My 2021 iPad Pro 11-inch. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
As the third tier of Apple’s connected personal computing devices, the iPad sits in an awkward place in 2023. It’s a supremely capable product, there’s no doubt about that. It’s powerful and responsive; most of the models have beautiful screens; and its interface is friendly. But it’s also incomplete and insistent on doing things the Apple-prescribed way. And even as it dominates the tablet landscape, sales of iPads have withered since 2020, as Mark Gurman noted in Bloomberg today. In short: it needs more.
To be clear, I like my 2021 iPad Pro a lot. It’s a nice device for reading and solid for watching TV in bed. It’s also indispensable for following recipes while I’m cooking. But when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad in 2010, saying…