I wish this was fake news for Apple

Phones are pretty much usurping tablets as the new personal computer.
Try as you might to replace your desktop computer with a tablet, phablet, two-in-one, three-in-one or none of the above, your phone hits the sweet spot when it comes to actual use and ability to do the things you want to do.
Tablets are not really tablets anymore when you hook up a keyboard to them. If you want a mouse, too, you really end up making the tablet more like a personal computer.  But it is a forever handicapped one if it is one at all.
Isn’t throwing away the keyboard and mouse the reason de facto for using an iPad? Why not just stick to the iMac that sits in the corner if you need a keyboard and mouse?
For professionals, I’m torn between recommending my traditional preference for Apple desktops and what Microsoft is doing in terms of flipping the PC market on its figurative head with the Surface Studio that merits serious consideration as a legitimate iMac killer.
As I write this on an ancient Microsoft Surface RT, I marvel at how useful it is to point and press with my finger to give my mouse hand some relief. For aging baby boomers especially, it’s all about moving and staying active while incorporating a healthy refrain from engagement in long periods of repetitive motion (like mouse death grip warfare).

I had an Apple iPhone 3GS back in the day. I thought it was fine until I realized how slow it was. Then I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S3. Now this was a phone, or so I thought at the time.
During the course of the evolution of my smart phone use, the web became increasingly laden with advertising. Along with the ads flashing on and off for our attention came the perceptible slowing down of user experience with individual device resources straining to keep up with demands.
Tablets had a brief period where some of us toyed with the idea that instead of the phone, this was what we would sit with on our couches while we watched television and surfed the web (or when we noticed something on TV that inspired googling).
Tablets never really took off and have peaked. Our phones undeniably are our go to devices, our go to personal computers. They are absolutely the PC we use most now. We can’t keep from checking all kinds of crap on them. Funny, though, that all the email I get, I browse through, vowing to return for more in-depth reading and eventual engagement, but never do (well, I do, but it sometimes is not all that immediate).
By the time we walk over to that iMac in the corner, we could have already checked two emails on the phone. The tablet we call the iPad Mini? It’s caught between a phone rock and an iMac hard place.
If you purchased an iPad mini, much like the iPad maxi (I’m joking fools, go ahead and google iPad maxi if you don’t believe me), you keep it down in favor of your iPhone.
I recently ordered an LG V20. I’m not intentionally distancing myself from Apple products; it’s just something I’m doing unconsciously.
Apple’s the kind of company that if they could still innovate, and if they could come up with a product that bests the iPhone in terms of sales (forget Apple Watch, which should not even be mentioned in the same breath), they would drop the iPhone like a bad habit—now that’s what I call Augmented Reality.

But they are not really a tablet, phablet or personal computer maker so much as a phone manufacturer now—for better or for worse, in sickness and in health (‘til death do they part?).
Essentially, Apple is now a one trick pony, kind of like Disk Warrior. But, the pressure to remain number one in phone sales will eventually be replaced by the pressure to deliver something else as the world’s go to device.
I’m not convinced someone else won’t get there first. Apple has lost the loyalty in their customers.
Maybe it’s because we’ve grown up now. Perhaps it’s because Apple was something that served our needs at one point, place and/or time. But it’s unraveling, slowly, brick by brick in a surreal wall demolition of its own construction.
Is Apple still making tons of money? Sure, but when you’ve been as good as they have for as long as they have, then, and only then, can the realization be drawn there is no place left to go but down. Mortality has set in. It’s been a good run. There are no more Jobsian-like gods to stem the innovation stagnation.
Another analogy less cryptic may be what happens when an artist paints themselves into a corner.
They’re stuck.
And like Apple, on the (Microsoft) surface, they appear at a loss to find a way out.