Apple isn't organized by product like other large tech companies, instead it's organized by function. E.g. no divisions like iPad, Mac, iPhone. It's divisions like hardware, software, RF, etc. Each division works on all products.
I would use an iPad Pro as my "laptop" if Apple would let me run macOS. It's a Macbook Air but without a directly attached keyboard saddled with an inappropriate OS for the hardware.
…which is maybe kinda true? I have no idea if they want to make it a “Pro” device, despite the Pro moniker, because you still have such weird multitasking UI paradigms and so many limitations in terms of pro features. (Audio routing comes to mind. You can’t have Audio Hijack for iOS.)
And the value proposition of a fully loaded iPad with keyboard case is pretty dubious to me compared to just getting a MacBook Air. I know, I know, less apps, not a touch screen…but I can just do so much more with a Mac, and with the ARM transition, I also get the insane battery life of an iPad.
And touchscreen interfaces need to have all their points of interaction on them, or hidden behind non-obvious gestures which does not make for a very good power-user software interface. And iOS at its core (I know they call it iPadOS now, but let's be real, it's iOS with a half-hearted splitscreen/windowing system on top) is made to be a walled garden. A nice walled garden, sure. But not something for productivity, other than its own very specific scenarios, like digital art where you're only planning on drawing, and not going too far outside of the clean-cut path that it expects to be used in.
So for most people, it's just another screen to watch Netflix and YouTube. And it's pretty expensive for that.
Why?
It's far from obvious to me. Unifying back ends and unifying products are night and day propositions. Nothing Apple is doing points towards a thin-client strategy.
Very hard to unify completely different paradigms.
The thing is a quite different point: the availability of software and the interactions. The iPad limits software to the App Store and its very restricted rules. Which makes the iPad nice for tasks which can be done completely inside one App, if that App exists in the first place. But it is really bad at any work flow which would involve multiple programs and a lot of programs aren't even allowed on the App Store.
On the Mac, one is free to run any software one wants, it is very easy to write your own. If it only is a quick shell script or python program. And it is trivial to combine multiple software in one project, just access the project directory from all involved programs.
There seems to be some capability of sharing file space between apps on the iPad, there is a great Git client called "Working Copy" which I can highly recomment which can interact with other apps, but that is quite an exception. In most cases, Apps on the iPad don't really support free data exchange with each other. My pet peeve: you cannot even add your own music to the music player on the iPad. It is sitting uselessly in Files and I can't access it.
I have made attempts at doing all my work stuff on it, but failed every time. Simple things like taking a screenshot over here and pasting it over there just feel harder on the iPad. I really want them to figure it out though!
iPad should be a Macbook Air.
Apple already allows to run iPad applications on macOS. They should completely destroy iPadOS, and let macOS run on iPad. I would prefer to have powerful OS (macOS) with some glitches on iPad, than to have an iPad with limited OS (and still have glitches to be honest). I even ok to use similar to Windows 8 idea, you aren't plugged in to keyboard - it is going to look like an iPadOS (with different app launcher), and when you connect keyboard you can use macOS.
The only reason I am still own iPad (to be honest two of them), is because I cannot disconnect screen from my laptop, even that is not the biggest issue, but because there is no Netflix app, and I cannot download movies to watch in the plane.
Isn’t there already a MacBook Air?
It just seems that trying to use the Mac UI purely by touch would be godawful. I mean how do you Command-click, or right-click a UI element with your finger? These are solvable, but only with horrible compromises. The iPad has a completely different interaction model to very good reasons, and this would utterly butcher it. Microsoft tried this approach and it was disastrous.
Yes the iPad has its limitations, but also incredible strengths. The new multitasking gesture system is a vast improvement.
That's already in iPad OS/iOS. It's the long touch.
>Microsoft tried this approach and it was disastrous.
Surface Pro/Go is a pretty successful product for Microsoft.
Windows 11 on a tablet is really not that bad.
(I also run linux on a desktop and have an iPhone and Apple Watch, so not a hater by any stretch of the imagination)
1. Linux support was pretty bad. You needed a custom kernel for an enjoyable experience, and even that was pretty unusable on anything other than x11 GNOME.
2. The overheating was a dealbreaker. I presume this was either a driver issue or hardware failure, but the device would regularly hit 55c in normal workloads, which was a no-go for that sort of product.
It was so close to being the Linux iPad of my dreams, but fell just short. I might give one of the later models a shot someday, but I'm not really in a rush. Maybe once Alder Lake makes it's way into a decent Windows convertible, it will finally be The Year of the Linux Tablet.
It's actually a ton faster in Linux, but with a bit worse battery life.
The biggest flaw with using Linux on the earlier Surface line was the shit Marvell Wifi. That would drop out all the time. So glad they switched to Intel for the later ones.
I'd never seen it put that way before, but I think it hits the nail right on the head for me. I do like my 2020 iPad Air when I use it, and the pencil is great; however, I basically end up using it as easy scratch paper or when copy-pastable handwriting is useful. Plus when I need an extra screen to go with my laptop.
It definitely has nice features, but doesn't feel like a compelling use-case overall, yet.
It helps that the app I use easily integrates with any cloud storage you would want to use, so I can easily just get sheet music using any personal device and just drop it into my cloud folder. And the next time I sit down at the piano, all those sheets are already there.
Imagine having a super powerful ipad pro running mac os for your work stuff, and when you are lying on the couch you detach the keyboard and any external monitors and switch to the more touch friendly ios.
I think that would be a much better approach than to try to merge the 2 OSes into one hybrid OS that can do neither this nor that very well.
Since the iPad and the Mac use essentially the same CPU now, why not allow Apps to be cross platform between the two? I know you can run some iPad Apps on the Mac, but why not the other way?
If you could run Mac apps on the iPad, would that hurt mac sales? Possibly. Although, I could imagine many non-mac users would buy an iPad if it could run VS Code.