With iPadOS 15 the iPad still isn’t a computer.

As I’m writing this we’re one day away from the official launch of iPadOS (and iOS) 15.

As is tradition every time the iPad gets a major update, hardware or software, the internet rises up as one voice and asks the most important question in the world:

“Can the iPad replace my computer?”

No, it can’t. And it probably, despite the Pro models now having access to silicon that equals the chips installed in your MacBook or high end Windows laptops, never will.

And that’s fine and you should try anyway, because laptops suck. More on that in a minute.

Asking that question isn’t just navel gazing on the part of the percentage of consumers who can afford the luxury of an iPad. Back when Apple first announced the device, in the winter of 2010, Steve Jobs famously heralded the iPad as the start of the “post PC era”. It was meant to be the first step in a compute revolution that would ultimately culminate in everyone, everywhere, throwing their home PCs (and maybe even their laptops) in a bin. We were promised a future free of clackety keyboards and mice.

Eleven years later we’re not quite there, but we’re inching ever closer.

It turned out that most people didn’t need or want anything as big as even a tablet for home computing. Most of us are just fine doing everything we used to do on a PC (web browsing, communicating, reading, gaming, consuming truly astonishing quantities of pornography) on our phones. In fact, despite having a PC, an iPad, a Chromebook and a laptop, the device I spend most of my time engaging with at work or home is, in fact, my iPhone (I wrote half of this piece on my phone, happily typing away in iA writer on the small screen).

But as much as we have replaced PCs (and in particular the laptop) with other devices, those devices aren’t actually adequate replacements for a PC. We just use them anyway.

I am a person who desperately wants them to be an adequate replacement.

I hate laptops.

I hated laptops when I was in sales because they were clunky and pulling one out of my bag always killed the flow of a meeting.

I hated laptops as a consultant because no matter how new it was, I always felt like I should have the most cutting edge gadget with the biggest “ooooooh” factor…and laptops were never it.

I work in IT now, and I have site visits from time to time that require me to carry something I can connect back to HQ with. Laptops, even the ultra light ones, add enough weight that they hurt my neck in a courier bag. I spend a lot of time on my bicycle; laptops add weight, which reduces speed, which means arriving onsite sweaty because I pushed too hard, or having to leave earlier to get somewhere.

Laptops suck.

For me.

So the siren call of the mobile first tablet; something unlike the Microsoft Surface which is an excellent small computer but which has never felt quite right doing tablet-y things (reading a book…ahem a tech spec, or jotting down notes, or bingeing the IT Crowd) has long had a pull on my vision of a sleeker, slimmed down work world.

And, as we enter the age of permanent remote work, the problem of picking the best possible device to do absolutely everything on has pricked at the back of my brain again.

And so, here I am, for about the third time in the last decade, trying to sort out whether an iPad can be that perfect all in one tool.

And the answer is…

Not for me, but almost definitely for you.

Steve Jobs turned out to be pretty good at predicting the future. He was wrong about keyboards and styli being tools that users would do without. But he was right about apps.

Just about everything a person needs to do on any kind of compute machine has at least one app available to perform the task with in any of the major app stores.

That wealth of available software allows most people to wrestle their preferred device into allowing them to get work done. Whether that work is tech writing, accounting, accessing one’s firm’s database of legal documents, managing a project, designing an ebike motor, editing a video, or just about anything else you can think of.

Some of these apps work perfectly; better even than their desktop equivalents. Some of them are imperfect. But we’re managing to find a way to do more and more of what we need to on devices that aren’t necessarily “meant” for that.

So sure, Apple is never going to encourage the iPad to cannibalize their laptop market; even though the chips available in the pro models are fully capable of running desktop applications, we’re still not getting those with tomorrow’s major overhaul of iOS. We know that now.

That’s fine.

Shove your laptop in a closet and use one anyway. It’s small (even with a decent keyboard/trackpad cover, an iPad is smaller and lighter and more mobile than the vast majority of laptops on the market). It’s got a true all day battery. It’s far more distraction free than a traditional PC (even with all that app selection, multi tasking isn’t quite good enough or notifications quite annoying enough to yank you out of whatever app you’re immersed in). And, and this is the real clincher, while it doesn’t do everything a laptop does perfectly, it benefits from the ability to do *far more* than a traditional PC. The iPad is truly a “whatever” device. It’s uses are bound by only by your creativity and willpower.

In 2021 I’m going to work from a lot of places that aren’t my office. And most of it will be done on my iPad. Even if it’s only to use it as a thin client to connect to a PC somewhere.