pundit to wonder if the iPad will still have a reason to exist by the end of the year.

Cheap – Low Cost MacBook

The first salvo will come from a lower end/less expensive/cheap(?) MacBook, which I will refer to as simply “MacBook”.

The MacBook has been rumored to come in at a price point as low as $599, though with the rising prices of both storage and RAM, some analysts are thinking a price this low is no longer attainable. Regardless, the combination of using an iPhone chip and likely reusing an old chassis (either the M1 MacBook Air or 12-inch MacBook) should help this laptop be much less expensive than the MacBook Air.

MacBook Benefits

This is going to be the first time in recent memory where you can buy a modern Apple laptop for under the pricey $1000 mark. Of course, Walmart was selling the M1 MacBook Air for $599 for a while, but that’s a pretty old computer at this point.

The new MacBook will make cost less of a factor if you’re deciding between an iPad and a MacBook. If you are deadset on the laptop form factor, meaning that if you bought an iPad you’d also buy a Magic Keyboard, the iPad + Magic Keyboard combo is almost certainly going to be more expensive than this standalone MacBook.

That MacBook will, of course, also run full macOS. Which means this MacBook will be able to support workflows the iPad can’t, like software development. It also means the MacBook is pretty much guaranteed to have better external display support than the iPad’s buggy display support.

Counterpoint

Being a tablet means the iPad offers a lot of flexibility on how you choose to use it. While you can use a keyboard, it is entirely optional. Same with stylus and touch support, both of which this MacBook won’t have. The iPad is a fully functional computer without any accessories. The MacBook, to paraphrase Steve Jobs, “has this keyboard that’s there whether you need it or not.”

There’s also iPadOS, which is what makes the iPad so versatile as a touch computer. After the massive release that was iPadOS 26, it’s clear Apple is still investing in it. And more importantly, it’s one of the indicators that would seem to point to Apple letting go of some of its long-held positions on what products can do what tasks. I think that can only be a good thing for the iPad as time goes forward.

Portability/Capability – Folding iPhone

Since the M5 iPad Pro was released, I’ve been leaning into an iPad (with cellular) as my daily driver more than ever (which is big because I love my iPhone Air). It’s less cumbersome to bring around than a MacBook. The screen is a lot bigger than my iPhone Air’s display, and with the new multitasking in iPadOS 26, it’s easier to switch between tasks than it’s ever been on my phone.

But that superiority in portability is about to get challenged later this year by Apple’s first entry into the somewhat stagnant folding phone category. iPhone Fold is my favorite of the potential names I’ve seen, so we’ll go with that here.

iPhone Fold Benefits

The iPhone Fold is expected to have a roughly 5.5 inch outer screen (ugh…these stupid outer screens) that opens up into a roughly iPad Mini sized inner screen at a little under 8 inches. The value proposition is obvious here…you get the benefits of an iPad sized screen when you need it, and a somewhat thick phone sized device when you don’t.

One would logically expect that the inner screen will “run” iPadOS and let you run iPadOS apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on a device that fits in your pocket.

Of course, experiences like video and navigation will really shine on the larger inner display, the same way they do on the iPad today.

Counterpoint

First, the iPhone Fold is rumored to cost upwards of $2000. You could buy an iPhone Pro and an iPad Mini and still come in under that price. And you get the benefits of having two devices that are great at being a phone and tablet, respectively, instead of a single device that is likely to be a bit meh at being both.

The other consideration is the rumored size of the iPhone Fold’s inner display. Again, as someone who uses an 11-inch tablet as their main device, an 8-inch display is not big enough for meaningful productivity. Even with the convenience of a folding phone, I can’t see it adding more value than the device I’m already carrying.

Touchscreen – OLED MacBook Pro with Touchscreen

And finally, the iPad gets challenged in its position as Apple’s only touch-based answer to a computer with the upcoming OLED MacBook Pros. These laptops are rumored to be catching up to the iPad Pro with an Ultra Retina XDR display (OLED), optional cellular, and yes, a touchscreen.

MacBook Pro Benefits

There’s been a very loud section of Apple users that have long demanded that Apple put macOS on the iPad. But these users don’t actually want a tablet. What they really want is a touchscreen Mac, and Apple seems poised to finally give these users exactly what they want. Expect to see a flurry of “I’m done with the iPad” YouTube videos when this laptop is released 🙄.

So the benefit is really just that you get everything you have and can do with your MacBook, but with touch added. And a lot of people will be really happy with this.

Counterpoint

First and foremost, if the rumors are to be believed, this touchscreen MacBook Pro is still just a MacBook Pro, which means the screen won’t detach or fold back on itself. From a touch interaction perspective, you’re probably not going to want to do much more than the occasional tap or swipe. The ergonomics are still terrible for touch.

macOS is rumored to see some updates for better touch compatibility. The way the traffic light buttons expand in iPadOS when you tap them is a good indication of the type of optimizations we are likely to see in the next version of macOS.

macOS certainly has its advantages in terms of the legacy software it supports, but when I think about some of the most common tasks people do with their iPads like web browsing, reading, games, watching video…those experiences are all better on a tablet. You can choose your orientation and accessories to create a more ideal setup for the task at hand.

Another big advantage for the iPad here is iPhone app compatibility, made better on the iPad with iPadOS 26. While you can technically run iPad and iPhone apps on a MacBook, I find most of the apps I’d want to do that with have opted out of letting their apps run on Mac. That’s much harder to do on iPad, which means there’s a much wider array of iPhone apps that can run natively on the iPad.

The Streams Are Crossing, but That’s Nothing New

The Mac and iPhone seem poised to become more iPad-like, but the iPad isn’t just standing still. As we saw with the revamped multitasking in iPadOS 26, Apple seems to be no longer afraid to let different products cross into each other’s lanes.

If you’re using an iPad with a keyboard, it feels more than ever like a Mac, removing what some had said was a major stumbling block for using their iPad more: the lack of familiar windowing.

Looking at the features Apple has been adding over the past few years like external display support, display scaling, virtual memory swap, and background tasks, Apple clearly isn’t afraid to let the iPad push into Mac territory.

I would anticipate these more advanced, Mac-like features to continue to trickle down to iPadOS, and I think that as long as Apple doesn’t forget the iPad is a tablet when implementing them, that’s a good thing.

Now, if only we could get Xcode running on the iPad…

What’s Left for the iPad?

Despite these incursions from Apple’s other products, the iPad still has unique selling points of its own.

First and foremost, it’s a tablet. We often forget this in the tech media’s obsession with turning an iPad into a laptop, but some people actually just want a tablet. Some of us even prefer that form factor. It lends itself to being productively used in more places than a laptop.

There haven’t been any credible rumors that Apple Pencil support will be expanding beyond the iPad, but even if it does, Apple’s tablet is likely to remain the ideal form factor for drawing and note taking with a stylus. The touchscreen MacBook Pros will remain traditional laptops, meaning that the screens won’t be detachable or fold back on themselves, so they won’t be in a great position for stylus use. If the iPhone Fold gets Apple Pencil support, you’re going to have to worry about the outer screen if you try to lay it flat on a table.

And, of course, there’s the iPad hardware itself. Users have multiple screen sizes to choose from the 8.3-inch iPad Mini all the way up to the 13-inch iPad Pro all without compromises like display creases, notches, or camera cutouts.

With all of this taken together, these advantages add up to a product category that still has a clear reason to exist.

Conclusion

Ever since Apple introduced the iPad in 2010 as a third category of device between a laptop and smartphone, observers have continued to question its reason for being. And while events like the advent of larger screen phones and moving the iPad chips to the Mac further raised those questions, I’ve never seen so many Apple products released in such a short amount of time that cross over into the iPad’s turf.

The iPad still brings in almost $30 billion of revenue a year for Apple, so it’s not as though that business is going to implode. By and large, people still seem to love their iPads, regardless of what they use them for.

Looking at the PC/Android world, all of these things: cheap laptops, folding phones, and touchscreen laptops, have existed for many years, and there’s still a relatively healthy tablet market. Apple themselves have even admitted that most Mac users also have an iPad, and use whichever tool makes sense for the task. So maybe these new products aren’t going to cause the existential crisis for the iPad that some pundits think.