When I finally pull the trigger, a new 13" iPad Pro w/ 16GB RAM, keyboard & stylus is gonna cost me €3,107. It would be by far the most powerful computer I own.
That's more than twice as much as what I paid for the Mac mini I do *all my development on*. It even beats out my high-end gaming PC whose GPU alone was €1800.
All of that goes to waste because it’s paired with a simplified, stripped-down OS using the same technology stack and limitations as a $300 Netflix device for your grandparents
There are 2 ways out:
Either investment in iPadOS is massively expanded to bring the OS & capabilities up to par with macOS (which is still a moving target, not a legacy OS), fixing all the half-working, flakey re-implementations of the last 14 years.
Or iPadOS leans on Apple's virtualization stack to run macOS as an app, with native performance and graphics, a la 'Classic' mode on Mac OS X, immediately ending all the angst you see about iPad, and buying an infinite runway for no. 1 to happen
@stroughtonsmith There are still a few counter arguments.
The biggest (as I articulated elsewhere) is that just giving people macOS in a VM doesn’t actually help existing iPad users who are frustrated by bugs in Files+iCloud and are forced to deal with Stage Manager’s bugs.
Put another way, advocating for a solution (macOS in a VM) that only helps one of the smallest groups of iPad users doesn’t really help most people. It shouldn’t be high on Apple’s priority list.
@stroughtonsmith I’m not actually saying they shouldn’t bring VM support to iPad OS, just that I don’t think it solves many issues. I think it is probably a good way to get mac users to shut up and stop complaining but other than that it won’t actually make the iPad a better platform.
iPad users shouldn’t have to deal with subpar windowing, they shouldn’t have to deal with subpar file management, they shouldn’t have to deal with subpar background task timers etc…
@amonduin @stroughtonsmith Counter to your counter: I think allowing macOS-as-an-app on iPad for the 10% of users who need all that power & flexibility will actually be beneficial even for the 90% of iPad users who would never use it.
Because it will raise the glass ceiling of what an iPad can do. It would put a spotlight on the use cases that are possible and desirable on iPad from a form factor pov but not possible due to OS limitations. It would help point the way forward for iPadOS to grow.
Firstly, this doesn’t address the fact that most users aren’t helped by this and that fixing the problems in iPadOS benefits everyone who uses it. Those who currently use it get a better window manager, a better file manager etc…
Second, you’re not talking 10% of users. The vocal online minority is probably less than 1% of users but neither of us really knows. I doubt millions of people every year are not buying iPads that they don’t think will actually work for them
While I think they should probably bring macOS to iPad via VM I do worry that it will reduce incentive to invest in iPadOS apps.
Personally if Apple said that they will never bring macOS to iPad and that devs need to start really investing in iPad apps that would be nice because it would send a nice clear message.
However bringing macOS to iPad will silence all the mac user complaining and let apple focus on iPadOS in peace … so maybe that would be worth it.
@rjvs my development workstation has the same amount of RAM as the current iPad Pro. I run macOS VMs on it all the time, alongside the iOS Simulator and visionOS Simulator.
In short: nonsense
@mwa3aan I use Screens regularly from my iPad, with and without the hardware keyboard. Sidecar, which only supports Pencil input, is *built into the OS*.
I find that whole argument a waste of time
@stroughtonsmith thanks! Appreciate the response. I may hop on as well. My MBP is way too unwieldy so this would be nice to bring on vacations. If only we had macOS on it 🥲
Just need to decide between nano-texture or not. This is all new to me
@stroughtonsmith
I bit the bullet and ordered base model 13”. I’ve been using my old 12.9” 2020 model for hours every single day for the past four years. It is my main video content consumption device.
But it’s crazy that prices are now MacBook Pro level. This value proposition just doesn’t make sense to me.
@stroughtonsmith the problem that i've come to understand with iPadOS is that the vision for the iPad, a seamless sheet of glass that can become anything, is totally incompatible with complex workflows.
It's a seamless sheet of glass that can become anything, not a sheet of glass that you can split into halves and store those halves and sometimes have a second smaller sheet you can peek onto the screen. The latter is what we've got and it's a confusing mess because it was never an articulated vision, just accumulated features.
If we don't want a WIMP to do complex workflows, then we need a ground-up rethinking of what the vision of what it means to use a computer in a day-to-day sense. I have some ideas of what might be interesting to explore in that sense, and I hope Apple has folks there who do too (and are listening to them).
@leon your profile can’t say you’re taller than me! That’s something-phobic gdi
(But also ty for explanation and snarkience)
@stroughtonsmith there's no way I can justify that kind of money on a tablet, much less a full function computer! I struggled to justify even a Framework (roughly €2200 plus tax), and that *is* a full function computer!
Why are iPads so expensive?
@stroughtonsmith I’ve ordered myself a Starlite at a fraction of that price to see how far Linux-based tablets have evolved. Not expecting the hardware to be nearly as sophisticated. But we’ve already established that it’s not about the hardware.
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