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Comment by f6v | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think versatile devices are possible. I love iPad Pro for what it is. I tried Surface Pro and it was a much inferior tablet experience, even though the device is more “versatile”. I just doing think that you can get an excellent tablet by trying to be a laptop at the same time.

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It’s a screen. Add a regular Bluetooth keyboard mouse and you have a PC. There’s no compromise here from hardware perspective, it’s just software that’s in the way.

The UI elements on iPadOS are necessarily larger to accommodate touch.

It's just a lot less information dense than macOS, and making it the same scale will make using it as a touch device harder.

Remember the size of the original iPhone? I have long wondered why nobody makes a universal compute brick in such a form factor without a screen. Then sell 5" or 7" or 10" or 27" screens with and without touch that connect to the little brick.

I can buy a 15" screen right now for under $75. It's the ultimate super-thin laptop if you remove the compute and keep the brick in your purse/backpack/holster.

For extra points, connect two compute bricks for more muscle.

Thermals is why. Closest we get is Mac Mini and NUC.

I mean, Samsung has DeX. It’s exactly what you describe. I don’t like it, I don’t need it. I’d rather have a focused device than one that tries to be two things at once.

I have a Surface Pro and really like it. But for sure it is 100% a compromise experience, especially on the tablet side.

But part of it was reconditioning myself; the “proper tablet experience” largely comes from limitations of what they let you do with it. And with more features comes some complexity. For me it’s worth the tradeoff.

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