Apple has long been the company to tell consumers they didn't need a certain device, only to later come out with a similar device and proclaim how it made the device into something we need. We saw it with the original iPhone, iPhone 5, iPad mini and more. A new patent from Apple blurs the lines between iPad and MacBook and sounds like Apple's version of Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface RT tablet bybrids.
The patent application describes a laptop hybrid that would allow a tablet to be docked into a base that has wireless charging capabilities, offer the user a full keyboard, and transmit data back and forth between the display and the base.
Microsoft entered this hybrid market first and covered its bases by offering the Surface Pro, which runs the full Windows 8 desktop OS and the Surface RT, which runs a stripped-down version of Windows 8 called Windows RT. Microsoft has yet to see the kind of success Apple has seen with its iPad and MacBook lines. This would be the perfect time for Apple to enter the market and show the world how Apple got it right and why Microsoft has failed.
During an earnings call last year Tim Cook addressed the hybrid market, as Microsoft was getting ready to announce its Surface RT and Surface Pro with this statement during an earnings call:
"Anything can be forced to converge. But the problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn't please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user ... you wouldn't want to put these things together because you wind up compromising in both and not pleasing either user. Some people will prefer to own both, and that's great, too. But I think to make the compromises of convergence, so - we're not going to that party."
When Apple publicly declares that it's not going to enter a certain market, it does so with the intention of never setting itself up to be a failure or guest at a party; it likes to be the one that holds the party everyone will want to come to. Would you be interested in a MacBook/iPad hybrid type of device? Let us know in the comments.
