I was definitely in the former camp, and eventually bought one because other people seemed to like it, and so took it more seriously as a product. But.. it was after buying it that I realized the emperor didn't really have any clothes, and it was either mostly an expensive status symbol for people who couldn't care less about the money, or a device with just a few specific and very useful purposes. My grandpa uses it for Planespotting, which seems perfectly appropriate to me. Now it's been 10 years, and I've never really thought about buying another one, because it's just not a general computing device that I've been able to make useful for a breadth of things I use devices for. It's only ever been effective for reading reference books, playing YouTube videos (before the app and browser support went away), reading pocket articles, browsing the web, and maybe a few games. Everything else just didn't prove effective, for me anyway. Even trying to watch regular videos on it is a total pain.
I can agree with a lot of this, depending on the user. I’m pretty similar to you. I got it and used it, because it was new and novel, but over time the usage faded. I tried going back to the iPad mini, since I liked that form factor best, but it’s sitting a few feet from me, powered off, and hasn’t been used in months.
My dad on the other hand, who is one of the people who bought and iPad after seeing mine, uses it all the time. He actually has 2 of them, a 10” and a 12.9”, and he uses both of them regularly enough that he feels they are both justified for his use cases. He still does use his Mac as well, but his iPads get a ton of use for reading the news, email, photography related things, and maybe some other stuff. He’s retired now, so that might be part of it.
Maybe if didn’t work in IT and simply consumed whatever the apps allowed me to consume, I could get by with an iPad as my computer, but I want to do stuff an iPad can’t do. I also pretty much always want a keyboard and mouse, and when that’s always bolted on to an iPad, it might as well be a MacBook. I never found the appeal of touch screen laptops.
Ya I'd agree with those points. People who put iPad pros to good use either don't have any other significant general requirements, or the few things they use it for are either consumption or illustration, where touch, a big screen, and no complexity are the selling factors.
I'm not personally producing intricate illustrations, but I know a tiny number of people who do, and I don't think it's occures to them they'd need anything but that and their phone.
