Comment by chakintosh
6 months ago
Some 15 years ago, A friend of mine said to me "mark my words, Apple will eventually merge OSX with iOS on the iPad". And with every passing keynote since then, it seemed Apple's been inching towards that prophecy, and today, the iPad has become practically a MacBook Air with a touch screen. Unless you were a video editor, programmer who needs resources to compile or a 3D artist, I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad.
The fact that they haven't done it in 15 years should be an indication that they don't intend to do it at all. Remember that in the same time period Apple rebuilt every Macbook from scratch from the chipset up. Neither the hardware nor software is a barrier to them merging the two platforms. It's that the ecosystems are fundamentally incompatible. A true "professional" device needs to offer the user full control, and Apple isn't giving up this control on an i-Device. The 30% cut is simply too lucrative.
If anyone wants to read up on how much effort Apple actually went through to keep Apple Silicon Macs open, take a look here: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/security/#per-container...
Secure Boot on other platforms is all-or-nothing, but Apple recognizes that Mac users should have the freedom to choose exactly how much to peel back the security, and should never be forced to give up more than they need to. So for that reason, it's possible to have a trusted macOS installation next to a less-trusted installation of something else, such as Asahi Linux.
Contrast this with others like Microsoft who believe all platforms should be either fully trusted or fully unsupported. Google takes this approach with Android as well. You're either fully locked in, or fully on your own.
> You're either fully locked in, or fully on your own.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. You can trivially root a Pixel factory image. And if you're talking about how they will punish you for that by removing certain features: Apple does that too (but to a lesser extent).
https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/RecordingIndicatorUtili...
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If anyone wants to read up on all the features Apple didn't implement from Intel Macs that made Linux support take so long, here is a list of UEFI features that represents only a small subset of the missing support relative to AMD and Intel chipsets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI#Features
Alternatively, read about iBoot. Haha, just kidding! There is no documentation for iBoot, unlike there is for uBoot and Clover and OpenCore and SimpleBoot and Freeloader and systemd-boot. You're just expected to... know. Yunno?
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the only macbook I’ve tried to put linux on was a t2 machine, and it still doesn’t sleep/suspend right, so I’m a bit skeptical that apple is really leading the way here, but maybe I’ve just not touched any recent windows devices either
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They don’t want to overtake their desktop device market. If the UI fully converges, then all you have a iPad with a keyboard across all devices (laptops, desktop).
I think practically everyone is better off with a laptop. iPad is great if you're an artist using the pencil, or just consuming media on it. Otherwise a macbook is far more powerful and ergonomic to use.
I think perhaps you are overestimating the computing needs of the majority of the population. Get one of the iPad cases with a keyboard and an iPad is in many ways a better laptop.
But the majority won't pay extra for an ipad and a keyboard, when they can pay less for an air with everything included...
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Or maybe a stand and separate keyboard. Better ergonomics than a laptop that way with similar portability.
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The problem is that almost everything, including basic web browsing, is straight-up worse on the iPad. Weird incompatibilities, sites that don’t honor desktop mode, tabs unloading from memory, random reloads, etc. all mar the experience.
I have an iPad and really like it, but no, it is not.
Several small things combined make it really different to the experience that I have with a desktop OS. But it is nice as side device
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I used to think that, not having used an iPad. Now I carry a work-issued iPad with 5G and it's actually pretty convenient for remote access to servers. I wouldn't want to spend a day working on it, but it's way faster than pulling out a laptop to make one tiny change on a server. It's also great for taking notes at meetings/conferences.
It's irritatingly bad at consuming media and browsing the web. No ad blocking, so every webpage is an ad-infested wasteland. There are so many ads in YouTube and streaming music. I had no idea.
It's also kindof a pain to connect to my media library. Need to figure out a better solution for that.
So, as a relatively new iPad user it's pleasantly useful for select work tasks. Not so great at doomscrolling or streaming media. Who knew?
There's native ad blocking on iOS and has been for a while—I've found that to significantly enhance the usability of the device. I use Wipr[0], other options are available.
[0]: https://kaylees.site/wipr2.html
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Try the Brave browser for YouTube. I used Jellyfin for my media library and that seemed to work fine for tv and movies.
I just got a Macbook and haven't touched my iPad Pro since, I would think I could make a change faster on a Macbook then iPad if they were both in my bag. Although I do miss the cellular data that the iPad has.
Use Orion Browser. It allows installing Firefox/Chrome extensions. Install Firefox unlock Origin.
> practically everyone is better off with a laptop
The majority of the world are using their phones as a computing device.
And as someone with a MacBook and iPad the later is significantly more ergonomic.
I prefer MacBook to iPad most of the time. The only use case for iPad for me where it shines is when I need to use a pencil.
I don't understand why my MacBook doesn't have a touchscreen. I'm switching to an iPad Pro tomorrow. I use Superwhisper to talk to it 90% of the time anyway.
My theory is because of the hinge, which is a common point of failure on laptops. Either you are putting extra strain on it by having someone constantly touching the screen, and some users just mash their fingers into touch screens. Or users want a fully openable screen to mimic a tablet format, and those hinges always seem to fail quicker. Every touchscreen laptop I've had eventually has had the hinge fail.
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Because MacBooks have subpar displays, at least the M4 Air does. The iPad Pro is a better value.
> The iPad has become practically a MacBook Air with a touch screen. Unless you were a video editor, programmer who needs resources to compile or a 3D artist, I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad.
No! It's not - and it's dangerous to propagate this myth. There are so many arbitrary restrictions on iPad OS that don't exist on MacOS. Massive restrictions on background apps - things like raycast (MacOS version), Text Expander, cleanshot, popclip, etc just aren't possible in iPad OS. These are tools that anyone would find useful. No root/superuser access. I still can't install whatever apps I want from whatever sources I want. Hell, you can't even write and run iPadOS apps in a code editor on the iPad itself. Apple's own editor/development tool - Xcode - only runs on MacOS.
The changes to window management are great - but iPad and iPadOS are still extremely locked down.
I don't use an iPad much, but it's been interesting to watch from afar how it's been changing over these years.
They could have gone the direction of just running MacOS on it, but clearly they don't want to. I have a feeling that the only reason MacOS is the way it is, is because of history. If they were building a laptop from scratch, they would want it more in their walled garden.
I'm curious to see what a "power user" desktop with windowing and files, and all that stuff that iPad is starting to get, ultimately looks like down this alternative evolutionary branch.
Its obvious isn't it? It will look like a desktop, except Apple decides what apps you can run and takes their 30% tax on all commerce.
Yeah, it's like we're watching two parallel evolution paths: macOS dragging its legacy along, and iPadOS trying to reinvent "productivity" from first principles, within Apple's tight design sandbox.
Whether or not they eventually fuse, I don't know—I doubt it. But the approach they've taken over the past 15 years to gradually increase the similarities in user experience, while not trying to force a square peg in a round hole, have been the best path in terms of usability.
I think Microsoft was a little too eager to fuse their tablet and desktop interface. It has produced some interesting innovations in the process but it's been nowhere near as polished as ipadOS/macOS.
ipad hardware is a full blown M chip. There's no real hardware limitation that stops the iPad from running macOS, but merging it cannibalizes each product line's sales
Right. But as long as touch is the main interface to you tablet, at least the desktop UI should be designed for that. So in my eyes it totally makes sense not just to use plain MacOS for the iPad. Another item is that so far they resist giving users full control over their iPad.
The new windowing feature basically cannibalizes MacBook Air.
A Macbook Air is cheaper than an iPad Pro with a keyboard though. Not to mention you still can't run apps from outside the app store, and most of these new features we're hoping work as well as they do on MacOS, but given that background tasks had to be an API, I doubt they will.
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There's still software I can't run on an iPad which is basically the only reason I have a MacBook Air. Maybe for some a windowing system may be the push to switch but that seems doubtful to me.
I really wish there was some sort of hybrid device. I often travel by foot/bike/motorbike and space comes at a premium. I'd have a Microsoft Surface if Windows was not so unbearable.
On the other hand, I have come to love having a reading/writing/sketching device that is completely separate from my work device. I can't get roped into work and emails and notifications when I just want to read in bed. My iPad Mini is a truly distraction-free device.
I also think it would be hard to have a user experience that works great both for mobile work and sitting-at-a-desk work. I returned my Microsoft Surface because of a save dialog in a sketching app. I did not want to do file management because drawing does not feel like a computing task. On the other hand, I do want to deal with files when I'm using 3 different apps to work on a website's files.
Yes and no. What they are currently doing, and it is working out greatly, is having a single hardware platform and a common code base on all devices. They still have branches of the main OS body for each device with the device specific customization. Which absolutely makes sense. Macs don't have touch. But iPads have. Which has at least some differentiation in the desktop UI. Then they try to keep up strong limitations on what iPad software can do - probably to a large extend to keep the lucrative app store alive. And of course, TV OS looks quite different for obvious reasons.
Yeah I think the majority of users, even in an office environment would be better of with an iPad in 99% of cases. All standard office stuff, like presentations; documents and similar are going to run better on an iPad. There are less foot guns, users are less likely to open 300 tabs just because they can.
If you are a developer or a creative however, then a Mac is still very useful.
I still find iPadOS frustrating for certain "pro" workflows. File management, windowing, background tasks - all still feel half-baked compared to macOS. It's like Apple's trying to protect the simplicity of iOS while awkwardly grafting on power-user features
With Microsoft opening Windows's kernel to the Xbox team, and a possible macOS-iPadOS unification, we are reaching multiple levels of climate changes in Hell. It's hailing!
I told that to John Gruber and he said never will happen
But when you have so many customers buying and using both, seems like it'd be bad business for them to fully merge those lines.
Does an iPad allow for multiple users?
Yes, but only if it's enrolled in MDM, bizarrely enough.
I wish Apple provided the MDM, rather than relying on a random consumer ecosystem of dodgy companies who all charge 3-18$ per machine per month, which is a lot.
Auth should be Apple Business Manager; image serving should be passive directories / cloud buckets.
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I don’t think that’s bizarre at all, there’s a clear financial incentive for things to be this way. Apple can’t have normal people sharing a single device instead of buying one for each.
> Yes, but only if it's enrolled in MDM, bizarrely enough
In education or corporate settings, where account management is centralized, you want each person who uses an iPad to access their own files, email, etc.
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> I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad.
For the same price, you still get a better mac.
They can't do this. It would destroy their ability to rent their iOS users out because they'd have access to dev tools and could "scale the wall."
Then why break it off as iPadOS?
I wish they’d focus on just enabling actual functionality on iPad - like can I have Xcode please? And a shell?
I dgaf what the UI looks like. It’s fine.
Nothing Apple can do to iPadOS is going to fix the fundamental problem that:
1. iPadOS has a lot of software either built for the "three share sheets to the wind" era of iPadOS, or lazily upscaled from an iPhone app, and
2. iPadOS does not allow users to tamper with the OS or third-party software, so you can't fix any of this broken mess.
Video editing and 3D would be possible on iPadOS, but for #1. Programming is genuinely impossible because of #2. All the APIs that let Swift Playgrounds do on-device development are private APIs and entitlements that third-parties are unlikely to ever get a provisioning profile for. Same for emulation and virtualization. Apple begrudgingly allows it, but we're never going to get JIT or hypervisor support[0] that would make those things not immediately chew through your battery.
[0] To be clear, M1 iPads supported hypervisor; if you were jailbroken on iPadOS 14.5 and copied some files over from macOS you could even get full-fat UTM to work. It's just a software lockout.