The struggle with the iPad is Apple doesn't want to cannibalize its laptop sales. There is simply no reason that the iPad couldn't switch to the MacOS UI when plugged into a hardware keyboard and mouse. So it will remain in this halfway up halfway down state until the winds change.
This is actually Apple's weakness. Right now Apple wants to sell you 3 devices, a phone, a tablet, and a laptop. The reality is that there is no reason why your iPhone when plugged into a keyboard, mouse, and display couldn't present a MacOS UI. Similarly for the iPad.
If someone could exploit this weakness then Apple could be placed in an uncomfortable position.
How do you think that would happen though? Boot two operating systems in parallel and switch between them upon connecting periphery? How would you keep app states in sync between tablet and "docked" then? How do you handle open windows once you disconnect periphery? What if you just worked on Terminal.app and then disconnect keyboard & trackpad? Does it just disappear? Do you suddenly have a potential root shell on your iPad?
I think there's a good reason this kind of desktop mobile hybrid hasn't really gained any traction yet.
DeX is a decent hack but nothing more. ChromeOS is still struggling with running Linux/Android/web apps in parallel without it feeling awkward.
> The reality is that there is no reason why your iPhone when plugged into a keyboard, mouse, and display couldn't present a MacOS UI.
> If someone could exploit this weakness then Apple could be placed in an uncomfortable position.
Motorola Lapdock, Continuum, Samsung Dex.
It didn't catch the mainstream adoption. Sure, that's mobile OSes (and Google failed miserably (if it did even try) on Android desktop) but still it didn't catch enough.
The reason is simple, though, most users (not uber front-end l33t hax0r with a mech keyboard) are served by the phone itself more than enough. Those who needs a proper computer would take a proper computer anyway (along with a phone). There is no unfulfilled gap there what would bring in billions for anyone who would attempt to make it work.
Oh, and there was one attempt which actually tried to bridge both ecosystems. Microsoft is still ridiculed about Win8.
And a watch! Watches could be potentially very interesting, and they could make phones largely redundant for those who don't like using apps all the time.
Personally, I hate phones, and I prefer computation at two extremes: Desktop and watch. Sadly, Apple Watch can't be owned without one of their phones.
I recently bought the M4 iPad Pro with the nano texture glass, etc. My goal in buying an iPad was to have a device that helps me focus more when doing certain kinds of work. I have ADHD and so my life is a constant struggle against distraction. A fully functional, fully customizable computer with overlapping windows and instant access to anything is totally counterproductive much of the time.
I am probably using the iPad about 25% of the time for work now. During this focused time, I am far better at responding to emails and reading long documents than when I am back on my chaos machine - an M2 MacBook Pro with the Studio Display. Yes, I got the keyboard and the pencil; without a keyboard, I couldn’t be productive on the device.
I’m not much of an artist, but I am gradually growing to love having the pencil. I’ve started using GoodNotes with the pencil to make diagrams like mind maps and to do brainstorms. My handwriting is awful so forget about handwriting with the pencil. It’s more useful for drawing pictures.
If you are an attention-starved person like me, maybe give it a shot? You could do worse.
I have to say I also feel a whole lot more secure on the iPad. MacOS security is really good, but the infinite flexibility to install whatever software you want exposes you to making bad decisions. On an iPad, if you’re going to be exploited, it is nation state level hacking by comparison.
The iPad is the „you’re holding it wrong“ philosophy applied to the whole OS. The problem is Apple is unable to make tradeoffs, which is exemplified by the lack of a calculator app because „you can’t just take the iPhone calculator and resize it for the iPad“ (yes you can and it’s better than not having a calculator so at all).
I wrote an article about the lack of calculator for the ipad, and an actual port of the ios calculator as a PWA, if anybody misses this app on the ipad. Free, no ads.
I've actually been giving this a bit of thought. Not because I think I could/would want to replace my Macs with an iPad but because my old 11" iPad broke and I was debating whether to replace it. I also found myself on a month-long trip hauling around the old MacBook Pro I use for travel and it weighs a fair bit and I didn't use it that much.
I did have an 11" Chromebook but it's way out of support and there's nothing on the market that would be my ideal replacement.
So I'll probably end up with an iPad Air for travel going forward. It's fine for any writing or work along those lines I would do--don't really do any programming or heavy duty picture editing/cataloging on the road. The external keyboard on the current iPads actually let you use the combined system in your lap which was one of my past complaints.
So not a general replacement for me but I think it's probably a better compromise for me traveling than a laptop that otherwise duplicated functionality of the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro I'd be using when I wasn't traveling.
I don’t mind that iPadOS is limited, my gripe is that Apple limits Mac hardware to protect the iPad. Where’s my 11” OLED MacBook with eSIM? Where’s my Mac with hinged screen and Apple Pencil support? My mac with tolerable cameras?
I bet we’d have seen at least some of these if not for a decade of trying to make the iPad answer the “what’s a computer?” question.
You could, but it's much less useful and much more expensive than many laptops. So I'm not sure why you would want to. Even in the Apple ecosystem, a Macbook or Macbook Air would make far more sense.
I love my iPad Pro. It’s a fantastic device that I carried around the house for constant use. I later gave it to my kid in college who uses it for note taking, writing papers, and all the normal college stuff. It’s brilliant for that.
But it’s good if and only if you never, ever want to do anything that’s not built in or readily available in the App Store. You’re buying and using the device as-is. Forget building your own tooling unless it’s something you can script up in Shortcuts. That doesn’t seem like the end of the world, yet it made me realize exactly how much of my environment I tend to customize with my own tools. It’s all the little stuff, like making macros in Keyboard Maestro that call out to shell scripts or Python to do a thing. (I implemented an Emacs-style push/pop-point feature in BBEdit, which doesn’t support that natively.) Or writing the forementioned shell scripts and Python. Or running from jobs to do things periodically. None of those are critical for most people, but they’re important to me. And if I can’t do that on an iPad — and I can’t — then I don’t want it. All the butting of heads against the garden walls made me resentful of this perfectly fine little device.
Apple sells a gazillion of them so I can’t say they’re wrong about what users want. They sure are wrong about what I want though.
>Apps like Procreate thrive on a touch interface, and they can utilise all the power of an iPad Pro with an M4 chip.
Isn't the main sticking point for Procreate the RAM, which isn't really improved with the M4 over the M2 or even the M1? Meanwhile apps like Final Cut Pro aren't really able to take advantage of the M4 because they can't video encode in the background while you use the rest of the chip to do other things.
The point about the iPad not having to do "desktop-class" things is also watered down by Apple promoting "desktop-class apps" during WWDC 2022 and adding features like Stage Manager.
Couple of days back, I saw a video and I believe it has the right terms. I like that.
- MacBook (desktop) is my work computer.
- iPhone (Mobile) is my mobile computer.
- iPad is my Hobby Computer - photography, sketching, note-taking, etc. A very costly one but right now with its power and lack of App and a dumbed-down OS, it is at best a Hobby computer.
> iPad is my Hobby Computer - photography, sketching, note-taking, etc. A very costly one but right now with its power and lack of App and a dumbed-down OS, it is at best a Hobby computer.
Except, of course, if sketching and note taking is your job or part of it. Or reading or annotating PDFs, and things like writing and proofreading, etc. There are many non-hobby things that can be done on an iPad.
Sure, it is a bit of a specialised tool, but you having no professional use for it does not make it “at best a Hobby computer”.
Sold on the idea. I had ipad +-5 years ago. Then when get broken didn't buy a new one - was expensive toy (for me).
Power is there - the M3/M4 looks amazing, but real productivity ?
I needed a light machine to do some web design work on figma. My first instinct was to get a Chromebook but my designer found an iPad air with m1 for cheaper. I checked and figma was available for iPad so I authorized.
A couple days later we get the iPad and it does have the figma app but it is view only!
You can still use figma but it has to be the web version. It works but because apple has terrible PWA support the experience is much inferior than in a much weaker Chromebook.
The Apps for iPad are just weak on general. Often the only available app is the one for iphone, and you can still install but it renders in a third of the screen as a phone App with big black bars on the sides.
Honestly this comes back to the refrain I've been hearing lately: what iPadOS needs is the desktop version of Safari! That would let us run Figma just fine! Figjam runs great on iPad, it's actually a fully native experience and I love it. But if they'd just give us a first-class Safari experience, we'd be good here.
I could if it can run Steam games, you can sshfs the filesystems of other computers with it and vice versa, it supports transferring files between mass storage devices, supports connecting a mechanical keyboard, if you can easily switch between many different application windows and browser tabs on it, have multiple windows visible at the same time, and use all the expected development tools like clang, gdb, JS minifiers, and you can connect displays and headphones with jack to it
EDIT: forgot to add, run firefox with plugins and chrome with devtools
From this list the only thing it can’t do is Steam and running a dev env (though you can do that via a remote shell or VM).
It already supports SMB, mechanical keyboards, storage, alt-tab via keyboard, multiple windows with stage manager or split screen, extended display, and headphones.
I admire the iPad from a hardware perspective; it's a beautiful piece of equipment. And I have also been pulled into think, "Hey, maybe I need one of these things" but invariably I come to the conclusion that I would have virtually no use case for it so I can't justify spending the money on it and having it sit collecting dust on my desk, particularly when it costs more than the Macbook Air I rely on most of the time. Between my MacBook Air and iPhone I don't see where the iPad fits into my life and work.
I've had an iPad since the month they came out, and over that time 3 full sized and one mini.
The mini was by far the best for me. Small enough to be one-hand able without strain, and bigger than a phone for browsing, reading, and mail. It's dead, replaced by a mostly unused series 6 full sized one, but it's too big. Screen is to big for typing without strain, unless it's down on a table. Split keyboard is ok, but then tapping on the url bar is a strain.
Phones are too small for my eyes without glasses, and I don't like mobile browsing. Mobile sites have decided that because there's no physical space, all the margins need to be super huge so nothing fits on screen. (though, that's also an issue with some mobile apps, like @ my bank) Maybe on a Pro/Plus it would be ok, and I'll probably go for one next time. Either that or I'll go low end for the phone and try to put all my mobile stuff on the next mini. If I could just get the phone hardware/software on the mini.
Even if an iPad could run MacOS, it's just more comfortable to do it on an Air. On the lap, the keyboard holds up the display.
Outside of software development, the real problem with iPadOS isn't just that it's not as capable as macOS (though that is a problem). It's that it's badly implemented. All of the features they added to justify the "iPadOS" rebrand[0] have significant bugs or UI issues that Apple hasn't really stopped to fix.
Things like:
* The file picker arbitrarily[1] locking you out of picking whole folders on third-party file providers (e.g. Dropbox)
* Mouse support occasionally bugging out and just not working, or snapping to widgets nowhere near your mouse cursor, or not letting you click the maximize widget on PiP videos
* SMB shares on the Files app occasionally taking down the daemon responsible for managing them and, in turn, freezing every app that tries to open a file picker until you restart your iPad
Missing features, software lockouts, and stereotypical Apple fussiness over not giving you things you want but won't enjoy using are one thing. I'd totally love to see touch-friendly versions of all the other things Macs can do. But that's a lower priority than just making iPadOS a functioning piece of software again.
The iPad feels like an Apple vanity project that just so happened to get pushed into production... because it is. Jobs had some engineers make him a tablet specifically so he could spite a friend of his at Microsoft that was bullish on Windows XP tablets. All of Apple's idiosyncracies regarding mouse and touch input, and them refusing to replace iPadOS with an operating system that actually works is downstream of Jobs' insistence that iPad software not require a stylus to operate. The problem is that iPad doesn't actually pay the bills at Apple, so none of the bugs in iPadOS actually get fixed, and it mostly gets hand-me-down features from iOS.
[0] Yes, I meant rebrand. iOS and iPadOS are the same thing internally - hell the SDKs still call it iPhoneOS. If you jailbreak an iPhone you can enable Stage Manager and it Just Works.
[1] Ok, this might not be 100% Apple's fault, since I have seen file providers that do let you pick folders, but the whole point of this being locked down is so that Apple can put a gun to developers heads' and force them to do things The Apple Way.
People really tie their brains in knots trying to justify iPad OS.
It's terribly limited -- a lot of the software people use regularly cannot run on it, and it also does not allow various typical workflows.
> so maybe it should be able to run MacOS... Their vision isn’t very clear the more one thinks about it
Come now. I think it's only unclear if you plug your ears and say "La, la, la, la!" loud enough.
We all get it: fat fingers can't hit small click targets like a mouse pointer can. Some apps really need a physical keyboard. So go into "iPad mode" when a pointing device and keyboard isn't connected, which can be similar to the current iPadOS interface. Or perhaps make use of some of the nice assistive technologies that are already in macOS. Point is, there are solutions, and no one said the macOS side of it couldn't be optional.
That said, no, not unless your only computing is consuming streamed media content and social media. If you actually need to type things, make things, etc, it will not work.
iPad: probably not. Windows 2-in-1's (for example, Surface Pro) _somewhat_ fit the bill: heavier than a tablet but still a full-blown computer when you need it.
I use my iPad pro mostly to read pdfs. Neither my laptop nor my phone are practical for that. Otherwise I didn't find many things the iPad was better at.
Honestly the iPad is great for content consumption, sketching, and light creativity tasks.
When I want to do anything serious, I pull out my MacBook Air...
I would be happy to have my iPad switch into 'macOS mode' when I put it into the keyboard/trackpad folio case, so I could have the best of both worlds. Or just have it so I can swap between booting macOS and iPad OS whenever I want.
But instead, I'm stuck with two portable devices, and the iPad is usually relegated when I go on a trip, because it's the less useful of the two.
[+] [-] spiralpolitik|1 year ago|reply
This is actually Apple's weakness. Right now Apple wants to sell you 3 devices, a phone, a tablet, and a laptop. The reality is that there is no reason why your iPhone when plugged into a keyboard, mouse, and display couldn't present a MacOS UI. Similarly for the iPad.
If someone could exploit this weakness then Apple could be placed in an uncomfortable position.
[+] [-] jasonvorhe|1 year ago|reply
I think there's a good reason this kind of desktop mobile hybrid hasn't really gained any traction yet.
DeX is a decent hack but nothing more. ChromeOS is still struggling with running Linux/Android/web apps in parallel without it feeling awkward.
[+] [-] justsomehnguy|1 year ago|reply
> If someone could exploit this weakness then Apple could be placed in an uncomfortable position.
Motorola Lapdock, Continuum, Samsung Dex.
It didn't catch the mainstream adoption. Sure, that's mobile OSes (and Google failed miserably (if it did even try) on Android desktop) but still it didn't catch enough.
The reason is simple, though, most users (not uber front-end l33t hax0r with a mech keyboard) are served by the phone itself more than enough. Those who needs a proper computer would take a proper computer anyway (along with a phone). There is no unfulfilled gap there what would bring in billions for anyone who would attempt to make it work.
Oh, and there was one attempt which actually tried to bridge both ecosystems. Microsoft is still ridiculed about Win8.
[+] [-] nextos|1 year ago|reply
Personally, I hate phones, and I prefer computation at two extremes: Desktop and watch. Sadly, Apple Watch can't be owned without one of their phones.
[+] [-] cesarvarela|1 year ago|reply
> But doesn't Apple run the risk of cannibalizing its own products? "It's not a danger," Schiller said in response to Rose. "It's almost by design."
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-201...
[+] [-] ttul|1 year ago|reply
I am probably using the iPad about 25% of the time for work now. During this focused time, I am far better at responding to emails and reading long documents than when I am back on my chaos machine - an M2 MacBook Pro with the Studio Display. Yes, I got the keyboard and the pencil; without a keyboard, I couldn’t be productive on the device.
I’m not much of an artist, but I am gradually growing to love having the pencil. I’ve started using GoodNotes with the pencil to make diagrams like mind maps and to do brainstorms. My handwriting is awful so forget about handwriting with the pencil. It’s more useful for drawing pictures.
If you are an attention-starved person like me, maybe give it a shot? You could do worse.
[+] [-] ttul|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] emsy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mejutoco|1 year ago|reply
https://mejuto.co/the-ipad-did-not-have-a-calculator-so-i-po...
[+] [-] dinckelman|1 year ago|reply
Even with the skeuomorphic design, split half for the history, half for a regular calculator. Flip it sideways, get a scientific calculator
[+] [-] nkozyra|1 year ago|reply
I think the problem is they're very conscious of cannabalizing their own product line.
If the average person could use a $500 iPad ($399 + keyboard + mouse) instead of a bare minimum macbook air ($1000+), they would.
[+] [-] ghaff|1 year ago|reply
I did have an 11" Chromebook but it's way out of support and there's nothing on the market that would be my ideal replacement.
So I'll probably end up with an iPad Air for travel going forward. It's fine for any writing or work along those lines I would do--don't really do any programming or heavy duty picture editing/cataloging on the road. The external keyboard on the current iPads actually let you use the combined system in your lap which was one of my past complaints.
So not a general replacement for me but I think it's probably a better compromise for me traveling than a laptop that otherwise duplicated functionality of the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro I'd be using when I wasn't traveling.
[+] [-] cricketminister|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] marbletiles|1 year ago|reply
I bet we’d have seen at least some of these if not for a decade of trying to make the iPad answer the “what’s a computer?” question.
[+] [-] everdrive|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardobeat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kstrauser|1 year ago|reply
I love my iPad Pro. It’s a fantastic device that I carried around the house for constant use. I later gave it to my kid in college who uses it for note taking, writing papers, and all the normal college stuff. It’s brilliant for that.
But it’s good if and only if you never, ever want to do anything that’s not built in or readily available in the App Store. You’re buying and using the device as-is. Forget building your own tooling unless it’s something you can script up in Shortcuts. That doesn’t seem like the end of the world, yet it made me realize exactly how much of my environment I tend to customize with my own tools. It’s all the little stuff, like making macros in Keyboard Maestro that call out to shell scripts or Python to do a thing. (I implemented an Emacs-style push/pop-point feature in BBEdit, which doesn’t support that natively.) Or writing the forementioned shell scripts and Python. Or running from jobs to do things periodically. None of those are critical for most people, but they’re important to me. And if I can’t do that on an iPad — and I can’t — then I don’t want it. All the butting of heads against the garden walls made me resentful of this perfectly fine little device.
Apple sells a gazillion of them so I can’t say they’re wrong about what users want. They sure are wrong about what I want though.
[+] [-] Hamuko|1 year ago|reply
Isn't the main sticking point for Procreate the RAM, which isn't really improved with the M4 over the M2 or even the M1? Meanwhile apps like Final Cut Pro aren't really able to take advantage of the M4 because they can't video encode in the background while you use the rest of the chip to do other things.
The point about the iPad not having to do "desktop-class" things is also watered down by Apple promoting "desktop-class apps" during WWDC 2022 and adding features like Stage Manager.
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|1 year ago|reply
- MacBook (desktop) is my work computer.
- iPhone (Mobile) is my mobile computer.
- iPad is my Hobby Computer - photography, sketching, note-taking, etc. A very costly one but right now with its power and lack of App and a dumbed-down OS, it is at best a Hobby computer.
[+] [-] kergonath|1 year ago|reply
Except, of course, if sketching and note taking is your job or part of it. Or reading or annotating PDFs, and things like writing and proofreading, etc. There are many non-hobby things that can be done on an iPad.
Sure, it is a bit of a specialised tool, but you having no professional use for it does not make it “at best a Hobby computer”.
[+] [-] throwaway888abc|1 year ago|reply
Keeping eye on the development and still unfortunately not there: (also recently posted on HN) https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code
On-the-go coding on an iPad with Blink Shell and VS Code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsbQxSUdUOw
*If anyone has perfect solution which will beat old rusty x230 for dev on the go, i did love to see
[+] [-] dudus|1 year ago|reply
A couple days later we get the iPad and it does have the figma app but it is view only! You can still use figma but it has to be the web version. It works but because apple has terrible PWA support the experience is much inferior than in a much weaker Chromebook.
The Apps for iPad are just weak on general. Often the only available app is the one for iphone, and you can still install but it renders in a third of the screen as a phone App with big black bars on the sides.
We returned it the same day.
[+] [-] chamsom|1 year ago|reply
Totally agree though, in this day and age 1st party Figma should be on there.
[+] [-] brigleb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Aardwolf|1 year ago|reply
EDIT: forgot to add, run firefox with plugins and chrome with devtools
[+] [-] ricardobeat|1 year ago|reply
It already supports SMB, mechanical keyboards, storage, alt-tab via keyboard, multiple windows with stage manager or split screen, extended display, and headphones.
[+] [-] brandon272|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wiredfool|1 year ago|reply
The mini was by far the best for me. Small enough to be one-hand able without strain, and bigger than a phone for browsing, reading, and mail. It's dead, replaced by a mostly unused series 6 full sized one, but it's too big. Screen is to big for typing without strain, unless it's down on a table. Split keyboard is ok, but then tapping on the url bar is a strain.
Phones are too small for my eyes without glasses, and I don't like mobile browsing. Mobile sites have decided that because there's no physical space, all the margins need to be super huge so nothing fits on screen. (though, that's also an issue with some mobile apps, like @ my bank) Maybe on a Pro/Plus it would be ok, and I'll probably go for one next time. Either that or I'll go low end for the phone and try to put all my mobile stuff on the next mini. If I could just get the phone hardware/software on the mini.
Even if an iPad could run MacOS, it's just more comfortable to do it on an Air. On the lap, the keyboard holds up the display.
[+] [-] kmeisthax|1 year ago|reply
Things like:
* The file picker arbitrarily[1] locking you out of picking whole folders on third-party file providers (e.g. Dropbox)
* Mouse support occasionally bugging out and just not working, or snapping to widgets nowhere near your mouse cursor, or not letting you click the maximize widget on PiP videos
* SMB shares on the Files app occasionally taking down the daemon responsible for managing them and, in turn, freezing every app that tries to open a file picker until you restart your iPad
Missing features, software lockouts, and stereotypical Apple fussiness over not giving you things you want but won't enjoy using are one thing. I'd totally love to see touch-friendly versions of all the other things Macs can do. But that's a lower priority than just making iPadOS a functioning piece of software again.
The iPad feels like an Apple vanity project that just so happened to get pushed into production... because it is. Jobs had some engineers make him a tablet specifically so he could spite a friend of his at Microsoft that was bullish on Windows XP tablets. All of Apple's idiosyncracies regarding mouse and touch input, and them refusing to replace iPadOS with an operating system that actually works is downstream of Jobs' insistence that iPad software not require a stylus to operate. The problem is that iPad doesn't actually pay the bills at Apple, so none of the bugs in iPadOS actually get fixed, and it mostly gets hand-me-down features from iOS.
[0] Yes, I meant rebrand. iOS and iPadOS are the same thing internally - hell the SDKs still call it iPhoneOS. If you jailbreak an iPhone you can enable Stage Manager and it Just Works.
[1] Ok, this might not be 100% Apple's fault, since I have seen file providers that do let you pick folders, but the whole point of this being locked down is so that Apple can put a gun to developers heads' and force them to do things The Apple Way.
[+] [-] jmull|1 year ago|reply
It's terribly limited -- a lot of the software people use regularly cannot run on it, and it also does not allow various typical workflows.
> so maybe it should be able to run MacOS... Their vision isn’t very clear the more one thinks about it
Come now. I think it's only unclear if you plug your ears and say "La, la, la, la!" loud enough.
We all get it: fat fingers can't hit small click targets like a mouse pointer can. Some apps really need a physical keyboard. So go into "iPad mode" when a pointing device and keyboard isn't connected, which can be similar to the current iPadOS interface. Or perhaps make use of some of the nice assistive technologies that are already in macOS. Point is, there are solutions, and no one said the macOS side of it couldn't be optional.
[+] [-] superkuh|1 year ago|reply
That said, no, not unless your only computing is consuming streamed media content and social media. If you actually need to type things, make things, etc, it will not work.
[+] [-] 4WIW|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] WillAdams|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fsflover|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] joak|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] geerlingguy|1 year ago|reply
When I want to do anything serious, I pull out my MacBook Air...
I would be happy to have my iPad switch into 'macOS mode' when I put it into the keyboard/trackpad folio case, so I could have the best of both worlds. Or just have it so I can swap between booting macOS and iPad OS whenever I want.
But instead, I'm stuck with two portable devices, and the iPad is usually relegated when I go on a trip, because it's the less useful of the two.