No, I don’t mean mine – which seems to have taken leave of its senses and only boots once every 4 times. It’s done 350 “power cycles” and been around the world at least twice since late 2011.
The PC was king until 2 years ago, losing its crown to the laptop against all the predictions in 2012. It seems somewhat obvious, to me anyway, that the laptop will lose its crown to a new kind of tablet.
And sooner than you think, why lug around a keyboard, 2 clam shells, a fat charger and a bunch of ports when you don’t need any of that,
I’m thinking of a 14 inch, iPad-like, device that sits as a hybrid of my (now dying) MacAir and a large iPad Retina thing. It will have serious power, depend on the cloud and run for more than a day. It will communicate using WiFi 803.sexy, 4G and support Bluetooth 4 for all my personal devices.
Let’s call this device the iPad Pro. Who’d buy it?
I’ll pay around £1000 for it, now, as I don’t really wanna spunk out that money on a new MacAir that a) is not retina, b) not much better than my “mid-2011” temperamental one and c) does work as well as my 3G iPad Mini.
Those unfortunate souls who still buy laptops for sub £300, when a boggo iPad Mini would do a better job, might keep the Chinese production numbers rolling but my bet is the early adopters plus the power users will jump ship when the fabled iPad Pro appears.
When is that, I hear you cry? I want one now, but I suspect I’m going to have to wait a year. Bugger, might have to try and fix my MacAir.
By Martin Dower, published from an Indian Ocean Island paradise.
