PC Magazine July 2017

Michael Muchmore
Can the New iPad Pro
Replace My Laptop?
Not Quite
Apple is slowly coming around to the
realization that touch screens work on
laptops. With iOS 11, its touch-screen
laptop wannabe—the iPad Pro—will get not only
file folders, complete with drag and drop, but
also a macOS-style Dock, Apple’s less-functional
response to the Windows Taskbar.
But these positive moves don’t go far enough. The
most common way to use an iPad Pro—in fact,
the only way I’ve seen them used—is with the
Smart Keyboard, which adds another $159 to
$169 to the tablet’s already-laptop-level price of
$649 to $1,229. If you’re using a keyboard, a
mouse might seem like second nature, but the
iPad Pro doesn’t support them.
The other big lacuna for those using iPad Pros as
laptops concerns windowing. Apple has nudged
the iPad Pro’s windowing forward, but it’s still
limited to a grand total of two. And let’s not even
get started with the abundant multiple virtual
desktops Mac users (and more recently, Windows
10 user) adore. Touch-screen laptops like the
Surface Book even offer touch gestures that let
you switch among running apps and between
virtual desktops.
COMMENTARY
Michael Muchmore is
PCMag’s lead analyst
for software and Web
applications. He got
his start in computing
when he wrote a
BASIC program for a
Radio Shack TRS-80.