The last thing the iPad needs is a specs bump

When Apple CEO Tim Cook and a group of his deputies take the virtual stage next week to announce the modern iPads, they’ll spend a lot of time talking about specifications. If the rumors are true, we will receive modern iPad Pros with OLED screens and thinner housings, modern Airs with faster chips and a properly placed front camera, and several modern accessories. Even before they hit the market, I can confidently say that these are the best iPads ever. But after all these years, I still don’t know how to tell you whether you should want an iPad. Or what you would like to do with it.

This, of course, has always been true. The iPad is an all-rounder in Apple’s lineup, a wonderful device in many ways that still feels increasingly redundant now that so many people have substantial phones and long-lasting laptops. For the past decade, it seems Apple has been enamored with the idea of ​​the iPad as a shape-shifter — a device that can be exactly what you need at any given moment. Business love that the utilize case for the iPad is tough to define and that it means different things to different people. It’s a fun, good and ambitious idea: one gadget to rule them all. To achieve this, however, you don’t need to upgrade chips, move buttons, or redesign rounded corners. The idea is to focus less on the iPad itself and more on the things you connect to it.

There’s a chance that accessories will be the star of the show next week. Just take a look at the surprisingly understated invitation to the “Let Loose” event: Usually there are tea leaves to read and we’re left trying to decipher concealed shapes, but this time there’s just the Apple Pencil front and center. Reports indicate that we will most likely see a modern pencil at the event with interchangeable magnetic tips for different uses and a modern “squeeze” gesture for quickly adding objects to a work of art.

Focusing on the Pencil makes a certain niche sense: the iPad is simply a immense touchscreen and the only Apple device on which you can draw and write in this way. Apple’s artificial intelligence researchers have been working on tools to lend a hand artists and animators work, and on an art creation system combined with an artificial intelligence model – you suggest, it creates; you edit, it improves. For anyone involved in this type of visual art, a high-powered pencil can be incredibly fascinating.

There are also rumors that Apple will release a modern Magic Keyboard that will make the iPad even more like a laptop. The modern model will apparently be made of aluminum and will have a larger trackpad. (Let’s hope it stops falling apart randomly, too.) A better keyboard won’t instantly make the iPad a great laptop, but I’m not sure Apple is trying to build a great laptop. He’s got loads of it already! I’m not on the “put macOS on the iPad, you cowards” train either. MacBook is great. I think the modular potential of the iPad is actually much greater.

If Apple wants to achieve this, it needs more accessories – and therefore a lot more accessories. The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on whenever you need it. Give gamers a controller and an external graphics card. Give music lovers a docking station with a speaker, and give sharp home fanatics a set of buttons that allow them to connect various devices. Photographers need lenses; spreadsheets need a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself – a device that is notorious for its durability and from which almost no one uses its full potential – and more time on how to make it more than just a tablet. (Plus bonus for Apple: it will be much easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don’t need it).

The ultra-modular vision of the iPad is tempting, and I hope Apple continues to build on it, but it’s almost impossible to achieve. Just ask Imperative how the attempt to build the device and accessory ecosystem went. Or ask Google. Or Asus. Or Fairphone, Samsung, Motorola, Blocks, Phonebloks or any other company that has never managed to do so. This requires building software that is always available to everyone, and hardware that is lovely, skinny, airy, robust, and fully remixable. I’m not even sure if all this can be done, but I know iPad and iPadOS are not it.

The problem with the all-in-one iPad approach so far is that you can’t just build a device that’s okay at everything and hope that’s enough. This totally fine device already exists – it’s your smartphone! The iPad needs to be more: more malleable, more competent, more robust and more useful. This is tough to build in a device, but Apple has done a pretty good job. The difficult part is building the ecosystem and creating the software to support it. You need something that is at once for power users and novices, for DIYers and simpletons, for people who love keyboard shortcuts and for those who would prefer to never type again.

Ultimately, Apple’s biggest problem may simply be math. The current iPad Pro starts at $799, which is already more costly than some MacBook Air models. Want cellular connectivity so you can utilize your iPad anywhere? That’s another $200, but a good modular gadget needs that. The current generation Pencil costs another $129; Magic Keyboard, another $299. (I don’t know yet how much the modern models will cost, but Apple doesn’t tend to do things like that cheaper.) That’s $1,328 for full iPad functionality, and we’ve only just scratched the surface of what this device can do with the right accessories and app support. So far, when Apple introduces modern accessories, it’s mostly only caused confusion.

Where is all this going for Apple? Blocked. The iPad is great, it’s a huge success, it’s a great device, I love the iPad, but the iPad seems to be stuck in a never-ending update loop and it’s never really gotten better. I suspect we’ll see a lot of iPad-related news at WWDC next month – that’s where Apple usually discusses its software, and it looks like there will be a substantial focus on artificial intelligence. The iPad may be a natural place to take advantage of many AI features, especially when it comes to image and video editing. However, when it comes to next week’s announcement, we’ll likely hear an awful lot about OLED screens and chip updates. But pay attention to all the devices in the iPad world that are not the iPad itself. If Apple wants to make its tablet a world record-breaking device, it will have to equip it with accessories.