Absolutely. Now we have macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS and audioOS - all decendants of the original Mac OS X. So in fact, Apple diversified instead of merged the OSs.
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Apple Silicone: The last straw in unifying the iPad with Mac?
- Thread starter Sarbun96
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Absolutely. Now we have macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS and audioOS - all decendants of the original Mac OS X. So in fact, Apple diversified instead of merged the OSs.
Touch for OSX is a gimmick searching for a use case, as proven by the equivalent in windows. iPadOS is a System specifically designed for touch, building the whole user experience on this single paradigm. You can’t translate this experience between those two platforms just like that, solely because they now share the same chipsets.
The majority of the challenge is not of technical, but of HCI nature. And as I mentioned above, due to the vast differences in the inherent strengths of each platform, a seamless Transition between those two might be fundamentally impossible without significantly compromising the user experience of either one.
I wonder if it would be possible to add a keyboard and mouse experience to iPadOS?
Hmmm ... no, that would probably be impossible too. (Chucks Magic Board in the scrap heap.)
And I wouldn’t base any argument on how Microsoft did something superficially similar.
Mouse and keyboard on iPadOS serve the purpose of complementing the touch Interface. While I totally understand the need for a keyboard, I don’t agree with the introduction of the trackpad. What happened here is that many 3rd party app devs released UIs with controls which were inconvenient to be controlled with a touch Interface while using the keyboard, due to their small size. This is pretty much bad design by the book, but people always try to push the envelope of a particular platform. The trackpad addressed this problem by introducing precise control with a cursor. This is nothing more than a quickfix however, since those apps should’ve been adapted to the platform properly in the first place (or reduce it to a companion app for the Mac if not possible otherwise).
In the end it’s up to everyone how he uses his devices, I personally use my iPad Pro as a complementary device to my MBP and I would never do any tasks like Ui design on the iPad, since it never will be as efficient as a device which offers a paradigm native to this type of app (high precision controls through keyboard shortcuts and a pointer). Similarly, I would never use my MacBook to do any of my sketches
You could say, no harm done, but this move confirmed the direction of said app developers, and therefore will dilute the iPad experience, as more and more apps won’t be conveniently usable with touch only. This is pretty much where Microsoft is at, a very undesirable situation if you expect all of the devices affordances to work consistently, but only part of them is supported.
At the same time, if you already put the keyboard there, I guess why not add a trackpad on top of it and make screen interactions more accessible in keyboard mode. So i see how this was a tough call for Apple
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This is all theoretical until it does or doesn't happen of course but look at what is happening.
Big Sur gets access iOS apps, and the iOS look, OS X has moved towards gestures and trackpads over mice, and now OS X gets the iOS chip.
Gates and Microsoft push for touch screens, but they just do not have the ability to get people used to the environment. With iOS and iPads we see hybrid set ups all the time, a large percentage of users have a blue tooth keyboard screen protector etc. People are so black and white about things they seem to forget it's not an either/or operation, it's possible to use both. Like I said, I own a Slate Raven and gestures on it work surprisingly well, especially considering it's essentially a third party hack of an OS feature for trackpads and the Mackie Control protocol.
You bring up good points, but what exactly says that Apple has ever been outright about anything where they're priming you for a change? Catalina was a huge mess for a lot of developers, but to me it was blatantly obvious that Silicon Macs were around the corner, and Apple was tweaking the OS for AS. So a $1100 Mac Pro has 8 GB RAM compared to a $2000+ MacBook pro, that's not surprising. So Apple wait until their iOS chips are running on OS X, until people are used to gestures on laptops, iPads etc., until iOS is fully compatible with OS X before introducing OS X to touch, why would that be surprising? This is how Apple has changed, not through brute force, but frog in boiling water type increments. Personally I was shocked that iPads were popular at all, but the iPhone introduced people to touch, and they took off like hotcakes.
We are literally watching the borders between OS X and iOS get weaker, there's no doubt about that. What's in question is whether OS X gets multi touch support, and personally I don't see a reason why it wouldn't eventually. iOS apps are going to be opening up on OS X, we're getting slow movement toward a more unified system in general. I agree that iOS isn't going away, but I see no reason why iPad Pros specifically should stay on iOS beyond formal boundaries.
I think the aim in the next 10 years is to have one unified operating system across devices, from AirPods/Watch to Mac Pro. Likely will rebranded AppleOS. The aim is to simplify application development so extremely well that developers don’t have to think too hard about which hardware you are targeting. Right now, even if you are writing apps for iOS, its not relatively easy to target macOS or bring Mac idioms to your app. The aim for Apple is remove that barrier and it’s also to make development on their platform remain relevant and competitive with the web and technologies like electron.
Then why wouldn’t touch complement the MacOS interface?
Far from being “impossible“ it just enables additional use cases. And just because those use cases aren’t useful to you, doesn’t mean they aren’t useful to everyone.
And I completely disagree with your thoughts on the trackpad. Cheers.
I think I gave a very thorough statement why it’s a bad idea, and I don’t see you addressing the points I made. If all that you contribute is to state that you disagree, I’m gonna have to stop at this point, since I’m not getting anything back out of this discussion.
That’s one of the big selling points Apple stated in their keynote already. All apps written for iOS, iPadOS, or Mac OS will be cross-platform if the developers enable it. But this doesn’t mean that they need to merge all of the operating systems into one. Literally the only reason why it’s hard to make an app for iOS and Mac OS is because they’re using ARM vs X86 which complicates things. Having them all be on ARM just streamlines the process.
Can anyone here tell me the reason why they would ever want to merge them all?
Macs, iPads, iPhones, Watches all have different needs, peripherals, use-cases and display sizes. The iPhone needs a simple, locked-down OS. The Mac needs a versatile, complex, and more open OS. They’re not going to “simplify the Mac”. They may simplify the UI design over time but the Mac will always be more open compared to the iPhone.
Silicone works pretty well to keep water out, so I'm calling it now: Arm Macs will be waterproof just like Apple Watch/iPhone.
/Sarcasm.
On a serious note, I'm kind of ambivalent about the switch to Arm at this point. Still pondering if I want to get a last-get MP until the tooling/etc arrives, but I am absolutely looking forward to some official info from Apple about the CPU series, for no other reason than people (a) butchering silicon/silicone, (b) thinking it's anything more than just another way to say "Apple designed CPUs".
A single codebase, even for a company the size of Apple, I’m sure they just would like to focus on a single platform that powers all their devices. It’s pretty much been the philosophy of how the company worked. One iPhone (they definitely backtracked a bit on that now), but it surely was a selling point. APFS is another example, even the Apple Watch is using APFS, now A Series will power their future Macs. So, it’s eventual they want to bring this simplicity to their operating systems. And not because it will be a single OS doesn’t mean it won’t be distinctive. Apple Watch, iPad, Mac and iPhone will have the essential components of what makes their hardware function. Mouse input for Mac, touch for iPhone/iPad, health and exercise functions for the Watch.
The very recent, deliberate split of iPadOS from iOS (and the earlier split of tvOS from iOS) would seem to invalidate this theory.
Sure, they're still closer to each other than macOS and iOS under the covers, but if they wanted "a single platform" it seems very unlikely they'd specifically split out the various platforms like that.
APFS is simply a disk format, and is relatively unrelated whether the two would "merge" or not.
Before APFS, both iOS and macOS uses HFS+. Heck the iPad Classic used HFS+ when paired with a Mac, and that had zero shared roots with macOS or iOS.
Having worked on projects that use a single code base for iOS and Mac... this isn’t the truth of it.
The truth is more: it depends heavily on the project. The real hurdle that all projects with a UI have to face if they want to support iOS and Mac from a single code base is AppKit vs UIKit. And this hurdle can easily dwarf the amount of effort dealing with architecture differences. Objective-C did a lot of the work to mask architecture differences back in the Intel switch, and the 64-bit switch.
AppKit comes from NeXT. UIKit is a modern re-imagining of AppKit for iOS. There’s a lot of controls that are similar, but have been re-written in UIKit, behaving differently than AppKit. UIKit reimagines what text input, “pointer input” and app shortcuts look like to the developer. AppKit (and the developer) can’t assume CoreAnimation is enabled like UIKit does. Put bluntly, migrating to UIKit from AppKit (or vice versa) can be considerable work, precisely because you can’t share a ton of logic between the two.
It’s why Apple has been putting effort in Catalyst and SwiftUI, because this is the big hurdle.
I don’t agree with the rebranding, Apple has been going in the other direction. Attaching branding to different flavors of iOS left and right. And even iOS itself is a macOS fork that still shares a lot of code with macOS. Apple has been spending a surprising amount of effort keeping the lower level APIs in sync between the two, and even some higher level ones like MapKit, WebKit, etc. When it comes to development, they are more alike than they are different.
I think it shows just how much work is wrapped up in AppKit, UIKit and WatchKit, and how much it dominates a developer’s effort that needs to go into an app. It’s interesting, really.
I do agree that they will continue to make bridging things easier though. And I think we’ve already seen the two thrusts:
1) Catalyst - UIKit on Mac. This seems aimed at folks who either skip Mac while shipping an iOS app, or use something like Electron on the Mac while doing something more native on iOS.
2) SwiftUI - A forward-looking replacement for AppKit/UIKit/WatchKit/TVMLKit. SwiftUI is the way to build new widgets, letting you share so much more code between iOS and Mac. I really think this is where we are going to see Apple spend effort going forward when it comes to new UI things.
SwiftUI probably has the best chance at reconciling AppKit and UIKit. However, it can’t erase the different idioms completely. Instead we see that certain iOS or Mac features are simply not available (yet) in SwiftUI. Time will tell if Apple intends this to be lowest common denominator, or if they have a real plan for making SwiftUI into something I can use to adapt between the two platforms with flexibility and power.
Never is a long time, but I think it will a LONG time before we see iPad features such as touch screen on a Mac. And the same for iPad, I don't see us being able to plug into some sort of dock and have the same finder capability and apps to use it as a true enterprise computer like we do with a Mac at least not in the near future.
Hardware issues alone make this a long term idea. Having 64gb or more ram, and an 8gb video card in a fanless machine will still be a daunting task.
We are already seeing the path that Apple is likely taking. I use Apple notes a lot for keeping copies of important documents and contracts. I edit and create the docs on one of my Macs because it is more comfortable sitting at my desk with a separate keyboard and 27" screen. If they came from a 3rd party as a paper copy, I "scan" them into Notes using my iPhone or iPad. Many of those need to be signed andI sign them on the iPad. Stored in Notes they are accessible to all my devices. I think this is the sort of workflow that Apple wants us to adopt.
Hardware issues alone make this a long term idea. Having 64gb or more ram, and an 8gb video card in a fanless machine will still be a daunting task.
We are already seeing the path that Apple is likely taking. I use Apple notes a lot for keeping copies of important documents and contracts. I edit and create the docs on one of my Macs because it is more comfortable sitting at my desk with a separate keyboard and 27" screen. If they came from a 3rd party as a paper copy, I "scan" them into Notes using my iPhone or iPad. Many of those need to be signed andI sign them on the iPad. Stored in Notes they are accessible to all my devices. I think this is the sort of workflow that Apple wants us to adopt.
APFS is simply a disk format? Ok. I guess they just bought it at Trader Joe’s and threw it in like any ingredient because changing disk formats is ‘so easy’!
You said it was "impossible" to combine the OSes, I pointed out that it had already been done. You then said the it was "complementary" as if that somehow refuted my point (spoiler alert: it didn't). And I when I asked why adding touch to to the MacOS wouldn't also be complementary, you simply ignored it.
And then you presented a number of opinions. None of which seemed valid to me. Your opinion that designing touch applications for a touch interface was somehow bad design because of keyboard input makes little sense, as did your opinion that Apple's elegant cursor solution was because of these poor design decisions. The design was for a touch interface. The decisions were fine. The solution seems to be well accepted by actual users.
Anyways, I'm not going waste time arguing opinions, as the saying goes, everybody has one. You're welcome to yours.
Cheers.
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Where did I say anything about "easy". I said it's simply the disk format, as in, it's not tied to the OS specifically.
To re-iterate, this is your original claim:
So, you're trying to say that all of Apple's devices use one file system (APFS) and thus they'll eventually use on OS..
My point is that Apple devices have generally used "one file system" for the last 20 years. At the turn of the century, the iPod was released, and guess what filesystem it used? HFS+.
iPhoneOS, which became iOS, and was split into tvOS, and then watchOS all predate APFS by a decade and a half, a decade, and half a decade, respectively. Guess what they were using before APFS. Go on. Guess.
So my rebuttal to your claim that the use of APFS on multiple released OS points to a convergence of said OS', is that your argument carries about as much weight as the fact that they all use aluminium, glass and silicon. Or that they're all powered by electricity.
Really the biggest difference between iOS, iPad OS, and Mac OS is just how much is locked-down for the end user and the basic UI. iPhone is very restricted which makes sense because people don't have a need to open up terminal on their iPhone, or dive into the system hard drive and mess with the internal bits. Mac on the other hand is much more open, and allows users to dive into the nuts and bolts. iPad is sort of in the middle, but errors more on the iPhone side of being more locked down.
There would be no need to have everything be under one OS, because they would need to create vastly different UI designs and experiences for each device. Thats sort of the whole point of having different OS's because they can tailor the experience for what's best for that device.
I really don't see any need to merge any of the OS's. If you're wanting some feature on the iPad that the Mac has, then lets discuss that. But it makes no sense to have Mac OS running on an iPad.
I want to run full blown DAWs on the iPad, like you can with the MS Surface. etc. That requires the full blown OS.
I think everyone is ignoring how powerful the latest iPad pros are. Laptops in general will always be less powerful than desktops. The argument that iOS needs to stay less powerful is ignoring that. I do not think iPhones and watches etc. are getting full blown Mac OS, but it's not any stretch at all to think that the iPad could. Apple released a stylus when they said they wouldn't, hell touch screens in general when they said they wouldn't? It's argued that people are buying Surface because it's high quality, yeah, that's a week argument, it's woefully underpowered. It sells because of its hybrid qualities and branding.
Regardless of the glacial adoption of touch on Windows, it's still on it's way in. The main things are form factors, not use cases. Tablets are the de facto touch interface, because your arm is most comfortable at that position. The Raven MTi2 here has no stand, it sits on the desktop at an adjustable angle so you're arm isn't at 90º. I've got it set up with the two finger pinch out gesture set to full screen zoom. So this negates issues of whether it's possible or not to just use the touch, at least in apps that are geared towards touch. Bitwig Studio for instance even having no Raven support, and not at all coded for OS X and touch screens is eminently usable with the Raven. I'm sure audio isn't the only case, but there are a ton of reasons to want touch interfaces with pro apps, and I can't think Apple is just going to sit back and let MS etc. keep a lead here, even if MS can't sell a decent feature to save their lives.
I actually don’t think it does. I think they could allow DAW support on the iPad in the future - there’s nothing on iPad OS that’s preventing it. I think the issue right now is that all DAW support has been written for X86 chips and they would need to be recompiled for ARM. Since now developers are doing just that, it opens up the possibility of having DAW support on iPad.
Tehcnically on apple silicon any app made for ARM can run on any Apple device and it’s just up to the developers to decide which devices can run it. There’s a good chance many DAW’s will allow iPad support in the future.
People keep explaining it to you and you keep not listening to the fundamental point, which is that macOS (and its giant library of apps) does not have a UI designed for operation without a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad. If you tried to run macOS on an iPad, the user experience would be miserable.
From another angle, you've already got what you're asking for. iOS/iPadOS is literally the result of a ~15 year process of making a derivative of macOS designed for touchscreen-only operation on low-resource devices.
(Speaking of low resources, I pointed out before that full macOS wants more RAM. The biggest most expensive iPad Pro ever sold has 6GB. The cheapest Macs currently sold have 8GB, and it's not really enough. This matters. It also matters that Apple designed iPad hardware around the assumption that there is no swapping (that being a fundamental pillar of iOS/iPadOS), so they may not have specified the iPad's internal SSD with enough write endurance to stand up to all the swapping which would occur due to running macOS on such a low-RAM platform.)
Right, but this is the internet isn't it, so no one addresses the points of the other person... I've explained that I'm currently running a "hacked" touch screen, the Slate Raven MTi2, and it's great in OS X. No one but Apple seems to think that you need one way of approaching a problem, and even they have a stylus for the iPad now. There's all kinds of proof of concept out there that touch can be added to an OS and be extremely useful. The surface itself is proof of concept that you can have a tablet that runs a full blown OS, and have a successful product. I get that Apple has stated it's not elegant, but let's be fair here, we're talking about a company that went years with a single button mouse, remember the hocky puck?
Which have recently shown to not be so low resource anymore, hence the current switch to Apple Silicon.
This is a good point. It's possible that Apple keep to their guns here, but I really don't see the rational? beyond resource management for mobile devices. the issue comes down to ergonomics, the Surface has a detachable keyboard for a reason. 45º or more is just best with touch screens, so looking at what is possible I wonder why they would?
My particular and main use for computers is music production, and integrating multi touch into the experience is 100% a positive experience, I look at what Asus did with the Zenbook Duo and I think Apple is slipping a bit here. If I were to spend 3K on a laptop it would be the Asus over the Macbook Pro for numerous reasons. I don't see them introducing an attached keyboard touch screen with Mac OS on it, it's just not that ergonomic, but I do not see them continuing to ignore that touch, like the mouse and keyboard is becoming a part of people's experience, and in my case it really does make me look at what Microsoft is doing.
This is a good point, and it goes both ways, iOS was always a stripped down version of OS X to begin with. My logic has always been that this line is getting muddier, you have iPad OS or whatever they're calling it and the watch OS, but in the end it's addressing a similar kore.
We are witnessing Apple muddy the App line between Mac OS and iOS etc. in one direction, (even the look of the OS) and you're I think right, developers could take it the other way. I just will not be surprised at all if iPads get more and more like MS Surface in capability and ability to run "pro" apps.