But this setup reduces battery power on your iPhone, an important consideration when you’re away from power outlets. However, it’s easy to use your iPhone as a Wi-Fi hot spot to give a MacBook a cellular Internet connection. The top-of-the-line iPad Pro ($1,079) includes built-in 4G connectivity as well as Wi-Fi, a feature bound to appeal to road warriors. By comparison, a MacBook is a laptop only. When equipped with a keyboard like Logitech’s Create ($150) or the Apple Smart Keyboard ($169), the iPad Pro morphs into a laptop (at least to some degree). Unlike a MacBook, you can also use an iPad Pro as a dedicated tablet, for all the things we love tablets for: reading digital magazines and books, viewing videos and surfing the Web. But for pure touch-based navigation on a large display, there’s nothing better in Apple’s product line than the iPad Pro. And its new Magic Trackpad 2 ($129) adds similar capabilities to desktop Macs, along with Apple’s Force Touch. Plus, touchscreens can be ideal for detailed work (image editing, for instance) and are particularly powerful when paired with a stylus such as Apple Pencil ($99).Īpple has equipped its MacBook line with an excellent trackpad that mimics, to some degree, touchscreen navigation tricks, such as flipping through browser tabs and pinching to zoom in/out. I’ve even found myself reflexively tapping my MacBook Air screen.
At any rate, for a lot of people (including me), navigating via touchscreen is becoming second nature.