Ten years later, the future I hoped for did not arrive for me. My iPad is mostly in my drawer, not being used.

When the Vision Pro made its debut, I was reminded of when I first got the iPad Pro. I wrote about my first year with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. I loved the hardware, the battery life, and the speakers. I used it to watch movies, read books and PDFs, browse the internet, and occasionally as a mobile hotspot. I also kept circling the same problem: typing on glass never felt natural, and none of the physical keyboards felt compelling enough.

No, I did not buy the Vision Pro. I do wonder how different my reviews of these devices would be.

After the Honeymoon

I mostly used the iPad when I traveled to watch movies on the plane. It is interesting that many Vision Pro ads and reviews point out that exact use case. After the honeymoon period wore off, the iPad Pro mostly sat idle near wherever I had used it last. I never felt that I got all the use I could out of it.

In 2015, I also bought a MacBook Pro. It became my primary device, even for watching movies, which meant the iPad was not used as much. In 2016, I called the iPad a big phone with lots of battery. That was praise and also the limitation. It could take some time away from my iPhone and MacBook Pro, but it did not give me a reason to leave either one behind. The phone was easier to pick up, and the laptop remained better whenever I wanted to type or do more than consume something.

I had hoped the input story would get better. I wanted typing onscreen to feel natural, or a physical keyboard that did not make the iPad bulky. I owned the Apple Pencil but rarely took notes with it because writing on glass did not feel like writing on paper. Those small points of friction were already visible after the first year. Over time, they mattered more than the impressive hardware.

A Single-Purpose Learning Device

At some point, the only time I used the iPad was to play DragonBox Algebra with my kid. When my daughter was learning piano, she used the iPad with Simply Piano to learn songs. That was a perfect use for the big screen.

Around the same time, I started noticing that many payment kiosks embedded a 12.9-inch iPad as their main interface. I began to think that perhaps the iPad's strength is its simplicity. It allows one specific app to take precedence. Aside from the times I used the iPad as a movie player, we used it as a learning device. I think the strength of the iPad as a learning device is underestimated, especially for learning games like DragonBox and Simply Piano.

All the uses I highlighted can also be handled by Android tablets, so what is the big deal? In 2015, it was a big deal to have a gigantic iPhone. Nowadays, all iPhones are gigantic. The iPad did not become a general computing device for me. It was at its best when it became a single-purpose device.

Coming Back to Vision Pro

What is the big deal about this new device? The clearest possibility I see is the same one that worked for the iPad: a tool for learning and educational games. One of the great things about the iPad Pro's large surface was having more space to interact with content. I do not necessarily mean being able to touch the whole surface. A larger screen can keep more context on the same page when somebody is trying to learn something new.

The Vision Pro takes that idea beyond the screen. Whether that additional space becomes useful will depend on the apps that give it a purpose. The hardware can be impressive and still end up idle after the honeymoon period. My iPad already taught me that.

The interesting part is not that the iPad failed. It did many things well, and I really did love it. The interesting part is that a device can be excellent and still lose its place in a routine. I stopped reaching for mine. Once that habit was gone, the iPad moved to the drawer and mostly stayed there.

In 2016, I was waiting for the input story to make the iPad feel natural. In 2026, the drawer gives me the answer: impressive hardware was not enough. The iPad was most useful when one app turned it into a learning device, and that is the question I would bring to the Vision Pro.