iPad Marketing VP: iPad and Mac are Complementary Devices, Not Competing Devices

[ddhhddhh2]

Actually, I don't mind buying both. I believe there are many people who own both, just like there are plenty of people who own both laptops and desktops. The issue is that they can each perform the other's tasks but can't fully replace each other. So, regardless of what Apple says, right now I just want to know if iPadOS can meet the needs of professional users better. Ideally, both a laptop and iPadOS should be able to handle the same or similar tasks, but each should have advantages that the other can't replace. That would be enough. However, it's clear that Apple still doesn't intend to do this, yet they keep advertising the iPad Pro as another computer. As it stands, iPadOS is really only suitable for certain professional users.

Anyway, I hope this WWDC shows us a significantly different iPadOS, don't you think? After all, Tim claimed this is the most important year for the iPad.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

How do you mean? By jailbreaking? Or are you tlaking about the EU's app store thingo?

“Sideloading”, for as far as it will likely go, exists on iOS in the EU. If the iPadOS is added to that, it’ll still be a fairly locked down situation where there will be more places to obtain software from, but all dictated by Apple. They don’t have to have macOS running on an iPad to enable the type of sideloading that already exists.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

“Sideloading”, for as far as it will likely go, exists on iOS in the EU. If the iPadOS is added to that, it’ll still be a fairly locked down situation where there will be more places to obtain software from, but all dictated by Apple. They don’t have to have macOS running on an iPad to enable the type of sideloading that already exists.

The EU is not ALL major markets. Apple isn't going to with put the work in, nor reward the EU, to make iPad's a zillion times better than it is in the US

And besides, is it actually true sideloading? Can anyone write an app and plonk it on any old web page for people to download and use? Or are there still hoops the devs have to go through to allow people to download it?

 

[Bearygoodfries1]

More like iPadOS going to the Mac. The dumbing down if the Mac has been going on for years.

I’m still upset over what they did with Pages. I used to prefer it over Microsoft Word until they “dumbed” it down for the iPad 😔

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Unpopular opinion: iPadOS has a great user interface paradigm that’s hamstrung by lack of reimagining legacy features for a touch-first environment.

This was the problem with Windows 8 as well, although given the vastness of the iPad App Store, Apple would have a much easier time resolving it.

Except Apple giving the iPad mouse and trackpad support, and releasing Logic and FCP for the iPad counters everything you just said.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

If the Mac and iPad are supposed to compliment each others ability, why isn't there uniformity of use between the two? The VP's rhetoric doesn't align with current Apple use reality, in my opinion.

Have you taken a look at macOS lately? Every new Cali locale will look and feel like the iPad more and more until macOS disappears entirely.

But Apple is going to milk that cow to desiccated levels, obviously.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Klunky, nerdy Microsoft can produce a decent tablet that does both.

You were doing well until this.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

We know Apple has Mac apps running under iPadOS in a secret room. Just like they had PowerPC Mac laptops able to triple-boot macOS, Windows, and OS/2.

This is possible, but not for the reasons you think.

I'm sure Apple does have macOS running on iPad, so that they can troubleshoot and engineer solutions to operating a cursor and mouse OS with a fingertip.

When they succeed, they release the iPad version of said Mac app.

Eventually, the "Mac" app will be iPadOS itself, with full filesystem support, non-Stage Manager window management, a proper terminal, and all the other macOS goodies we're missing from iPadOS.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Apple forked iOS and is putting the same chips in the iPad Pro as they put in the Mac. What is the point of doing that if their expectation/assumption is that customers will own both?

For the same reason that people buy a truck and a car and even a motorcycle. Different tools with different experiences for different jobs.

Make no mistake, Apple WILL turn the iPad into a truck. They've ALREADY been doing it, actually.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

So all of that “this is a computer” stuff several years ago was just…marketing!?

Nope. Many of my extended family members use the iPad as their only computer, and have absolutely NO IDEA how to use a Mac.

 

[DavidSchaub]

What a sad quote.

While I generally don't put all that much weight in what Steve Jobs said, but one of my favourite Jobsian moment was in the iPad introduction:

"if there's going to be a third category of device it's going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone otherwise it has no reason for being"

but no... Apple wants everyone to buy a Mac, and an iPad, and an iPhone, etc...

The iPad could be great, if Apple let it complete.

 

[mashinhead]

“If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will.” — Steve Jobs

 

[Darth Tulhu]

All y'all complaining about having two devices... y'all are missing out.

My M2 MBA and 12.9" iPad Pro together is the most formidable, lightweight setup EVER.

I mean, I get it all:

Dual-screen bliss, heavy graphic arts/document tool, more than enough Mac muscle, seamless integration, a BADASS pair of screens, HIGHLY underappreciated modularity.

All in a LUDICROUSLY compact, travel-friendly package for SIGNIFICANTLY LESS money, MUCH less weight, and nearly HALF the thickness than my trusty, beloved 17" MBP (1" thick, 6.6 pounds), COMBINED.

And I LOVED my 17.

Yeah, it's a lot of money for many. But I keep my Apple products 'til the wheels fall off, so I see it as a long-term investment.

Y'all can rage against the machine all day, but I'm a HAPPY CAMPER.

 

[Thehangmn]

I’m one of those who’d rather have just an iPad over a Mac if I were forced to choose one over the other exclusively. I use my iPad for over 90% of my computing needs. The Mac doesn’t do anything for me my iPad can’t, except connect to multiple monitors.

Exactly my point. If your iPad was a Mac, why would you buy a Mac?

 

[Thehangmn]

That’s a controversial statement around these parts.

When I worked at the school district, there was a reason we gave iPads to the lowest grades of kids who haven’t developed their fine motor skills, and all other grades got chromebooks - which are far more capable devices.

Right but if you could give everyone an iPad that was more capable you would right? Many people would buy the iPad and just use it as a Mac. Why buy a 2k+ MacBook Pro or a 1.5k MacBook Air? That is why Apple will never enable MacOS on the iPad, because it would be plenty for a huge portion of their users.

 

[MichaelAdam]

This is becoming ridiculous … The iPad Pro is now technically more powerful than a MacBook Pro but can’t show it … We want a Mactouch rather than an archaic box such a Mac … What’s the problem ? Apple is sacrifying natural innovations over profitability … So frustrating …

 

[tobybrut]

Exactly my point. If your iPad was a Mac, why would you buy a Mac?

I still bought multiple Macs. I have three of them in my den, two laptops and one desktop. That’s the thing. None of the three types, iPad, laptop, and desktop, can ever fully replace the others because each has strengths and weaknesses. Even though my iPad can do everything I need it to do, I still have multiple laptops and desktops.

Why, you ask? The desktop is an M2 Ultra. You can’t put an Ultra in a laptop or a tablet, so that automatically means if you want ultimate power, you get a desktop. But a desktop is stuck at your desk, so you need a laptop. My laptops are an M1 Pro and an M3 Max MBP’s. I use them in different situations, but the major thing is that they are good for travel. You can’t take your desktop with you unless you’re MKBHD who took his iMac Pro in his luggage.

Then there’s the iPad. My current is an M1 2021 version with an M4 iPad Pro arriving Wednesday. The iPad is my bread and butter able to travel everywhere with me within my house. It’s so much easier to walk around with an iPad than with a MBP.

Even when they can all do everything I need, the difference is the level of convenience, so I have all three types. To me, it’s the form factor, not so much the software features, that makes the biggest difference. If I couldn’t afford to have that many devices, I’d forgo the desktop and the laptops and just buy an iPad.

If my iPad were a Mac, I’d still buy a Mac because an iPad can never be powerful enough for certain tasks due to an iPad’s limited battery and thermals. Fortunately the iPad is not a Mac because I love it as a tablet. I love apps that are optimized for touch, which makes the iPad far more enjoyable to use than any Mac app, which is a big reason why I don’t want the iPad to become a Mac.

 

[smulji]

Yeah the asterisk to that quote is why bother cannibalizing yourself when no one else is close to being a threat.

It's called thinking ahead.

 

[smulji]

Marking VPs are incapable of understanding reality.

Their job is to bend & create reality to their own image.

 

[smulji]

Have you taken a look at macOS lately? Every new Cali locale will look and feel like the iPad more and more until macOS disappears entirely.

But Apple is going to milk that cow to desiccated levels, obviously.

Gives more credence to the rumors that Macbooks will get touchscreen in 2 years

 

[Eithanius]

Now that physical SIM is gone, I'll stick to my MacBook Air since I'll be tethered to my iPhone anyways thank you very much Apple...!

 

[Dreamail]

macOS coming to the iPad at WWDC 2024, I'm calling it

I also think that the wrong question was asked.

It is not a Mac with a touchscreen that is most needed, but an iPad running macOS.

The iPad hardware had been very impressive for years - but ipadOS, pardon my French, sucks. And has sucked for years.
It is just really frustrating and annoying if you are used to the power of a "real" desktop OS.

I am aware that a lot of people do amazing things with iPads, but for general computing, when you want to share between and manipulate data with many different apps, ipadOS still sucks IMHO.
Let alone features like Time Machine, which allows you to retrieve hourly saved back versions of your files.

People who want a powerful MacBook, they don't necessarily want a touchscreen as this would tire their arms too quickly - unless you have a screen that can fold back 360 degrees turning your MacBook into a tablet, which is a hardware that does not exist yet. The current MacBook hardware with merely a touchscreen added would be very cumbersome to use.

So instead of waiting for a new type of MacBook hardware, it would make more sense to allow macOS to run on already existing iPads, at least in some form of memory partition or sandbox.
Which would effectively give you a small "tablet Mac". With the new magic keyboards, iPads should work just fine as tablet Macs.

At least to me it makes a lot more sense to allow running macOS on iPads than adding a touchscreen to MacBooks. As ipadOS really needs a more powerful alternative.

 

[prospervic]

Complementary? How out of touch with reality can you be? A loaded iPad Pro is $2900! That’s not a complementary product. A small % of consumers are not purchasing both a Mac and iPad Pro at those costs.

Paying $2900 for a iPad Pro is your choice, isn’t it? Neither Apple nor anyone else is forcing to you to buy Pro versions of Macs or iPads. You can chose an Air version for either or both devices and spend far less than $2900 combined.

 

[richpjr]

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.

Nobody has any idea what 99.9% of iPad users think of iPadOS. I do agree that people thinking macOS is coming to an iPad any time soon are likely to be really disappointed.

Lots of people do not agree that iPadOS is just fine. Just read all of the reviews that just came out about the M4 and the universal theme is the hardware is great but iPadOS is really holding it back.

There is some merit to the argument that some apps are lagging but iOS has been out for a long time so they programmers don't know how to write touch first apps is not accurate (I am in charge of a software team writing iOS apps and live this daily).

There are many weak areas of iPadOS that many have beefs with.

 

[okieoutwest]

iPad prices have gone so bonkers that I'm convinced Apple knows a certain segment of customers have a workflow that affords them an iPad Pro only purchasing reality. As a result, they've priced the iPad Pro sufficiently high enough to offset the loss of Mac revenue. I can't see many consumers dropping $4K+ on an iPad Pro with all its trimmings + a MacBook. Even for professional workflows I can't see them doing the same. At those prices it becomes a one or the other.

Touch is simply never going to be as productive for feature rich apps and workflows. Not to mention it’s unergonomic for long work days. Touch excels in shorter work sessions or workflows with relatively minimal interaction. This and because of the innate limitation of iPad’s battery and thermals is why I don’t believe there will ever app parity between Mac and iPad.

I agree with both of these observations and Logical Apex spelling it out on pricing makes a lot of sense.

FWIW I’ve used an iPad as my primary mobile computer for about three years now and I consistently hit a wall in certain workflows. Subjonas is right about the comfort levels too. But while 90% of my work can be easily done on the iPad, it’s the 10% that can’t that - when I need to do it - becomes mission critical. Eventually when I can afford it I’ll buy a MacBook again.

But I am not interested in spending big bucks to have both a top of the line iPad and MacBook together. And, frankly, I think Apple asking or recommending I do that is annoying.

Apple is free to do what it wants as a company of course but it’s irritating to have such an inelegant approach to mobile computing. Simplicity and elegance is what once defined the Apple approach over the windows PC and builds. But increasingly simplicity has become over-simplification and elegance has become limitation.

IDK about others but to me it feels silly to buy a laptop and an iPad (and a bunch more accessories to make my iPad like a laptop) and have to think carefully about which workflow I’m going to do that day and which machine I need accordingly. I just want to be able to have one machine that doesn’t ever feel limiting.

Someone on the forum once suggested a “docked” iPad which would function as a MacBook with a detachable screen that ran iPadOS. This would be perfect, imo. Sounds like we are never getting it.