Has anyone asked an Apple executive why they don't offer cellular on MacBooks?
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iPad Marketing VP: iPad and Mac are Complementary Devices, Not Competing Devices
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Translated to: “why sell you one, when we can sell you two”. I guess my Surface Pro will continue to be my main productivity device, while my iPad continues to be my complementary device for content consumption.
There aren’t that many people who want macOS. You’re living in a tech bubble with tech diehards who want to manipulate Terminal settings. The 99.9% of regular people like iPadOS just the way it is. They don’t want a Mac. They want the ultra portability and simplicity of iPadOS. IPadOS is just fine and doesn’t need any fundamental changes.
When I’ve surveyed people in the past, it isn’t iPadOS that people want a change to. They want to run Mac programs because they tend to be more mature than their iPad counterparts. That isn’t the OS. That’s the apps. People may ask why iPad apps (some) can run on macOS while Mac apps cannot run on iPadOS, it’s because of sandboxing. macOS supports sandboxing, but is not enforced. IPadOS requires sandboxing, which very few Mac apps support. Mac apps are allowed to range all over the file system while sandboxing prevents that and would break Mac apps. That’s why Terminal and Finder are forbidden and will never happen and why Apple threw in Stage Manager instead of Finder. Finder just isn’t possible. If Apple were to change sandboxing, it would essentially be a complete rewrite of iPadOS since that is a core security feature of their mobile OS’es. If Apple had the opportunity to redo macOS, they’d make it more like iPadOS rather than the other way around. But the horse left that barn decades ago. Rewriting macOS would break almost all existing Mac apps.
Keep in mind Macs have been around for almost four decades with macOS being around for 20 years or so. IPadOS is very new with programmers, unfamiliar with how to write touch-first apps. There’s a steep learning curve, hence the slower pace of iPad apps. It’s flat out hard to write touch programs. Stalwarts like Photoshop promised fully desktop features, but it’s been three years and counting. Final Cut Pro is still missing plugins but is slowly moving forwards. DaVinci Resolve ported all their desktop tabs but hid all but two because they aren’t sure how well they’d work in a touch environment.
So it’s not really iPadOS that people have a beef with. It’s that they own Mac programs they want to run. But consider this, people knock the MacBook Air for throttling and poor performance with high end Mac apps and consider the MacBook Air to be more of a casual consumer device. The iPad Pro is a lesser beast than even the MacBook Air with smaller battery and poorer thermals, yet people here want the iPad Pro to run software that would make an M3 Max MBP sweat. Even if it were to run macOS where Apple shockingly makes it touch-friendly (it’s not in the least), no Mac apps are touch friendly. This is the same curse that hits Surface Pros. MS has tried since Vista to make a successful hybrid and has failed. One of the big reasons is the lack of touch friendly apps. Nobody wants to be tethered to a mouse and keyboard on a tablet, because it’s no longer a tablet if you do that. So why bother making an inferior device to a MacBook Air into a MacBook Pro? It’s a recipe for disaster, which is why Apple won’t do it. They’re not stupid enough to not see a disaster in the making, just watching Microsoft flail. It’s not that they’re out of touch with the people. They know exactly what most people want. MacOS isn’t it except with a small subset of the perpetually online geeks.
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Sure, they aren’t competing products but they overlap in features and price enough for users to wonder if the iPad can/should replace their Mac.
The only reason the iPad is complementary to the Mac is because Apple is artificially limiting the potential of the iPad, which has the same hardware as the base MacBook Air, so we know it can run macOS without a problem.
Read a long article on potential successors to Tim. What really stood out to me was: 1) Virtually the entire core-ops C-level execs are about the same age, gender, ethnicity. 2) All the C-level execs HAVE EXACTLY THE SAME INCENTIVE STRUCTURE. I.e. lots of pay related to keeping the stock price high. 3) Most of the upcoming execs apart from some folks from India are a lot like the current guys (no women to speak of). No one is going to be interfering with the C-Level club's desire to cash out relatively near term.
Mr. Boger CANNOT be unaware of the issues with iPad OS productivity. He cannot be unaware of the opportunity Apple has to create the ultimate 2-in-1 device. He is simply a mouthpiece for the C-Level plans to avoid real disruption and innovation in order to keep the walls as high as possible, and the revenue flowing as fast as possible.
Mr. Boger... Read the link below please. I would buy a iPP x M4 MacPad in an instant. Until then, I just keep wondering why the famous Apple Sledgehammer ad seems to be coming true re: Apple in what might be one of the greatest ironies ever.
Link:
www.macstories.net
Mr. Boger CANNOT be unaware of the issues with iPad OS productivity. He cannot be unaware of the opportunity Apple has to create the ultimate 2-in-1 device. He is simply a mouthpiece for the C-Level plans to avoid real disruption and innovation in order to keep the walls as high as possible, and the revenue flowing as fast as possible.
Mr. Boger... Read the link below please. I would buy a iPP x M4 MacPad in an instant. Until then, I just keep wondering why the famous Apple Sledgehammer ad seems to be coming true re: Apple in what might be one of the greatest ironies ever.
Link:
MacPad: How I Created the Hybrid Mac-iPad Laptop and Tablet That Apple Won’t Make
It all started because I wanted a better keyboard for my Vision Pro. I had no idea that, in looking for one, I’d accidentally create the hybrid Apple computer of my dreams. As I quickly discovered after working on the Vision Pro daily, you can get by without an external trackpad, but a keyboard is
www.macstories.net
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Translation: We want you to buy both products because we only care about $$$.
Drawing app and streaming services apps that let you download movies/shows. For some reason you can’t get those on the Mac. Besides that, yeah.
"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." - Steve Jobs
I think modern Apple has forgotten this idea. After 14 years iPadOS should have been the successor to macOS. But the appeal of selling customers two $2000 products was just too great.
Luckily for Apple, Microsoft has also lost their way and Google still hasn't figured out tablets.
I think modern Apple has forgotten this idea. After 14 years iPadOS should have been the successor to macOS. But the appeal of selling customers two $2000 products was just too great.
Luckily for Apple, Microsoft has also lost their way and Google still hasn't figured out tablets.
I know you're probably joking or being sarcastic, but I actually wouldn't be surprised about this.
Yes we get that.
The problem is eight (8!!) current iPhones competing with each-other, and six current iPads competing with each-other.
The "New Price" showcased for the base iPad is especially golden. Apple you're making yourself look like a dysfunctional automaker: competing with yourself while using price cuts to move product.
I'm not quite old enough, but all these macos on iPad posts make me wonder, was the same debate going on back in the day between the original Mac series and the Apple II series?
oh, they complement each other, gotta put that order for the iPad Pro in right away ...
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iPads are cheaper. $350 and even cheaper on sale.
Definitely a market for them with kids and grandparents along with seeing small businesses use them as cash registers (in my experience.)
Apple doesn't want to give them too much ability or they might cannibalize Macs. Folks like me might go cheap iPads if they did decent multitasking, file system and external monitor support.
iPad does not need macOS. iPad needs a better UI and better file management. Stage Manager is not bad, but more is needed. Files is absolute trash.
tl;dr $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
literally no excuse but money when they're selling a case with trackpad and keyboard. they even have the virtualization framework to easily run macOS as an app. but then you might not buy 2 devices.
"We really see this as a product that requires another product." - Booger
literally no excuse but money when they're selling a case with trackpad and keyboard. they even have the virtualization framework to easily run macOS as an app. but then you might not buy 2 devices.
"We really see this as a product that requires another product." - Booger
So dumb. All the power of M4 for nothing. Keeping my 2018 IPP.
Yeah the asterisk to that quote is why bother cannibalizing yourself when no one else is close to being a threat.
I agree completely. I like the iPad the way it is. Yeah I still want Apple to keep developing new features and improving the OS, but I don’t need a complete overhaul. It does what I need it to do already.
So all of that “this is a computer” stuff several years ago was just…marketing!?
When the M1 iPads were announced everyone went all "THERE MUST BE GREAT THINGS AT WWDC! Why else would they put a desktop chip in an iPad!?"
Those commentators were disappointed.