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iPad Is the iPad being a giant iPod touch a bad thing or a good thing?? OS X in the future??

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ShaunAFC3

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 28, 2016
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The iPad in its current state running IOS will always be a giant iPod Touch but it has some very clear advantages like the the amount of apps that is designed for the iPad and IOS is very very touch friendly and very easy/simple to you use unlike Windows on tablets and lots more which it is awesome!


So I really really hope Apple will stick with IOS on IPads and not put MacOS/OS X on there iPads because of the programs not designed for touch and requires a mouse to navigate around which it is a bad and a frustrating experience and it is definitely not the right way to go putting a not touch friendly desktop OS on a tablet just look at Microsoft so I definitely don't want OS X on iPads!

So Is the iPad being a giant iPod touch a bad thing or a good thing?? and do you think Apple will stick with IOS on there iPads and make IOS more advanced and make the iPad with IOS more PC like in the future?? I definitely go with the latter 100%!! :)

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this!! :D :D
 
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ShaunAFC3 said:
The iPad in its current state running IOS will always be a giant iPod Touch but it has some very clear advantages like the the amount of apps that is designed for the iPad and IOS is very very touch friendly and very easy/simple to you use unlike Windows on tablets and lots more which it is awesome!


So I really really hope Apple will stick with IOS on IPads and not put MacOS/OS X on there iPads because of the programs not designed for touch and requires a mouse to navigate around which it is a bad and a frustrating experience and it is definitely not the right way to go putting a not touch friendly desktop OS on a tablet just look at Microsoft so I definitely don't want OS X on iPads!

So Is the iPad being a giant iPod touch a bad thing or a good thing?? and do you think Apple will stick with IOS on there iPads and make IOS more advanced and more PC like for the iPads?? I go with the latter 100%!! :)

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this!! :D :D
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There is about 20 threads that pose this same observation and people share their thoughts in them.

Couple of thoughts. Can the iPod touch or even iPhone do split screen? Does the iPod touch have a keyboard?
 
Indeed. The OP must be about 8 years old because the question was posed in 2010 when the original iPad was released. Between then and now it has surfaced much less frequently, and I think it's safe to say it has been put to rest.
 
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Mcdevidr said:
There is about 20 threads that pose this same observation and people share their thoughts in them.

Couple of thoughts. Can the iPod touch or even iPhone do split screen? Does the iPod touch have a keyboard?
Click to expand...
I think there are jailbreaks enabling split-screen and even PIP on the iPhone, so it's technically doable. As for keyboard, bluetooth keyboards are a dime-a-dozen, and can be used on smartphones as well.
 
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They'll optimise the onscreen space being used by the interface on the largest iPad Pro. The current OS is older than the machine and is optimised for smaller screens.
 
It really is nails on a chalkboard to me when someone refers to an iPad Pro as a giant iPod touch. Yes it shares iOS, but can an iPod touch do split screen or pip? Does it have pencil support? Does it have access to the many iPad specific apps that make the iPad so great? Maybe I think too much into it, but to me it is a completely different experience than anything I can get on an iPod or iPhone.

To answer the question, no, Apple won't put OS X on an iPad. Their money maker is iOS. It's clear based on how they are marketing the iPad Pro as a computer replacement that they are all in on iOS. I expect them to add features here and there that will continue to allow iOS to be a computer replacement operating system for many people. It has already come a long way, and I expect iOS 10 to be even better.
 
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having used OS X on a touchscreen before I sincerely hope they never put the full blown OS X on an iPad, it's just not a good user experience, in fact it's abysmal.

What they'd need to do is make some sort of touch optimised version instead, where they replace the standard OS X gui with something that could be used efficiently with a finger. Of course then they'd have to maybe tone down the complexity of the operating system quite a bit as well to make it less dependent on traditional computer input devices and accessories. Maybe something along the lines of iOS..... Oh, hang on, never mind.
 
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capathy21 said:
It really is nails on a chalkboard to me when someone refers to an iPad Pro as a giant iPod touch.
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LOL, my response when someone says that the iPad Pro is a giant iPod Touch is, "yeah... and?" I put the onus on them to explain the significance of their comment. The response is almost always, "err...well... ummm... but it's so large and expensive!". :eek::D
 
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ShaunAFC3 said:
So Is the iPad being a giant iPod touch a bad thing or a good thing?? and do you think Apple will stick with IOS on there iPads and make IOS more advanced and make the iPad with IOS more PC like in the future?
Click to expand...

My guess is that we've passed "peak tablet" and the future combo will be a large-screen phone in your pocket and a laptop - possibly a convertible - in your bag. The pure tablet has a few sweet-spot uses for which touch or stylus input is an advantage - and you can tell where Apple is heading by looking at the iPad Pro and the Pencil - but apart from that, the touch UI is actually quite restrictive. The #1 use of my iPad is as a web/email terminal around the house and, frankly, a cheap Android tab would do that.

I strongly agree that the ergonomics of Touch and Keyboard/Mouse/Trackpad UIs are very different, and a one-size-fits-all design is doomed to failure, as Microsoft proved with Windows 8. Of course, the idea that Tablets and laptops can't run the same OS/Apps is an inconvenient truth for Microsoft who are kept alive by the huge back-catalog of Windows software and the dominance of Office, Exchange/Outlook etc.

The question is, though, why does "separate UI" = "separate OS & Apps"? When Jobs launched the iPad, the CPU power, storage and graphics capabilities of mobile devices were a limiting factor. Now, with the high-end iPads rivalling the low-end Macs for power, why can't we have a 'convertible' laptop that changes interfaces when you flip/undock the screen. I confess that I've managed to avoid Windows 10 thus far, so I don't know if that's how SurfaceBooks etc. work but AFAIK Windows is still divided into desktop and "the API formally known as Metro" applications.

Convertibles seem to be the thing of the moment. One thing that Apple *could* do is produce an ARM-based 'convertible' that, initially, could run both recompiled OS X applications and iOS Apps or, going forward, 'Dual UI' apps. I'd guess that a lot of modern OS X Apps constructed with XCode/ObjC/Swift would be easy to recompile for ARM, and I'd bet that apps already offering OS X and iOS versions already share a lot of code (with UI code separated from the 'engine').

The fly in the ointment would be "legacy" apps like MS Office and, particularly, pro graphics stuff like Adobe CS. Plus, you'd lose the ability to run Windows on a Mac. Unlike the 68k-PPC and PPC-x86 shifts there isn't going to be a big step-up in power, so running legacy apps under emulation isn't likely to be effective. However, short term, these are going to be "MacBook"-class systems that don't appeal to the pro graphics crowd (& Adobe are doing a great job of repelling non-pro users with their subscription model).
 
OS X doesn't make sense on a tablet. It's not designed for touch. Neither was Windows 7. That's why when Microsoft and PC makers decided to go the route of touch screen PCs and Windows tablet and hybrid devices, they changed Windows. iPads could benefit from a new OS that is somewhere between iOS and OS X.
 
Night Spring said:
How did you do that? ModBook?
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It must have been about 7 years ago easily so my highly medicated memory isn't the best :D think it must have been a ModBook it's the only one I remember having done it. That one wasn't mine thankfully, I just had a play with someone else's when I had the notion that a Mac tablet would be the best thing ever and didn't like it at all.

I also ran OS X on an HP convertible as a Hackintosh for a bit out of curiosity more than anything else, I like to tinker. Performance was really good but again it was just that OS X on a touchscreen didn't feel right, it was too fiddly, just wasn't for me.
 
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theluggage said:
The question is, though, why does "separate UI" = "separate OS & Apps"?
Click to expand...

theluggage said:
The fly in the ointment would be "legacy" apps like MS Office and, particularly, pro graphics stuff like Adobe CS
Click to expand...

I agree with your point about separate UI not necessarily having to mean separate OS and apps, and think that the long term goal is to have devices that transit smoothly between tablet mode and desktop mode, switching interfaces as needed within a single OS. The most difficult part about making such a device, I believe, is how to move developers and users from legacy apps to apps designed for a dual interface system. Microsoft is trying this transition by building a dual interface operating system, and hoping that developers will build dual interface apps. Apple is going the route of first building a touch only platform, forcing developers to build touch only apps, and gradually folding back desktop functionality as the touch platform matures. Who will get to a fully converged device first? We'll see!
 
Night Spring said:
I agree with your point about separate UI not necessarily having to mean separate OS and apps, and think that the long term goal is to have devices that transit smoothly between tablet mode and desktop mode, switching interfaces as needed within a single OS. The most difficult part about making such a device, I believe, is how to move developers and users from legacy apps to apps designed for a dual interface system. Microsoft is trying this transition by building a dual interface operating system, and hoping that developers will build dual interface apps. Apple is going the route of first building a touch only platform, forcing developers to build touch only apps, and gradually folding back desktop functionality as the touch platform matures. Who will get to a fully converged device first? We'll see!
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Yeah I agree. I think that ultimately, some time in the future a single codebase for the operating system will exist and only the interface will be different. There's nothing to stop, for example, Apple combining OS X and iOS almost exactly as they are and transitioning between an OS X style GUI and the iOS GUI. They share quite a bit of code as it is already and merging the two would make maintaining the underlying frameworks and so on easier.

As you say, the difficulty, or issue if you prefer to look at it that way, is in getting developers to transition to such a setup.
But honestly, I don't think thats as big an issue as it might first seem. I'd welcome it with open arms for sure. As it is I currently have to design one interface for the iPhone, potentially a second for the iPad, a third for the Apple TV and then if I think about porting across to the desktop, yet another interface.

So I personally wouldn't mind a merging at all, the interface work has to be done regardless if it's one operating system or two. The biggest benefit and something that would make life easier is that if they merged into just one codebase it would actually reduce my workload. If I wanted to put an app or game onto the desktop, as it is I can reuse the bulk of the code I've done for the iOS version. But there are many differences between iOS and OS X as well, so theres still quite a bit of code to be rewritten, or written in addition to the iOS code. Merging into a single codebase, now that would make me a happy chappie :D
 
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TrueBlou said:
But there are many differences between iOS and OS X as well, so theres still quite a bit of code to be rewritten, or written in addition to the iOS code. Merging into a single codebase, now that would make me a happy chappie :D
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I think this was Apple's big secret plan. Get developers used to having to code two different versions (OS X and iOS) of their apps, so when the platforms finally merge and all they have to do is make separate UIs for desktop, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV, they see it as a reduction of their workload and are happy. Whereas developers making apps for Windows would still be grumbling over (and not doing a good job of) having to make separate UIs for different device formats. :p
 
Night Spring said:
I think this was Apple's big secret plan. Get developers used to having to code two different versions (OS X and iOS) of their apps, so when the platforms finally merge and all they have to do is make separate UIs for desktop, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV, they see it as a reduction of their workload and are happy. Whereas developers making apps for Windows would still be grumbling over (and not doing a good job of) having to make separate UIs for different device formats. :p
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In all seriousness, I could see that being true. There aren't massive differences on a coding level between iOS and OS X. If you can do one, you can do the other. So bringing them together and just worrying about different interfaces would be awesome. I'd welcome it with open arms.

The other side though, ewww, I've given up on that. I'll happily take the abuse I'll get from the Windows lovers, but I'm just not a fan of their implementation of a dual operating system. Rarely have I ever used it in tablet mode when I've not had to drop into the desktop for something or other. Then you either need a keyboard and mouse or the dexterity and thin limbs of a spider to poke about at things.

Don't get me wrong, I admire what they're trying to do, I just don't think it's there yet. To me it's a desktop os with worse tablet functionally. iOS on the other hand, well, it's basically the other way round.

Yeah I'm probably biased. Even though I use Windows occasionally, mostly fixing other people's systems and occasionally looking at my Windows tablet to remind myself why I don't like it ;) but it was working with, programming for, fixing and maintaining Windows systems for many years that finally drove me towards Apple and I'm glad it did.
 
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TrueBlou said:
but it was working with, programming for, fixing and maintaining Windows systems for many years that finally drove me towards Apple and I'm glad it did.
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I started out with DOS, and moved to Windows. I still find Windows 7 easier to work with than OS X. I got into Apple products with the iPod Nano, then moved on to iPod touch, and from there to iPad and iPhone. I gradually started using OS X More and more because of interoperability with iOS, and also because I didn't like where Microsoft is going with Windows 8 and 10. I like that the iPad is basically a giant iPod touch. It's how I got into the platform, and the transitions from Nano to touch to iPad and now to the 12.9 iPad Pro has been very organic. But Windows 8 and 10 feel like Microsoft tried to graft a foreign element, namely touch interface, onto the existing desktop OS. I think they'll eventually get the two elements to mesh, but until then, it's just ugly. As for Apple, they'll either have to eventually merge iOS and OS X, or grow iOS to the point that OS X can be retired. I think we'll get hints of which direction they are going at the upcoming WWDC.
 
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Night Spring said:
I started out with DOS, and moved to Windows. I still find Windows 7 easier to work with than OS X. I got into Apple products with the iPod Nano, then moved on to iPod touch, and from there to iPad and iPhone. I gradually started using OS X More and more because of interoperability with iOS, and also because I didn't like where Microsoft is going with Windows 8 and 10. I like that the iPad is basically a giant iPod touch. It's how I got into the platform, and the transitions from Nano to touch to iPad and now to the 12.9 iPad Pro has been very organic. But Windows 8 and 10 feel like Microsoft tried to graft a foreign element, namely touch interface, onto the existing desktop OS. I think they'll eventually get the two elements to mesh, but until then, it's just ugly. As for Apple, they'll either have to eventually merge iOS and OS X, or grow iOS to the point that OS X can be retired. I think we'll get hints of which direction they are going at the upcoming WWDC.
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I had a similar progression, starting out with Dos (not counting Amstrad, Spectrum, Commodore and Atari before that) I used to love dos. Even when Windows 95 came along I could still be found meddling in Dos tweaking memory and the like. Ah the good old days ;)

I just got so annoyed over the years with the constant bloody maintenance and faffing with Windows. Probably because I had to (and still do to a degree) spend so much time fixing the bloody thing for work and friends, friends of friends, friends of frien.... You get the idea :D

When I finally decided to switch to Apple it was a complete culture shock getting used to OS X but once I did, I could never go back.

I still have a Windows tablet, because I love tech and I like to tinker but yeah I agree that things just now with Windows could be a lot better. It will improve, just God knows when.
 
capathy21 said:
It really is nails on a chalkboard to me when someone refers to an iPad Pro as a giant iPod touch. Yes it shares iOS, but can an iPod touch do split screen or pip? Does it have pencil support? Does it have access to the many iPad specific apps that make the iPad so great? Maybe I think too much into it, but to me it is a completely different experience than anything I can get on an iPod or iPhone.

To answer the question, no, Apple won't put OS X on an iPad. Their money maker is iOS. It's clear based on how they are marketing the iPad Pro as a computer replacement that they are all in on iOS. I expect them to add features here and there that will continue to allow iOS to be a computer replacement operating system for many people. It has already come a long way, and I expect iOS 10 to be even better.
Click to expand...
It effectively is a giant iPod touch, though. No, the iPad UI isn't just a stretched out iPod touch/iPhone UI, but it runs the same OS and effectively does the same thing. Sure, there are a couple of features exclusive to the iPad, but that comes with having a bigger screen. Split screen just isn't effective on a 4" screen. Two 2" apps running side by side would be impractical.

But being a giant iPod touch isn't a bad thing. I love my iPad. I would love an OS X tablet, but I'm not sure it would really replace my iPad. Just like I have a MacBook Pro and an iPad now, I'd probably just own a MacPad :cool: and an iPad if that was a thing.
 
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ShaunAFC3 said:
The iPad in its current state running IOS will always be a giant iPod Touch but it has some very clear advantages like the the amount of apps that is designed for the iPad
Click to expand...

Make your mind up.
Is it a giant iPod Touch or is it a device with a large amount of dedicated apps designed for its large form factor and considerable processing power?
 
Mcdevidr said:
Who really cares at this point. What's the next thread title gonna be "Can the iPad Pro really, I mean really replace your laptop?".
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LOL so true. There are some/many who are on the elusive search for that device that can serve as both a tablet and a notebook but not compromise on either. If it is possible, and I believe that it is, I'd wager that it will be Apple that does it. "it" defined as a device that doesn't compromise as a tablet or notebook.
 
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