7 ms·

It'll be interesting to see if iPadOS 15 steps us any closer to laptop/desktop class usage. The biggest thing holding back iPad from being a real laptop replace

It'll be interesting to see if iPadOS 15 steps us any closer to laptop/desktop class usage. The biggest thing holding back iPad from being a real laptop replacement for so many is the software. It's also not as simple as porting macOS to iPad. I get Apple's hesitancy from a usability and a product cannibalization standpoint, but it's time they step things forward.

mlindner 6y ago
As an active user of the Mac. That would not be a step forward. It would be a step backward. There are so many things that are fundamentally impossible on a closed ecosystem like the iPad. For example, Macs still support, even on the M1, installing your own OSes. I don't get why some Apple fans are so interested in destroying a core stable of Apple's userbase.
- kgermino 6y ago
  It would destroy the Mac user base if iPads were capable of running desktop class applications?
- pixard 6y ago
  I think they could find a good middle ground. Since macOS can run iOS apps on M1 devices, why not allow it to be installed on the iPad as-is? Let users choose between iPadOS for the tablet experience, or macOS for the "full" experience. Of course just saying this out loud sounds ridiculous considering that Apple is Apple but hey, we can dream. :)
hajile 6y ago
The inability to run the software I need is why an ipad isn't even on my radar yet. The nicer screen isn't worth the lockdown (not to mention that the macbook air is much lighter than ipad + keyboard and cheaper too)).
- volta83 6y ago
  The macbook air screen is ok, its webcam is horrible, it doesn't have a touch screen, so you can't use it as a "digital blackboard" for remote work, and it can't use multiple monitors. The iPad has a great front camera, great screen, great touch screen and Apple Pen, yet is software-handicapped to prevent professional use. I guess Apples' goal is for people to buy both, but I've been on the market for a new "work device" for a while and this messed product lineup just means I'll wait till they get their s** together and produce a decent work machine with: - support for multiple monitors - reasonable webcam - touchscreen and apple pen support Until then, I'm out. Neither the Macbook nor the iPad are good work machines for me, and I'm not going to buy both to compensate for bad product management. I mean, the title says it all, iPads now have "Macbook Pro CPUs" in them. That's a super mixed message to send if they are not suitable for professional work.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    In the last year of remote work I have not missed whiteboard collaboration at all. My team just got better at writing docs and generating diagrams with dedicated tooling.
    - volta83 6y ago
      I use it every day. A 10 second drawings saves me 5 minutes of talking every time. Colleagues that don't have this capability at home give the impression that they are wasting everbody elses time, to the point that they draw on a piece of paper and hang it infront of the camera instead. Also, this pretty much completely disqualifies them for doing things like, e.g., "interviews", which restricts their career development.
      - mulmen 6y ago
        Yeah we just have a totally different workflow where you provide a doc and that has all the material already included. There’s no adhoc sketching stuff because we think that through before taking anyone’s time. It’s just a different way of working. But it pays dividends when you have people spread across time zones. Plus none of it is throw-away work. The docs are there for anyone to reference any time in the future.
gmaster1440 6y ago
Missed opportunity in today's announcement to introduce arguably the most compelling part of M1 adoption: a desktop-like experience, especially since hardware keyboard and trackpad already exist. If it runs M1, I wanna run my Electron VS Code on it.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Why tho ? Everything about the system is locked down - it's never going to be a good development machine no matter if you run electron vscode or not. It could be a decent client for stuff like web vscode.
  - gmaster1440 6y ago
    I don't think a machine's fitness for development is correlated to how locked down it is—you can totally have a very controlled environment with gatekeeping like the current iPadOS but have well-designed tools and development environments built for it. Apple did it with macOS after all...
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      macOS is not terribly locked down. The terminal is immediately accessible, dev tools are one download away (unless you want to use an older version of various interpreted languages). Most of the locked down defaults with regard to downloading programs can be easily sidestepped if you open up Preferences and click a couple buttons.
    - reader_mode 6y ago
      I think we don't have the same definition of locked down. I can download Linux compatible tools to my Mac and run server compatible software locally. I can install custom browsers, development environments, etc. This just isn't compatible with iOS app model. The only way I see this happening is if they let you run docker images/VMs. Even then it would suck for front-end. And it's such a niche use case from their perspective - I don't see this happening ever.
  - 6y ago
api 6y ago
"If I can't run whatever I want on it, it's a console not a real computer." iPads are still consoles regardless of what kind of chip you put in them. That may be Apple's intent. They don't seem to be cancelling the Mac, their "real computer." There's more than one market.
anonymouse008 6y ago
Oh, do not worry... it's coming. M1 > SwiftUI > MacCatalyst = Write once, run anywhere. Watching the iPadOS and MacCatalyst APIs mature says different form factors will emphasize certain workflows over others, but overall, feature parity is and will be a priority across the device lineup, iPhone included... Though it makes me sad... soon after their unified OS is realized, Sherman's coming by with his hammer. It'll be beautiful while it lasts.
- arecurrence 6y ago
  I don't know if you've tried going from a universal app to Catalyst but it feels very subpar compared to the Mac app variant. EG: Catalyst does not have the proper sidebar support that a Universal App with a Mac target has. Also there's no 'click' in Catalyst (at least not in the way that those components work on the Mac... they feel quite different). The experience is definitely "iPad" with Catalyst instead of "Mac". I believe Apple is going all in on the Universal App model. You can already get most of the way there today with some limitations (many libraries don't support Mac yet). Making different targets for each hardware with a 99% Shared code base is really excellent.
crazygringo 6y ago
Seriously. The thing that still bites me the most is that "Share" functionality of files continues to be broken in certain apps. For example, I frequently need to save a PDF from my Google Drive app either to my local Files or the Books app. But both those options are just... missing from the iOS share sheet, even though Acrobat is there. So I have to share to Acrobat, then share to Files or Books from within Acrobat. Bizarre. The problem is some kind of combination of file type plus application -- Gmail will let me share a PDF straight to Files or Books just fine. Or sometimes when you open a PDF in Books from another app it saves it to Books as a copy... but in other cases it opens it in-place. So you think you copied a bunch of things into Books to read on the airplane... and then they're not there. The fact that there's never any indication whether something is being copied or not, and that apps that support a filetype are simply arbitrarily missing from some share sheets (but not all), makes iPadOS just a disaster for any serious work that spans multiple apps.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Yes, the file management is absolutely terrible, along with the extremely limited multitasking. These are the two biggest factors keeping the iPad from real desktop usage. It seems most of the successful "pro" usage is by those who can work entirely within a single app that provides everything they need.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- phelm 6y ago
  a workaround is to create a shortcut that shares its input, you share to the shortcut (which you set to be on the share sheet and accept anything) and from there you can share anywhere
- unfamiliar 6y ago
  Unfortunately the terrible file management seems to be spreading to MacOS, rather than vice versa. Now if you have iCloud Drive turned on and navigate to ~/Documents in Finder, if you go up one level you'll find yourself in some kind of virtual folder called iCloud Drive, rather than your home directory. This is exactly the sort of weird filesystem-tree-concept-breaking thing that made Windows Explorer so annoying to use for me.
joshhart 6y ago
Another idea I think is interesting. If we reach that level of usability and tech with an iPad, then it seems plausible that we could build tech where you just need to bring an iPhone near a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and you instantly have a usable environment for things we think of as desktop. We've seen usability across devices with things like the google suite or Evernote improve over time, but if you had a single device with you everywhere then data sync is totally solved.
mulmen 6y ago
I have zero interest in using a worse laptop. Touch screens are an anti-feature. For decades we have tried as an industry to do touch interfaces on “real” computers and it’s always horrible because it’s not actually a thing worth doing. With M1 Macs being a thing I have no idea what benefits an iPad offers.
- formercoder 6y ago
  Touch isn’t great but styluses are for those of us that work on presentations.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    That’s a fair point. It’s not something I need so I don’t consider it. But if I need a stylus I don’t want to involve a desktop environment. The whole unified os/one-device thing is unworkable IMHO. Just have a laptop and a tablet if that’s what you need. Let the tools excel in their role instead of making a ton of compromises.
- fastball 6y ago
  "Touch screens are an anti-feature" – I guess you don't have a smartphone then? The benefit is obvious: if you were the kind of person that previously had a laptop and an iPad (iPads / touch screens are nice for all sorts of things, esp. for say artists), then an optimal solution would be a device you can use as both. An iPad Pro that could run macOS and have a keyboard case with trackpad seems ideal. Or if you're the kind of person that only has an iPad (my mom), it might be useful to sometimes have more flexibility than it provides, even though she does't need it 99% of the time.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Touch screens are a design compromise. Not as good as dedicated input devices, but necessary if you're putting something in your pocket and perfectly acceptable if all you are doing is consuming media and maybe some light typing.
nojito 6y ago
It’s not really a laptop replacement. Apple’s philosophy shared by Phil? is that you should be able to do as much as you can on each device before having to move up to the next product. Watch -> phone -> tablet -> laptop -> desktop
swiley 6y ago
Apple would be giving up an incredible amount of control by allowing anything more and it's obvious their customers don't care. I've personally completely given up on Android/iOS even if that means I won't have a working cell phone (although I mostly do.) There's way too much money involved for good firmware to be written.
sirn 6y ago
Just a wishful thinking, but since this is an M1 and not the A14X (and 8c+8c+8/16GB setup used in MacBook Pro even), I'm hoping that Hypervisor.framework will come to an iPadOS in the next WWDC. Having something like macOS.app, or even Ubuntu.app within iPad Pro would make it a pretty amazing convertible (for me).
- justaguy88 6y ago
  Agreed, ubuntu.app would be amazing
  - jxy 6y ago
    Switch to Safari to surf the net, and come back to ubuntu.app ... ooooh, it got killed in the background!
    - kitsunesoba 6y ago
      iOS/iPadOS only kill background processes if they're resource hungry and competing with another resource hungry frontmost app and resources are running low. Anecdotally, on my iPhone 11 Pro Max w/4GB of RAM it's very rare for apps to get killed while multitasking. There's been a few times when I've brought forward an app I used multiple days ago and it's still running exactly where I left it. Based on that, with these new models having 8GB and 16GB of RAM processes getting killed should be pretty rare. On top of that, it's highly likely that virtualization apps would be given increased protection from getting killed due to their inherent extra overhead.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  M1 is essentially an A14X.
fastball 6y ago
I mean, why can't you just port macOS to iPad? It's all M1 now.
- jack_riminton 6y ago
  Dual boot would be a great hack
binbag 6y ago
I'm a surface pro user. Why does Apple not just put macos on the iPad and then it can go head to head for my business? The comment above said it's not as easy as just sticking macos on them. Why? (Obviously the answer could be they simply don't want to take on that market, but technically I don't see the barrier.)
- Spartan-S63 6y ago
  Biggest reason is that macOS is designed as a pointer interface and iPadOS/iOS is designed as a touch interface. You could argue that with the Magic Keyboard and Trackpad, the iPad is well suited for pointer input and I wouldn't disagree. However, macOS with touch as an input option would be atrocious, in my view. Rather than opening the door for touch input on macOS, they should bring iPadOS closer to a desktop-class, touch-first experience.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    It could switch maybe? If you use the magic keyboard it switches to Mac OS and otherwise ipados? But yes, iPados with proper multitasking and allowing development apps locally would be a step in the right direction IMHO.
  - indymike 6y ago
    I have a Dell XPS-15 laptop. 15" 4K touchscreen/tablet. It is fantastic. Gnome, KDE, Windows all work fine with the touch screen and even active stylus. Come to think of it, MacOS has fantastic support for Wacom tablets, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a terrible experience with the same kind of display that my Dell has.
kuprel 6y ago
Seems like apple could make an Xcode app that runs on the large iPads
Method-X 6y ago
I think they should include macOS in new iPads as a dual boot option and allow users to connect the iPad to a monitor. This is what I do with my MacBook Air and I'm sure many, many iPad users would find this tremendously useful. Ditto for iPhone.
theodric 6y ago
Have you priced these things, though? 2TB/5G iPad Pro 12.9 + keyboard + pen = 3000 Swiss Francs (over $3k) 2TB/16GB RAM MacBook Air = 2200 Swiss Francs For whom are these iPads made? I bought a 12.9 in 2015, and another in 2017, but it's my last. They're just not that useful, and certainly not useful at a level that justifies the price of a very nice laptop!
- thirdsun 6y ago
  > 2TB/5G iPad Pro 12.9 + keyboard + pen = 3000 Swiss Francs (over $3k) 2TB Storage, 5G, keyboard and pen are all very much optional and not required to use an iPad Pro. If you want a laptop, simply buy a laptop. Personally I'm much better off with a desktop + iPad Pro combo. When I need keyboard and mouse on the iPad my existing desktop input device can be paired with multiple devices. However that's rare occasion. Most of the time it's simply a much more mobile device than a laptop.
tluyben2 6y ago
I guess the market is tiny for a full OS on an iPad or Apple just waits until MS is close in other feature parity: the surface X has the battery life and the looks but is crap in all other departments (or so I heard: I have not tried one as people also say it is slow). So maybe gen 2 or 3.
stevehawk 6y ago
it wont be porting MacOS to the iPad. It'll be discontinuing MacOS and having everyone on a derivative of iOS locked up with the App Store at a 30% tax.
MrFoof 6y ago
This is my wait and see. The fact that the 1TB and 2TB storage versions of the M1 iPad Pro have 16GB of memory is something. Plus Thunderbolt 4. It's an M1 iMac you can carry around. If there isn't capability to easily use that hardware as a normal person (as in, creating bespoke apps), it'd all be for naught for me. I'm due for an iPad upgrade, but I'm waiting until WWDC on June 7th before I decide on what I'll get. I won't make a bet and pay more for hardware I'll never be able to easily take advantage of. Though if an iPad Pro can let me do a lot more with a more advanced Window manager, it could just end up being a laptop that's not a laptop for when I don't want to sit at a desk in front of my workstation.

mlindner 6y ago

As an active user of the Mac. That would not be a step forward. It would be a step backward. There are so many things that are fundamentally impossible on a closed ecosystem like the iPad. For example, Macs still support, even on the M1, installing your own OSes. I don't get why some Apple fans are so interested in destroying a core stable of Apple's userbase.

kgermino 6y ago
It would destroy the Mac user base if iPads were capable of running desktop class applications?
pixard 6y ago
I think they could find a good middle ground. Since macOS can run iOS apps on M1 devices, why not allow it to be installed on the iPad as-is? Let users choose between iPadOS for the tablet experience, or macOS for the "full" experience. Of course just saying this out loud sounds ridiculous considering that Apple is Apple but hey, we can dream. :)

hajile 6y ago

The inability to run the software I need is why an ipad isn't even on my radar yet. The nicer screen isn't worth the lockdown (not to mention that the macbook air is much lighter than ipad + keyboard and cheaper too)).

volta83 6y ago
The macbook air screen is ok, its webcam is horrible, it doesn't have a touch screen, so you can't use it as a "digital blackboard" for remote work, and it can't use multiple monitors. The iPad has a great front camera, great screen, great touch screen and Apple Pen, yet is software-handicapped to prevent professional use. I guess Apples' goal is for people to buy both, but I've been on the market for a new "work device" for a while and this messed product lineup just means I'll wait till they get their s** together and produce a decent work machine with: - support for multiple monitors - reasonable webcam - touchscreen and apple pen support Until then, I'm out. Neither the Macbook nor the iPad are good work machines for me, and I'm not going to buy both to compensate for bad product management. I mean, the title says it all, iPads now have "Macbook Pro CPUs" in them. That's a super mixed message to send if they are not suitable for professional work.
- mulmen 6y ago
  In the last year of remote work I have not missed whiteboard collaboration at all. My team just got better at writing docs and generating diagrams with dedicated tooling.
  - volta83 6y ago
    I use it every day. A 10 second drawings saves me 5 minutes of talking every time. Colleagues that don't have this capability at home give the impression that they are wasting everbody elses time, to the point that they draw on a piece of paper and hang it infront of the camera instead. Also, this pretty much completely disqualifies them for doing things like, e.g., "interviews", which restricts their career development.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      Yeah we just have a totally different workflow where you provide a doc and that has all the material already included. There’s no adhoc sketching stuff because we think that through before taking anyone’s time. It’s just a different way of working. But it pays dividends when you have people spread across time zones. Plus none of it is throw-away work. The docs are there for anyone to reference any time in the future.

gmaster1440 6y ago

Missed opportunity in today's announcement to introduce arguably the most compelling part of M1 adoption: a desktop-like experience, especially since hardware keyboard and trackpad already exist. If it runs M1, I wanna run my Electron VS Code on it.

reader_mode 6y ago
Why tho ? Everything about the system is locked down - it's never going to be a good development machine no matter if you run electron vscode or not. It could be a decent client for stuff like web vscode.
- gmaster1440 6y ago
  I don't think a machine's fitness for development is correlated to how locked down it is—you can totally have a very controlled environment with gatekeeping like the current iPadOS but have well-designed tools and development environments built for it. Apple did it with macOS after all...
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    macOS is not terribly locked down. The terminal is immediately accessible, dev tools are one download away (unless you want to use an older version of various interpreted languages). Most of the locked down defaults with regard to downloading programs can be easily sidestepped if you open up Preferences and click a couple buttons.
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    I think we don't have the same definition of locked down. I can download Linux compatible tools to my Mac and run server compatible software locally. I can install custom browsers, development environments, etc. This just isn't compatible with iOS app model. The only way I see this happening is if they let you run docker images/VMs. Even then it would suck for front-end. And it's such a niche use case from their perspective - I don't see this happening ever.
- 6y ago

api 6y ago

"If I can't run whatever I want on it, it's a console not a real computer." iPads are still consoles regardless of what kind of chip you put in them. That may be Apple's intent. They don't seem to be cancelling the Mac, their "real computer." There's more than one market.

anonymouse008 6y ago

Oh, do not worry... it's coming. M1 > SwiftUI > MacCatalyst = Write once, run anywhere. Watching the iPadOS and MacCatalyst APIs mature says different form factors will emphasize certain workflows over others, but overall, feature parity is and will be a priority across the device lineup, iPhone included... Though it makes me sad... soon after their unified OS is realized, Sherman's coming by with his hammer. It'll be beautiful while it lasts.

arecurrence 6y ago
I don't know if you've tried going from a universal app to Catalyst but it feels very subpar compared to the Mac app variant. EG: Catalyst does not have the proper sidebar support that a Universal App with a Mac target has. Also there's no 'click' in Catalyst (at least not in the way that those components work on the Mac... they feel quite different). The experience is definitely "iPad" with Catalyst instead of "Mac". I believe Apple is going all in on the Universal App model. You can already get most of the way there today with some limitations (many libraries don't support Mac yet). Making different targets for each hardware with a 99% Shared code base is really excellent.

crazygringo 6y ago

Seriously. The thing that still bites me the most is that "Share" functionality of files continues to be broken in certain apps. For example, I frequently need to save a PDF from my Google Drive app either to my local Files or the Books app. But both those options are just... missing from the iOS share sheet, even though Acrobat is there. So I have to share to Acrobat, then share to Files or Books from within Acrobat. Bizarre. The problem is some kind of combination of file type plus application -- Gmail will let me share a PDF straight to Files or Books just fine. Or sometimes when you open a PDF in Books from another app it saves it to Books as a copy... but in other cases it opens it in-place. So you think you copied a bunch of things into Books to read on the airplane... and then they're not there. The fact that there's never any indication whether something is being copied or not, and that apps that support a filetype are simply arbitrarily missing from some share sheets (but not all), makes iPadOS just a disaster for any serious work that spans multiple apps.

manigandham 6y ago
Yes, the file management is absolutely terrible, along with the extremely limited multitasking. These are the two biggest factors keeping the iPad from real desktop usage. It seems most of the successful "pro" usage is by those who can work entirely within a single app that provides everything they need.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
phelm 6y ago
a workaround is to create a shortcut that shares its input, you share to the shortcut (which you set to be on the share sheet and accept anything) and from there you can share anywhere
unfamiliar 6y ago
Unfortunately the terrible file management seems to be spreading to MacOS, rather than vice versa. Now if you have iCloud Drive turned on and navigate to ~/Documents in Finder, if you go up one level you'll find yourself in some kind of virtual folder called iCloud Drive, rather than your home directory. This is exactly the sort of weird filesystem-tree-concept-breaking thing that made Windows Explorer so annoying to use for me.

joshhart 6y ago

Another idea I think is interesting. If we reach that level of usability and tech with an iPad, then it seems plausible that we could build tech where you just need to bring an iPhone near a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and you instantly have a usable environment for things we think of as desktop. We've seen usability across devices with things like the google suite or Evernote improve over time, but if you had a single device with you everywhere then data sync is totally solved.

mulmen 6y ago

I have zero interest in using a worse laptop. Touch screens are an anti-feature. For decades we have tried as an industry to do touch interfaces on “real” computers and it’s always horrible because it’s not actually a thing worth doing. With M1 Macs being a thing I have no idea what benefits an iPad offers.

formercoder 6y ago
Touch isn’t great but styluses are for those of us that work on presentations.
- mulmen 6y ago
  That’s a fair point. It’s not something I need so I don’t consider it. But if I need a stylus I don’t want to involve a desktop environment. The whole unified os/one-device thing is unworkable IMHO. Just have a laptop and a tablet if that’s what you need. Let the tools excel in their role instead of making a ton of compromises.
fastball 6y ago
"Touch screens are an anti-feature" – I guess you don't have a smartphone then? The benefit is obvious: if you were the kind of person that previously had a laptop and an iPad (iPads / touch screens are nice for all sorts of things, esp. for say artists), then an optimal solution would be a device you can use as both. An iPad Pro that could run macOS and have a keyboard case with trackpad seems ideal. Or if you're the kind of person that only has an iPad (my mom), it might be useful to sometimes have more flexibility than it provides, even though she does't need it 99% of the time.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Touch screens are a design compromise. Not as good as dedicated input devices, but necessary if you're putting something in your pocket and perfectly acceptable if all you are doing is consuming media and maybe some light typing.

nojito 6y ago

It’s not really a laptop replacement. Apple’s philosophy shared by Phil? is that you should be able to do as much as you can on each device before having to move up to the next product. Watch -> phone -> tablet -> laptop -> desktop

swiley 6y ago

Apple would be giving up an incredible amount of control by allowing anything more and it's obvious their customers don't care. I've personally completely given up on Android/iOS even if that means I won't have a working cell phone (although I mostly do.) There's way too much money involved for good firmware to be written.

sirn 6y ago

Just a wishful thinking, but since this is an M1 and not the A14X (and 8c+8c+8/16GB setup used in MacBook Pro even), I'm hoping that Hypervisor.framework will come to an iPadOS in the next WWDC. Having something like macOS.app, or even Ubuntu.app within iPad Pro would make it a pretty amazing convertible (for me).

justaguy88 6y ago
Agreed, ubuntu.app would be amazing
- jxy 6y ago
  Switch to Safari to surf the net, and come back to ubuntu.app ... ooooh, it got killed in the background!
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    iOS/iPadOS only kill background processes if they're resource hungry and competing with another resource hungry frontmost app and resources are running low. Anecdotally, on my iPhone 11 Pro Max w/4GB of RAM it's very rare for apps to get killed while multitasking. There's been a few times when I've brought forward an app I used multiple days ago and it's still running exactly where I left it. Based on that, with these new models having 8GB and 16GB of RAM processes getting killed should be pretty rare. On top of that, it's highly likely that virtualization apps would be given increased protection from getting killed due to their inherent extra overhead.
saagarjha 6y ago
M1 is essentially an A14X.

fastball 6y ago

I mean, why can't you just port macOS to iPad? It's all M1 now.

jack_riminton 6y ago
Dual boot would be a great hack

binbag 6y ago

I'm a surface pro user. Why does Apple not just put macos on the iPad and then it can go head to head for my business? The comment above said it's not as easy as just sticking macos on them. Why? (Obviously the answer could be they simply don't want to take on that market, but technically I don't see the barrier.)

Spartan-S63 6y ago
Biggest reason is that macOS is designed as a pointer interface and iPadOS/iOS is designed as a touch interface. You could argue that with the Magic Keyboard and Trackpad, the iPad is well suited for pointer input and I wouldn't disagree. However, macOS with touch as an input option would be atrocious, in my view. Rather than opening the door for touch input on macOS, they should bring iPadOS closer to a desktop-class, touch-first experience.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  It could switch maybe? If you use the magic keyboard it switches to Mac OS and otherwise ipados? But yes, iPados with proper multitasking and allowing development apps locally would be a step in the right direction IMHO.
- indymike 6y ago
  I have a Dell XPS-15 laptop. 15" 4K touchscreen/tablet. It is fantastic. Gnome, KDE, Windows all work fine with the touch screen and even active stylus. Come to think of it, MacOS has fantastic support for Wacom tablets, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a terrible experience with the same kind of display that my Dell has.

kuprel 6y ago

Seems like apple could make an Xcode app that runs on the large iPads

Method-X 6y ago

I think they should include macOS in new iPads as a dual boot option and allow users to connect the iPad to a monitor. This is what I do with my MacBook Air and I'm sure many, many iPad users would find this tremendously useful. Ditto for iPhone.

theodric 6y ago

Have you priced these things, though? 2TB/5G iPad Pro 12.9 + keyboard + pen = 3000 Swiss Francs (over $3k) 2TB/16GB RAM MacBook Air = 2200 Swiss Francs For whom are these iPads made? I bought a 12.9 in 2015, and another in 2017, but it's my last. They're just not that useful, and certainly not useful at a level that justifies the price of a very nice laptop!

thirdsun 6y ago
> 2TB/5G iPad Pro 12.9 + keyboard + pen = 3000 Swiss Francs (over $3k) 2TB Storage, 5G, keyboard and pen are all very much optional and not required to use an iPad Pro. If you want a laptop, simply buy a laptop. Personally I'm much better off with a desktop + iPad Pro combo. When I need keyboard and mouse on the iPad my existing desktop input device can be paired with multiple devices. However that's rare occasion. Most of the time it's simply a much more mobile device than a laptop.

tluyben2 6y ago

I guess the market is tiny for a full OS on an iPad or Apple just waits until MS is close in other feature parity: the surface X has the battery life and the looks but is crap in all other departments (or so I heard: I have not tried one as people also say it is slow). So maybe gen 2 or 3.

stevehawk 6y ago

it wont be porting MacOS to the iPad. It'll be discontinuing MacOS and having everyone on a derivative of iOS locked up with the App Store at a 30% tax.

MrFoof 6y ago

This is my wait and see. The fact that the 1TB and 2TB storage versions of the M1 iPad Pro have 16GB of memory is something. Plus Thunderbolt 4. It's an M1 iMac you can carry around. If there isn't capability to easily use that hardware as a normal person (as in, creating bespoke apps), it'd all be for naught for me. I'm due for an iPad upgrade, but I'm waiting until WWDC on June 7th before I decide on what I'll get. I won't make a bet and pay more for hardware I'll never be able to easily take advantage of. Though if an iPad Pro can let me do a lot more with a more advanced Window manager, it could just end up being a laptop that's not a laptop for when I don't want to sit at a desk in front of my workstation.