Tim Cook says no hybrid iPad-MacBook is in the works →

Apple’s CEO, in an interview with Independent.ie:

“We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad,” said Cook. “Because what that would wind up doing, or what we’re worried would happen, is that neither experience would be as good as the customer wants. So we want to make the best tablet in the world and the best Mac in the world. And putting those two together would not achieve either. You’d begin to compromise in different ways.”

[…]

“It’s true that the difference between the X86 [personal computer] and the A-series [Apple iPad architecture] is much less than it’s ever been,” says Cook. “That said, what we’ve tried to do is to recognize that people use both iOS and Mac devices. So we’ve taken certain features and made them more seamless across the devices. So with things like Handoff we just made it really simple to work on one of our products and pick it up and work on the next product.”

I view this a shot across the bow at Microsoft’s two-in-one devices like the Surface Book and Surface Pro than a statement purely about the future of the Mac and iPad.

There’s this whole big debate right now about what the iPad Pro means for the Mac, and I think this statement is also a little about that. The Mac may indeed lose ground to the iPad at some point, but it will be to people who can use a tablet to get their work done, not by people using a hybrid device.

As Mac notebooks get thinner and lighter, and as iPads get bigger and more powerful, Apple still wins. Having consumers choose between two of their products is better for Cupertino than having them choose between something with an Apple logo on it and something with Microsoft’s. The iPad Pro may indeed replace the Mac for some people, but it’s not going to replace it for everyone, and that’s just fine.