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Tim Cook Says Apple Won't Create 'Converged' Mac and iPad

I don't think we want a tablet running OS X or a laptop running iOS or a "foldover" hybrid, but when I first read the description of the MS Surface Book and saw the rumors of the iPad Pro, I thought what would be brilliant is the keyboard section from the Retina Macbook married to an iPad Pro screen.

Docked - it runs OS X from the keyboard section logic board and can use the batteries contained in both the keyboard and screen section for some incredible runtime. Undock the screen and you have an iOS tablet that is thin and (relatively) light with its own battery and two app multitasking.
 
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Rafterman said:
But Windows 10 DID get better, didn't it? The first try won't be perfect, it never is, for any product. But Apple has to start trying eventually even if it means we need OSX 11.
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It's better but Windows 8 set a pretty low bar. Plus, it isn't as if Microsoft really wanted to produce Windows 10 and go back to the desktop. They wanted to wean their dependence from Intel and were hoping that the Metro interface would take off and developers would write for Windows on ARM. Since that isn't happening, they are going all in on Windows 10 and convergence.

I'm sure within Microsoft there is some jealousy that Apple has been able to get developers to write for an ARM platform.

What's more likely is that Apple will continue to gradually improve iOS to address the complaints of those who want more functionality. Apple basically confirming that the iPad Pro will eventually get USB 3.0 support is the first of those moves. The Smart Connector opens up the possibility for more hardware docks (possibly supporting external displays), and Apple can add a more visible file system in a future release of iOS. If it did that, I think we'd see a lot of the chatter about OS X tablets go away. That may be exactly what Apple is thinking.

Rogifan said:
because you could make one device and charge a lot more for it.
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True. Look at how pricey Surface Book gets. It's a MacBook Pro plus an iPad Air.
 
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KPOM said:
What processor would you recommend Apple use for the MacBook? The MacBook Air processors use up too much power (so it would be more of a Surface Book, which weighs as much as the MacBook Pro). ARM doesn't run x86 software natively, and would be even slower than the Core M if Apple tried to emulate x86.
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Don't bother to emulate x86, problem solved? Does Apple have to retain compatibility with existing desktop apps? Can't they just make everyone compile their apps in ARM? for distribution in the App Store?

I am not a programmer so maybe I am misunderstanding how iOS and OS X share the same kernel but run different UI and how it would be impossible for Apps in the Mac App Store to have a single binary that runs on both platforms.

As it is none of the software that has been written for Mac OS X takes advantage of the SIMDS, right? So there would be literally no performance hit going to ARM?


/s
But for real though Apple isn't afraid to cut off older software so going ARM for the rMB shouldn't have been an issue.
 
Sabretooth78 said:
I agree with the "anti-touchscreen" sentiments. I have no use for it myself, especially seeing as I hate having fingerprints and other smudges on my displays as it is. In terms of productivity at work, sorry, keyboard and generic mouse beat the tar out of having to rely on touchscreen. I can't imagine having to do my job with that. Certainly not in the current desktop/monitor/etc. workstation paradigm as it currently exists.
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So don't use it! I never understood why consumers would not want a feature, I'm sitting at my breakfast bar having breakfast with my surface pro 4 in front of me, the absolutely logical way to navigate is with my fingers on the screen. If we are getting rid of useless hardware, my vote would be to get rid of the trackpad which in all these years of existence I've probably use a dozen times.

Since the surface devices have been released I doubt I would ever go back toa laptop, but if I did there is no way in hell I'd get one without a touchscreen, it's just so damn convenient.
 
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Rafterman said:
The Macbook needs a redesign. I'm talking tablet Macbooks running OSX, not a vanilla Macbook Pro just with a touchscreen added. A Surface Book-style design is the future. Dock it for the power of a dedicated GPU and more battery, or lift off the screen for more portable use.
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No problem, thank you for clarifying. It does indicate that the 'touchscreen on OS X' argument connotes much deeper consequences than simply slapping a touchscreen on a MacBook, which I think a few people here may be missing.

I sincerely believe that the proposed change is a step backwards, as I don't think Apple notebooks need such a major redesign as you've described, though I don't think that's something we can agree on as a lot of it comes down to personal preference.

Happy to agree to disagree if you are, and thanks for being patient enough to outline a reasoned argument. :)
 
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pika2000 said:
No it won't. History already proves it, re Tablet PCs.

When you have a desktop OS, people expect desktop applications. Those won't work on a touch-focus UI on a tablet. Even Microsoft tried it with Windows 8 and Metro, and everybody hated it.
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And now? ......

Windows 10 and the Surface Pro is getting nothing but praise. Almost all manufacturers, like DELL, ASUS, and etc are moving in that direction and with premium quality and great specs.

Apple's trying to hold on to the low end Macbook market, but sooner than later the new desktop tablet is going to be more valuable.
 
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Since there ARE segments of Apple customers interested in such functionality, how about this:
  1. Build an official Apple app that mirrors a customer's Mac screen on their iDevice, so that one can simulate the OS X experience through their iDevice. I think there's some of this already out there. So the difference here is Apple offering it's own version of this kind of app. OS X software is still running on the Mac back at the desk or home but it is controlled and viewed as if it is running inside the iDevice.
  2. Take the iDevice emulator that already runs iOS apps in OS X for coders to test their app programming, polish it up into a more consumer-oriented Mac application and thus let any iOS apps run on Macs. Make it multitask to run multiple iOS apps at the same time if the user wants. I'm surprised this has not already been done as a replacement for Dashboard as Dashboard apps and iOS apps seems to have a lot of overlap. Knowing Apple, add an A-series chip to next gen Mac motherboards (with- not replacing- Intel) to "make this work" (better) and thus rationalize why everyone wanting this functionality needs to buy new Macs with a A-series chip on board to take maximum advantage of this functionality.
Both choices would deliver a way to get as close to this consumer segment want as possible while not trying to force OS X and iOS to converge in a single piece of hardware. Those with some kind of utility need to use some OS X software via an iDevice or vice versa would have a fairly efficient way to do so.

Pay for the programming team and codebase maintenance by pricing it up there a bit since this would be comparable in some ways to a Parallels or VMware-type solution, with regular "new versions" to keep covering the costs of maintenance.

Since neither option would be forced on anybody, the "whatever Apple says" purists would not be forced to buy or use these apps. Yet the segment that DOES want something like this would have a good way to get pretty close to the idea of converged device. Even Apple's most important partners- AT&T, Verizon, etc- should love #1, as that would likely burn cellular data at a pretty good clip when it gets used fairly heavily. I believe that would be win:win:win for everyone without anyone having anything forced upon them.
 
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pika2000 said:
No it won't. History already proves it, re Tablet PCs.

When you have a desktop OS, people expect desktop applications. Those won't work on a touch-focus UI on a tablet. Even Microsoft tried it with Windows 8 and Metro, and everybody hated it.
Click to expand...

Desktop apps work fine on a touchscreen. Windows 8 is gone and Windows 10 is here now and most agree its much better. No first try, for any product, is going to work perfectly. It takes time to develop.
 
spinedoc77 said:
So don't use it! I never understood why consumers would not want a feature, I'm sitting at my breakfast bar having breakfast with my surface pro 4 in front of me, the absolutely logical way to navigate is with my fingers on the screen. If we are getting rid of useless hardware, my vote would be to get rid of the trackpad which in all these years of existence I've probably use a dozen times.

Since the surface devices have been released I doubt I would ever go back toa laptop, but if I did there is no way in hell I'd get one without a touchscreen, it's just so damn convenient.
Click to expand...
After the iPad came out there I am sure there were a ton of folks that tried touching their Mac displays because the it was such a natural thing to do after using an iPad.
 
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Rogifan said:
For some people. I would argue there are a lot of people using laptops for the exact same things they're now using their iPad for. Microsoft doesn't have the edge on anything. The Surface line is heading more and more back to laptop territory. How many people are actually using touch first apps on the Surface Pro or Surface Book? My guess is not many. We saw how well the Surface RT did. I predict an OS X tablet would suffer the same fate.
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I don't see it this way, as long as there is no sacrifice in things like size, battery life and price. Putting aside the number of apps available to each platform, I'd MUCH rather have a full desktop OS which can be used just as well in terms of simple touch apps for the same price, size, battery life, etc. Why would I eschew more features and functionality for no tangible benefit? Once again this is ignoring the app markets, which if we didn't ignore I understand is certainly a valid argument. Although in counter to that, personally I prefer full featured programs rather than having a watered down "app". Apps were a necessary evil when drive space, computing power, battery, heat, etc were at a massive premium. These are not issues anymore, and something like Continuum is what we need, something that scales up and down depending on how we need to use the device.

Apple was great in reinventing the tablet space, but the massive functionality losses the ipad has are just not necessary anymore. Same thing with apps.
 
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dmylrea said:
There's obviously a huge disconnect between Tim Cook and his customers. He either needs new advisors that can read public forums, or maybe he should fire up Macrumors.com on his new iPad Pro and do some light reading.
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Our forums only take up .1% of the Apple customers and most of them are Apple haters or trolls.
th-gates9345 said:
He is going to eat his words like he did when he said Apple will not make iphone which needs to use both hands: iPhone Plus?
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Tim Cook never said that. Steve Jobs probably said that.
LIVEFRMNYC said:
An Ipad with a desktop OSX would sell tons more than the iPad Pro.
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No it won't. It would have terrible battery life, the UI wouldn't work well with touch, . . .
 
penajmz said:
Basically why would they make it so people would stop buying MacBooks. Not really a great business decision.
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Just an idea....an OS X smart keyboard for the iPad Pro.

Using a vm/partitioning type technology they could have it designed so that the screen\tablet when detached ( a la surfacebook) would switch to its own iOS. It reverts back to OS X when docked to the keyboard.


So using the iPad Pro and its smart connector as your laptops [MacBook Air] display when connected. Then revert back to iOS when the iPad Pro is detached.


So whats needed is the software to add the features needed to allow the iPadPro to act as a laptop display. The new hardware would be a keyboard type accessory which again like the SurfaceBook is a full laptop for running OS X that has the ability to dock the iPad Pro.
 
Hey Tim! If what you're claiming is true then stop dumbing down our Mac Apps. You just killed the Aperture that all the users loved. Sorry but I don't believe every word you said though. You never been real all your life and stop playing politics.
 
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Rafterman said:
But Windows 10 DID get better, didn't it? The first try won't be perfect, it never is, for any product. But Apple has to start trying eventually even if it means we need OSX 11.
Click to expand...
That's open for debate. Windows 8/8.1 jumped too far too quickly toward touch computing. Microsoft overcompensated with Windows 10 as it seems to have swung the pendulum back toward desktop-centric usage. Having live tiles in the Win 10 Start Menu seems goofy.

What's so hard about, "Live Tiles when using a device in touch mode, traditional Start Menu when using the device in desktop mode, with a setting to override default behavior?"

On my hybrid Windows devices, Win 8.1 is far better as a tablet, Win 10 as a notebook. In the mix of all that are touch-optimized Modern UI apps that fall far short in quantity and quality compared to Android and iOS.

The holy grail of a truly converged device will not arrive any time in the foreseeable future. Microsoft is close, but they're a bit short on the tablet end of things.

I'll be happy to have a notebook that is slightly to the notebook side of convergence and a tablet that is slightly to the tablet side of convergence (if that makes any sense)

The Macbook Air 11" is already there. The iPad (Pro or non) is close but needs just a few more tweaks to get there.
 
LIVEFRMNYC said:
And now? ......

Windows 10 and the Surface Pro is getting nothing but praise. Almost all manufacturers, like DELL, ASUS, and etc are moving in that direction and with premium quality and great specs.

Apple's trying to hold on to the low end Macbook market, but sooner than later the new desktop tablet is going to be more valuable.
Click to expand...

But sales of the Surface product line actually dropped year on year in the September quarter. Sure, the Surface 3 line sold a lot better than the Surface 2 line, but that was a really low bar and barely a blip in terms of total tablet sales.

fhall1 said:
Docked - it runs OS X from the keyboard section logic board and can use the batteries contained in both the keyboard and screen section for some incredible runtime. Undock the screen and you have an iOS tablet that is thin and (relatively) light with its own battery and two app multitasking.
Click to expand...

That's a reasonable idea, though I think Apple would resist since the result would be a thicker notebook than the MacBook Pro. The screen on the MacBook Pro is incredibly thin. By contrast, my HP Elitebook 820, which uses the same processor as the MacBook Air, has a screen as thick as an iPad because of the touchscreen. Remember that the Surface Book is using also using MacBook Air-class 15W processors. All the noise about the Surface Book being twice as fast as the MacBook Pro was based on some cherry-picked GPU tests (and any CPU differences will be wiped out when Apple moves the MacBook Air and Pro lines to Skylake likely early next year). Plus, it would be incredibly expensive. The Surface Book goes up to $2700, and that's with a tablet piece that lasts only 2.5 hours.

So either way, there is a compromise involved.
 
Rafterman said:
But Windows 10 DID get better, didn't it? The first try won't be perfect, it never is, for any product. But Apple has to start trying eventually, even if it means we need OSX 11.
Click to expand...
Windows 10 got better by undoing a lot of Windows 8. Surface Pro and Surface Book are trending back towards a traditional laptop.
 
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diamond.g said:
But for real though Apple isn't afraid to cut off older software so going ARM for the rMB shouldn't have been an issue.
Click to expand...

Apple isn't afraid to cut off older software, but I doubt they would want a split line where some Macs are running on one architecture and others on another. For example, would Microsoft write two versions of Office for OS X, or would they write for ARM, in which case the more powerful Macs would not be able to take advantage of the extra power of x86?
 
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