It's about input devices and UI features much more than RAM.

iPad apps are expected to have massive buttons for big fat fingers. Pro software requires a mouse and a keyboard, a much more precise and flexible combination.

(Yes, you can get the Apple Pencil and an iPad keyboard. But it's a bit chicken-and-egg, people don't have the accessories because there's little software that uses them. And there's no software as few people have the accessories...)

Everyone I know with an iPad Pro has the keyboard case. I hate the keyboard... but I can put up with it while travelling. I don't think the keyboard availability is an underlying issue, but I do think that people will balk at a $700/year license for something that runs on an iPad, because they feel like it's a toy, not a tool. However, the CPU is not what causes that; the CPU has more raw compute power than many Intel laptops that people do run expensive software on.

I want my iPad Pro to be a good workstation, but the reality is that will probably never happen. However, if Apple uses the same hardware to run MacOS, then it could happen. Yes, they would need to tack on some more I/O (or at least release a first-party dock) and RAM, but they could still make a very thin and fast device that would blow Intel laptops out of the water. I would not buy one of these because I don't really care for MacOS. (I use the iPad as my "laptop" because it doesn't really require any customization or maintenance. I have my SSH key on there, that's about it. I use it as a dumb terminal and it's great for that, but with the right software, it would also be a very capable computer.)

Why don't we see more OS-level integrated remote computing in the Chromebook category?

I get Google started it to run their webapps.

But it doesn't seem technically infeasible to package and sell a set monthly subscription price, that gets you a lazy-allocated machine on GCP.

Spin up beefy software, your computer recognizes "this is more than I can do", checks current networking availability, and starts running the app remotely.

I know there are offerings like this, but it seems like a killer feature if it had full OS integration.

Just plop an overlay icon somewhere in the window to clearly note it's running remote. (Thereby letting users reason through why it occasionally behaves weirdly)

People don't have room for any more subscription fees in their lives. Especially to pay for something like this (or game streaming) that offers an inferior/laggy user experience, when owning a reasonably powerful laptop or games console isn't all that expensive.

Subscription fee exhaustion seems an odd concept to me. Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"?

It seems an ironic perspective given that "Time is the only real currency we have" is on the HN front page!

I specifically mentioned it because Apple (1) has cloud resources, whether they see it as an offering or not, (2) has full stack integration with their products, & (3) has historically prized ease of use and packaging new technology in a slick way.

"Underpowered Mac / iPad / etc, now with iPower transparent cloud compute" seems a unique way to leverage their strengths and abilities in ways that Google, MS, and Amazon lack the capabilities to match.

> Do people actually say "A service delivers me value for its price, but I already have too many subscription services, so I won't use it"?

Sounds like Silicon Valley thinking. If you're used to massive salaries (and massive housing costs), you probably won't care about relatively small subscription costs.

But for the majority of people elsewhere in the world, those costs really do add up. There's very little appeal in renting a PC or games console in the cloud, then getting a sub-standard PC or console experience for an ongoing fee.

Just to add to this - life is pretty expensive these days, and a lot of people really don't have much discretionary income left each month after taxes, rent, health insurance, food, etc. Median household income in the US is ~$63k, and after all of those expenses its pretty easy to be left with something like $100 a month (or less, or even worse, needing to take on debt to cover bills). When that is the case, even a $5/month subscription is a lot of money.

Point not being that subscription is not a lot of money.

Point being that expecting someone with that level of disposable income to having savings that allow for capital expenditures (instead of amortized subscriptions) isn't likely either.