Trimmed macOS for iPad M2 coming?

[Ludatyk]

I hear you, but I said making it the best stand-alone product it can be. I feel the iPad Pro is leaving so much of its power left on the table because of iPadOS.

So, adding Stage Manager and virtual memory just don’t cut it for you. Tbf, if you don’t care to use iPadOS because its limited… that’s why macOS exist for you.

IMO, iPadOS feels like it’s meant to be a computer for dummies. Ironically, they’ve tried to make everything overly simple, but in the process they’ve turned multi tasking into a convoluted mess.

You are entitled to your opinion. But I disagree, I don’t believe Stage Manager is such a mess you make it out to be… does it need to be improved on, absolutely. When Apple first brought out multitasking on iOS 9 with SplitScreen… the app picker was horrible, but overtime it has evolved to what it is now.

I call this Stage Manager version 1.0 and history tells us Apple will improve on this, yet we judge them so harshly on version 1.0.

Again I am an Apple fan! I just think the direction they're taking the iPad Pro line has been so sloppy as of late. Stage Manager is straight up clunky, counter intuitive and frustrating. The only "exclusive" M1 feature at this point is external monitor support, which is complete BS IMO.

Not sure what Apple fan has to do with anything… it’s okay to criticism Apple when it’s justified. But in this case, I have to disagree. M1 features also includes virtual ram for which you gloss over… this particular feature will help port desktop class apps over to M1 iPads.

You mean to tell me you have to have an M1 iPad to do anything besides mirror a 4:3 ratio?? Yet some apps, like iMovie, can go full screen? What?? The idea that someone cannot use a $1,099 2020 iPad Pro and have Safari running on an external monitor with full 16:9 aspect ratio is so inexcusable IMO.

Not sure where this is coming from… M1 iPads are now capable of using the full aspect ratio on an external display.

 

[Jedimindtrick]

Tbf, if you don’t care to use iPadOS because its limited… that’s why macOS exist for you.

I'll never agree with this counter argument. Basically what you're saying is that because MacOS exists, it's ok for iPadOS to fall short of its potential, and settle for less than what it's capable of.

iPads have come a long way from being an affordable, sub $400 complimentary device. Fully equipped, the new base 64gb 3gb ram A14 iPad now cost more than a 256gb 8gb ram M1 Mac mini! With that comes a higher level of expectation.

Not sure where this is coming from… M1 iPads are now capable of using the full aspect ratio on an external display.

I'm saying it's utterly ridiculous to gatekeep that feature to only M1 devices. The idea that a 2020 A12Z can only mirror the 4:3 ratio is inexcusable. Stage Manager or not, allow 2020 iPad Pro owners to take advantage of the full aspect ratio. It would be so easy to allow split screen on a 16:9 monitor. A 2006 MacBook can support a HD external monitor. I mean, cmon.

 

[Jedimindtrick]

You don't need to bring MacOS to iPad to provide better window management, multi-user accounts or a better file system. I suspect Apple have tested MacOS on iPads numerous times to see how certain features translate before they're redeveloped into iPadOS iterations.

I agree. I don't necessarily need MacOS on the iPad Pro. However, Stage Manager is a total mess, IMO, and should be torn down to the studs and rebuilt. It's worse than what we had previously with Split Screen/Slide Over!

 

[Ludatyk]

I'll never agree with this counter argument. Basically what you're saying is that because MacOS exists, it's ok for iPadOS to fall short of its potential, and settle for less than what it's capable of.

Seriously? You have to understand it's about context... macOS has been around much longer than iPadOS, it took decades of development for macOS to become what it is today.

I'm saying it's utterly ridiculous to gatekeep that feature to only M1 devices. The idea that a 2020 A12Z can only mirror the 4:3 ratio is inexcusable. Stage Manager or not, allow 2020 iPad Pro owners to take advantage of the full aspect ratio. It would be so easy to allow split screen on a 16:9 monitor. A 2006 MacBook can support a HD external monitor. I mean, cmon.

I agree. But then again, Apple is a company and this is business 101... keeping it M1 exclusive entices users to upgrade.

 

[haydn!]

I agree. I don't necessarily need MacOS on the iPad Pro. However, Stage Manager is a total mess, IMO, and should be torn down to the studs and rebuilt. It's worse than what we had previously with Split Screen/Slide Over!

I’ve not had first hand experience yet so cannot agree nor disagree with this. But I’m sure we both will agree that Apple will continue to evolve and improve it.

From reading some complaints, it seems like relatively small changes would make it considerably better.

 

[LogicalApex]

I could see this since Stage Manager is on iPad OS and MacOS. Allowing the M-Series iPad Pro devices to operate a MacOS mode that likely was MacOS w/ Stage Manager enabled, but otherwise all the same would be a major step forward.

I don’t see it being M2 exclusive though as they’d have a really angry customer base of M1 iPad Pro users. They’s also have no real technical argument to protect themselves with. The M1 chip is in all their current Macs.

All that said, I’ll believe it when I see it… At this rate I think Apple is fine letting the whole thing collapse under its own weight.

 

[Jedimindtrick]

Seriously? You have to understand it's about context... macOS has been around much longer than iPadOS, it took decades of development for macOS to become what it is today.

I get that, but why does that matter? With that logic, you're suggesting that instead of taking proven concepts that work really well from MacOS, rather they should to start from ground zero and try to reinvent the wheel with everything on iPadOS. 12 years ago when the iPad launched, that made sense. The ideas and concepts that worked on MacOS simply were not capable of running on the original iPad's inferior hardware. And we didn't expect it to, it cost half the price of a Macbook. That’s no longer the case.

There's absolutely no need to keep the iPad Pro line so committed to touch interface for "Pro" users. If Final Cut Pro ever makes it to the iPad Pro, I'm would never use my finger to control it, ever. I use Excel on my iPad Pro all of the time, but always with a mouse and keyboard, never with touch only, for obvious reasons.

To me the solution is so simple and obvious, change the UI when a keyboard and mouse are attached to a more conventional windowed environment! Keep everything else the same when in touch only mode.

 

[Ludatyk]

I get that, but why does that matter? With that logic, you're suggesting that instead of taking proven concepts that work really well from MacOS, rather they should to start from ground zero and try to reinvent the wheel with everything on iPadOS.

Ca'mon.. you should know this by now. iPadOS is touch-centric compared to mouse driven on macOS, of course... Apple have to start from ground zero when applying anything to the iPad.

There's absolutely no need to keep the iPad Pro line so committed to touch interface for "Pro" users. If Final Cut Pro ever makes it to the iPad Pro, I'm would never use my finger to control it, ever. I use Excel on my iPad Pro all of the time, but always with a mouse and keyboard, never with touch only, for obvious reasons.

It's all about preferences. Just because YOU don't care to use touch when using certain apps... shouldn't apply to everyone else.

To me the solution is so simple and obvious, change the UI when a keyboard and mouse are attached to a more conventional windowed environment! Keep everything else the same when in touch only mode.

So, your solution is... iPadOS when using touch and macOS when a keyboard & mouse attached to the iPad? OK. But I'd rather wait it out to see what more can be made out of Stage Manager before casting it off.

 

[Jedimindtrick]

Ca'mon.. you should know this by now. iPadOS is touch-centric compared to mouse driven on macOS, of course... Apple have to start from ground zero when applying anything to the iPad.

Like I said, 12 years ago that made sense, when the iPad was a touch only interface. It didn’t even offer mouse/trackpad support back then. We’re so far beyond that by this point. It’s not a touch only interface anymore, touch first, sure. But we’ve had the Apple Pencil for precision input and first party keyboard attachments for 7 years! Now they include a trackpad/keyboard option for ALL iPads except the mini.

The iPad has evolved from its original concept. When it launched, it was really the first mainstream tablet to market. And back then, you simply couldn’t put high end pc specs into tablet form. Now you can.

So, your solution is... iPadOS when using touch and macOS when a keyboard & mouse attached to the iPad? OK. But I'd rather wait it out to see what more can be made out of Stage Manager before casting it off.

yes! Absolutely! Not MacOS necessarily, but a more traditional windowed environment.

Clinging to the touch first interface is what’s bogging everything down! It isn’t the hardware! The only reason we don’t have more pro apps on the iPad is because they can’t figure out a way to make it work with touch controls. Which I think is a battle not worth fighting because the majority of Pro users need a precision pointer and keyboard shortcuts anyhow. I would much rather have Pro apps available to me even if a mouse and keyboard were a requirement, rather than waiting for some wonky way to implement finger controls.

Which brings me back to my first point, the original iPad simply didn’t have the hardware to run pro apps or multitask in a traditional windowed environment. So it had watered down versions of iMovie, Numbers, Pages, etc. We no longer have those limitation, the only limitation is the input.

 

[haydn!]

Ads are never great, but Apple could at least make sure the apps are relevant! Advertising a gambling/game app at the top of a “You might also like” list of podcast apps is a sure fire why to get ignored.

Reference gambling, agree there needs to be a morals check here!

 

[chevyboy60013]

Personally I like iPadOS 16, and like stage manager. Makes it very easy to do non work related things during company time, like texting with friends, facebook, posting ads on dating sites, along with doing minimal actual work, and do it where no one knows., that is absolutely priceless.

 

[Kal Madda]

We all knew Stage Manger could run on older devices, but Apple intentionally held it out. Eventually caving to public pressure, and going back on what they had said about the memory being so important. Give me a break. A 5th gen iPad with 2 gigs of ram can run 4 apps simultaneously (Split Screen, Slide Over, PiP).

I guarantee they could port over the eventual external monitor support to A12Z devices as well, but intentionally won't!

Again I am an Apple fan! I just think the direction they're taking the iPad Pro line has been so sloppy as of late. Stage Manager is straight up clunky, counter intuitive and frustrating. The only "exclusive" M1 feature at this point is external monitor support, which is complete BS IMO. You mean to tell me you have to have an M1 iPad to do anything besides mirror a 4:3 ratio?? Yet some apps, like iMovie, can go full screen? What?? The idea that someone cannot use a $1,099 2020 iPad Pro and have Safari running on an external monitor with full 16:9 aspect ratio is so inexcusable IMO.

The version of Stage Manager that’s available to those older A12X and A12Z iPad Pro’s only have to support half the number of windows because of the lack of external monitor support. This makes perfect sense that they don’t support external monitors since they only have about half the RAM of the M1 iPads, not to mention the lack of Virtual Memory Swap support. Apple had to pair down the feature in order to support those older iPads, so they absolutely weren’t wrong when they said the COMPLETE Stage Manager feature required Virtual Memory Swap, since that requires holding double the number of apps in memory at once in order to function.

 

[SebCohen]

What do you reckon, guys?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1583065617950613504

I would pay 3500$ for an iPad Pro 12.9 512 M2 w/keyboard that has MacOS/PadOS

 

[sputnikBA]

I could see this being M2 only because of  Pencil Hover being limited to M2 devices and maybe some UI affordances to bridge the macOS (mouse pointer) / iPad (touch) gap.

How likely that is in the end idk, but I can see it being a possibility.

 

[Kal Madda]

There's absolutely no need to keep the iPad Pro line so committed to touch interface for "Pro" users. If Final Cut Pro ever makes it to the iPad Pro, I'm would never use my finger to control it, ever. I use Excel on my iPad Pro all of the time, but always with a mouse and keyboard, never with touch only, for obvious reasons.

To me the solution is so simple and obvious, change the UI when a keyboard and mouse are attached to a more conventional windowed environment! Keep everything else the same when in touch only mode.

I’ll have to disagree on this point. There is absolutely a very good reason to keep the iPad Pro line committed to touch interactions. It’s a touch-first device! Many iPad Pro users use the iPad with no keyboard and trackpad attached. And just because you wouldn’t use touch interactions for pro software, doesn’t mean that nobody else would prefer touch interactions with their pro software. I think it largely depends on the use-case of the individual, and iPadOS’s current system that’s fully optimized for finger-only interaction is better for people who just want to use the iPad, without requiring the use of optional accessories with it. Since the iPad only ships with a touchscreen, everything on it is and should be optimized for finger-only interactions, even if they’re enhanced by use of optional accessories.

As to your second point about switching the UI, I think this would very likely cause confusion when switching back and forth, and it would also harm muscle memory. Imagine when you pull it off of the keyboard and you reach to select a button that exists in macOS, but it’s no longer there. How does the system respond when there’s a Mac app you had open that doesn’t exist in a touch-optimized form in the iPad App Store? There would be hundreds of little interactions and system considerations like this that would make this kind of a system problematic, and extremely difficult to implement. And I’m not convinced that the end result would be worth all of the downsides, confusion, and technical issues and paradigm inconsistencies that would be introduced. For these reasons and more, I think that iPadOS and macOS should remain separate and distinct, but I think iPadOS should continue to gain macOS functionality in a way that makes sense for it’s touch-first nature. I think Apple should also continue to make it easier for developers to port their pro software from the Mac to the iPad to help unify the third-party software ecosystem between the two. I think this is the goal with some of Apple’s current coding tools such as Catalyst, SwiftUI, etc. I could see Apple implementing a tool in the future that could use something akin to SwiftUI (or maybe even a future version of SwiftUI) that would automatically optimize the UI of a Mac app for iPadOS, similar to how Catalyst optimizes iOS and iPadOS app UIs for macOS. This I think would be the better solution, because it wouldn’t undermine the iPad’s touch-first design, but it would also make the iPad a superior 2-in-1 device. One of people’s biggest problems with the Microsoft Surface Pro is that it’s OS and apps are still very much optimized for desktop use more than touch-first. Most apps on the Surface require a stylus or keyboard attachment to get the best experience using them. If Apple can bring desktop software to the iPad, but with UI and other optimizations that make better sense on a tablet, it is better for those who don’t want or use the extra accessories, and it makes it a better tablet. Many pro desktop softwares are already available on iPadOS, and I think Virtual Memory Swap alone was a huge step in making it easier for more pro desktop software to transition to the iPad.

The tldr version, I think that iPadOS can incorporate more macOS functionality in a way that’s better optimized for it’s touch-first nature, and that such a solution would be better than what I deem the lazy option of copy pasting macOS onto the iPad. I also think Apple should continue to make it easier to port Mac apps to the iPad, I’d even be completely for a Catalyst 2.0 style solution that would automatically offer Mac apps on the iPad with a UI that’s automatically optimized for touch input, and iPadOS. I just think the idea of copy pasting macOS onto the iPad would be a bad idea on multiple levels, just like I wouldn’t advocate Apple copy pasting iPadOS onto a MacBook.

 

[Kal Madda]

So, adding Stage Manager and virtual memory just don’t cut it for you. Tbf, if you don’t care to use iPadOS because its limited… that’s why macOS exist for you.


You are entitled to your opinion. But I disagree, I don’t believe Stage Manager is such a mess you make it out to be… does it need to be improved on, absolutely. When Apple first brought out multitasking on iOS 9 with SplitScreen… the app picker was horrible, but overtime it has evolved to what it is now.

I call this Stage Manager version 1.0 and history tells us Apple will improve on this, yet we judge them so harshly on version 1.0.


Not sure what Apple fan has to do with anything… it’s okay to criticism Apple when it’s justified. But in this case, I have to disagree. M1 features also includes virtual ram for which you gloss over… this particular feature will help port desktop class apps over to M1 iPads.


Not sure where this is coming from… M1 iPads are now capable of using the full aspect ratio on an external display.

Exactly this! I think the addition of Virtual Memory Swap in iPadOS 16 didn’t get a lot of attention because it wasn’t as obvious of a feature, but it will absolutely change the game for software on iPadOS! 👍🏻. And with the addition of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on the iPad, I think the momentum is all towards more professional desktop apps being added to the iPad. The above mentioned apps aren’t perfect in their first version, but they actually do contain almost all of the same functionality as their desktop counterparts, and I think they’re going to only improve with future updates. But I definitely think that now with Apple’s pro apps on board, more developers are going to follow Apple’s lead and port their apps as well. I think iPadOS 16 really entirely changed the game for pro desktop-class software on the iPad, and I think it’s no coincidence that we’ve been seeing so many desktop apps moving to the iPad in the last few months since iPadOS 16 launched. These are definitely exciting times for iPadOS, and I’m glad that Apple is committed to improving it, not just giving up on it and slapping macOS on the iPad. 👍🏻

 

[Jedimindtrick]

As to your second point about switching the UI, I think this would very likely cause confusion when switching back and forth

But this is how Stage Manager works already, you can toggle it off and on, which completely changes the UI. And I’m sure it is confusing to many casual users.

Also, your response was really centered around an argument of bringing MacOS to iPad, which isn’t really my stance. There are features from MacOS that I think would significantly increase productivity on the iPad, especially when using a mouse/keyboard/external monitor.

The Magic Keyboard with trackpad debuted over 3 years ago at this point. iPad Pros have had the same chip sold in the iMac now for over 2 years. My argument is that the iPad Pro line is not an underpowered, touch-only tablet that is only capable of running mobile versions of desktop apps (like the original iPad) It’s the opposite. It’s marketed and branded with a trackpad and keyboard attachment, a stylus, and a most notably, a desktop class chipset. (I’ll attach a screenshot of first thing you see on apples webpage for the iPP) With that comes a higher level of expectations, IMO, and I think iPad Pros are capable of more.

 

[Kal Madda]

But this is how Stage Manager works already, you can toggle it off and on, which completely changes the UI. And I’m sure it is confusing to many casual users.

Also, your response was really centered around an argument of bringing MacOS to iPad, which isn’t really my stance. There are features from MacOS that I think would significantly increase productivity on the iPad, especially when using a mouse/keyboard/external monitor.

The Magic Keyboard with trackpad debuted over 3 years ago at this point. iPad Pros have had the same chip sold in the iMac now for over 2 years. My argument is that the iPad Pro line is not an underpowered, touch-only tablet that is only capable of running mobile versions of desktop apps (like the original iPad) It’s the opposite. It’s marketed and branded with a trackpad and keyboard attachment, a stylus, and a most notably, a desktop class chipset. (I’ll attach a screenshot of first thing you see on apples webpage for the iPP) With that comes a higher level of expectations, IMO, and I think iPad Pros are capable of more.

If you’re talking about improving iPadOS, then I completely agree with that, it seemed like you were saying the iPad Pro needed macOS. I personally think iPadOS needs macOS features, but should remain distinct and optimized for touch input. As to the UI change with Stage Manager, it is a UI change, but it’s not nearly as confusing of one in my opinion as switching between iPadOS and macOS would be. With Stage Manager, you’re Control Center still behaves the same way, you still have a Status Bar, the app UIs stay the same, the only thing that really changes is the addition of a drag bar at the bottom corner of app windows, the Recent Apps tiles to the left, and overlapping windows. But it’s consistent with the rest of the system, because it’s still iPadOS. If one were to switch from iPadOS to “macOS mode” there would be several radical changes to the UI, such as a Menu Bar instead of the Status Bar you’re used to, different app UIs, and even different apps all together to do the same things like Finder + Preview instead of Files, etc. Besides all of these big differences, how would the system behave when you have an iPad-only app open on your iPad, and then you switch to “macOS mode”? Would it just close that app entirely, and now you don’t have access to it in this mode? There would be so many changes between modes, and it would be incredibly difficult to switch the content between these two as well since their are app discrepancies and system discrepancies. Personally, I think the better option is to just continue to improve iPadOS and give it more macOS functionality.