Difference of mac osx and ios

Hello all, here's the deal. My boss asked me to advise her on either getting a new macbook air 11' or an ipad 3 for doing slideshow presentations, and general office work. She currently uses an ipad 1 and a windows laptop. She asked me because I am the most IT inclined at the office, however my knowledge covers windows and linux, and I have almost 0 experience with a mac. She basically asked me what a macbook can do that the ipad 3 cannot, as far as programs. She uses MS office mostly, along with keynote and a few other things on her ipad. I know that office can be run on osx...otherwise not sure what else she would need a full fledged (and pricey) laptop for since she already has a pc. I guess as a windows user I'm struggling to find the real differences between the two platforms, os x and ios, for her purposes. Appreciate any advice you guys can give, thanks and have a good day =)

She wants a MacBook Air.

Two reasons:

1. At present, Microsoft Office is not available for the iPad. That might change at some point, but at present that's where we're at.

2. Although you can easily pair a BT keyboard with an iPad for detailed data and text entry, it sounds like she would be doing a lot of Office-type work and thus will be very reliant on a keyboard, so why not just have one thrown in?

Then there's some other hardware advantages like USB ports and video out and such.

So to answer her question fully, a MacBook can run Mac OS X programs, which can be much more sophisticated than iPad programs by virtue of a more complex infrastructure supporting it (beyond just mouse and keyboard).

IOS can be thought of as a subset of Mac OS X, since both are based on the same core technologies, but one is centered around touch and user simplicity, while the other offers as much complexity and power as the user is willing to have, all the way down a UNIX command line.

CAN someone use an iPad for basic Office-type work and slideshow presentations? Yes, absolutely -- though for now I'd say using Apple's iWork suite of programs rather than MS Office is the most viable, since MS Office for iPad simply isn't available -- but at this point I'd say having a built-in keyboard, USB and other ports, direct video connectivity rather than relying on wireless AirPlay and the power and sophistication of Mac OS X still provide an edge for users who have to work extensively with business files.