With Microsoft billing its newest tablet, the Surface Pro 4, as "the tablet that can replace your laptop," many people are holding Apple's recently released iPad Pro to the same promise. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, the Cupertino company does not share Microsoft's vision for a desktop-less world.
"We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad," Cook told The Irish Independent. "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."
Cook's statements remain consistent with a philosophy that Apple has held ever since the late Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPad in 2010. Standing onstage in San Francisco, Jobs proclaimed that in order to be successful, a tablet would have to do certain things better than what either a smartphone or a laptop or desktop could offer.
This belief explains why Apple's iPad Pro continues to run its mobile operating system, iOS 9, despite claiming to be more powerful than most PCs. On the other hand, the Surface Pro 4 ships ready to run Windows 10, Microsoft's full-fledged desktop operating system. While remaining distinct from the OS Apple uses for its laptops and desktops, OSX, iOS has been designed to communicate with and connect to OSX more seamlessly than ever, with functions like Handoff allowing users to trade work in real time between mobile and desktop devices.
Providing a hint at why Microsoft might be taking such a different approach to Apple when it comes to phasing out desktop and laptop computers, Cook was quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying, ""I think if you're looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?" Having later confirmed that his comments did not extend to Apple products (which he does not regard "to be the same" as PCs, according to the Independent) it would seem Cook sees Microsoft's positioning its tablet as a replacement laptop is meant to compensate for PCs increased obsoleteness, a stunt Apple need not pull.
All that being said, Cook reportedly uses just an iPad Pro and an iPhone for work when traveling, leaving his Macbook at home.
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