What’s a computer?

Early tablet computers were a niche device - fairly overpriced alternative to laptops with early touch screens and styluses. When first iPad was released in 2010, it pretty much changed the definition of the word - and tablets became basically big smartphones. This was followed by a bunch of Android tablets, some in the higher price range, but others selling for cheap. Unlike smartphones though, Apple managed to remain the top manufacturer in the tablet space - and iPad apps managed to attract more dedicated development than Android tablet-optimized apps - yet there was always a question of what the tablets were actually good for, they were never really a must-have device like computers or smartphones were.

However, as hardware progressed, people often wondered if the hardware was artificially locked down - or if it was capable of more. After all, Android is based on Linux, and iOS has been created from macOS codebase. Back in 2017, Samsung released DeX - a desktop interface for Android - and several other solutions followed on Android, although they remained locked down to certain models and markets, and they do not resolve a general lack of tablet-focused development on Android.

A year later, Apple released the “What’s a computer?” ad, infamous from when it released, presenting a vision when iPads would become default computing devices, and children not even knowing what to use the computer for. That ad was, to put it mildly, very out of touch with the market situation - iOS 11 at that time did get some computer-like features (with Files app, drag and drop support, better dock, and split screen multitasking) but these were very basic compared to what computers could do. Further progress in that direction was mainly based on keyboard and touchpad accessories, and their better support. But with excellent M-series chips making their way over to iPad, outperforming many Intel/AMD laptops, this always felt like not enough. Even with the release of Stage Manager, it was limited to certain models, and not available with all the models, including based iPads launched after the date.

However, the new iPadOS - currently in public beta, should be released to general public by the end of September - makes some radical changes here. These include a functional windowing system (finally), more multitasking improvements via background tasks, improved file management, improved mouse support, mouse-friendly menus, etc. In addition, there’s now a phone app for better iPhone integration, Preview app ported from macOS, UI redesign, and more.

Where tablets excel

Tablets are some of the best portable media devices available today. There are very few computing/media devices with a screen comparable to iPad in its’ price category - and they have built-in sound capabilities that beat cheap laptops, and many expensive ones too. Watching videos, reading, surfing - all roles in which tablets proved excellent for the past 15 years.

However, a lot of people just dismissed them as toys, as they bought cheap, crappy tablet for their kids.

But for people who would otherwise use their phones a lot, tablets can even offer cost savings - if they offload the usage from their phones to their tablets. Every battery lasts a limited number of cycles, and offloading much of the phone use to another device such as a tablet saves phone battery cycles. In comparison, tablet batteries are huge, and they have better thermals than phones due to much larger thermal mass. A tablet has a far longer lifecycle than a phone, and has a potential of reducing how often one buys phones. Though, this requires calculated usage patterns, otherwise this might be a stretch - or a convenient excuse to tell your spouse or parents why you need a new device.

That battery also compares well to most laptops - Intel and AMD chips are far more power hungry. Tablets are also passively cooled, which means no fan noise - something only a few laptops do (notably, Macbook Airs and some of the new Qualcomm CPU Windows laptops).

Over the past few years, photo editing, drawing and note taking also emerged as something that tablets are generally better at than other devices - especially if you have a decent pencil for them.

Enter the accessories

When you buy a laptop, you get a complete device. Granted, many laptops have uncomfortable touchpads that most people don’t want to use, but it’s still a complete device. Tablets, by default, are oversized phones which can be clumsy to type on.

Pencil for drawing and note taking costs money. If you want to type documents, spreadsheets, or code, you probably want a keyboard and a mouse/touchpad. This also costs money. One USB-C is not enough? Guess what, USB hubs cost money. All of this can add up - especially if you go for the most premium options. An iPad Pro 13" with an Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard, hub, and other accessories can be eye-wateringly expensive. However, base iPad paired with a cheap hub, keyboard and a mouse can be priced very competitively - though it’s less convenient to use.

With added accessories, the size advantage of tablets shrinks - especially when it comes to thickness. And even with the best “laptop-like” keyboard attachments, tablets typically remain top-heavy compared to laptops - as they have all electronics and a battery in screen compartment rather the bottom part. This can make them wobbly if you actually need to use them on your lap.

Is it enough?

The rise of web applications over the past two decades means we’ve been doing more and more computing in the cloud rather than on machine itself. Emails, productivity apps, etc., nowadays even coding with services like Github Codespaces - we use our computers as thin clients to the web for a lot of use cases. But not all.

The default browser on iPad is Safari. You can install other browsers, but they will still use Safari’s Webkit rendering engine. This limitation has been removed in EU, but in practice no browser developers released an EU-specific iOS / iPadOS browser with their native rendering engine. This can be a problem, as some pages only render correctly in Chrome, and related browsers such as Edge (and their Blink engine). Chrome-defaultism is an issue on today’s internet, but there’s currently no going around it on iPads in case you need to use a badly-behaving website that doesn’t work on anything other than Chrome.

The ever-growing app library for iPads is more filled with professional apps than on Android, especially on the creative side, but still doesn’t come close to the variety and quality of the professional software available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Though there are some exceptional apps which have few competitors on other platforms, such as Procreate - this is fairly one sided. When talking about native OS apps, there is also the issue of Apple’s walled garden - the walls are down in EU and you are allowed to install apps from other sources, but few of them are available.

My personal use

Originally, I had an iPad 5 paired with BT keyboard and mouse. Several years ago I replaced it with an iPad Air 4, paired with a Logitech Combo Touch and a knockoff Pencil. I’ve used it as my primary “personal laptop” for years when I was away from home, mainly for entertainment, but I also did a few presentations and spreadsheets on it - and I ran the presentations off it, which worked well. I edited a few videos on it as well.

Also, I used it a lot for video calls and meetings, as it had the best front camera of the devices I own. This included some job interviews as well. One of the unexpected situations was when I was asked during the interview to share my screen and code something in Python - but I was able to do it on iPad inside Pythonista app.

Work-related, I found VPN apps to work well, and I was able to fix a few things by RDP-ing to a Windows machine (not too pretty on a small screen but it worked), and fix a few more things from terminal using iSH app.

However, there are certainly some things that I need to do that I cannot do on an iPad even now, including virtualization, docker, or accessing my Steam library. This means that I can do most of my non-work stuff on an iPad, even for prolonged periods of time, but I still want another device overall.

Final words

With the growing trends of tablets becoming more suitable as laptop replacements, there seems to be a decline of their use in portrait mode - as seen on online posts, and Apple’s recent changes of front camera placement to better suit landscape use. What tablets are and how they are used is changing - slowly, but noticeably evolving with each passing year.

While iPadOS 26 has meaningful improvements when it comes to the use of the iPad it doesn’t have a lot of impact in the availability of apps. If what iPad offered was enough for your needs before, it will be even better now - especially if you’re using a keyboard and mouse, or Magic Keyboard, or Logitech Combo Touch, or another product. One’s use case might dictate which OS they use - as I mentioned in one of my previous posts. But if I had to guess, for most general population, iPad can be enough of a laptop - and iPadOS 26’s UI improvements make it much better at doing so.