Whether I’m heading out to a cafe, a week-long trip, or just around the house, my iPad Pro is what I reach for.
The iPad isn’t the most capable device I own, but it’s the most reliable. And increasingly, that’s what I value above all else.
Here is a short list of what I mean by reliable:
- Applications won’t hang. They just won’t. Just as importantly, they won’t lag. Jobs may take a _very_ long time to run if I’m running something in parallel, but unlike any desktop OS I have run, the rest of the system won’t stutter. This is the epitome, I think, of Apple’s hardware-software integration.
- Battery life is super-predictable.
- Connectivity is guaranteed – I have a 4G SIM, so the iPad is always either on Wi-Fi or on cellular data.
- It wakes instantly and is ready to go immediately. Always.
- FaceID will always work – unlike a laptop, I’m not going to ever mistype my password.
- Airdrop always works – at least, between my iPad and phone. I can tap Share on either device confident that the other is always visible.
- A peripheral will either work or it won’t. Once I know it works, I can rest assured it’s going to work every time I plug it in.
- Apps will never update while I’m using them or at launch.
- This is rather niche – I know I can use it to sign and return any document in a pinch. I run into this only a couple of times a year, but when I do it’s extremely reassuring. Even if it’s a paper document, I can scan, sign and print/email it.
I think the most important design choice Apple made is setting very clear expectations about the user experience: both what to expect and what not. I can’t expect applications to run in the background, for instance, so I’ll make sure I’m running screen on any Termius session on remote machines so I can always reconnect and pick up from where I left off. This is as important as the expectation that the machine will always start instantly regardless of whether it’s been off a few seconds or a few days.
None of these is solely a result of the iPad’s form-factor as a tablet. It’s a number of things that come together. Several people have remarked that the iPadOS software does a disservice to the massively capable hardware on recent iPad Pros. They are right, but over time I have come to understand what Apple will not compromise when it builds new software capabilities.
The iPad is in fact a new kind of computer – just one that’s not merely portable and flexible, but completely reliable.