Unfolding the Future: Why the Next Big Thing Should be a Foldable iPad Pro

As the functional distinction between smartphones and tablets blurs, the allure of a foldable iPad Pro becomes increasingly appealing and, surprisingly, more plausible. In what sounds like a tech nerd’s fantasy, a foldable iPad Pro is poised to become a real product with the potential to completely change the gadget world. First, let us take a closer look at why such a realization might be useful and surprisingly straightforward.

THE CURRENT PRO CONUNDRUM: TOO MUCH POWER, TOO RIGID FORMAT

But here’s the puzzle at the heart of Apple’s product stack: the Pro models have built-in capabilities for a kind of Herculean brawn that is almost too much for their clunky frames. The iPad Pro makes more sense as a laptop than as a tablet, and the iPhone Pro models appear like power-packed superheroes looking for new worlds to wreck.

This leads us to a key question, what if Apple could redirect this excess power into more flexible use? An iPad Pro that you can fold in half, for example. It’s enough to give you goosebumps when you think about bending your iPad! But if you reframe it as a foldable device … imagine.

THE FOLDABLE PRO: BRIDGING GAPS AND BREAKING BOUNDS

Why bother designing such a foldable iPad Pro? Well, because there might be a sweet spot in combining the haptic and functional utility of a folded device with certain elements of form factor and functionality one could afford from an unfolded device. Imagine the power of the iPad Pro compressed into a more portable and versatile package.

SOLVING THE SKU OVERLOAD: A PRO MOVE TOWARDS SIMPLIFICATION

Apple’s current devices offer a bewildering choice of devices geared toward different wishes and needs. While this might be extremely confusing to users, who are already overwhelmed by all available choices, supposedly anyway, Apple could leverage its prestige and reputation to introduce a foldable iPad Pro that would offer the features of multiple devices in one single product. This master move would not only simplify consumer’s usage decision, but also reestablish and redefine Apple’s ability to innovate and become the benchmark of a category.

THE PRO PILOT’S DREAM: A FOLDABLE DEVICE FOR EVERY NEED

Take the beloved iPad Mini, which is the ideal mix of smallness and legibility for pilots – now imagine it with the foldable pro technology. It would be an even more portable version of the iPad’s de rigeur cockpit companion – a device that was small yet still had a good-sized screen. Pilots would be thrilled with this development. The iPad Mini example demonstrates how a foldable form factor can meet specific professional demands while delivering a premium user experience.

A PRO VISION FOR THE FUTURE: THE NEXT LEAP IN TECH

Moving towards foldables is not just about a new device: it’s about a step forward into the future of personal technology. A foldable iPad Pro would combine the raw power of the Pro range with a new way of interacting with and using a device. It asks users to move from set, known categories to a more elastic and fluid interaction with technology that mirrors their own changing lifestyles.

ELEMENTAL TO INNOVATION: EMBRACING THE PRO IN "PRO-GRESS"

But when Apple moves to make the iPad Pro foldable, it is investing in the position that innovation and progress is not about making an existing thing better, but remaking it into what was never possible. This outward-looking perspective on how innovation should work – in which technology molds itself to human needs in the most natural and intuitive way possible, not the other way around – is what separates industry leaders.

WHY "PRO" IS NOT JUST A PREFIX BUT A PHILOSOPHY

The prefix ‘pro’ is normally used to signify ‘better than’, ‘higher end’, ‘more advanced features’, ‘more professional’ or ‘for the prosumer’, and Apple extends the concept further on its naming scale to declare a machine’s exceptional performance, design or usage. Taking this ‘pro’ approach on how we think about creating a two-sided foldable display product for iPad Pro is very much a part of the bigger picture of exploring synthesis itself, of what it means to design a product that is far more than a mere ‘thing’. It’s about the future of technological devices that on the one hand are ‘tools’, and on the other hand are ‘companions’ that can take us on creative, productive and meaningful journeys.

So, by the time you can put an iPad through the paces of flexing it in half, these panic-inducing fantasies like the iPad of 2012 might not seem so crazy after all. Rather than a sign of desperate lunacy, a folding iPad Pro might presage the next chapter of personal technology. An unprecedented blend of power, flexibility and innovation, a foldable iPad Pro could be the device that users, whose lives have gotten more multifacated than their devices, need. Folding is Apple’s chance to lead, not just to leap.