Suggesting a completely different OS and hardware experience is wild, hope you don’t work in sales.
“Sorry, we don’t offer a convertible car under $20K but may I suggest a motorcycle.”
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iPad Marketing VP: iPad and Mac are Complementary Devices, Not Competing Devices
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“Sorry, we don’t offer a convertible car under $20K but may I suggest a motorcycle.”
Yeah I'd hate to have to carry a MBP around the house whilst listening to podcasts. My iPad goes with me from the toilet to the bathroom for a shower, to the garden, to bed, to the sitting room. It must have loud and clear speakers (4 of them ideally for the best sound) and it must have Face ID, and the biggest screen possible.
A MBP, or a laptop of any description, just does not meet those needs. I have a laptop for other purposes.
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A lot of these complaints don’t seem to have anything to do with the App Store or Apple protecting App Store revenue. They are things Apple could change that the vast majority of iPad users wouldn’t even notice and wouldn’t impact services revenues at all. It’s baffling why Apple created iPad OS only to not do much with it.
Apple keep saying MacOS isnt touch first.
Not a NEVER WILL BE but their current roadmap isnt putting that as a priority.
An iPad running some MacOS version IF you add a keyboard and mouse AND disables touch MIGHT be the workaround... maybe.
From the initial launch in 2010, Apple envisioned the iPad as a complementary device. Jobs described the iPad as a third type of device that sat between an iPhone and a MacBook. It was Apple's answer to the Netbook craze of the time. If you watch the launch presentation, they literally go through the justification for the iPad's existence, and it is clearly complementary to the phone and laptop.
That said; I think $4-10K is a bit hyperbolic if we are talking about a full-fledged office productivity system plus drawing and handwritten notes. You can do that with a base MBA ($1,099) + entry level iPad ($349) + USB-c Apple Pencil ($79), which is about $1,500 full retail. If you wait for a sale, you can get it down to $1,300-$1,400.
I see the iPad Pro as a niche product. Perhaps, it fits the requirements of certain creatives with very specific needs. The vast majority of casual iPad users will buy the $349 base model, which is a pretty good deal BTW, and will use it strictly as a tablet to consume content. There is a middle group that might go for the iPad Air because they want to squeeze a little more productivity from the device or want the larger 13" screen. But, at the end of the day, it is an tablet designed to be a complementary device.
Guessing Apple marketing havent thought about that tagline as a sales pitch:
"from the bathroom to the shower, use FaceID on a big screen"
Sadly many people are too narrow minded to think of any use cases beyond their own, and then complain when the product doesn't meet their use case exactly.Guessing Apple marketing havent thought about that tagline as a sales pitch:
"from the bathroom to the shower, use FaceID on a big screen"
It probably just means the product is not designed for you.
I’m assuming these are folks that have a well worn workflow using the specific tools of their choosing that they started on the Mac or Windows and are mentally trying to bring that workflow to the iPad. Because, it IS true that once people learn one way to do things, any other way becomes more arduous, especially if the user’s not in the age bracket where the brain is still able to learn new tasks easily.
Also regarding battery life, it’s Apple that’s decided 9-10 hours is good enough even though a MBA gets close to
15 hours. According to a leaked document, an upcoming Dell XPS 13 using a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor will get nearly 22 hours battery life.
Apple is prioritizing thin and light with iPad but it sure seems like they’ve decided 10 hours is all iPad needs and if it gets a little more because of improvements with their silicon that’s great but the goal is never going to be more than 10 hours.
Steve is right though... every review says the same thing.
"awesome hardware limited by an OS".
Adding a MacOS (non touch enabled) would not detract from how you use your hardware.
But it might make a lot of other people very happy who wont carry two "complimentary" products around anymore...
I think there is a big dose of this at play here. Just look at how difficult it is to pry file management, headphone jacks and memory cards out of people's hands; they really don't want to let go and/or learn to do things a different way.
But it's not in Apple's interests to do that.
There's not much point in fantasising about things that don't align with Apple's financial interests, because they are so unlikely to happen. I just can't see how making MacOS available on the iPad makes Apple more money, which is the metric they'll be looking at when deciding what products to make.
I think this list is a pretty good starting point and is pretty specific:
The iPad Pro Manifesto (2024 Edition)
www.highcaffeinecontent.com
The way I see it, the UX aspects of "touch vs. mouse/keyboard" and the underlying API aspects of access and openness are 2 mostly orthogonal limitations. Many of the pro apps I've been on iPadOS are handling the UX side of things just fine - it's a smooth user experience, controls are intuitive for touch use, etc. Where they stumble is when it comes to things like being able to continue an operation in the background when I temporarily switch to another app or having a decent way to handle inter-process communication etc. The Touch UX in itself hasn't been the issue.
I think iPads are exactly like you describe... perfect for casual media consumption, light work, email, web browsing.
Big phones... plus a bit more.
Little laptops... with a little less.
Like when cars go through product iterations and grow bigger and more powerful, the iPad has matured into a hardware beast now far beyond the initial job.
The new hardware making it the fastest and most powerful device has maybe clouded the intent.
And a few people think it should do more to use that power.
Either iPadOS needs to change and allow it or a way to load some MacOS onto it.
I have a foot in both camps as I can see most of my iPad time I dont need something more desktop OS strength.
But them other times (like going on holidays), I'd love an easier way to load videos and music to take with me. iPadOS is still not great at files. Airdrop isnt quite flexible enough (want to put movies in Photos app rather than in VLC).
I end up taking both iPad and Macbook. Just in case.
It would be great to take a couple kilos less hardware.
That just reads like a list of what the Mac is good at.I think this list is a pretty good starting point and is pretty specific:
The iPad Pro Manifesto (2024 Edition)
www.highcaffeinecontent.com
Is there any reason if those are your requirements that you can't just buy a Mac?
But the high price of iPad Pros wouldnt affect revenue much (probably).
If you allowed MacOS on regular iPads or Airs then maybe it would hurt.
The Pro device is niche and high value to Apple.
As many point out, you can buy a Macbook for a lot less than an iPad Pro and keyboard.
What I mean is that iPadOS IS the successor to macOS. Not in the way that macOS folks freely flock to it because they can bring all their Mac ways of working with them, it’s the successor in the way that the Mac was the successor to the Apple II. Folks that owned Apple II’s couldn’t bring over their VisiCalc spreadsheets and Apple BASIC code, and their command line workflow, but users NEW to Apple could choose to go with the older one or the newer one. And, today, millions are choosing iPadOS over macOS. Those are sales that might have gone to the Mac (or Windows) if the iPad didn’t exist. They’re cannibalizing themselves today.
No, but it would sound like an extremely inelegant (albeit pragmatic) solution. And I guess I am one of those people who would happily opt for "design purity" every time, even if it results in a slightly worse user experience for myself (and for the people around me).
This is why the whole "you don't have to use it if you don't like it" argument has always irked me. While technically true, it's still there, it exists, it's existence is an abomination, and it irritates me that it exists.
Just saw a YouTube review that did a battery test on the 2022 and 2024 iPad Pros. The test involved a few different things with the the 2022 iPad Pro ending up at 52% while the 2024 iPad Pro ending up at 75% with the YouTuber saying the 2022 iPad was ”barely used” in the last two years. Granted it was one YouTuber, but that looks like a whopping huge battery life increase.
It's not just a case of allowing MacOS to run on an iPad, it's all the extra engineering and cost that would have to go in to allow that to happen. Apple would still have the cost of developing and maintaining iPadOS, and a new additional cost of developing and maintaining MacOS for iPad. This would eat into the margin they earn on the iPad and reduce revenue.
I did exactly what you suggest I should do: I bought a MacBook Air instead of an iPad Pro last year. When I read what these guys wrote, that lines up pretty well with my reasons why, hence why I'm sharing it.
It fascinates me that people don't just buy the product that meets their needs. Life's too short for the whinging and whining.
yeah I agree when it comes to the way the EU is forcing change to an OS.
they've made "you don't have to use it" into "you dont have to use it BUT the code to allow it is there and could allow backdoors to your phone even outside the EU because its the same code base".
the option to allow MacOS (or version) onto an iPad could be controlled as two separate OSes on the same hardware.
you choose what to boot into.
I've never understood why Apple hasnt allowed multiple User Accounts on an iPad.
Sure it wouldnt be hard - MacOS does it - and either your face or finger boots into your data.
There are certainly things Apple could do with the power and memory we know have in our hands.
If you think MacOS on an iPad WITH TOUCH ENABLED is the abomination, I would also agree.
MacOS needs a keyboard and mouse. Not touch.