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It's a crying shame that Apple don't offer a desktop mode on iPhones. The chips are more than powerful enough to give a no-compromises experience (for most use

It's a crying shame that Apple don't offer a desktop mode on iPhones. The chips are more than powerful enough to give a no-compromises experience (for most use casual use cases at least), the disks are large enough to store 2 OSs, and they have a full desktop OS sitting around ready for use. It'd make it a lot harder to sell macs, but it would be an absolutely killer device.

jsheard 2y ago
People have been begging for a real desktop mode on the iPad forever, if Apple won't even do it for a device which uses the same processor as their laptops and even has an official laptop-style keyboard accessory then they're certainly not going to do it for the iPhone.
- whycome 2y ago
  They’re really going at it from a weird angle. iOS 18 features the ability to screen share your iPhone to your desktop. They seemingly want to make sure you have a main Mac desktop always. I could see Mac doing something like the Surface Book form factor. Basically an iPad MacBook hybrid with more power.
  - gumby 2y ago
    > They seemingly want to make sure you have a main Mac desktop always. I’m willing to believe in this case it’s because they want the Mac to survive. I’m sure every Mac is profitable (in accord with one of Apple’s core values) but Mac sales are pretty tiny compared to other products. Even when Apple fans say “St Stephen would be rolling in his grave if they got rid of the Mac”, he famously said he’d milk the Mac for all it was worth while doing the next thing. Separately, there’s already a ton of writing on why iPad and Mac won’t completely converge
    - 1123581321 2y ago
      Mac, iPad and Home/Wearables all bring in similar revenue. iPhone is the hardware category that dwarfs the rest. Software revenue is roughly equal to Mac/iPad/Wearables combined.
  - iterateoften 2y ago
    With any new technology with apple don’t look at how it is used now but what products it will enable in 3-4 years. The iPhone streaming to Mac is most likely much more about improving AR inthe future than anything to do with Mac. Mac is just an easy platform to get more users using it.
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      This is what people _always_ forget. Just like the new iPhone coming out this year isn't for the people who upgrade every year. It'll feel like a "spec bump". BUT it's for the people whose phone is dropping out of support after 5-7 years of major version upgrades. For them it's a massive leap of performance and features. Just imagine jumping from an iPhone XR to an iPhone 16? Same with the Vision Pro. Apple finally releases a Pro device that's just for Pro(sumer)s and people complain it's too expensive. It's the first version, they see what 3rd party devs can and want to do with it and release a new one. There's a rumoured patent about headphones with an external camera for hand tracking, which is a clear evolution of the one in the Vision Pro.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    Forgive me, I've been hearing that since 2010. I've been through at least a couple cycles of "but they are this time, seriously!" myself personally -- this most recent cycle was the first one the Apple inteligentsia widely agreed it wasn't worth even talking about.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > They seemingly want to make sure you have a main Mac desktop always. At some point it might even become a "licensing" proposition: If you are registered (or once-connected) or some such as having a desktop, you will get Desktop features on your other devices ... (Of course once you buy the very expensive Apple brand docks, and keyboards and dongles and cables and adapters and (perhaps) extra monthly fees that you will need ... Maybe they might couple this with their AI efforts, in making their whole "AI product" into a hardware "box" that you need (even if the box is "dumb" and "Amazon-echo like" ... ... I am guessing Apple will be the first to "commoditize" AI. Perhaps via hardware. Expensive hardware. Apple hardware ...)
    - naikrovek 2y ago
      what in the world are you talking about? none of these things exist, or show any hint of existing. i'd love apple to make an apple dock. they don't because they don't need to; apple hardware uses thunderbolt 4, so thunderbolt docks work. (i do wish apple would support MST in their laptops though, so I can get multiple monitors connected via a single dock without that silly DisplayLink nonsense, but not even an apple dock could get around this limitation.) your paranoia about apple-proprietary docks, keyboards, dongles, cables, adapters and (perhaps) monthly fees, are completely off-base from what I've seen out of apple. ...and i'm not even an apple fan.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        Might have overdone it a bit for sake of exposition, but Apple killed the headphone jack. Their accessory ecosystem is a thing ...
        naikrovek 2y ago
        yes, but they don't require that you use their hardware. non-Apple bluetooth headphones are a thing, and they work great. Apple desktops and laptops still have physical headphone/headset jacks, too. I personally prefer wireless headphones when using a phone, because having the cable often required that you either have the phone out and in your hand the whole time, because the cable is too short, or somehow the headphone cable is far too long and it gets caught on everything as you move around. I understand wanting to have the option, of course, and I recognize that not everyone shares my preferences. Having designed electronic circuit boards in the past, I also know that the removal of a connector is always considered a "win". connectors suck and are the source of a lot of problems down the line, especially if they are for connecting to the outside world.
wraptile 2y ago
Apple will never cannibalize themselves like this. There isn't event multi user support on iPad which would be something trivial to do and everyone know ipad is a family device yet here we are.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Apple should be forced to enable multiuser on iPad and iPhone.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Or you're going to kick their asses?
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Let's do this! Next time Jon Stewart talks to Lina Khan, they discuss enabling the multiuser support in all the Apple OSes. Lina then does discovery against Apple where it turns out that product managers inside of apple have been trying to do this for years, esp in markets where a device per person doesn't work, but a shared device would. Bootlicking MBAs say that news of this would get back to high margin markets and rich families would be pissed because they just bought ipads (baby sitters) for all their children. While we are at it, once a device goes out of support, it should be fully unlocked for the user with sufficient documentation so that alternative OSes can be installed. The hardware that is my gen1 iPad still functions perfectly.
kingkongjaffa 2y ago
I love having different devices for different things. Macbook pro for coding and designing in figma and light gaming, web browsing iPad mini for reading, travelling, sketching with apple pencil. iPhone for doing phone things. Sure I buy 3 devices (4 if you count apple watch) but they last several years and have decent resale value.
- diffeomorphism 2y ago
  I dislike having to charge 3 or 4 different things. Also the sync is far from seamless, e.g. to annotate a pdf from the laptop, I have to send it to the tablet, annotate, then send it back. Same reason I am not carrying a point-and-shoot, a phone, a navigation system and a pda. Same reason I use a laptop instead of multiple desktop computers. Related question: on the pixel phones you could just run full windows in a VM, but for other devices it was "coming soon". What happened to that? I don't need convergence right now, if I can just run the desktop OS in a VM.
  - moneywoes 2y ago
    When? Never heard of this
    - diffeomorphism 2y ago
      Not that hard to google, touted with android 13 e.g. https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-dp1-google-pixel-6-kvm-virtual-machine/ https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-dp1-google-pixel-6...
Bluestein 2y ago
I am thinking Apple would not want to cannibalize some lower end notebook sales ...
beAbU 2y ago
"Just buy an iPad/Mac" - Tim Cook probably.

jsheard 2y ago

People have been begging for a real desktop mode on the iPad forever, if Apple won't even do it for a device which uses the same processor as their laptops and even has an official laptop-style keyboard accessory then they're certainly not going to do it for the iPhone.

whycome 2y ago
They’re really going at it from a weird angle. iOS 18 features the ability to screen share your iPhone to your desktop. They seemingly want to make sure you have a main Mac desktop always. I could see Mac doing something like the Surface Book form factor. Basically an iPad MacBook hybrid with more power.
- gumby 2y ago
  > They seemingly want to make sure you have a main Mac desktop always. I’m willing to believe in this case it’s because they want the Mac to survive. I’m sure every Mac is profitable (in accord with one of Apple’s core values) but Mac sales are pretty tiny compared to other products. Even when Apple fans say “St Stephen would be rolling in his grave if they got rid of the Mac”, he famously said he’d milk the Mac for all it was worth while doing the next thing. Separately, there’s already a ton of writing on why iPad and Mac won’t completely converge
  - 1123581321 2y ago
    Mac, iPad and Home/Wearables all bring in similar revenue. iPhone is the hardware category that dwarfs the rest. Software revenue is roughly equal to Mac/iPad/Wearables combined.
- iterateoften 2y ago
  With any new technology with apple don’t look at how it is used now but what products it will enable in 3-4 years. The iPhone streaming to Mac is most likely much more about improving AR inthe future than anything to do with Mac. Mac is just an easy platform to get more users using it.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    This is what people _always_ forget. Just like the new iPhone coming out this year isn't for the people who upgrade every year. It'll feel like a "spec bump". BUT it's for the people whose phone is dropping out of support after 5-7 years of major version upgrades. For them it's a massive leap of performance and features. Just imagine jumping from an iPhone XR to an iPhone 16? Same with the Vision Pro. Apple finally releases a Pro device that's just for Pro(sumer)s and people complain it's too expensive. It's the first version, they see what 3rd party devs can and want to do with it and release a new one. There's a rumoured patent about headphones with an external camera for hand tracking, which is a clear evolution of the one in the Vision Pro.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  Forgive me, I've been hearing that since 2010. I've been through at least a couple cycles of "but they are this time, seriously!" myself personally -- this most recent cycle was the first one the Apple inteligentsia widely agreed it wasn't worth even talking about.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > They seemingly want to make sure you have a main Mac desktop always. At some point it might even become a "licensing" proposition: If you are registered (or once-connected) or some such as having a desktop, you will get Desktop features on your other devices ... (Of course once you buy the very expensive Apple brand docks, and keyboards and dongles and cables and adapters and (perhaps) extra monthly fees that you will need ... Maybe they might couple this with their AI efforts, in making their whole "AI product" into a hardware "box" that you need (even if the box is "dumb" and "Amazon-echo like" ... ... I am guessing Apple will be the first to "commoditize" AI. Perhaps via hardware. Expensive hardware. Apple hardware ...)
  - naikrovek 2y ago
    what in the world are you talking about? none of these things exist, or show any hint of existing. i'd love apple to make an apple dock. they don't because they don't need to; apple hardware uses thunderbolt 4, so thunderbolt docks work. (i do wish apple would support MST in their laptops though, so I can get multiple monitors connected via a single dock without that silly DisplayLink nonsense, but not even an apple dock could get around this limitation.) your paranoia about apple-proprietary docks, keyboards, dongles, cables, adapters and (perhaps) monthly fees, are completely off-base from what I've seen out of apple. ...and i'm not even an apple fan.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Might have overdone it a bit for sake of exposition, but Apple killed the headphone jack. Their accessory ecosystem is a thing ...
      - naikrovek 2y ago
        yes, but they don't require that you use their hardware. non-Apple bluetooth headphones are a thing, and they work great. Apple desktops and laptops still have physical headphone/headset jacks, too. I personally prefer wireless headphones when using a phone, because having the cable often required that you either have the phone out and in your hand the whole time, because the cable is too short, or somehow the headphone cable is far too long and it gets caught on everything as you move around. I understand wanting to have the option, of course, and I recognize that not everyone shares my preferences. Having designed electronic circuit boards in the past, I also know that the removal of a connector is always considered a "win". connectors suck and are the source of a lot of problems down the line, especially if they are for connecting to the outside world.

wraptile 2y ago

Apple will never cannibalize themselves like this. There isn't event multi user support on iPad which would be something trivial to do and everyone know ipad is a family device yet here we are.

sitkack 2y ago
Apple should be forced to enable multiuser on iPad and iPhone.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Or you're going to kick their asses?
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Let's do this! Next time Jon Stewart talks to Lina Khan, they discuss enabling the multiuser support in all the Apple OSes. Lina then does discovery against Apple where it turns out that product managers inside of apple have been trying to do this for years, esp in markets where a device per person doesn't work, but a shared device would. Bootlicking MBAs say that news of this would get back to high margin markets and rich families would be pissed because they just bought ipads (baby sitters) for all their children. While we are at it, once a device goes out of support, it should be fully unlocked for the user with sufficient documentation so that alternative OSes can be installed. The hardware that is my gen1 iPad still functions perfectly.

kingkongjaffa 2y ago

I love having different devices for different things. Macbook pro for coding and designing in figma and light gaming, web browsing iPad mini for reading, travelling, sketching with apple pencil. iPhone for doing phone things. Sure I buy 3 devices (4 if you count apple watch) but they last several years and have decent resale value.

diffeomorphism 2y ago
I dislike having to charge 3 or 4 different things. Also the sync is far from seamless, e.g. to annotate a pdf from the laptop, I have to send it to the tablet, annotate, then send it back. Same reason I am not carrying a point-and-shoot, a phone, a navigation system and a pda. Same reason I use a laptop instead of multiple desktop computers. Related question: on the pixel phones you could just run full windows in a VM, but for other devices it was "coming soon". What happened to that? I don't need convergence right now, if I can just run the desktop OS in a VM.
- moneywoes 2y ago
  When? Never heard of this
  - diffeomorphism 2y ago
    Not that hard to google, touted with android 13 e.g. https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-dp1-google-pixel-6-kvm-virtual-machine/ https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-dp1-google-pixel-6...

Bluestein 2y ago

I am thinking Apple would not want to cannibalize some lower end notebook sales ...

beAbU 2y ago

"Just buy an iPad/Mac" - Tim Cook probably.