I'm still coming to terms with my feelings on the Microsoft Surface Studio. On the one hand it's a powerful touchscreen computer that elegantly converts to multiple form factors to facilitate many types of users. One the other hand it runs Windows and costs $2,999.

This is the thing that gets some people frustrated with my (and other macOS fans) options of Windows hardware. We simply don't like Windows as a platform, and that makes it a moot point how nice any particular piece of hardware is. I don't care how many teraflops you can push if I have to use those to run Windows 10. It's the same reason I don't buy Android phones despite liking some of the hardware out there (especially the Galaxy S7), I don't like Android nearly as much as iOS.

I bet you're expecting me to say I would be interested in this machine if it was running macOS Sierra but I'll surprise you and say no. Nope, I would love this machine selling for closer to $1,399 and running iOS.

Bring out the pitchforks!

But seriously, iOS is a marvelous platform and is brilliant on the iPad. I would like to see another major update or two to iOS before it's ready to take advantage of a 20+ inch screen, but I don't think that's unreasonable. iOS 9 brought a ton of new features specifically to the iPad, most notably split screen multitasking. It's rumored that iOS 10.2-3 will bring a new wave of features this spring, and iOS 11 and 12 will obviously continue to grow the platform. I can already do most of my work on a 2014 iPad Air 2, so a little more power and and lot more screen real estate would probably push me over the top to being able to go 100% iOS.

Apple grew (literally) the iPad last year with the 13 inch iPad Pro, and they saw some solid success with it. It's converting some to the always-iPad club, their iPad revenue has stabilized, and users and critics generally love it. Tim Cook clearly thinks the future of mobile computing is the iPhone and iPad. If people are replacing their Mac laptops with iPads, then Apple must be looking at the iMac next and thinking about what comes next. Come on, Apple, get a little crazy and give is a huge iPad similar to Microsoft's new Surface Studio.