There is a serious distortion in perspective underlying this narrative. iPad sales are down and revenue is less than the Mac, therefore users don't want iPads anymore because Macs are more useful and are the right answer for more people.

Horse puckey. Last quearter Apple sold 8.9m iPads and only 4.1m Macs. That means in the last 3 months twice as many people decided an iPad was the right device for them and did the things they wanted to do better, than thought that of the Mac. The iPad also has around double the installed base of the Mac. Ok, iPads are cheaper and I'm sure that's a factor, but still. How does dramatically better ongoing device sales of the iPad square with this iPad has failed, Mac rules narrative? It just flat out doesn't.

The question then becomes, what are these devices being used for? Yes of course the iPad is an excellent device for reading ebooks, watching video, casual browsing, emails, social media, etc. Is that all they’re used for? Well no, iOS has a thriving App Store and developing apps for the iPad is a multi-billion dollar industry. Leading players such as Adobe, Microsoft and IBM regard it as a key strategic platform they have to be on. There are also thriving niches such as music production and visual arts where the iPad has moved well beyond just casual or toy status. The decline in device sales don’t appear to be threatening that as App sales continue to rise, so the sales decline seems to be on the ‘consumption device’ side of the sales category.

We have not transitioned to a world in which more people buy Macs because they are more useful. We're in one where instead of 3x as many people thinking the iPad is the right device for them, now only 2x as many people think that. But if this was a collapse in the iPad value proposition we'd be seeing a reduction in ASP, margins and customer satisfaction. Actually these are as high as ever.

Let's look at the expectation though. Suppose iPad sales had stayed flat at their peak of 11m a quarter? By now the installed base would be 800m devices, more than half the installed base of all laptop and desktop PCs. Is that the definition of success? Anything less is failure? I would contend that current sales of the iPad are very healthy, they just don't compare well to the completely unsustainable, unprecedented success of it's early years.

So that’s the positive case. Even so the iPad faces some major challenges to achieving it’s full potential. I completely agree with the posts here pointing out it’s weaknesses. I use Pythonista heavily and the lack of convenient Github integration is a major pain point. iCloud is a lot better than it used to be, but still a very long way from where it needs to go. Many small software studios are struggling to make money out of Apps. But this narrative of a failed product that nobody needs anymore is simply not supported by the facts.

The iPad is nowhere near killing off the desktop or Laptop, sales of both of which by the way are also down industry wide. I can’t see a future in my lifetime when I won’t want to own a desktop or laptop. Equally though you’re going to have to take my iPad out of my cold dead hands. It’s actually pretty much found it’s niche and is here to stay.