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Every time I go on a trip, I get into this mess. I spent thousands of dollars of my hard- earned money on all this stuff, including this guy. Yes, come on, laugh at me. bro. Oh no, man, don't even think about it. Because for years, Apple has convinced me that these devices are for four different purposes: mobile, tablet, desktop, and spatial. But as much as I hate to admit it, aren't they all doing the same thing? Well, they get faster, but they hardly evolve. There are more and similarities in what I actually do on each of them. So why am I packing four different screens to do the same tasks? And why does Apple continue to successfully sell them to us? It's
like an illusion of choice, and the deeper I dug, the more questions I had. Why is this thing so different from that other thing? Or why can't you do real work on a tablet? And when Apple releases that foldable iPhone, won't it just become an iPad? Or, you know, what do you even need the Apple Vision Pro for? So, why, why do you need this? I discovered that Apple had stopped selling us overpriced hardware. It's none of their business anymore. Now they're selling us these artificially imposed software limitations. So let me untangle this messy situation we find ourselves in Let's start with these two, because everything starts with them to some extent. To understand the iPad and everything that came after it, even that guy, we have to go back to
2000. Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville. Welcome to Jackass. Because back then, the computer was where you worked. And the phone was for calls. Yo, how are you? There was a very specific, very indisputable rule of how technology worked. Screen size equals power, equals purpose. So was it better than what we have today? Why did we need to disrupt this balance? Remember this thought. The larger the screen, the better the "stuffing", processor, RAM, you know, and the more powerful the device. So, you can use it for work. But, as phones got a little better, their
tiny screens got a little bigger. Eventually, we started using phones for light work. For the things that could be done within the confines of a small screen and a crappy plastic keyboard. With a best-in- class keyboard and navigation keys Even when the iPhone came along, the divide still persisted. We started getting amazing apps that let us do things on the go, but they were still very different from what we did on computers. So, we have accepted the fact that these devices are designed for two different purposes. There was a clear, obvious line separating these categories. And then this guy came along to mix it all up. And we want to show it to you for the first time today. We call it the iPad. there a list of tasks for which it is
better suited, and most importantly, how does it fit into our structure of device usage in terms of screen size and power? The truth is that Apple didn't really know for sure. I'm a geek, and I jumped on this trend before many of these questions were answered. I bought an iPad 1 as soon as I could, and should have learned my lesson: never buy a first- generation device of anything. But we have what we have. And yet, for most of the 2010s, we realized that tablets were better than phones in some ways, and better than laptops in others. web from the couch on this huge screen is pretty cool. Showing your photos or videos anywhere on the screen is a truly enjoyable experience. Games, reading, notes, movies on planes, even
iPad terminals have become commonplace in airports, although in my opinion, this is just so-so use. But whatever, almost 20 million devices were sold in the first year, over half a billion in the first decade, and it single-handedly destroyed the netbook category. Everyone agreed. This is a new category of devices. Schools, businesses-the success of the iPad confirmed that there was a gap between devices, and a truly new category was born. Our concept has stood the test. A larger device meant a bit more power and a whole host of new uses. This was also, of course, due to the limitations of what the iPad could do at the time. The iPad's hardware was weaker than the computer's, but the form factor and interface still made it better for certain
things. But what happens when the restrictions disappear? When the user experience and capabilities of one device begin to overlap with another. We actually know exactly what happens when these barriers start to break down. We've seen this before. With this guy. There he is, right there. Remember the iPod, right? Certainly one of the most successful products in history. Oho. Video iPod. Oh, wow, my God. If the iPod was so great, why did it disappear? For years, the iPod has been an untouchable pillar of Apple's business,
but where does the iPod fit into this diagram? The iPod was created in part because of the limitations of the devices at the time, as those old phones from the 2000s couldn't hold 1,000 songs. This amazing little device holds 1000 songs and fits easily in my pocket. Then the iPhone came along, and if you were to draw a diagram of the iPod and the iPhone, it would probably look like this. The iPhone was powerful enough to swallow up the entire product, and Apple was happy to let the iPhone cannibalize the iPod because the iPhone was a goldmine. It was a profitable trade-off that made Apple a trillion-dollar company, but hardware companies don't grow by destroying their own product categories.
Product innovation is their signature, their holistic business model. You can't survive and you certainly won't please Wall Street by just selling people a phone once every 4 years. So what to do? How do you invent equipment when you've already saturated the market with your own devices? What to do when every form factor is already covered? Well, you have to diversify. There is something else. But we have So, to satisfy investors, Apple had to convince us that we needed a separate device for each room of our lives.
A watch on your wrist, a Mac on your desk, an iPad on your couch, a Vision Pro-we don't even know what it's for. And when I look back on my life and where my money went, I realize-it worked, right? We ended up buying these damn devices. But for some reason, this problem is not obvious in our daily lives. It only becomes noticeable when I'm about to hit the road, and it's become even more apparent over the past few years. Apple partly dug itself a hole because they had to push their chip production to the absolute limit, which created a new problem called Intel.
Starting today, the Intel chip will be freed and can live in the Mac. For years, the division between these product categories was not just about power or form factor, it was a rigid division of architectures. The processor, the CPU inside each of these devices, was a completely different chip. The software that could be used on one or the other also differed. Part of the reason these were separate categories was because you simply couldn't run apps on one platform or another. This is a really interesting story, but for another time. We already made a whole video about this. But in short, in the 90s, Mac computers ran on chips designed by Apple. They were completely incompatible with any In the 2000s, Apple switched to
Intel processors because they were essentially left behind. They needed at least some compatibility with software But while these Intel chips were fast, they had a terrible impact on battery life. They got very hot and would never work in a phone. Therefore, to create the iPhone, Apple returned to its own chips, which were quite energy efficient. Not interchangeable with a kettle. And they put the same chips in the iPad. But, as I said, they kind of dug their own hole, because these chips just kept getting better and better until we're incredibly excited to introduce our first chip designed specifically for the Mac, and we're calling it the M1.
You can hate Apple all you want, but Apple's M-series chips are incredible. Previously, a computer was a device where the motherboard, processor, video card, and RAM were created separately by different companies. The laptop was the same, only with slightly reduced details. But now it's an Apple computer. All of this is now contained on a single chip. The rest of the computer is essentially just the battery. And the performance of this thing is on par with other equipment. But more importantly, the same architecture now lives in the phone, the iPad, and the computer. Phones, budget iPads, and budget computers have A-series chips.
Top-of-the-line iPads and professional MacBooks get M-series chips, but the architecture is basically the same. The same software runs on all of them. You can literally just open phone apps on your Mac, and no conversion is required. So why? Why can't we use them for everything? Why is this impossible? This is simply impossible. Why not, you idiot. What prevents the iPad from being a computer other than connecting a keyboard, which you can do. You can buy it. Apple even sells it to you. Absolutely nothing. That's the point. There are no more hardware limitations. Apple accidentally developed a solution that took them beyond their own categories. And so I have to spend half an hour deciding which device to take with me. They need to sell more
devices. They need to continue selling more devices. But how? How do they consistently do this? So I decided to do some real-world experiments. I chose the three most common tasks you perform on any of these devices: spreadsheets, email, and editing and posting photos to Instagram. And I'm going to run each of them on a MacBook, an iPad, a phone, and a Vision Pro to see how different each of these experiences is. So, let's start with.let's start with email. On the laptop with mail, everything was obvious and simple. Since I have a large screen, keyboard, and trackpad, these actions take me less than a minute. I even had a keyboard shortcut to press Send on my keyboard. Boom. Ha!
32.33, well, I mean, 33.7 seconds from start to stop the timer. But what happens when I do this on an iPad? Let's take a look. When we launched Slidebean, I spent a lot of time writing emails to close deals, but honestly, closing the deal wasn't the finish line. This is really just the chaotic beginning of a chaotic part. Because the moment someone signs, a dozen things happen at the same time. You need to create their account, send the necessary materials, schedule a meeting, and add a team. And in a small company, it's usually one person trying to do everything manually, which causes everything to be delayed or you forget something. And a bad first week is exactly what causes you to lose a client you spent months trying
to acquire. You do n't lose them on the contract, you lose them in the silence that comes immediately afterwards. And this is where the sponsor of today's video - Make - comes into play. Make is a visual platform that allows you to create a system that triggers at the moment of closing a deal and performs the entire transfer process for you. But since this involved real paying customers, using some kind of opaque automation was unacceptable to me. Make is a transparent system. Every step is visible. Everything is on the dashboard. Nothing happens off- screen. Even their AI agents are completely transparent. So instead of a "black box" that magically handles onboarding, you can open the justification panel and see exactly what the
agent prepared for that particular new customer and why. This shows me exactly what happened, so I know the transfer process worked, not just hoping it did. It is very important that Make does not handle customer onboarding for you. He doesn't build relationships. This simply ensures that nothing gets lost in the process. The actual welcome message is still awaiting my review before sending. So the relationship remains human, but what used to require switching between CRM, Notion, Gmail, and Slack now happens automatically. So your team can spend time on real communication with customers, not filling out checklists. If you've ever brought on a client and then made mistakes in the first week-that's what drives our
shows now. You can try it for free. Click on the link in the description, pinned comment, or use this QR code to get a month of free Pro plan for 10,000 transactions. Now the iPad has to share physical space with a virtual keyboard, and I hate typing on glass. So the keyboard is small, and mistakes often occur on it appears and disappears every time I need to correct or print something. If it's a long angry letter, it won't fit on the screen, so I'll have to keep scrolling. Of course, these are just minor inconveniences, and one letter is not a problem, but when it comes to real work, and it's not one letter, but twelve, it starts to get annoying. And the difference becomes almost subconscious. If you write letters on an iPad or phone, at some
point you just say, "[__] it. " And you just take out your laptop to do everything yourself. Not to mention the ergonomics of having to constantly reach for the iPad if I want to type at a normal pace. Also, I have a familiar way of navigating on the desktop for all tasks when I log into my laptop. But when I try to do the same thing on an iPad, my brain has to readapt to this environment. Wouldn't it be better if Apple recognized the connection of an external keyboard and loaded an interface closer to macOS? Uh, 1 minute and 3, 1 minute and 2. Not sure if you can call it cheating, but honestly, I think it's worth trying to use the iPad with certain extensions and accessories.
The keyboard and trackpad connected to the iPad helped, but it's still not as convenient as on a computer. Superhuman, my email client, had all the usual hotkeys, which I appreciated, but that's not the case with most programs. Wow, 36, 37…Well, actually, 38, when I stopped the timer. I haven't used iPad OS with a trackpad in a long time. I think there's a lot about Superhuman that feels familiar after Mac, though there are other issues. Now, last but not least, let's try the phone. OK. 47. 47 on the phone. Which, in my opinion, is great. Because I believe that phones are not made for work, they are made for efficiency and mobility. I didn't need a desk to type on my phone, so I think that's a big advantage of phones.
Now, I'm sure some of you have tested the Apple Vision Pro. Anxiety for geeks. And while some specific things about the Vision Pro are impressive, performance overall is lame, even with dictation, which of course requires a quiet room and clear pronunciation. It only supports English. Print everything, exclamation mark. New line. I'm coming back to see if you have any comments on the documents I sent last week. So, Vision Pro took the longest. This is my little table with the time it took for each device. Now, my second experiment was editing a spreadsheet. This meant adding a few columns and editing the formula. You don't even need to track the time it takes to create a table on a particular device. It's quite obvious that creating a spreadsheet
is a task for a laptop, for a computer. And even editing it on an iPad or phone was extremely difficult. On my laptop, this is part of my daily, fairly simple work. I have arrows to navigate, and the trackpad or mouse gives me a pointer to drag to the cell I want. But on the iPad it's just awful. The cells are getting tiny for my thick fingers. It takes me twice as long to edit columns or write formulas. Most of the interface I need is hidden in submenus, or requires a wait or hold time. Again, Apple knows and understands these limitations.
They literally show an iPad with an external keyboard and trackpad when they advertise it for work, for example on the iPad landing page. Keep in mind that the smallest Apple laptop screen is now 13 inches, which is the same size as the largest iPad Pro. But they skillfully avoid comparing these different devices. Comparisons are made strictly within the same category. They literally designed the device convergence we talked about earlier. But Apple is terrified of this convergence. So convergence is not a problem for Apple in the case of the phone, because phones
were not designed for it. Both Apple and Google understand that Google Sheets simply isn't for the phone. But for the sake of experimenting, I did it and also tried it on Vision Pro. Of course, a virtual display is the best option of all, but it's a scam because I'm using a laptop and just extending the screen. But the built-in spreadsheet experience in Vision Pro was the worst of all. There's no official Google Sheets app, but even with Apple Numbers it was a pain. Regarding posting on social media: the idea was to take a photo, crop it, edit it, and post it on Instagram.
These apps are built for mobile devices, so the interface is literally optimized for that. For example, I had to export a photo to my laptop, while it was already on my phone. It's just ready to use in the Instagram app. So, touchscreens and the visual nature of editing tools make it easier to work on portable devices. Instead, there's no dedicated app on the laptop, so the experience is clunky and inconvenient. Ultimately, the user experience is a reflection of the device itself. Returning to Apple's fear of convergence, let's look at foldable phones.
Competitors have been releasing foldable phones for years, but Apple has been quietly abandoning the category. Try to fit a foldable phone in here. Could it be as exceptional at something as the iPad was? Is this a new category or just a bizarre combination of iPad and iPhone? Apple's main challenge is to create a device that combines two of their most profitable categories into one purchase. Both Apple and I have fresh lessons to learn about devices without a clear category. Every time I see myself in the Apple Vision Pro, I feel a mixture of delight and guilt. So, Apple's thesis was that a new category of devices made sense.
The new form factor is here. And the wearable device- that's worked before. But the other day I met a person who worked at Apple, on the Vision Pro team itself. I told him I had such a device. First, he was surprised that he was already talking about so much. And secondly, the first thing he asked was, "What are you using it for?" And it's funny that movies or working on a plane are the most common ways to use the Vision Pro, at least according to my friends on Reddit. But this is short. The Vision Pro was a desperate attempt to add a fourth must-have device to your bag. And while I sincerely, truly admire it every time I wear it, the shape is imperfect and the
purpose is unclear. Even ignoring the crazy price, the Vision Pro doesn't answer the main question. What does it actually do that my three other devices on M chips can't already do? It's too expensive for entertainment, just for fun. It is too isolating and too uncomfortable for social use. It's too heavy for long sessions and too limited to replace a laptop. But enough whining about my $3,500, that train has already left. However, there is something more. Apple got itself into this trap. We all started to realize that we didn't need to buy all four of these different screens.
People are watching this video I made. So how does Apple plan to maintain that trillion-dollar valuation? The answer to that is in this diagram. This is revenue from iPhone, Mac, and iPad. And I'm no financial guru, guys, but this curve is flattening now. People are using their phones longer, and thanks to the frankly excellent Apple Silicon chips, laptops and tablets last for years without any problems. This era of mandatory equipment upgrades every year, I think, is almost over. We can't add much to the phone every year. But like I said, there's something else for Apple, and that, guys, is services. Apple Music, cloud storage, Apple TV Plus, Arcade, Fitness, AppleCare, and the huge percentage they take from every App Store transaction.
Here's another look at it. This is the percentage of revenue from services compared to everything else. Apple is no longer a company that grows through hardware. Equipment is now like a drug for entry. They realized that real money is taking $30-50 out of your bank account every month forever. As a founder of a SaaS startup, I mean, there's nothing better than recurring predictable revenue. This is great. And if Apple manages to sell you more than one device, or, you know, six, you 'll just be endlessly tied to their ecosystem. So think about it. If you only have an iPhone, switching to Android-I mean, it's not that big of a deal. And.and before you start criticizing
me in the comments, I'm certainly not going to talk about brand loyalty or Android vs. Apple. This. this is a whole Pandora's box that we might open in the future. But the point is, for better or worse, I'm probably the perfect example of Apple's dream customer. And don't get me wrong, this ecosystem is together, integrated, and working. And it works great precisely because these devices are interconnected nodes of the matrix. Your Apple Watch is designed not to work if you don't have an iPhone. Your iPad works great if you have Apple Photos and they are connected to each other. Your Vision Pro takes these spatial photos that are, frankly, impressive. Or it becomes this incredibly wide Mac desktop. But you can't
connect this thing to a PC. Well, I have some really cool apps that come bundled with me. Well, like, what do you have? Calculator. Half of these features work thanks to my 2TB iCloud One family subscription. That's $40 a month, $500 a year. The pain of getting out of this, downloading 2TB of data, finding a way to back up locally, losing access to sync. These are hours, days of work. But do you see a pattern here? When you have more than one Apple device, the difficulty of leaving this ecosystem becomes enormous.
Here is the real reason why they maintain this illusion of choice. That's why they refuse to give you one universal device and instead create all these devices that duplicate functions. If they consolidated their hardware categories, they would reduce the number of nodes in your life. And the fewer nodes you have, the easier it is for you to escape the matrix. They don't want me to take one device on my trip. They want me to take all four devices on my trip. That's their design. But there has to be a way out, right? How do we break Apple's rules about buying technology? Now the haters will say, "Just don't buy Apple devices." And yes, of course, it is quite possible. But if you're already trapped in them, like me, and wondering which device to take with
you or which to leave behind, remember that the old rule about form factor and usage is dead. Right? So you just need to stop thinking or buying devices based on what Apple says the device is for, and start thinking a little bit about friction. Instead of asking which device is best for work or entertainment, start asking which device eliminates the most inconveniences in my life. I hate printing on glass. So if any work is needed, I want a keyboard. So the MacBook remains. The phone already has a pretty good chip. He can edit photos. He can answer emails. I can watch 4K videos just as well as I can on an iPad. The screen is tiny, but the iPad doesn't give me any new options. It simply offers a different form factor.
So, yes, the iPad can stay at home. Maybe I'll put it up for sale. As for Vision Pro, it's with a heavy heart, to be honest, that he's been staying home lately. If the flight is short, it's not worth the extra weight. If I travel with someone, it's just weird. It's heavy, bulky, fragile, and impractical for anything other than a few hours of, well, the best movie experience you can find. But this is such a highly specialized use case. When you are limited in weight or volume, that's when you start to test your common sense. When you start to realize that two devices, not four, cover all your travel needs. And as much as I loved the experience of using the Vision Pro, that's when you start to realize that this category may simply not survive
all this chaos. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. YouTube will recommend one right here in the frame. I don't know what this is, but click on it. See you in the next video.
