Daring Fireball: Convergence on the Laptop Form Factor:

I think Heer gets this right. It’s not about iPad moving closer to Surface conceptually; it’s about moving closer to the laptop ideal. For certain tasks nothing beats the laptop form factor, and quite possibly never will. All computing platforms that are used for such tasks inevitably take on that form. What’s new this decade is the detachable 2-in-1 form — one device that serves as both a laptop with keyboard and trackpad and as a handheld tablet. Microsoft got there from one direction, Apple from another.

I think it’s more than just a direction, but a destination. The iPad was released as an ideal, and for certain things it was perfect on Day One… But for other things, it wasn’t as well suited by itself, and so each release is steering the ship, adding things to make it a little better for edge cases while trying not to lose the spirit…

For Microsoft, the PC was their original ideal, and they’re trying to make it as broad a platform as they can, while truly satisfying nobody.

The fact that today’s iPad OS update is happening on the 19th anniversary of the original GA release of Mac OS X suggests to me that this might be a moon-shot release of sorts.