For a while now, we’ve been wondering if Apple has plans on merging its MacBook line with the iPad. The only downside of Apple’s tablet is that typing at length a bit of a chore, so a converged solution – akin to the Asus Transformer Prime – makes sense, right? Wrong. It’s not going to happen as long as CEO Tim Cook’s in charge…
So why the hybrid shunning? According to Cook, when you try and converge two devices in this way, you “wind up compromising” both. While Asus is leading the way in the hybrid tablet/laptop market with its Transformer devices, and a whole host more are set to arrive when Windows 8 drops, Apple’s staunchly against it:
“Anything can be forced to converge,” said Cook in a Q&A following Apple’s quarterly earnings review.”You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.”
New Asus Transformer: The real iPad killer?
“We’re not going to that party,” he said, adding that “others might from a defensive point of view.”
Cook asserts that “the problem is that [hybrid] products are about trade-offs,” and if you begin to make trade-offs you get to the point where “what you have left at the end of the day doesn’t please anyone.” But that’s not the only issue here.
Apple obviously doesn’t want either of the two devices in question to cannibalise the other. If the iPad becomes a laptop, that’ll take away a huge amount of interest in the more expensive MacBooks. As it stands currently, both device lines offer different sets of pros and cons, and there’s enough in each to suggest that Apple fans will walk away with one of each.
So, no iPad-laptop hybrid for you. Sorry. Of course, if you’re really that desperate there are ways round Cook’s rules – like Logitech’s sexy new Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, for instance:
