s/real/office/g and then the article reads just fine.
Otherwise, yeah, it makes little sense, because, yeah, just about every other kind of work, short perhaps of literal bricklaying, has been radically changed by tablets. The last time I had to visit a hospital, I got the impression that they might have had more money invested in iPads than in CT scanners.
I don't see this as a failure. Expecting the iPad to be positioned as a device that would outright displace an existing line of Apple products that's typically sold at 2-3x the price point strikes me as an impressive failure to intuit Apple's priorities. The iPad was intended to break into - and even create - new markets, not to cannibalize its cousins. And if you look at it that way, it's been an amazing success.
Bricklayers may not use tablets for work, but I bet they use smartphones a ton, and not just as communication devices. I know I use mine constantly when doing "real world" work—my laptop's a much worse camera, flashlight, level, and measurement device than my phone, and that's just the things it's worse at without even factoring in portability (which would include almost everything else one might want to use an Internet-connected device for on a job site, which a laptop would do alright at except that it's huge compared to a phone).
[EDIT] "but why's a camera important to construction work?" want to get a usable estimate of how much tile you need for a room in about 5 seconds flat, recorded for later use? Snap a photo of the floor with the 4' by 8' plywood exposed. Done, you can walk away now. Ditto drywall if the studs are exposed and follow standard spacing, and so on.
Otherwise, yeah, it makes little sense, because, yeah, just about every other kind of work, short perhaps of literal bricklaying, has been radically changed by tablets. The last time I had to visit a hospital, I got the impression that they might have had more money invested in iPads than in CT scanners.
I don't see this as a failure. Expecting the iPad to be positioned as a device that would outright displace an existing line of Apple products that's typically sold at 2-3x the price point strikes me as an impressive failure to intuit Apple's priorities. The iPad was intended to break into - and even create - new markets, not to cannibalize its cousins. And if you look at it that way, it's been an amazing success.