14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the company has recently launched the iPad Pro, a hybrid device that basically brings a keyboard to a tablet in the same way Microsoft did nearly three years ago, Apple says that it’s no longer interested in mixing two of its products together for targeting a new product category.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has recently said in an interview with Independent that the Cupertino-based firm isn’t interested in building a device that would involve combining a MacBook and an iPad. This is clearly a reference to Microsoft’s Surface Book, which was not long ago launched as a laptop that can double as a tablet when users remove its keyboard.
“A compromised product”
Cook says that, no matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to create a product that’s not compromised in some way. He hasn’t mentioned, however, how exactly Microsoft compromised its Surface Book.
“We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad,” Cook is quoted as saying.
“Because what that would wind up doing, or what we’re worried would happen, is that neither experience would be as good as the customer wants. So we want to make the best tablet in the world and the best Mac in the world. And putting those two together would not achieve either. You’d begin to compromise in different ways.”
Microsoft’s Surface Book, which was unveiled on October 6 and went on sale later the same month, is most of the time a fully featured laptop that runs Windows 10 and provides the typical functionality of such a device. But when removing the keyboard, the Surface Book becomes a clipboard that makes it possible for anyone to use touch or a Surface Pen as the main input method.
Apple’s currently not interested in such a device, but plans could always change overnight, depending on the way sales of the Surface Book are going. This wouldn’t be the first time when Apple actually changes its mind, as Tim Cook also said in 2012 that a tablet with a removable keyboard had no chance to succeed, and now the company’s making its very own such device…