Steve Troughton-SmithMay 8, 2024

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

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithMay 8, 2024

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

Show threadBenedict Cohen
@stroughtonsmith I would prefer a management shake up so that, instead of Apple platforms dropping to the lowest common denominator for the sake of consistency, they are developed largely independently of each other and the best ideas then spread amongst them. That would give the iPad a fighting chance to find its niche. If it had been done earlier it may have saved all the energy wasted on SwiftUI and other half baked products over recent years.
May 8, 2024 at 4:07pmWeb