I keep coming back to this “artificially hampered”. To me, “hampered” is adding one feature that won’t provide satisfactory UX, and not adding everything just because you can. Of course, there are companies that go for the later, and customers that prefer it, but that has never been Apple’s approach, and it seems like they have been quite successful with their strategy. In my view, there shouldn’t be uses cases on a primary touch device where apps “can be tricky to use with fingers”. And I think it’s hard for people to realise how adding features almost always has downsides. It’s not ”add it and use it if you want“, the fact is that adding options always increases complexity, creates unintended incentives, etc.
I would also ideally want a device that would completely replace a MacBook and an iPad. But I just think that’s not possible. If you implement the optional precision of the mouse, you loose the possibility to always use touch input, which is the core definition of an iPad. I prefer Apple’s approach of trying to improve upon the foundation of a touch based interface. And I think they’re on their way to cover 99% of use cases. Due to this lack of mouse precision, I think the remaining 1% will be very hard to achieve (FCP, Logic, Xcode…), but anyway, I think for that we’d all rather prefer a big MBP.
I’m glad that you like your Surface, but I think the ability to detach the screen to write some notes is not a substitute for a tablet. Even for those use cases, every time I’ve tried them, it still feels like a traditional PC, with its traditional window management, non-natural screen rotation, etc. Once again, I’m happy that both models exist, but I’m surprised that so many people are surprised that Apple continues with their successful iPad concept against the less successful classic tablet PC.
TLDR what you see as limitations, because your field context is traditional PCs, to me it’s maximising the potential of a tablet.
