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The M1 on the Mac unintentionally killed iPad as laptop replacement for a lot of people. Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and h

The M1 on the Mac unintentionally killed iPad as laptop replacement for a lot of people. Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and had loud fans. At the same time, the iPad Pro was dead silent, lighter, faster and had better battery life. Today, the M1 MacBook Air gets all those goodies and you get a nice keyboard and a capable OS. The battery life is also twice as long as an iPad Pro. Apple needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat to pull the iPad ahead again.

Dylan16807 4y ago
Apple was deliberately putting bad cooling into those laptops because they had other priorities I don't understand. So I suppose they could always make the cooling on their new laptops even worse, and then the iPad would pull "ahead".
- d3ckard 4y ago
  M1 Air is passively cooled. Still pretty great.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Oh don't worry, it's possible to make passive cooling worse.
    - canadianfella 4y ago
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      Sure, but the current Air doesn't even have a proper heatsink, and still delivers a ton of performance with thermal throttling setting in quite late compared to what I would have expected. They're pretty much doing it badly on purpose and it's still really good.
- fmajid 4y ago
  Jony Ive was the problem. Many things have improved since he was effectively fired. Note that his position was axed, no designer will ever again wield the power and influence at Apple he abused.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > no designer will ever again wield the power and influence at Apple he abused. Besides whoever is in charge of designing MacOS.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      macOS plays second fiddle to iOS at Apple. Ive was Chief Design Officer. Now check Apple's Leadership page (https://www.apple.com/leadership/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/). Design is nowhere to be found on it. It had temporarily been assigned to HR chief Deirdre O'Brien, no more, and Design co-chiefs Alan Dye and Evans Hankey report to the COO Jeff Williams, a.k.a. the Department of Everything Else. It's not a surprise both Dye and Hankey are leaving the company. While I think Ive was mostly harmful to the company once the strong guiding hand of Steve Jobs that kept him on the straight and narrow went, it's not good to have this level of instability in the critical function of design either. Expect years of mediocre product design and stagnation ahead. On the plus side, no more butterfly keyboards, cables that fray if you look at them funny, or portless Macs either.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Sounds like you're taking a realistic stance here, so I won't tear you to shreds. Like you said, Apple's hardware is improving objectively so it's not a terrible thing. For years though, I've been more bothered by gimped software than gimped hardware. Guess that means I shouldn't be in the Apple ecosystem, which is fine by me I suppose.
  - fdsaf34qgf423 4y ago
    But I am assured that Design is the key to everything! How will we be able to make things that humans can use, without Designers? At least, that's what Don Norman, ex-Apple, told me in the seminal book.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  The cooling on those machines was bed yes, but their Intel CPUs were also ran more ho than they had any right to. Good Windows laptops with the same CPUs didn’t overheat easily but would run their fans doing nothing and have their fans screaming when being pushed. Their battery life was also pretty abysmal, and that’s only started to improve meaningfully with the last 1-2 gems of x86 CPUs.
- piskov 4y ago
  > Apple was deliberately putting bad cooling into those laptops because they had other priorities I don't understand There’s a rumor that was because Intel promised every year 10nm chips, which they ultimately postponed every year. MacBooks chassis were designed for the promised thermal advantages which have never been delivered.
goosedragons 4y ago
Only problem is Macs are missing everything good about the iPad. No touch screen, no pen input, always 2+ lbs. Apple doesn't need to pull a rabbit out of a hat they just need to stop artificially limiting what iPadOS can do. There's no reason the iPad can't run Emacs natively with a full stack of dev tools except Apple's rules. The $80 Fire Tablet I'm typing this on can (OK it's not exactly quick but $80...).
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  Maybe in a few years we'll have Asahi Linux on eyepads.
- greymalik 4y ago
  > they just need to stop artificially limiting what iPadOS can do I wish they would add a touch screen and pen input to their laptops.
  - feet 4y ago
    But then why would people buy an iPad? Everyone needs multiple devices! /s
- cstross 4y ago
  > stop artificially limiting what iPadOS can do Why would they do that when it would remove the incentive for their customers to buy one of each? Give the iPad range Mac features, and it'd cannibalize Macbook sales from the bottom up. Give the Macbook a touchscreen, 5G, and the ability to run iPadOS apps, and it'd cannibalize iPad Pro sales from the top down. Neither of these are in Apple's commercial best interests.
  - kmlx 4y ago
    true. if i could get macos on an big ipad i would probably sell my macbook.
    - criddell 4y ago
ako 4y ago
Huh? I just purchased an iPad Air M1 as a laptop replacement. With stage manager supporting external displays as of iPadOS 16.2, an iPad really is just a laptop without a keyboard. Combine it with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, hook it up to an external display, and it's hard to distinguish from any other desktop computer. Remove everything, and it's the optimal size to consume books and video on the couch. Combine it with a Pen, it's perfect for photo editing or drawing. Connect it to your guitar or midi instrument, and it's perfect for making music. Funny thing is, i'm starting to use the ipad as a keyboard alternative more and more, text dictation often feels more convenient than typing. Sure, for programming you'll probably want to ssh into another machine (using blink, which also provides visual studio code on the ipad), but that's maybe 5% of my home use of a computer.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  If you're just going to use another machine to do your work on, it doesn't sound like much of a replacement.
  - ako 4y ago
    True, so for that 5% it's not a replacement, unless you do coding via ssh or a cloud IDE.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- cdelsolar 4y ago
  What programs / hardware do you use for connecting it to your guitar?
bobleeswagger 4y ago
> Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and had loud fans. At the same time, the iPad Pro was dead silent, lighter, faster and had better battery life. This is more of a PEBKAC problem than you realize, iPads are only "faster" because they do a better job of managing background tasks.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  No. The iPads of the time beat the Macs in performance and efficiency.

Dylan16807 4y ago

Apple was deliberately putting bad cooling into those laptops because they had other priorities I don't understand. So I suppose they could always make the cooling on their new laptops even worse, and then the iPad would pull "ahead".

d3ckard 4y ago
M1 Air is passively cooled. Still pretty great.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Oh don't worry, it's possible to make passive cooling worse.
  - canadianfella 4y ago
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Sure, but the current Air doesn't even have a proper heatsink, and still delivers a ton of performance with thermal throttling setting in quite late compared to what I would have expected. They're pretty much doing it badly on purpose and it's still really good.
fmajid 4y ago
Jony Ive was the problem. Many things have improved since he was effectively fired. Note that his position was axed, no designer will ever again wield the power and influence at Apple he abused.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > no designer will ever again wield the power and influence at Apple he abused. Besides whoever is in charge of designing MacOS.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    macOS plays second fiddle to iOS at Apple. Ive was Chief Design Officer. Now check Apple's Leadership page (https://www.apple.com/leadership/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/). Design is nowhere to be found on it. It had temporarily been assigned to HR chief Deirdre O'Brien, no more, and Design co-chiefs Alan Dye and Evans Hankey report to the COO Jeff Williams, a.k.a. the Department of Everything Else. It's not a surprise both Dye and Hankey are leaving the company. While I think Ive was mostly harmful to the company once the strong guiding hand of Steve Jobs that kept him on the straight and narrow went, it's not good to have this level of instability in the critical function of design either. Expect years of mediocre product design and stagnation ahead. On the plus side, no more butterfly keyboards, cables that fray if you look at them funny, or portless Macs either.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Sounds like you're taking a realistic stance here, so I won't tear you to shreds. Like you said, Apple's hardware is improving objectively so it's not a terrible thing. For years though, I've been more bothered by gimped software than gimped hardware. Guess that means I shouldn't be in the Apple ecosystem, which is fine by me I suppose.
- fdsaf34qgf423 4y ago
  But I am assured that Design is the key to everything! How will we be able to make things that humans can use, without Designers? At least, that's what Don Norman, ex-Apple, told me in the seminal book.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
The cooling on those machines was bed yes, but their Intel CPUs were also ran more ho than they had any right to. Good Windows laptops with the same CPUs didn’t overheat easily but would run their fans doing nothing and have their fans screaming when being pushed. Their battery life was also pretty abysmal, and that’s only started to improve meaningfully with the last 1-2 gems of x86 CPUs.
piskov 4y ago
> Apple was deliberately putting bad cooling into those laptops because they had other priorities I don't understand There’s a rumor that was because Intel promised every year 10nm chips, which they ultimately postponed every year. MacBooks chassis were designed for the promised thermal advantages which have never been delivered.

goosedragons 4y ago

Only problem is Macs are missing everything good about the iPad. No touch screen, no pen input, always 2+ lbs. Apple doesn't need to pull a rabbit out of a hat they just need to stop artificially limiting what iPadOS can do. There's no reason the iPad can't run Emacs natively with a full stack of dev tools except Apple's rules. The $80 Fire Tablet I'm typing this on can (OK it's not exactly quick but $80...).

i_am_proteus 4y ago
Maybe in a few years we'll have Asahi Linux on eyepads.
greymalik 4y ago
> they just need to stop artificially limiting what iPadOS can do I wish they would add a touch screen and pen input to their laptops.
- feet 4y ago
  But then why would people buy an iPad? Everyone needs multiple devices! /s
cstross 4y ago
> stop artificially limiting what iPadOS can do Why would they do that when it would remove the incentive for their customers to buy one of each? Give the iPad range Mac features, and it'd cannibalize Macbook sales from the bottom up. Give the Macbook a touchscreen, 5G, and the ability to run iPadOS apps, and it'd cannibalize iPad Pro sales from the top down. Neither of these are in Apple's commercial best interests.
- kmlx 4y ago
  true. if i could get macos on an big ipad i would probably sell my macbook.
  - criddell 4y ago

ako 4y ago

Huh? I just purchased an iPad Air M1 as a laptop replacement. With stage manager supporting external displays as of iPadOS 16.2, an iPad really is just a laptop without a keyboard. Combine it with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, hook it up to an external display, and it's hard to distinguish from any other desktop computer. Remove everything, and it's the optimal size to consume books and video on the couch. Combine it with a Pen, it's perfect for photo editing or drawing. Connect it to your guitar or midi instrument, and it's perfect for making music. Funny thing is, i'm starting to use the ipad as a keyboard alternative more and more, text dictation often feels more convenient than typing. Sure, for programming you'll probably want to ssh into another machine (using blink, which also provides visual studio code on the ipad), but that's maybe 5% of my home use of a computer.

smoldesu 4y ago
If you're just going to use another machine to do your work on, it doesn't sound like much of a replacement.
- ako 4y ago
  True, so for that 5% it's not a replacement, unless you do coding via ssh or a cloud IDE.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
cdelsolar 4y ago
What programs / hardware do you use for connecting it to your guitar?

bobleeswagger 4y ago

> Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and had loud fans. At the same time, the iPad Pro was dead silent, lighter, faster and had better battery life. This is more of a PEBKAC problem than you realize, iPads are only "faster" because they do a better job of managing background tasks.

saagarjha 4y ago
No. The iPads of the time beat the Macs in performance and efficiency.