Apple Silicon is the merger of Mac and iPad that everyone was expecting

[Yebubbleman]

Ever since the introduction of Mac OS X Lion (if not earlier), there's been talk of a convergence between macOS and iPadOS (or, then, iOS). That Apple would eventually produce an unholy Mac that ran an iOS/iPadOS-like OS capable of running Mac and iOS/iPadOS apps. People still talk of such a computer as though it's still forthcoming.

Well, I'm here to argue that we're already there and that this mythical hybrid Mac is currently sold by Apple in the form of their M1 Macs and that all Apple Silicon Macs are effectively the byproduct of this long prophesized merger. I'll explain my reasoning (as I'm sure it sounds utterly ridiculous):

- Apple is only going to make a touchscreen Mac when it decides it wants to and without any regard as to our desires for such a Mac. Which is to say that they are extremely unlikely to ever do so. The closest they got to doing it was with the Touch Bar and that clearly didn't catch on (hence never appearing in a MacBook Air, not appearing on the M1 iMac's keyboard alongside Touch ID, and only existing on MacBook Pros, and only on some of them for the majority of its existence).

- Apple is not going to remove or detract from the experience of using a Mac by stripping it down to be limited in the ways that iPadOS is compared to macOS. They have outright stated as such.

- Apple Silicon Macs have the capability of running iOS and iPadOS apps, thereby hybridizing the app ecosystem between all three platforms onto one single computer

- While the experience when booted to macOS is more or less the same as it's been since the earlier days of Mac OS X (and I'd argue that, barring a few facelifts, iCloud integration, and new apps, and interface tweaks here and there, it pretty much is), the key differences on an Apple Silicon Mac are in how it boots, how it's restored, how its storage is laid out, how the OS is updated and serviced; all of which are much more closer in similarity to an iPad or an iPhone than an Intel Mac; hell it gets restored via an ipsw file, for crying out loud! You can put the whole thing into DFU mode!

The Apple Silicon Macs may not be touchscreen hybrid machines running an interface that combines both macOS and iPadOS, but they run iPadOS and iOS apps natively, they run first party apps that are Catalyst versions ported from iPadOS that are strikingly reminiscent to their iPadOS counterparts, and they boot, run, and are serviced and maintained like iPads, despite being Macs.

Guys, the Mac and iPad HAVE merged. Apple Silicon Macs ARE the byproduct.

 

[leman]

What's interesting to me is that they've made full circle. Original iPhone OS was a fork of OS X, with ARM-specific optimizations and Apple-specific drivers and features. With Apple Silicon those forks have been merged back into macOS. The only real difference between an M1 Mac and the iPhone is that the iPhone does not ship with AppKit or the Mac Window Manager (the M1 Mac does ship with all the iOS frameworks though).

 

[UBS28]

If Apple kills x86, they are the same computers to me with an artificial software barrier created by Apple to try keep the 13“ MBA and 13” MBP relevant.

 

[Krevnik]

What's interesting to me is that they've made full circle. Original iPhone OS was a fork of OS X, with ARM-specific optimizations and Apple-specific drivers and features. With Apple Silicon those forks have been merged back into macOS. The only real difference between an M1 Mac and the iPhone is that the iPhone does not ship with AppKit or the Mac Window Manager (the M1 Mac does ship with all the iOS frameworks though).

In a manner of speaking, true. I nit pick on the use of "fork" here though. Apple's been building on top of a unified set of components for years. I honestly expect the bulk of the work was around things that were never fully stood up on iOS for various reasons (CALayers not supporting CIFilters for example), on top of AppKit/WindowServer. Fixing things like bad preprocessor macros/etc that needed to be tweaked would also be part of it.

But it might also be that I've worked on forked projects, and merged them, and it's wholly different than what Apple would have had to do here (and a lot more work keeping stuff in sync than Apple has been expending the last 6 years or so).

- While the experience when booted to macOS is more or less the same as it's been since the earlier days of Mac OS X (and I'd argue that, barring a few facelifts, iCloud integration, and new apps, and interface tweaks here and there, it pretty much is), the key differences on an Apple Silicon Mac are in how it boots, how it's restored, how its storage is laid out, how the OS is updated and serviced; all of which are much more closer in similarity to an iPad or an iPhone than an Intel Mac; hell it gets restored via an ipsw file, for crying out loud! You can put the whole thing into DFU mode!

The T2 Macs also foreshadowed this sort of change, as they brought a chunk of these changes to the Mac already, just not fully integrated like Apple can do with owning the whole SoC. DFU mode is required on T2 Macs to restore BridgeOS, for example. And BridgeOS is also the less-integrated predecessor of the current pre-boot environment we have on the M1 today.

 

[leman]

In a manner of speaking, true. I nit pick on the use of "fork" here though. Apple's been building on top of a unified set of components for years. I honestly expect the bulk of the work was around things that were never fully stood up on iOS for various reasons (CALayers not supporting CIFilters for example), on top of AppKit/WindowServer. Fixing things like bad preprocessor macros/etc that needed to be tweaked would also be part of it.

But it might also be that I've worked on forked projects, and merged them, and it's wholly different than what Apple would have had to do here (and a lot more work keeping stuff in sync than Apple has been expending the last 6 years or so).

Yeah, you are right, it’s not a “true” fork as the development continued in lockstep. It’s just that the portions of the ARM kernel code seem to be significantly different from the i386 one. I mean design differences, not mere platform-specific parts.

 

[Krevnik]

Yeah, you are right, it’s not a “true” fork as the development continued in lockstep. It’s just that the portions of the ARM kernel code seem to be significantly different from the i386 one. I mean design differences, not mere platform-specific parts.

I’m curious if you have any specific examples. I would expect some differences due to the hardware differences at play, but I haven’t been able to find anything too surprising in my skimming of the xnu source for 11.4.

 

[JMacHack]

In the strictest definition, they didn’t “merge” the iPad and Mac. They still sell both (going to the point of artificially differentiating them), and have very clear distinctions between iPadOS and MacOS.

I see your point of view though, if you look at it through your lens then it seems like a merger of sorts.

However the “merger” predictions involves touchscreen hybrid devices and iOS lockdown software. This isn’t what the M1 Macs turned out to be.

Personally, I’m of the belief that the Mac will have a touchscreen eventually. Young’uns are growing up in a smartphone and tablet dominated world where nearly everything has a touchscreen. In the future, that’s going to be the expected interface for devices as that generation grows up.

 

[xraydoc]

Just think - somewhere inside Apple HQ is a mini-LED 12.9” iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard running macOS just as well as a MacBook Air.

 

[robco74]

I can see using an iPad with pencil and touch screen, then docking it, and all the Catalyst apps switch seamlessly into macOS mode ready to use with keyboard and trackpad or mouse.

 

[Yebubbleman]

In the strictest definition, they didn’t “merge” the iPad and Mac. They still sell both (going to the point of artificially differentiating them), and have very clear distinctions between iPadOS and MacOS.

I see your point of view though, if you look at it through your lens then it seems like a merger of sorts.

However the “merger” predictions involves touchscreen hybrid devices and iOS lockdown software. This isn’t what the M1 Macs turned out to be.

Personally, I’m of the belief that the Mac will have a touchscreen eventually. Young’uns are growing up in a smartphone and tablet dominated world where nearly everything has a touchscreen. In the future, that’s going to be the expected interface for devices as that generation grows up.

I think this definition of "merger" is way too rigid and not realistic. It also focuses much more on the user interface and not enough on the under-the-hood elements, which are arguably more important when evaluating them as computers. Certainly everyone on the "there's going to be a merger" band-waggon are of the mind that touch screen Macs that run iPadOS apps is the ultimate end product. But given Apple's staunch stance against touch screen Macs, what we have with M1 Macs is that merger in literally every other way.

Just think - somewhere inside Apple HQ is a mini-LED 12.9” iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard running macOS just as well as a MacBook Air.

I seriously doubt it given that Apple has been staunchly anti-Touchscreen Mac for the past decade, if not more.

 

[xraydoc]

I seriously doubt it given that Apple has been staunchly anti-Touchscreen Mac for the past decade, if not more.

It’s doubtful it’ll come to market, but I’d wager real money that some engineers have made this happen. Not that we’d ever know about it if it has…

 

[Sydde]

I can see using an iPad with pencil and touch screen, then docking it, and all the Catalyst apps switch seamlessly into macOS mode ready to use with keyboard and trackpad or mouse.

I am going to predict that, in a few years, the iPad Pro will hold the bottom end of the Mac notebook line (before Intel, it was "PowerBook", then "MacBook" was used for the Intel line, so now they need a new name), creating a smooth continuum from phone through Mac Pro.