7 ms·

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,

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.

jeron 1y ago
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
- chakintosh 1y ago
  The new windowing feature basically cannibalizes MacBook Air.
  - threetonesun 1y ago
    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.
    - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      iPad+keyboard is also awkwardly top heavy and not very well suited for lap use. That might cease to be an issue with sufficiently dense batteries bringing down the weight of the iPad though.
  - tarentel 1y ago
    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.
- _ph_ 1y ago
  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.
m3kw9 1y ago
I told that to John Gruber and he said never will happen
omega3 1y ago
Does an iPad allow for multiple users?
- crooked-v 1y ago
  Yes, but only if it's enrolled in MDM, bizarrely enough.
  - alwillis 1y ago
    > 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.
    - iAMkenough 1y ago
      In home settings, where devices are shared with multiple family members, you want each person who uses an iPad to access their own files, email, etc. Parents and spouses would appreciate if they could take the multiple user experience for tvOS and make it an option for iPadOS.
    - ics 1y ago
      Same applies to “families” and it’s somewhat bizarre that this is still ignored in 2025.
  - thimabi 1y ago
    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.
  - eastbound 1y ago
    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.
paxys 1y ago
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.
- LoganDark 1y ago
  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-security-policies 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.
  - amoshebb 1y ago
    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
    - LoganDark 1y ago
      To be fair, sleep/suspend has been a rather infamously difficult problem for Linux when it comes to devices that weren't designed to run Linux. I think the Macs with T2 chips were a bit weird anyway and I wonder if they had already been working on Apple Silicon Macs that far back and that's why the T2 became a thing?
kmeisthax 1y ago
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.
browningstreet 1y ago
Then why break it off as iPadOS?
losvedir 1y ago
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.
- hamandcheese 1y ago
  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.
- KolibriFly 1y ago
  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.
burntalmonds 1y ago
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.
- ZeroTalent 1y ago
  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.
  - dexwiz 1y ago
    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.
    - raydev 1y ago
      Apple is capable of solving it if they want to. They don't want to (yet at least).
    - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      There seems to be some kind of incompatibility between antiglare and oleophobic coatings that may also contribute. Every single touch screen laptop I’ve seen has huge reflection issues, practically being mirrors. My assumption is that in order for the screen to not get nasty with fingerprints in no time, touchscreen laptops need oleophobic coating, but to add that they have to use no antiglare coating. Personally I wouldn’t touch my screen often enough to justify having to contend with glare.
  - thetallguyyy 1y ago
    Because MacBooks have subpar displays, at least the M4 Air does. The iPad Pro is a better value.
athenot 1y ago
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.
jonplackett 1y ago
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.
dcchambers 1y ago
> 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.
msgodel 1y ago
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."
renrutal 1y ago
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!
Bengalilol 1y ago
> I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad. For the same price, you still get a better mac.
gnatman 1y ago
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.
KolibriFly 1y ago
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
nicbou 1y ago
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.
qn9n 1y ago
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.
_ph_ 1y ago
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.

jeron 1y ago

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

chakintosh 1y ago
The new windowing feature basically cannibalizes MacBook Air.
- threetonesun 1y ago
  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.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    iPad+keyboard is also awkwardly top heavy and not very well suited for lap use. That might cease to be an issue with sufficiently dense batteries bringing down the weight of the iPad though.
- tarentel 1y ago
  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.
_ph_ 1y ago
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.

m3kw9 1y ago

I told that to John Gruber and he said never will happen

omega3 1y ago

Does an iPad allow for multiple users?

crooked-v 1y ago
Yes, but only if it's enrolled in MDM, bizarrely enough.
- alwillis 1y ago
  > 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.
  - iAMkenough 1y ago
    In home settings, where devices are shared with multiple family members, you want each person who uses an iPad to access their own files, email, etc. Parents and spouses would appreciate if they could take the multiple user experience for tvOS and make it an option for iPadOS.
  - ics 1y ago
    Same applies to “families” and it’s somewhat bizarre that this is still ignored in 2025.
- thimabi 1y ago
  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.
- eastbound 1y ago
  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.

paxys 1y ago

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.

LoganDark 1y ago
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-security-policies 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.
- amoshebb 1y ago
  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
  - LoganDark 1y ago
    To be fair, sleep/suspend has been a rather infamously difficult problem for Linux when it comes to devices that weren't designed to run Linux. I think the Macs with T2 chips were a bit weird anyway and I wonder if they had already been working on Apple Silicon Macs that far back and that's why the T2 became a thing?

kmeisthax 1y ago

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.

browningstreet 1y ago

Then why break it off as iPadOS?

losvedir 1y ago

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.

hamandcheese 1y ago
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.
KolibriFly 1y ago
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.

burntalmonds 1y ago

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.

ZeroTalent 1y ago
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.
- dexwiz 1y ago
  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.
  - raydev 1y ago
    Apple is capable of solving it if they want to. They don't want to (yet at least).
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    There seems to be some kind of incompatibility between antiglare and oleophobic coatings that may also contribute. Every single touch screen laptop I’ve seen has huge reflection issues, practically being mirrors. My assumption is that in order for the screen to not get nasty with fingerprints in no time, touchscreen laptops need oleophobic coating, but to add that they have to use no antiglare coating. Personally I wouldn’t touch my screen often enough to justify having to contend with glare.
- thetallguyyy 1y ago
  Because MacBooks have subpar displays, at least the M4 Air does. The iPad Pro is a better value.

athenot 1y ago

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.

jonplackett 1y ago

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.

dcchambers 1y ago

> 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.

msgodel 1y ago

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."

renrutal 1y ago

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!

Bengalilol 1y ago

> I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad. For the same price, you still get a better mac.

gnatman 1y ago

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.

KolibriFly 1y ago

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

nicbou 1y ago

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.

qn9n 1y ago

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.

_ph_ 1y ago

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.