To sum it up; looking around you don't see people in coffee shops using iPads (or any tablets)--it's all laptops. Even though iPads have outsold laptops by a significant margin for years now.
As a bit of a tangent (also mentioned by him); anyone who is productive on an iPad Pro uses a keyboard. Apple has refused to add touchscreens to laptops, but iPads with keyboard suffer this exact problem. So something still needs to evolve.
I see iPads/phones replacing the entertainment needs a general purpose computer used to fill and maybe Apple gets out of general purpose computing. This is also happening for "light" computing needs in business; like POS and inventory. But I don't see any sign that a PC going away at all for workhorse tasks just yet.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/06/13/ipad-trackpad-i...
Actually they barely ever did, and the peak is past. For example in 2017 there were about 164 million laptops sold versus 161 million tablets of all types.
In 2007 it was 109 million laptops and zero tablets.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276308/global-apple-mac-...
[2] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/05/4q17-ipad-vs-other-tabl...
I remember seeing a lot of this take when people were buying up iPads, but I think there are real limitations -- tablets are just not really good for doing work.
I don’t like where Apple is going, but I can easily see a Macbook a generation or two out whose software is more iOS than macOS, and whose character is pretty locked-down / appified.
If Apple would just add support for pointing devices and if they would allow access to arbitrary files stored on USB devices via the Files app, the iPad could serve the needs of most people.
Nobody uses all of the esoteric features of Office, but most people use at least a few.
I rarely see the people who bought in on the iPad revolution almost a decade ago use their iPad beyond light browsing and sending emails.
To me, it seems to have replaced the morning paper more than it has laptops.
Maybe it's more accurate to say that iOS is the (present and) future of Apple. All arrows seem to point in this direction. It's a mobile, run-anywhere world that Apple sees as the future.
In that vision, MacOS machines are a cash cow business. And the corporate playbook for those is min-investment, max harvesting.
Someone has to write all the software, and they're not going to be writing it on an iPad. Even with an external mouse and keyboard.