I really really miss those brief brilliant years a decade ago when we started making 17, 18 inch tablets.
Its sad we gave up so quickly, but also, we were much worse at building devices then & the performance wasn't really there. Now that we can easily pump the pixels, now that we can make great well structured chassis, I hope we see this come back.
I think the laptop is indeed on the way out. I have been using a tablet form factor (x86) pc as my main personal dev machine since 2017, but with a solid ergo arm & bluetooth keyboard. Keeping the screen & keyboard attached is such a huge disadvantage.
The form factor could work, but to replace a laptop you'd have to have models with equivalent power and with a "real OS" that isn't so locked down that you can't run anything.
Locked down console OSes limit usefulness to only tasks that involve remote logins, web apps, or apps in the App Store. It's fine for a phone but not a work machine or a personal "real computer."
Thankfully we're seeing a lot more work upstreaming modern cores into Linux. Most still are missing various key bits of support, but the trend is radically different from the past where colossal vendor forks of kernels & custom trees were the one and only path for all devices. This is all to say, I have some hope soon we'll see ARM tablets become vaguely near as useful/capable/flexible/all-purpose as the Personal Computer PC x86 platform has been. Someday. So the dream's been going I guess; keep that spark of hope alive.
FWIW I did mention that my systems have all been x86. I intend to continue that trend for the foreseeable. Currently they're all pretty power sipping (Intel i5-4200Y 11.5W TDP, i5-7200U 7.5W TDP), but I hope we can actually do the gaming deck dance & start having badass cooling & sick TDPs... and scaling down on battery. The new AMD Z1 core looks amazing, gimme a 18" tablet with this, please, I'm begging.
It's a more limited answer, but as a developer, I also don't really care. Give me a fullscreen web browser & an online editor like vscode web. What I carry around is just a network thin client.
I've been using Macs and iPhones since around 2009 and the last few months have been the first time I've started seriously contemplating about moving away from the ecosystem. I'm going to go travelling soon, and I want the most minimal setup possible, and Apple are starting to look really far behind. I'm toying with getting a Steam Deck and combining that with some NReal air glasses, a Magic Trackpad and either a custom 36 key split keyboard or the upcoming Tap XR. I really don't want to carry a MacBook, plus another mouse and trackpad and stand to make it ergonomic plus an iPad for when I want to read books or write notes.
This obsession with keeping iPad separate from MacOS is really starting to piss me off. People have been crying out for this for a while now and they're just tone deaf to it. I'm waiting til WWDC before I make any major decisions because that's when they're supposedly releasing their AR glasses but if they're shit or ridiculously priced then I could seriously see myself moving to Linux and Android within the next 12 months which is something I thought I'd never do.
Its sad we gave up so quickly, but also, we were much worse at building devices then & the performance wasn't really there. Now that we can easily pump the pixels, now that we can make great well structured chassis, I hope we see this come back.
I think the laptop is indeed on the way out. I have been using a tablet form factor (x86) pc as my main personal dev machine since 2017, but with a solid ergo arm & bluetooth keyboard. Keeping the screen & keyboard attached is such a huge disadvantage.