Great post
However...
I think you’re right about everyday consumer & creative pro uses of the iPad (although we’ll have to see how graphics professionals work with photoshop on touch and pen compared to on a Mac/pc and mouse with keyboard shortcuts).
One big big use case that I’d argue that the iPad is still not very good at, is (mainstream) productivity. By that I mean, ‘general office work’ tasks.
Even more specifically, I mean things like trying to write a formatted document, working with a medium sized spreadsheet, using web forms or project management software (which I do).
The iPad is still absolutely terrible for these tasks compared to a pc with a mouse & keyboard (even a trackpad isn’t as good as a mouse when you’re doing productivity tasks).
I really agree with you that tech journalists are (mostly) the sorts of people who are not great at reviewing a product like the iPad for pro tasks.
Somewhat egotistically, most of them assume that ‘work’ means writing a big chunk of text with some mark up that will be put into Wordpress or another CMS & then editing photos - and in particular, video. That is not a normal use case for most people at work, I’d argue (general productivity apps are).
Given that the use cases I outline above, aren’t that exotic, it surely must be the case that by next year when (presumably) Apple will add a little more power to iOS, trackpad/mouse support will be forthcoming to make this a true pc replacement.
Until then, I know I’m not buying an iPad - my needs are pretty mainstream I’d say & the product just doesn’t work for me.
