I don't think that's the main thing holding them back. I think they can make a great iPadOS that's more Mac like, but the problem is that if they do that, Mac sales will take a hit. And since Macs are more expensive, they would take a revenue hit.
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iPad Marketing VP: iPad and Mac are Complementary Devices, Not Competing Devices
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The notion of them being "complementary" is fine. The problem is that, for most people, current iPad is not the best complement for the Mac. If you have both devices, chances are Mac is you productivity device and iPad is content consumption device. But:
- iPad Pro is too expensive for a complementary designation
- None of the iPad models is optimized for content consumption. Samsung Tab S series is a better device for that for most people: 1) it does have OLED display which is not as bright as new iPad panels but it's perfectly fine for indoor usage 2) it has 16:10 display ratio 3) it has more reasonable price.
I’m guessing you haven’t perused Intel’s processor line up?
I think what they’re saying is the Mac is the complement to the iPad in some specific instances. If someone has an iPad and, after getting it, wants to run applications the iPad doesn’t run, then they’ll need another system for that. If the applications they want to run, run on Windows, they’ll need a Windows machine. If the applications they want to run, run on macOS, then they’ll need a Mac. And, if someone has a Mac and wants to run iPad applications, they’ll need an iPad. It goes both ways.
If someone owns an iPad and can do what they want to do, then there’s no need for anything else. That’s where most people are.
If anyone with Apple News+ wants to read the article, it’s here.
iPad Pro vs. MacBook: The Great Apple Laptop Trade-Off — The Wall Street Journal
Apple’s latest iPad Pro is superior to a Mac in many ways. Yet a Mac beats the iPad on the most important thing—software.
I’m getting really tired of everyone in the MacRumors forum thinking they know more than the executive team of one of the most successful company in all of human history.
It’s the same thing in every thread here.
A company as big as Apple probably spends millions in market research before making any decisions. They know what they are doing.
If the iPad Pro is not the right device for you, don’t buy it.
There’s currently 400 million iPad users, including me. They are clearly doing something right.
It’s the same thing in every thread here.
A company as big as Apple probably spends millions in market research before making any decisions. They know what they are doing.
If the iPad Pro is not the right device for you, don’t buy it.
There’s currently 400 million iPad users, including me. They are clearly doing something right.
iPad Pro is sometimes more expensive than a Macbook Air for some combinations of memory and keyboard and pencil.
It's an expensive tool for specific users and gets kudos for being the best device around technically.
A better Files app would go a long way to making iPadOS better.
Other apps work mostly fine. Office apps (either Microsoft or Apple) work better with keyboards rather than fingers.
The new iPad keyboard with extra keys and trackpad will make it even better. For those who need it.
The 11" devices are always a typing compromise.
But the 13" iPads are low end laptop size and people seem to expect these devices should be more Mac like or have a Mac mode. The hardware is powerful enough (although maybe MacOS would hit the battery life in a bad way).
Honestly, the files app issue has been solved mostly for me and is actually even better than the pre-iCloud finder in most cases for me. I keep most of my files on iCloud Drive now, so it's even more convenient how everything syncs.
Stop sucking apples teet. Your arguments are terrible.
Sure it could run macOS, but it would suck badly…..lol…says who exactly?
Tell me this. Up until recently you could run Windows 10 on an ipad pro through virtualization. Guess what? It ran very well. Are you telling macos runs worse NATIVELY on an m1 than a virtualized version of Window 10 on an m1?
GTFO shill.
Hah. I get that. Just taking the piss with the 4 inch thing.
There will be differences I’m sure. But I don’t think it would be that great. For the use I am thinking the limitation of a slower Mac on iPad is not a problem. I am thinking cases where someone has a Mac desktop of some flavor. Or even a solid MBP. the times to run out to a coffee shop or bar for a few hours and not take all the horsepower with them.
If I could run Xcode or eclipse or full Excel on iPad in those cases it would be worth the trade offs.
I agree it’s not feasible to make an iPad a complete replacement for an actual Mac, but the use case I am describing fits quite well into the idea of an iPad complimenting a Mac. To do so really requires more that iPadOS allows today.
Says Craig Federighi, who said they had macOS running in their labs years ago to test whether they should bring macOS to the iPad. He said the experience was terrible, so Apple won’t be bringing macOS to the iPad, ever. While my opinion means nothing, Craig F is the Sr. VP of Software Engineering and if he says it’s not happening, it’s not happening. You can hate on me all you want and call me names, but that doesn’t change the fact Apple will never do what you want them to do.
You can’t even get what I said correctly. It isn’t that macOS doesn’t run. It’s that the experience is terrible. He specifically mentioned macOS is not optimized for touch and would be an awful thing to put on an iPad. He wasn’t talking about whether it was laggy or buggy. He was saying you wouldn’t like it if you tried it because neither macOS nor any Mac apps are optimized for iPad. In other words, you’d be frustrated trying to manipulate controls that aren’t designed for touch. That has nothing to do with how fast macOS would run on an iPad. So your thing about Windows running on an M1 is a non-sequitor.
Get back to me when you actually know what you’re talking about.
Yes he said that. I don’t think it would be a terrible experience. If you stop thinking that macOS on iPad has to be touch. A docked iPad running a macOS mode slightly slower (maybe) that an MBA blocking touch input would be fine. Absuletly the same experience as a 13” MBA or MBP.
Just because the thing has a digitizer does not mean it has to be active in all modes.
Given common SOC, likely aligned supporting hardware, common core os, power mgmt, memory mgmt, networking mgmt, etc it should be possible to have a Mac up mode when docked and touch up when not. Or to support running actual Mac apps on iPad using non-touch interface.
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I know that I want to run macOS apps on my iPad Pro. No idea why you would associate this with "tech bubble with tech diehards who want to manipulate Terminal settings". Totally lost on me and very strange! The latest iPad Pro should be faster than my M1 MBP I have. Why would I not run Lightroom Classic etc. on it as well?
User story: I want to run macOS apps on iPad Pro. Implementation detail: difficult without significant redesign to run them on iPad OS. Solution: Why can't I have macOS on iPad os? Another implementation challenge: Apple would have to make macOS touch compatible to be consistent and find a way to not frustrate users with apps that are not designed for touch at all.
btw.: Would you mind sharing your survey? You are mentioning it but you are not sharing the details. Makes it hard to judge if it is relevant or not
Again: You are down the road of how you would implement it. User does not care if iPad OS with macOS apps, or if macOS on iPP with touch enabled... I have some thoughts how I would approach this technically, but that's for another time.
Been around since NeXT OS, and loved it. Getting touch into a desktop OS with apps not designed for it at all is the only real problem I accept here...
Disagreed with the the MacBook Air issues. The M1/M2 Airs are great IMHO. Not a replacement for a Studio or a future apple silicon Mac Pro, and never been one.
Don't see a M4 iPP as a lesser device than the M2 MBA we have at home or my MBP M1 I am using. I am fine with the iPP to run the same apps we are using there and that are not making them sweat at all.
I think you are in a special bubble here on very demanding apps.
And yes, I am totally fine "being tethered" to a keyboard with the iPP when running macOS and/or apps, but still want to use the pen for some apps.
I am not sure the Surface Pros are considered a failure at MS. I know people who moved from MacBook to Surface and like it. Not a representative survey though...
Not sure if they really appreciate what people want. I don't have any research backing this. Would love to see their product discovery process (if they did one) on the related user stories. But these are clearly highly sensitive.
I would not rule out that all your assumptions claims and thoughts might have had a lesser impact on the decisions at Apple than their fear to cannibalize their business. In their high confidence they might underestimate though that if they don't compete internally, the door will be open for external competition.
This is completely unnecessary for obvious reasons.
macOS apps are a hog compared to what developers can do natively on the iPad and Apple would prefer if macOS apps were as efficient as iPad apps.
Everyone should know this by now. It's right there with Catalyst.
macOS apps would run like crap on an iPad for the same reason Windows desktop apps run like crap on Surface tablets. Could you image all the teeth gnashing and hair pulling because people started doing Blender renders or Ollama text generation on their tablet and saw the device overheat and screen burn from it?
The revolution Steve Jobs resisted: Apple's App Store marks 10 years of third-party innovation | AppleInsider
The first iPhone saw release in 2007 with a fairly barebones selection of apps, none of which were made by outside developers. That changed when Apple opened the gates to developers a year later with iPhone OS 2.0, invigorating a sector and forever changing what it meant to be an "Apple developer."appleinsider.com
Don't post links to clown sites. The goal was always to have an App Store alongside movies and music stores. It was one of the biggest predictions and talking points going back years before it launched. For a few years Apple hosted third party apps in iTools shared folders.
Auto updating software was a wide request too.
They can make iPadOS better without outright making it macOS (never will happen).
But there are things such as Finder which can be done better.
For me, the issue isn't running macOS on an iPad, it's that iPadOS needs to be its own OS and not just a forked version of iOS.
But there are things such as Finder which can be done better.
For me, the issue isn't running macOS on an iPad, it's that iPadOS needs to be its own OS and not just a forked version of iOS.
They can do this for a while, but sooner or later someone else will eat their lunch.
Yup.
All my important stuff is iCloud synced anyhow so whether I navigate to it with finder, directly via an app or via files on the tablet... meh. Makes no difference.
What do you know about my use cases?
If I can run my apps on a 16G MBP M1 to my satisfaction I can do so on a iPP M4 with 16G
Really? So nobody should use MacBooks because they are soo crap?
Define crap. If my apps run the same way on my iPP with a keyboard as they run on a MBP with keyboard, I am ok.
You completely lost me on your Blender and Ollama topic. Get a device that is fit for your purpose and be happy. I guess you must have tested the new iPP very thoroughly already to know about all that crap and overheating... Would you mind sharing your test procedure? Btw.: If a MBA is not good enough for you, this is NOT an argument against an iPP with macOS. It just means it is not for you...
The iPP M4 would be perfectly fine to run my apps that are currently running on my M1 MBP
I suggest that people accept that other people may have different requirements from their own.
Just because I want something does not mean that you should want it.
I can live with that pretty well
. I'd suggest you do the same.
thing is the UI code is pretty generic and can be re-bound. there's nothing to stop apple doing a shim to essentially migrate macOS UI elements to iPadOS UI on a one for one basis. both have buttons, drop downs, mouse pointer targets, etc. available in the UI kit.
The menu bar? Can trivially be re-displayed in an iPadOS specific UI element. The dock already exists on both platforms, Window management via stage manager already exists on both platforms.
I'm hoping for this and if I was running apple I would be working towards this. Running iPad apps on the Mac is step one, running Mac apps on iPadOS is step two, and sooner or later the platforms will converge and the UI for the app will simply shift to the relevant UI depending on what platform the app runs on.
The hardware is the same. Both platforms have their roots in nextstep, there's no technical reason apple can't do this. Its just a question of the will to do it, and given the hardware advance on the higher end iPads, the commonality with the Mac hardware and the cleanly abstracted UI of native macOS or iPadOS apps I think it is inevitable. I'm just hoping the time is "soon", hopefully iPadOS 18.
As above - I DO NOT WANT macOS on the iPad. I want apps to basically shift UI based on the platform they are running on. As above, there is little technical reason this can't be done, and unlike Windows, as macOS and iPadOS UI are fairly cleanly abstracted from the rest of the application I don't even believe it would be difficult for a company with a fraction of Apple's resources. It's just a case of will to do it.
Microsoft is not in a position to do this with Windows due to the legacy baggage and decades of hacks upon hacks to the core codebase. Just look how it has taken them more than a decade to try and get rid of control panel, and still haven't managed it yet. The code complexity and baggage is why.
As an aside, this is how the vision pro is going to end up with a large number of apps as well. The UI events in the code will simply be re-targeted to Vision Pro UI elements, just like I have proposed above for macOS/iPadOS. Same thing.
Apple have been maintaining a fairly clean code base with clear lines of demarcation in their libraries for decades now - they've been doing so with the long game in mind, and the fruits of their labour in doing so are close to becoming reality. They had the opportunity to start over with nextstep/macOS X once all this was feasible from a performance perspective.
Microsoft on the other hand has been spending far too much effort maintaining legacy compatibility with 35 year old hacks in their platform and as a result do not have this flexibility. Which is why they have tried to force one OS everywhere and we had the whole Windows 8 UI debacle and 3-4 years in there was still no native touch version of office for Windows. There still isn't - if you want a touch friendly version of Office you buy an iPad.
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The M4 iPad Pros
A “pro” device that goes pro by getting thinner and lighter, not heavier and thicker, is not a non sequitur.
Fair point but that’s Apple we are looking at. They also claimed to never make a video iPod until they did, and shouted the no no no from the rooftops. It’s a publicly traded company that even goes so far as to apologize for their own ads - everything is possible at Apple these days.
Well, I'm calling BS on Apple being worried about eating into any kind of revenue because they put a lot of time and money into developing Vision Pro and VisionOS (and the return on that must be minimal or non-existent, and will be for a long time) and allegedly spent over a billion dollars on developing a car that they've allegedly cancelled.
I guess we will find out next month if they've listened at all.
People wanting a full fat desktop OS like macOS on a tablet which has CPU sandwiched super tightly between the case and the screen won't listen to sense. They just want to rant and win internet points. If you reason with them in person they will say yeah. You can load up an intensive app on an iPad and show them the heat. They will listen in person. Online people are not themselves. They lose their real senses.
Others on a number of sites are trolls and influencers bribed by competitors to spread misinformation and mania to sabotage Apple's line up and add confusing noise to the product release.
This mania and misinformation campaign will pass anyway. There have been variations of this during every major product release cycle going back to the 80s.
Then...there are more sensible people who just want drop down menus from the menu bar, or snappier Stage Manager, or better file management. That's sensible and we should have that on iPadOS. It will come in due time. Presently iPadOS has to support iPads that go back about 5 years, including the A12/A13 chips.
iPadOS today isn't the same as it was 5 years ago. In 5 years from now it will have these new features and it will all be optimised for the new CPU families.