iPad An OS X tablet

[nightcap965]

I'm a major fan of operating systems, and have worked with everything from CP/M to OS/2 and virtually every version of Unix. I disagreed when Apple bought NeXT. I thought they'd be better off with Be. I was wrong.

You can do almost anything with a Unix-based OS. That doesn't mean that you should. Every Linux noob starts by building a box with the kitchen sink in it. You never know what you may need, might as well install it now. What they end up with is a bloated machine with gaping security holes just waiting to happen. The older and wiser sysadmin builds a system with the functions she needs and no more. Every program or package that you strip away is one less to hack, one less to patch, one less to cause problems.

iOS started with MacOS X (which started with NeXTSTEP, which started with BSD Unix and the Mach kernel) and stripped out everything they didn't need. They also added support specific to a multitouch interface. It's not just a matter of remapping the mouse input to accept taps, it's a whole 'nuther animal. And finally, they locked the thing down. How many non-jailbroken iOS devices do you know that are botnet slaves?

Sysadmins are the laziest people on earth. (I know, I was one for decades.) We don't like extra work. So we keep it simple.

 

[engineerben]

I feel we need to be honest with another aspect here, and one that's pretty well hidden and more the REAL reason.
The Arm chips in the iPad are simply too slow for OSX.

At the moment they can "Look" fast simply because they are only running iOS and cut down apps, with features specially coded in to be quick at something.

Load up OSX as it stands today, and then try and run some full/proper software and the real truth would become apparent VERY quickly indeed.

Above all else, that's probably more the real reason it's not been done yet.

I used to doubt the ARM's ability to run a full-up desktop OS too, until the 64-bit A-series ARM cores started showing up. Now, the latest benchmarks indicate that the A9X has about the same single-core processing power as some versions of the I5 core. Intel still whups it on multicore scores, but not by orders of magnitude, as it was before.

A second consideration is that both IOS and OS X are based on the BSD UNIX kernel. They have different API layers, but share some APIs so that if you develop for OS X, you're not completely out to sea when you start developing for IOS. That kernel seems to run great on both Intel and ARM platforms, and really, much perceived performance these days come from the GPU, not the CPU, and the A9X has a smokin' GPU.

Finally, if Apple really wanted to build an OS X tablet, there are low-powered X86 chipsets that would be suitable. The Atom line is the best example from Intel, and Microsoft has full-up I-series cores in some of their tablets. Bottom line: Apple may have a lot of reasons for not doing a OS X tablet, but I suspect CPU performance isn't the major reason.

 

[ZombiePete]

I am hoping apple are developing a stripped down version of osx yosemite...

iOS is the "stripped down" version of OSX.

I don't think it will happen, mostly because it will negatively impact both iPad sales which are not all that great at the moment and MBP sales.

Relative to how they were selling before sales of the iPad are down, but I don't know that it's fair to say that they're not selling all that well; they are still the best selling tablets on the market.

 

[Cashmonee]

It's...amazing to see how many people cling to old paradigms just because they're familiar.

I agree. I like the iPad Pro because there is no Finder. I don't want an exposed file system on something like the iPad. I also don't want a mouse, and I don't want to give developers ammunition to be lazy and not plan for life without a mouse or file system. I want Google Drive and Dropbox to be my file systems and I want my apps to just pulls files from there. That way, no matter where I am, no matter what device I am on, my files exist in their most up to date form.

If I get to a point in my day when I need to use a ton of windows, or I need something that requires OS X, I go to OS X. I do not want that with me all the time. The overhead and UI cost is too high, and it creates a subpar experience.

BTW, why on earth are there so many of you clinging to a file system? What benefit does it possibly have? I mean, I don't even want it on OS X that badly. Plus, even if iOS had one, what task would you perform? Do you actually think it would be a good experience? To me, it seems like it would be a PITA to use, making it worthless, and allowing developers to not include cloud integration and the like.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

As a more general comment: Whenever I hear people say "I don't want a file system" or something similar it makes me want to roll my eyes. I will never get the person who wants fewer options and less control. Couldn't possibly disagree more with that attitude.

They'll usually argue that the current system works great for them and they don't want it changed, but they never care that the current system doesn't work well for others and that more options are better.

I don't want OS X on a tablet. Instead, i want two things:

1. the ability to use my iPad Pro as a second monitor without using huge amounts of CPU
2. the ability to use my iPad Pro as an input device for my Mac (mostly for illustrating with the Pencil)

I know that apps exist to do both of these things, but they're limited; Duet is a CPU hog, and Astropad is too laggy. Maybe the USB-3 connector will fix those problems and make my wishes a reality?

USB-3 won't fix the issues with the current second screen apps. The problem isn't bandwidth (USB-2's 35MB is already fine for a video stream; that's like 6-7 simultaneous blu-ray streams).

The issue with this tech is that because the iPP lacks video capture hardware (which iMacs and the Cintiq Companion have) the video capture and encoding has to occur on the host machine, and to do this at 60 fps and high quality will be too much for anything other than a high-end desktop or "gaming" laptop (even then it will waste a lot of CPU/GPU time on the host and only work well if the developer can utilize built-in video capture functionality of the GPU).

In practice these systems currently produce low frame rate video with poor quality and too much lag. To see an example of this done well look at Steam Home Streaming, which can do 30mbit 1080 video with 30ms latency. It requires a powerful CPU/GPU combo on the host though.

I basically keep posting this in every thread that mentions Astropad, but what you need is to offload the video conversion work to a 3rd device in the chain. Instead of having the host do the video capture/encode, take the HDMI/DP video from the host, convert it with an external video capture device (similar to the hardware that allows iMac target mode), and then send THAT video stream to the iPP over USB. Decoding on the iPP is done by an app just like it is now. Some kind of USB splitter adapter would be required to send input events back to the host machine since the iPP is no longer connected to it by USB.

This setup would get you performance that looks exactly like the Cintiq Companion 2 hooked up as a second screen, by which I mean the video quality would be excellent and latency would be minimal (assuming good capture hardware).

 

[Beavix]

BTW, why on earth are there so many of you clinging to a file system? What benefit does it possibly have?

Because I need to group files of different types into project folders. Because using the cloud is not feasible when working with large files and using a metered Internet connection.

 

[Night Spring]

actually have humans on this forum that are saying that if they were given a MacBook from the future that works exactly like a MacBook does now, today. And then you showed them you could pull off the screen and that screen portion would then flip into iOS mode and be usable in the exact same way an iPad works today.

The key part of this is "from the future." When we do arrive at that future where technology is finally advanced enough for the machine you describe to exist, I'm sure everyone will love it. But the people arguing against OS X on a tablet are saying that putting OS X on a tablet TODAY would cause too many compromises. They think that Apple is wise not to try to build such a machine next year, because the technology isn't mature enough to make it a good experience.

 

[maflynn]

Relative to how they were selling before sales of the iPad are down, but I don't know that it's fair to say that they're not selling all that well; they are still the best selling tablets on the market.

The iPad Pro will enjoy a nicely little bump to be sure, but I think overall the sales of iPads will continue to shrink. Apple really didn't do much for the iPad Air, so we have a minor bump of the mini and of course the Pro which imo, is a niche product. I think the next quarter will show the same thing, i.e., poor iPad sales numbers

 

[Beavix]

The key part of this is "from the future." When we do arrive at that future where technology is finally advanced enough for the machine you describe to exist, I'm sure everyone will love it.

The technology exists, but Apple has no reason to use it for that purpose. Yet.

But the people arguing against OS X on a tablet are saying that putting OS X on a tablet TODAY would cause too many compromises.

I thought people already figured out that a smart company like Apple would not just slap El Capitan on a tablet and be done with it. Even Microsoft did a lot of work to make Windows more tablet-compatible.

 

[Night Spring]

I thought people already figured out that a smart company like Apple would not just slap El Capitan on a tablet and be done with it. Even Microsoft did a lot of work to make Windows more tablet-compatible.

And yet, people continue to post that they want OS X on iPad.

 

[Beavix]

And yet, people continue to post that they want OS X on iPad.

OS X here really means not iOS. The iPad should run something more advanced than iOS.

 

[ZombiePete]

The iPad Pro will enjoy a nicely little bump to be sure, but I think overall the sales of iPads will continue to shrink. Apple really didn't do much for the iPad Air, so we have a minor bump of the mini and of course the Pro which imo, is a niche product. I think the next quarter will show the same thing, i.e., poor iPad sales numbers

Eh, iPad sales may continue to slow but I think that calling them "poor" sales without any context ignores trends in the overall industry. I won't pretend to know how the iPP will affect the numbers (I returned mine after all) but I guarantee that competitor devices like the Surface will sell a fraction of what Apple sells in the tablet market this quarter, iPP notwithstanding.

 

[engineerben]

As a more general comment: Whenever I hear people say "I don't want a file system" or something similar it makes me want to roll my eyes. I will never get the person who wants fewer options and less control. Couldn't possibly disagree more with that attitude.

For me, it's like this: I drive a car with an automatic transmission. I don't want a manual transmission. Technology has advanced sufficiently that I'm happy with the car shifting for itself. I know there are different gears it uses in different circumstances - I just don't care.

Same thing with IOS. Most of the time I don't want to mess with the file system. I'm happy with the iPad figuring out how to manage my files. I know there's a file system under there, and that it sandboxes and all that stuff - I just don't care - most of the time.

It's that 5% of the time that bugs me - I'm on IOS and I'd like to get something over from one program to another without all the "open in" malarky. I know how I'd do it in OS X / Windows / Ubuntu / Solaris. It's trying to map that working knowledge into the IOS paradigm. It's at moments like that that I mutter, "Why couldn't they have put a file manager in this dang thing!"

Here's the thing: I don't really want a file manager. I want Apple to solve the problem in a way that doesn't necessarily involve exposing a hierarchical file system. They're not ideal - they don't represent information that isn't hierarchical in nature particularly well. That report I wrote on cricket infestations in Belgium in 2012 - is it filed under "insects," or "Belgium," or "2012"? Have a few hundred files? You can figure it out. A few hundred thousand? Now you have trouble, and you'll resort to Spotlight or some other search method.

I'd be sorely disappointed in Apple if in a year or two they said, "Oh, and we're finally going to expose the user folder - here's the Finder, have at it." It would tell me that they couldn't square that circle and had given up. Personally, I think Cook & Co. are better than that.

 

[ZombiePete]

Even Microsoft did a lot of work to make Windows more tablet-compatible.

And not only has it taken them multiple iterations to get the UI close to something workable across a spectrum of devices, the OS still suffers from basic issues like display driver crashes and an inability to get it to sleep properly so the battery isn't draining while you're not using it. Insane stuff to be having to deal with in the fourth generation of a flagship product line, IMO.

When I first booted up my SP4 and Windows Defender popped up telling me my device was unprotected because I hadn't updated my virus definitions yet, I suspected that I wouldn't be using it as a tablet much. And I was right.

 

[KALLT]

I think the price is just too high. Look at Windows 10: they are desperate for tablet and mobile apps. That is why they needed to make this hybrid work. To do so, they sacrificed a lot of the UI of Windows 10 itself. Just compare the file manager to universal applications like Mail: one is optimised for the classic desktop, the other for touch. I find Mail a huge waste of space and overall a very clumsy and inelegant design. Conversely, the file manager is not a good touch-based application either when tablet mode is used. Compare this with OS X Mail: it has a crisp UI, a customisable toolbar, a menubar with lots of options. The UI is more sophisticated. This is what universal applications will look like to achieve this parity across Windows 10 systems.

Apple shouldn't strive for this, they can do better. They have the developers on their side who create powerful mobile apps that are optimised for both iPhone and iPad. This is what Microsoft wants, but doesn't have. So what if the iPad does not have Photoshop. That is a niche market. Adobe already committed to bringing better apps to the iPad Pro and Microsoft Office is already powerful enough for most use cases. Apple needs to put more resources into iOS and allow the iPad to shine a little more. But OS X should stay OS X and not inherit a touch-based UI, just for the sake of a hybrid device.

Moreover, Apple already fails to achieve a high level of quality on both fronts. They really don't need the added pressure of making such huge changes to iOS/OS X just to be able to sell a hybrid device. I don't want that.

 

[ZombiePete]

Here's the thing: I don't really want a file manager.

More importantly, the industry doesn't want you to have a file manager. Corporate IT is pushing hard to move away from local storage and into collaboration tools like SharePoint or Google Apps. Data is more valuable than ever, and letting users hoard it on their hard drives makes disciplines like knowledge management increasingly difficult.

However, I tend to lean towards the side that wants to have at least something resembling file storage on our local devices, for one primary reason: the internet is not ubiquitous and fast enough to completely take over for local storage and processing for our devices. This idea tends to work better in corporate environments over high-speed LAN connections and internet access can be all but guaranteed. Consumer devices, particularly mobile computers, don't have that luxury and need to be able to operate offline.

As the internet gets faster and people become accustomed to searching for documents rather than drilling down through a folder structure to get to them (and trust me, this is how things are trending whether organizational nuts like me have a hard time dealing with it) then hierarchical file systems will disappear until they are a niche solution.

It won't be too long before the primary interface for your OS is a search bar.

Apple needs to put more resources into iOS and allow the iPad to shine a little more.

I have little doubt that Apple sees iOS as their future; I would be surprised if iOS 10 isn't called iOS X and offers new features revolve around expanding its use as a productivity OS.

 

[Night Spring]

OS X here really means not iOS. The iPad should run something more advanced than iOS.

I think we should keep in mind that the iOS development team didn't have a shipping model of iPad Pro on hand when they were working on iOS 9. They probably had a prototype, but nothing compares to having an actual finalized hardware model to work with. I think iOS 10 will have a lot more "advanced" features, and would be a giant step in satisfying people who want a desktop OS on their tablets.

 

[jamesrick80]

A IOS/OSX hybrid tablet will sell like hot cakes. I don't even care if it's priced $2000 or beyond but this is something Apple should do. Integrate there laptop/tablet market and offer it at basic to advanced models to account for profit loss in their Mac book pro line. The surface pro line has various models which Apple can do as well.

 

[2128506]

A IOS/OSX hybrid tablet will sell like hot cakes.

I'd get me one for sure, with snap-on keyboard (or even better - with USB port for my Kinesis). And one more for wifey.

I'd buy iPad Pro (love the screen!) if it wasn't running smartphone OS.

 

[Skylitfly]

No. I hope in 5 years OS X and other desktop OSs are gone as we know them and we will live in a world of mobile devices with 100% easy to use and intuitive OSs but as capable as desktop OSs are now. It will happen. I don't care about these hybrid devices meanwhile.

 

[maflynn]

Eh, iPad sales may continue to slow but I think that calling them "poor" sales without any context ignores trends in the overall industry.

I'd say a year over year change of 20% qualifies as a slide, and Q4 2015 vs. Q4 2014 showing a 10 decrease also substantiates the slowing iPad sales.

Source: Apple Reports Record Fourth Quarter Results

 

[Precision Gem]

Fact is if the iPad Pro ran OS X it would be a much more useful device for me. I would be able to stop carrying my Macbook with me when I travel. The fact that it doesn't is a missed opportunity. I appreciate the touch focused apps of iOS and I would be happy to switch modes to use either as needed. With a Microsoft like type cover, I would at least have the option of doing real work on OS X and could care less if the touch experience was not optimal in that context.

When you travel, what do you need to do on your Mac Book, that you can't do on an iPad? A few years ago I bought a Mac Book Air to use when traveling. Once I bought an iPad Air, I never used the Mac Book Air any more, and gave it to my wife. Now with the iPad Pro with the smart keyboard, I think it's the best travel device around.

 

[Cashmonee]

Because I need to group files of different types into project folders. Because using the cloud is not feasible when working with large files and using a metered Internet connection.

None of what you said requires an exposed file system like Finder. There is no reason apps couldn't handle all of that on their own. Also, if you are working on files and projects large enough that metered internet would be an issue, then I would guess a tablet is really not the choice.

The problem is, if you give developers the option to use an exposed file system or mouse input (the other thing people have asked for), you all of the sudden run the risk of changing the way iOS works fundamentally, which could undermine its simplicity and ease of use. In most people's mind that would be a step back.

 

[jamesrick80]

None of what you said requires an exposed file system like Finder. There is no reason apps couldn't handle all of that on their own. Also, if you are working on files and projects large enough that metered internet would be an issue, then I would guess a tablet is really not the choice.

The problem is, if you give developers the option to use an exposed file system or mouse input (the other thing people have asked for), you all of the sudden run the risk of changing the way iOS works fundamentally, which could undermine its simplicity and ease of use. In most people's mind that would be a step back.

You are one of the reasons why IOS will not become the amazing hybrid device it has the potential to become. Keeping IOS simplified for even the smallest preschool kid who can make it work is not everyone's goal in mind.

 

[Night Spring]

None of what you said requires an exposed file system like Finder. There is no reason apps couldn't handle all of that on their own.

The way iOS works right now, apps can't handle this on their own.

Say I have a project. I have the budget in Excel, presentations in PowerPoint, and documents in Word. On iOS, each file is saved inside the respective app. If I want to keep all the related files in one folder, the only solution is to save them in the cloud, like on DropBox or OneDrive. You may have a point that metered Internet isn't really a problem, but there are other reasons why people might not have a constant Internet connection. For instance, I spend a lot of time on the subway, where there is no Internet.

Don't get me wrong, I love iOS, and most of the time, I'm content to work around its limitations, because for me the benefits outweigh the inconvenience. But let's not pretend there is no limitations. Exposing the entire file system like with jailbreak isn't the answer, but Apple needs to figure this out at some point.