Tablets: Niche or Daily-Life Computer?

Since modern tablets launched, the expectations changed a lot. At the beginning, Apple intended to position the iPad as a whole new category of device for daily-life computing. Then with the launch of Apple Pencil and iPad Pro, tablets seem more suited to specific tasks like graphic design and painting. Now we are hearing that the ideal of tablets is to replace laptops, due to the availability of Magic Keyboard. At each shift in expectations, the originality of tablets was undermined.

Is the original goal of making tablets daily-life computers justified? If so, why did tablets keep "failing"? The answer is likely complex, but it does seem that the app and content ecosystem isn't ready for tablets yet. In previous posts about digital library and research publications, it's clear that tablets have potential, but supporting technologies aren't there. Tablets today excel at video consumption, but there is much more to do.

Android tablets failed early at least for GUI reasons. This gives Apple the chance to secure niche markets with Apple Pencil and iPad Pro. The intuitive interface of iPadOS at drawing can not be overstated. There is no Photoshop on Android tablets. And while Photoshop works on Microsoft Surface, it isn't optimized for mobile experience. All of this makes well-designed Photoshop and related apps on iPadOS much more valuable.

Tablets as laptop replacements will forever remain a fringe unless productive suites like full Creative Cloud or Xcode are made available. Laptops are designed for mobile productivity. It's not the same as home computers, for which tablets may well be replacements.

Regarding tablets as daily-life computers, there is a example worth mentioning: food recipes. Food recipes were mainly presented in the form of printed books. Laptops and smartphones didn't make them much better. But with tablets, people are searching for, reading, saving food recipes in a ideal manner. Multimedia make food recipes much clearer and more attractive. Social networks satisfy the need to share and explore. People no longer passively receive recipes from newspapers and books, but actively participate in their creation and distribution.

There is still room for improvement for tablet-oriented food recipes, to be sure, but tablet makers can learn from their success and work out implications for a successful tablet.