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Become a Six Colors member to read exclusive posts, get our weekly podcast, join our community, and more!By Jason Snell for Macworld
Cars, trucks, iPads, and laptops
Steve Jobs famously likened touchscreen devices to cars and traditional PCs, including the Mac, to trucks. The idea was that in the future-especially as older people who grew up with keyboards and mice and were accustomed to them-computers would become marginalized, powerful tools that would be used for specific purposes. General-purpose computing, on the other hand, would become the province of the ubiquitous car.
This story is frequently told in the context of the iPad. The argument is that the iPad and touchscreen tablets like it will ultimately replace the PC. And while that may yet happen, I think it misses the larger point. This entire thing has already happened. The world is being transformed into a smartphone-using culture. The smartphone is already the car, and everything else is a truck.
So let’s talk trucks, and consider the iPad again. With the release of the iPad Pro-I’m writing this story on one right now-we’ve all been considering the question of if the iPad fits into getting work done. My feeling is that it absolutely can, though it will be a big adjustment for those of us in that keyboard-and-mouse crowd.