Steven Sinofsky’s WWDC 2017 Trip Report

Steven Sinofsky has a terrific report summarizing last week’s WWDC:

Delivering on “Pro” with the iPad Pro and iMac Pro is significant. The iMac answers the need for a high end workstation and does so with arguably the most powerful device available, yet in a sleek all-in-one form factor. The iPad Pro finally (almost?!) puts the iPad in a position to be a laptop for the masses, especially those who grew up only on phones.

Sinofsky really gets this. I think he had an idea with Windows RT and the original Surface that – if Microsoft had had the gumption to fully commit to it – could have made the Surface a viable competitor to the iPad in this post-PC tablet space. They doomed themselves to failure by watering the strategy down by only going half-in, with the other half sticking with legacy compatibility with Windows for Intel. The iPad would have failed too if it was half a Mac. You can’t get anywhere with one foot in the new boat and the other foot in the old one.

The other thing about the iPad Pro with the upcoming iOS 11 is that it’s not just for kids who grew up on phones, but for anyone for whom the complexity of Windows and even the Mac was too much to ever get comfortable with. There are adults who’ve spent two decades doing their work on computers without ever being comfortable with them until they switched to an iPad.

★ Monday, 12 June 2017