I was reading this review of the 11″ MacBook Air on AnandTech today and came to the realization that Apple could now easily create an OS X/iOS hybrid system, call it the MacPad, and dominate the tablet/PC market for the foreseeable future.
The new Intel Haswell based chips give the 11″ MacBook Air 8 – 10 hours of battery life. This surpasses the latest iPad by at least an hour. Add to this the fact that the two devices are nearly identical in size and you have a recipe for the best tablet/pc hybrid on the market.
Apple has the design expertise to remove the keyboard and lower the weight to where it can possibly match the iPad. Or, make a dockable keyboard that doesn’t look clunky like it does on so many Windows 8 hybrid PCs. I think a MacPad with no keyboard would be the genius move. I’ve seen so many people carry around that tiny little Apple bluetooth keyboard with their iPads in airports and hotels that it can’t be much of a stretch for them to do this with a MacPad.
If I were to do a MacPad I would have iOS run as an application or have an iOS emulator that can run all the iOS apps that people use today. Then users can keep their iOS apps running in a window while also using OS X for actual computing.
I don’t use Macs or iPads (Although I have used them) because I don’t like to be trapped in the Apple ecosystem. I am also not fond of the UI on Macs or iPads. I did buy a Surface Pro in the hopes that Microsoft would get this right and I can tell you that I’m not at all happy with their implementation of the tablet/PC hybrid concept. Seems there are a lot of people that didn’t like Microsoft’s concept either given the company had a $900 million dollar right off due to the Surface’s, in both the RT and Pro forms, lack of popularity.
It would be just like Apple to push out a tablet/PC hybrid after Microsoft and their followers and have it take off like a rocket. This would have the potential to put the nails in the coffin of any Windows 8 RT or Windows 8 Pro system. For the love of God Microsoft please get it together.