iPad as a laptop replacement

[Ludatyk]

Great article and interview! 👍🏻. Very refreshing to see! And, I must say, for many years I’ve suspected the iPad is Craig Federighi’s favorite device, and this interview definitely seems to reinforce that. 👍🏻

Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence

It’s a cool, sunny morning at Apple Park as I’m walking my way along the iconic glass ring to meet with Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, for a conversation about the iPad. It’s the Wednesday after WWDC, and although there are still some developers and members of the press...

www.macstories.net

Thanks for sharing!

One point of the article when he mention the "Not an iPad Pro review" story.. I wanted to discuss this.

The reaction to that story was, to say the least, polarizing. Some Mac users saw it as a vindication of their longstanding beliefs, and I read comments from people who cited the story as “proof” that Apple didn’t care about the iPad at all and was just coasting to sell more expensive devices. Some iPad users saw the article as a “betrayal” from someone who had dedicated a large part of his career to covering the platform. And another group – people who, like me, loved the iPad but were disappointed by its lack of progress – well, they didn’t know what to think, but remained hopeful for its future.

And that's what annoyed me the most when Federico wrote that story... he played into the stereotypes of what naysayers say about the iPad. And it's not only Mac users that do it, but Windows users as well.

And as Federighi mention in the article... that Apple cares about the iPad, but to find that balance of simplicity while trying to bring power users features over to the platform has to have thoughtful consideration.

Another point of the article stood out as well.

Still, how did Apple land there? After all the talk over the past 15 years about the “post-PC era”, why have we come full circle to reusing features and UI metaphors that the Mac got right decades ago? I ask Federighi about this. “When you’re designing in a new space with a new set of constraints with a different kind of user in mind, you do guard yourself against whether it would be too easy to just pull the old thing off the shelf and put it here because maybe that feels right, because we’ve lived with it since 1984”, he begins, acknowledging the Mac’s key role in democratizing graphical user interfaces and freeform windowing. “And you ask yourself”, Federighi continues “’Well, but what is the essence of iPad? And if that other world had never existed and one had designed from first principles for a touch-first device…what would a cursor be like? What would windowing be like?’”.

I think this is the battle Apple continually face over the iPad... because most Mac/Windows users feel that they should just use "the old thing off the shelf and put it here." But I like how Apple tries to do in an iPad-like way... from a touch-first perspective.

I have to admit though... the Menu Bar touch targets are tiny, I like the fact they exist. But I'm not sure what they could even do to fix it. And just wanted to add.. after listening to ATP podcast, Marco brought up Stage Manager being another form of Spaces on the Mac.

And I didn't think nothing of it until now. Because I don't really use Spaces on the Mac anymore... but it does have some kind of resemblance. Both provides the user with focused environments.

 

[Kal Madda]

Thanks for sharing!

One point of the article when he mention the "Not an iPad Pro review" story.. I wanted to discuss this.


And that's what annoyed me the most when Federico wrote that story... he played into the stereotypes of what naysayers say about the iPad. And it's not only Mac users that do it, but Windows users as well.

And as Federighi mention in the article... that Apple cares about the iPad, but to find that balance of simplicity while trying to bring power users features over to the platform has to have thoughtful consideration.

Another point of the article stood out as well.


I think this is the battle Apple continually face over the iPad... because most Mac/Windows users feel that they should just use "the old thing off the shelf and put it here." But I like how Apple tries to do in an iPad-like way... from a touch-first perspective.

I have to admit though... the Menu Bar touch targets are tiny, I like the fact they exist. But I'm not sure what they could even do to fix it. And just wanted to add.. after listening to ATP podcast, Marco brought up Stage Manager being another form of Spaces on the Mac.

View attachment 2521672

And I didn't think nothing of it until now. Because I don't really use Spaces on the Mac anymore... but it does have some kind of resemblance. Both provides the user with focused environments.

Yeah, I really appreciate that he clarified that wasn’t his intention with that review to bolster those claims and stereotypes. 👍🏻. I remember when that review came out, it was frustrating because many people tried to use it as ammunition against those of us who prefer the iPad and think it can do more than watch YouTube and Netflix. I don’t know that I viewed that review as a “betrayal” per-say, but I do think that is pretty close to describing the way I felt over it initially. 👍🏻. I also think some of his claims in that review were somewhat exaggerated. Like while there wasn’t a way to set a default app to always open a specific file type (I technically did create a working Siri Shortcut that could do this for some file types and open them in an app of my choosing based on the file extension passed into the shortcut from the Share Sheet), it also wasn’t the picture he painted that he was just at the mercy of whatever app the system decided to open it in, and he couldn’t select an app to open it in from the Share Sheet either…. So I’m really glad to see him clarify his intentions with that review. 👍🏻

And yes, I definitely agree this is a process that requires a lot of careful consideration and work. I can totally get why Apple would be worried about the impulse to just slap older legacy interactions onto the iPad. They want to get it right, they have a new slate to tinker with and try to improve some interactions, rather than just rehashing them. Take their implementation of background tasks on iPadOS 26 for example, rather than duplicating the old way where there’s no intuitive way to monitor background tasks, they implemented it with a fresh take on it, with a live-activities style popup to monitor the background process and allow greater user control over it. I think this is where iPadOS has excelled in many ways in my opinion, iPadOS has managed to take several legacy interactions and improve on them.

Honestly, that’s what came to mind for me when Stage Manager was first introduced on the iPad. Beyond just adding a windowing feature, it also supplied a way to create window groupings similar to the way Spaces on the Mac does. It feels like a more intuitive way to produce spaces without adding different “desktops”. The thing that’s always confused me with that more legacy system on the Mac is having to create multiple “desktops” to manage different groupings of app windows. It doesn’t feel nearly as intuitive to me to create another desktop to add a grouping of windows, where Stage Manager simplifies that system and makes it easy to create and switch between app window groupings. 👍🏻