New iPad Pro Ad Continues Apple's Computer Replacement Mantra

The new 2018 iPad Pros are simultaneously the most beautiful iPads Apple has made and probably the most divisive ones as well. While it finally got the Apple Pencil right and threw away thick bezels, it also ruffled not a few feathers when it threw out the headphone jack as well as the lightning port for a multi-talented but only half useful USB-C. The biggest controversy, however, might not be in any hardware or feature. Instead, it's in how Apple kept on hammering the idea of the new iPad Pros as computer replacements, as emphasized by its latest video ad.

To be fair, Apple has been singing this tune ever since the first generation of iPad Pros, urging people to ask "what is a computer". This year, however, the company has really stepped up the rhetoric to levels that even some iPad Pro fans found to be unconvincing. On stage, Apple explicitly pit the iPad Pro's sales and performance against laptops and now it's giving five reasons why it should be your next computer.

The ad lists reasons such as the A12X processor's now-famous benchmarks that trumped even some of Apple's MacBooks, the iPad Pro's always connected and always on mode of operation, and its flexibility of use as both consumption and creation device. The other two reasons are no-brainers really. No one would probably buy an iPad Pro if not for its Apple Pencil compatibility nor would they want one if their biggest use case is typing rather than touch.

While there are definitely many who have been able to live off and work on nothing but an iPad Pro, they would also be the first ones to admit that it's still far from being the computer replacement Apple wants everyone to believe. From compatibility with a large number of peripherals to trackpad/pointer support to even a desktop web browser, Apple is still a few steps short of really replacing mobile PCs with iPad Pros.

Curiously, the ad does make a subtle shift in tone near the end. It describes the iPad Pro as "like a computer, unlike any computer", perhaps an indirect admission that even while it can replace some of the things you do on your computer, it's still not really a computer. Then again, what is a computer anyway?