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I do not want macOS on iPad. Ever.
- Thread starter SanderEvers
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I agree 100%. Expanding on those points; I think iPadOS should include a Finder so-to-speak. JIT is a requirement. Allowing installation of apps from anywhere. I also believe Mac OS apps should be able to be used on iPads with M1 or higher. If said app doesn't function right oh well. It will probably function just fine if you use a mouse.
I own a Surface Pro 2. I haven't used it really at all since I got my iPad Pro (11" M1). So I feel I have a decent personal point of view here. The SP2 is a relatively small device much like the 11" iPad. Currently, my SP2 runs Fedora Linux with Gnome (which for those of you that don't know, was basically the Windows 8 situation only about 10 years earlier). But my Surface is the only device I use Gnome with because I hate it for desktop use.
Prior to that it ran Windows 8.1, and then 10. 10 was actually my favorite to use on it as far as Windows was concerned. I could do all the touchscreen tablet stuff I wanted but could also run whatever apps I wanted. This is the main thing I wish my iPad could do. I may not run a Mac app on it all the time, but it beats turning on my Mac Pro for one thing that could have easily been accomplished on my iPad.
I own a Surface Pro 2. I haven't used it really at all since I got my iPad Pro (11" M1). So I feel I have a decent personal point of view here. The SP2 is a relatively small device much like the 11" iPad. Currently, my SP2 runs Fedora Linux with Gnome (which for those of you that don't know, was basically the Windows 8 situation only about 10 years earlier). But my Surface is the only device I use Gnome with because I hate it for desktop use.
Prior to that it ran Windows 8.1, and then 10. 10 was actually my favorite to use on it as far as Windows was concerned. I could do all the touchscreen tablet stuff I wanted but could also run whatever apps I wanted. This is the main thing I wish my iPad could do. I may not run a Mac app on it all the time, but it beats turning on my Mac Pro for one thing that could have easily been accomplished on my iPad.
“Even if you add a keyboard and trackpad, the iPad will never become a MacBook.”
Uh, if you add a keyboard and trackpad and run MacOS on an iPad Pro… then it’s exactly a MacBook.
As far as I understand, iOS and MacOS both run the Mach kernel and both use the same development system.
Bottom line is that Apple has sandboxed the daylights out of he iPad for one reason: AppStore revenue. It’s not to help you, or to give you a better iPad. It’s to send revenue to Apple.
iPad works great for consuming content, web surfing and writing email, but it’s a terrible productivity platform. It’s great for delivering presentations but terrible for editing presentations, and Word documents, and on and on. File management on the iPad is horrendous. The simplest file management operations are either difficult or impossible. Stuff I could do with MS-DOS in 1986 is difficult for the iPad. So yeah, that makes it a pretty awful productivity platform.
Apple can definitely fix these things and frankly they belong in a courtroom for marketing their Pro iPads as professional music/photo/video editing platforms, when such fundamentally simple things are inexplicably missing. Apple is marketing these devices with capabilities they simply do not have.
I would absolutely love to be able to use MacOS on an iPad. It’s about choice. Make MacOS opt-in, like a Boot Camp installation. For regular iPad users, nothing changes. For those who do want a more capable OS, it would be a game changer. I’m not interested in navigating Mac OS with touch, I would use a physical keyboard and pointer for that. While I always opt for an 11” iPad, if MacOS on iPad were a thing, I would buy a 13” M4 iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard and 1TB or 2TB storage in a heartbeat.
iPads are the platform of choice for millions of students and creatives who show off their work on social media. If anything you said was remotely true this wouldn't be possible.
It looks like some kind of misinformation campaign is underway by either a competitor or someone trying to short Apple stock, so they are trying to sow bad ideas into Apple forums and social media. The same kind of bad ideas that are trying to hurt the security of the iPhone. Now they want to cannibalise Apple's products and cause confusion.
Don't fall for it. Don't repeat their misinformation and be puppet for this campaign. It's a trap.
macOS isn't coming to the iPad. In a few years when Macs no longer need to support many old apps and Intel apps, there will be a revamp which will make macOS have the buttery smoothness and memory management of iPadOS.
We have already seen the beginnings of this with application saved states, automatic document saving, stage manager, etc.
That is not so. I don’t care about Apple’s stock price.
I own lots of Apple products, and I bought an iPad Pro thinking I could edit photos with it, since that’s what Apple says it’s designed to do… and I’ve learned that it’s not nearly as good as my MacBook Pro at managing and editing RAW photos. I’ve tried Photoshop, Lightroom, and another RAW editor, and they’re basically a joke compared to the MacBook Pro and its software tools.
There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind on this point. I take RAW photo editing very seriously and I’ve done it for well over ten years now. I bought all of the products and use them extensively, and iPad just doesn’t cut it compared to a MacBook Pro or other Mac.
I don’t care how Apple improves these problems, I just want them fixed.
That's not the problem.
The reason why more "power" (Pro?) users have kept asking for macOS on iPad actually has nothing to do with macOS itself, but more about the level of "control" a power user can have with any iPad.
For instance, with a Macbook, if the user does not want to use macOS, they can install Asahi Linux. Or else just use one of the popular virtual machine apps and set up any other flavor of Linux, or even Windows.
That is not possible with an iPad regardless of whether macOS is on iPad or not. But more to the point, again, the whole point of "macOS on iPad" is not about touch/mouse/keyboard or any of this stuff. Heck, it's not even about the UI. It's the underlying architecture and the whole "reason" for why power users still have to stay on macOS, Windows and Linux.
So even "Xcode on iPad" or "JIT compilation" are not the point.
Until Apple gives us more control over the system of the device itself, I reckon the iPad is only ever good to "creative professionals". But maybe that's why it's called an iPad Pro. The "Pro" is not for "IT professionals" but more for "creative professionals".
So if they want to market it that way and create it only for that purpose, then that's all it will ever be good for.
My point is Apple should keep improving iPadOS and iOS. But I don't think giving the user full control or forcing full control upon the user. Also a lot of people do want MacOS on the iPad. And that is purely the reason I made this topic.
If you would replace iPadOS with macOS (even as an option) a lot of developers will no longer make apps for iPad. Or iPad apps will become a lot lower in quality. (my whole Windows-point)
And yes, iPad isn't made for "IT professionals" it's not sold as a device for "IT professionals". It's a device made to be used by almost everyone. For example my parents recently bought a new iPad Air. And I only had to give them assistance over the phone and they were able to set it up perfectly. The last time they bought a new PC I had to: choose the hardware, build the computer, install Windows, install their applications, and made sure that they don't break it from opening a sketchy mail attachment or website.
See here the most important difference between an iPad and a PC or Mac. In the end it's up to Apple to decide to make a device for IT Professionals or a device for the less IT knowledged people. And honestly you can make that choice yourself. If you want an IT Professional tablet.. Well get a Microsoft Surface.
If you would replace iPadOS with macOS (even as an option) a lot of developers will no longer make apps for iPad. Or iPad apps will become a lot lower in quality. (my whole Windows-point)
And yes, iPad isn't made for "IT professionals" it's not sold as a device for "IT professionals". It's a device made to be used by almost everyone. For example my parents recently bought a new iPad Air. And I only had to give them assistance over the phone and they were able to set it up perfectly. The last time they bought a new PC I had to: choose the hardware, build the computer, install Windows, install their applications, and made sure that they don't break it from opening a sketchy mail attachment or website.
See here the most important difference between an iPad and a PC or Mac. In the end it's up to Apple to decide to make a device for IT Professionals or a device for the less IT knowledged people. And honestly you can make that choice yourself. If you want an IT Professional tablet.. Well get a Microsoft Surface.
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It could be, though. Easily. And if it didn’t affect the IPadOS-only experience, why would anyone care?
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For the less technically-inclined people (i.e.: not IT professionals), they want macOS because ipadOS doesn’t have an app or two that they want to use. So once apps mature, they may be able to find a workflow that can replace their current Mac workflow and switch over.
That is the ideal at least, but it’s also a chicken or egg problem here.
In general, if we have to segment “professionals” into “creative” or “IT” and then consider other fields in between (like accounting, finance, engineering, etc…) then clearly, Apple not catering to any other segment except for “creative” means app developers are less inclined to try and “break” the tradition too.
For instance, it’s already been mentioned: what if I want to work on a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet, then once done, save a file and write to a USB drive to be handed off to someone else? It’s a basic Mac/PC workflow that does not require full control over the device. But yet Apple is not giving us even that. There is the Files app, yes, and there are other apps that can help us workaround but they are not ideal.
The same “non-IT” workflow is super simple and basic on any other device. Even ChromeOS does it now.
There is a way to give control to user without forcing full control on everyone. That’s what macOS is doing. Clearly Apple can achieve whatever level of security and obscurity they would like to achieve in the OS itself.
The only reason that I can fathom why they don’t even want to go that far (mind, macOS and ipadOS are still fundamentally just Darwin, so they are not that different) is because they really want to lock everyone into the App Store model and will actively try to avoid giving users any control over the filesystem at all, lest someone finds out a way to circumvent the App Store.
So it comes down to a business model in the end. Not about the users. App Store is not required on macOS, but it is required on pretty much all other OSes from Apple. I don’t think they will change their tunes on that any time soon given the recent court battles and even EU regulations.
A person who says 'Stuff I could do with MS-DOS in 1986 is difficult for the iPad.' is not being honest and has no credibility.
This has nothing to do with the operating system. The developers of those apps can make a carbon copy of their desktop apps but have chosen to prioritise touch. Adobe still doesn't support the Pencil hover's brush preview feature.
The product name isn't a Mac. End of story. Apple has the best UI designers and OS engineers on the planet and they don't need the opinions of people who don't understand UI or OS engineering. Giving them feedback is one thing but pursuing unrealistic and sloppy ideas is another thing.
You are falling for a disinformation campaign designed to twist minds and put pressure on Apple to mess up their product line.
It would be great if people understood how all these corporate and political campaigns work because next year or even later this year the number of realistic fake accounts will be massively high and your experience on forums and social media will become more confusing and extreme than ever before. Very large LLM based bot campaigns are coming for us all and they will be hired to create corporate conflicts, brainwash masses, and cause political turmoil.
There is a differnece between less technically inclined or "not IT professional". And this is exactly where your argument falls on its face. I see there are 4 kinds of computer users:
1. People who know about computers but do not know how to operate them safely. (for example: my parents)
2. People who use computers regurally but are unable to safely configure them themselves. (80% of the population)
3. People who know how computers work and are able to configure them safely and perfectly like how they want (8%)
4. People who create their own Linux distro's. (0,001%)
Anyone below number 3 is not helped by putting macOS on an iPad. And people above 3 will buy a cheap Windows tablet and install Linux on it.
Most people who use Word / Excel these days save their documents to OneDrive or a company controlled server. (Quite easy to setup on an iPad) And even if they'd use an USB Stick, most companies have policies against using them. With very VALID reasons to do so.
For people like us, this is very true. And even people from cat. 2 (see above) would be able to set up a computer (any) like that. But that wouldn't be safe for most, and people from cat. 1 would struggle even with the simplists of tasks. They can, however, use an iPad without worries. I never used ChromeOS so I can't really comment on that.
Sadly this is not true. If you give the system ANY option to give full control to the user. It would be the same as forcing it up to them. It takes not much to write malware that can elavate itself and take control over from the system. Unless apps are fully sandboxed. (which is the true reason why iPadOS and iOS are limited)
Like I said, it is mostly to purely protect the user. And sure there is financial gain, but that isn't the reason not to offer this protection. The EU DMA legislation will in the end hurt users in cat. 1 and 2.
Yes it comes down to a buisiness model. Since that what Apple is, a company. But there are also very real dangers from opening up the system, like I said above.
But that isn't even my main issue. Currently developers, who want their apps on iPad, need to alter their apps to make it work as best as possible. Most developers are lazy, if you give them an easy eay out (just use macOS on the iPad to use our pro-app), they will use it. Every. Time. This means that there are less apps for iPadOS in the future, which hurts people who do not want macOS on their iPad.
People like me.
I do not want macOS on my iPad. Ever.
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With any luck, the bots will be more persuasive and less patronising when making their case. I’m done here.
Except the ones who very much prefer macOS.
I could probably close my eyes, spin around and throw my mouse in any direction and most likely hit something running Linux.
Still, I'm typing this on my MacBook. (Although it is also running Linux. And Windows.)
Yeah, but this request isn't for most people, is it?
If Apple only did what "most people" need, the iPad would hardly have changed at all since 2010.
Most of these apps (Solidworks, Altium and Turbotax Business come to mind) will likely never be released for iPadOS anyhow.
Fine. Rename the iPad Pro to MacPad. Done.
Then just get a Mac...? What is the exact reason you want the iPad run Mac Software? If you want everything that a mac does, then buy a mac. A mac mini is cheaper than the iPad pro and does all you want from it.
Or is it because of the touchscreen? There are also (third party) solutions to add touch to mac. But honestly none of those run as good as iPadOS on iPad. Which is one of my issues with bringing macOS to iPad.
(I own and use a Wacom drawing tablet with screen on my Mac Mini. Which works fine with pen controls. But touch controls aren't good)
No. What is beyond stupid though is to think that macOS on the iPad would run without a mouse/keyboard. C'mon now with this...
For those who want macOS on the iPad: "yeah sure, but you'll have to connect a mouse+keyboard"
For those who don't want macOS on the iPad : "yeah sure, stick with the out-of-the-box iPadOS".
Et voilà, topic closed.
I’d love to be able to manage files and folders effectively, and to use iPad applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop and Lightroom as effectively and efficiently on my iPad Pro as I can on a Mac.
I shouldn’t have to switch operating systems just to do that but I feel that the iPad OS is very much handcuffed.
Then just buy a mac? And what would happen if you connect it to a mouse + keyboard and it would boot into mac os and then you remove the keyboard? Would it just reboot or crash? Basically what you want is a touchscreen mac with removable keyboard, and honestly... Apple is never going to make that. Because of the reasons I put in the TS and many replies in this topic. It wouldn't work.
Like I said in the TS. I'm all in on improving iPadOS. But "just put macOS on iPad" is not improving iPadOS. In any way or form.
Because there is no ****ing small and light Mac (preferably with a detachable keyboard) with cellular for me to buy.
Even if there were, I'd prefer to travel with only one device, which means I'd lose out on all the stuff the iPad is actually better for.
Personally, I'd be happy enough with virtualization support on iPadOS, which would also remove practically all the security concerns you could possibly have.
I'd happily pay $10000 for a device that actually does what I want.
The whole point is mobility, so no, it does none of what I want.
I am more than happy with my desk situation.
I wouldn't care if the touch interface was disabled altogether in "Mac mode".
Again, that's an app problem not an OS problem. Use the ol' grey noggin. There are quite a few apps that do batch renaming and Apple could add that to the Files app if there is a need to. They just don't want to piss off every app dev.