Bad headline, first of all, as Bradley Chambers is mainly arguing for better input options in the iPad.

Imagine being able to work in a native WordPress or Squarespace interface on an iPad with an external keyboard and trackpad? Imagine being able to use the full web version of Google Docs instead of the sub-par iPad apps? Imagine being able to do precise text selection on an iPad. This is what the iPad needs software wise. While touch-based interfaces have brought a lot of great innovations, I still struggle, ergonomically, to use them for hours as a time.

Seriously, I really don’t understand why 9to5Mac went with this headline. Anyways, Ben Brooks makes a good case for Apple holding it’s ground here.

Because some product manager decided that their support response would be “use a desktop, sorry”. I don’t want iPad to have a cursor, because that’s not what iPad is. I want websites to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that there are far more people using mobile Safari than there are those sitting down at a desktop to work. Just as web designers had to learn to design responsive websites mobile first, web application developers need to make their apps work on iPhones and Android phones first and foremost, desktops second. Because if it works on an iPhone, it will certainly work on a MacBook Pro.

Apple is in a very strong position here, with so many devices in the world running mobile Safari. It helps that mobile Safari is arguably one of the best web browsers in the world.

Chambers is a correct that Apple needs to keep working on interface solutions that offer something to improve ergonomics in key areas—particularly for people with “laptop-like” use cases.

It’s clear that Apple is taking great care before adding traditional interface tools to iOS. Once they add cursor/trackpad inputs, they can’t really turn back, and doing so would risk limiting progress with touch interfaces as users revert to whatever is comfortable to them.