Everyone would be happy if Apple focused more on perfecting the iPad's hardware instead of pushing iPadOS to the brink. An iPad with options to run MacOS, iPadOS or Linux would be the knockout product-of-the-decade for Apple IMO. Judging by the design of Monterey, I think iPad/Mac convergence seems fairly likely.
Well, no, it's not about the Operating Systems; it's about the UI paradigms themselves.
I believe that Apple is worried that the desktop WIMP UI itself is going to be disrupted and fade into irrelevance due to 1. "do everything on the web" devices like Chromebooks, and 2. VR/AR productivity-workflow paradigms that are yet to be formalized; and so they're trying to find a successor to the WIMP UI, one that will still be relevant in 2040, even if/when the WIMP UI dies.
The distinction between iPads and Macs isn't arbitrary, insofar as iPads don't require a keyboard, and Macs do. iPadOS (and iOS) apps have to be designed under the assumption that a keyboard is optional; and that really changes things about how an app can work. You can port apps designed for keyboardless tablets to macOS just fine (and as of the M1 you don't even have to, you can just install them); but fully-featured macOS apps can't just be thrown onto a keyboardless touchscreen. (And you can't say "well, you can't install 'keyboard required' apps if you don't have the keyboard", either; the OS has no idea if the user owns a keyboard but just hasn't bothered docking it.)
You are accidentally correct in the other direction, though — that there's no reason you couldn't run iPadOS as well as macOS on a theoretical "touchscreen Mac" (which would be a different thing than an iPad, precisely because the keyboard would be welded onto it, and so apps could guarantee its presence/require you to use it.) The reason that Macs don't have touchscreens, AFAICT, is because Apple wants to use the iPad — along with everyone who buys one, and every developer who signs on to develop apps for one — as an isolated laboratory to run this "successor to WIMP UI paradigm" experiment. They don't want to "dilute" that experiment by allowing those users and developers to get the advantages of the iPad from any of their other products — because then those users and developers wouldn't be incentivized to use the iPad, and thereby to give them the experimental data they need.
Well, we asked ourselves that at the launch of the iPad. At the time it was basically a reading/web browsing tablet (in other words, revolutionary). But people had grander visions, like running DAWs on it and porting Photoshop and developing software. All of these things are not hardware-limited; their exclusion entirely boils down to arbitrary software decisions made by Apple.
So, we waited. We let it grow for more than a decade. What we have today is just a bigger version of iOS, which is a reflection of Apple's refusal to upset a paradigm they directly profit off of. They're genuinely incapable of disrupting the computing market, because they're the ones abusing the market the hardest.
My only hope is that legislation steps in to stop all this bullshit. Your customers shouldn't be treated like guinea pigs, and they should have the authority to install whatever they want on the hardware they own. If Apple can't design a product that respects those two simple principles, then they're going to have a hard time courting modern-day pros that use Macbooks and Wintel machines.
VR/AR makes people feel sick and are fundamentally uncomfortable in a way a screen not strapped to your face isn’t.
And then I tried sending a pdf by email. Oh well.
Can I share it on the corporate FTP ? Oh no.
Let me airdrop this to you... Wait... is this a windows / android device ?
...
Alright, I'll just use my laptop. My iPad is too niche for this workflow.
There are plenty of apps to upload stuff to FTP. If this was an actual thing you used with any regularity, you'd have something installed already if files isn't connecting for you.
GP was right, iPadOS is never going to work for anyone having to send a pdf to someone else.
If you wish for Adobe Scan to store the scan in "Files" automatically, well, you can't. You have to "share" them individually FROM THE APP to "Files".
And I think you will understand, now : this is the same shit show when trying to upload something via FTP. Like family photos.
The UX is stupid. The workflow is abysmal. The discovery is inexistant. The teams responsible for this at Apple don't care, as it's been like this for _years_.
What else are you going to use an iPad for, except for editing family photos and annotating pdfs ?
I use mine to watch Netflix.
What would the point of "adding functionality to the OS" be? If they wanted to put macOS on iPads, they'd just put macOS on iPads.
My understanding at Apple's strategy here is that they're simultaneously exploring two different GUI paradigms — almost pitting them against one-another to see which wins (or, if you like, making a hedged bet):
• macOS, for building "Unix pipeline-like" workflows where you point different programs-as-tools at the same document or take one program's output as another's input. Apple encourages macOS developers to make this kind of app.
• iPadOS, for building "all-in-one silo" workflows (think: Photoshop, Garage Band, XCode), where the developer intends to solve fully for a use-case, such that people with that use-case can get by using only their app. In these cases, rather than interacting with other apps, a siloed app will embed whatever other accessory workflows a user might need, either directly (e.g. XCode embedding a terminal console) or through plugins (Photoshop plugins, Garage Band VST support.) The user might use other apps at the same time as this app, but not in a way where the apps are sharing data or interacting in any way; rather merely using each app to "do what it does" — e.g. referencing a design diagram in Miro while implementing that design in XCode, and writing down reminders in some reminders app. (Thus, the iPadOS 16's Stage Manager, which assumes you want several apps on screen at once, but doesn't implement drag-and-drop between apps or any other kind of useful inter-app interaction.)
As a user, as long as each user-story you have has been perfectly addressed by some particular siloed iPadOS app, then iPadOS should work for you. (And there are a lot of people whose user-stories have all been perfectly addressed by these siloed iPadOS apps — mostly, people with boring, predictable, traditional workflows. Novelists; illustrators; business executives; possibly salespeople.)
However, if your workflow is niche or "constantly reinventing itself" enough that nobody's ever going to make a siloed app specifically for your needs, and so you expect to get things done by throwing files between various different tools all day — then iPadOS is never going to work for you. You need a desktop OS designed around that kind of thing.