All iPads iPadOS Really Needs Its "Mac OS X" Release

[bcortens]

Yeah I know but these "opinions" have been destroying iPad. iPad is not this ultimate, inevitable form factor that takes over all computing. It's a device with no specific role or purpose that is nice for a handful of a things, and it's fine for it to stay that way. It's a full blown computing device for people with light needs, and its an accessory device for everyone else. That's fine too. I'm tired of people trying to exaggerate its role (with no clear vision on how, btw) and ending up worse than it was before. Stage Manager is an abject failure of design, and I thought Apple was completely nuts to implement it until I realized they were using iPad as a test bed for what would be the primary UI for vision Pro. At least they had a reason.

Leave my iPad alone. Leave it alone!

Stage manager could have been good, but I feel like all the great UI designers have left Apple or lost their power within Apple. I have no confidence the Apple of today would have come up with something as easy to use as Exposé

I find stage manger mostly useless since i don’t have an M1 or better iPad I can’t use it with an external display. I honestly would rather they have brought Split View + slideover to external displays as that is just a better way of doing things most of the time.

 

[sparksd]

Yeah I know but these "opinions" have been destroying iPad. iPad is not this ultimate, inevitable form factor that takes over all computing. It's a device with no specific role or purpose that is nice for a handful of a things, and it's fine for it to stay that way. It's a full blown computing device for people with light needs, and its an accessory device for everyone else. That's fine too. I'm tired of people trying to exaggerate its role (with no clear vision on how, btw) and ending up worse than it was before. Stage Manager is an abject failure of design, and I thought Apple was completely nuts to implement it until I realized they were using iPad as a test bed for what would be the primary UI for vision Pro. At least they had a reason.

Leave my iPad alone. Leave it alone!

"Stage Manager is an abject failure of design" - a lot of users would disagree with this opinion.

 

[Digitalguy]

Yeah I know but these "opinions" have been destroying iPad. iPad is not this ultimate, inevitable form factor that takes over all computing. It's a device with no specific role or purpose that is nice for a handful of a things, and it's fine for it to stay that way. It's a full blown computing device for people with light needs, and its an accessory device for everyone else. That's fine too. I'm tired of people trying to exaggerate its role (with no clear vision on how, btw) and ending up worse than it was before. Stage Manager is an abject failure of design, and I thought Apple was completely nuts to implement it until I realized they were using iPad as a test bed for what would be the primary UI for vision Pro. At least they had a reason.

Leave my iPad alone. Leave it alone!

Stage manager is great for using an external monitor, especially since iPadOS 17. Not something I would use on the tablet much. Same for DEX, I only use it for external monitors, not on the tablet. What's more it doesn't bother anyone as it's an option, so these "leave the iPad alone" make me smile...

 

[transpo1]

Yeah I know but these "opinions" have been destroying iPad. iPad is not this ultimate, inevitable form factor that takes over all computing. It's a device with no specific role or purpose that is nice for a handful of a things, and it's fine for it to stay that way. It's a full blown computing device for people with light needs, and its an accessory device for everyone else. That's fine too. I'm tired of people trying to exaggerate its role (with no clear vision on how, btw) and ending up worse than it was before. Stage Manager is an abject failure of design, and I thought Apple was completely nuts to implement it until I realized they were using iPad as a test bed for what would be the primary UI for vision Pro. At least they had a reason.

Leave my iPad alone. Leave it alone!

Please calm down and breathe. Nobody’s destroying the iPad. It will always do what it was originally designed to do. These new feature & capability asks are additions, not subtractions. But there’s a reason it’s evolving to place more emphasis on the landscape keyboard form factor (and now probably with landscape web cam placement) and that is, people want to use it for something more. And if there were a software layer on it that allowed us to run a macOS app, this would not kill its current functionality and purpose. We’ll still be able to read the morning paper on it.

 

[bcortens]

"Stage Manager is an abject failure of design" - a lot of users would disagree with this opinion.

Stage manager is really not great for managing lots of windows. If you have multiple windows across multiple stages that you want to move between stages then stage manager is just measurably harder to work with than splitview + slideover is. Or as I’ve brought up before a bunch of safari windows that end up in an inaccessible stack of 7 windows you cannot rely upon the switcher to find them. The App/Stage switcher view is just a broken mess.

If you’re just working on a few stages with a few windows it works well but it doesn’t scale the way Mission Control, spaces and Expose do on the Mac. It doesn’t even scale as well as SplitView + Slideover

 

[Siliconguy]

Switching between two os:es wouldn’t give good ux is an invalid point.

It would be one os and it would let you asapt the ui depending on what you are doing and what accessories you have connected

Like switching between Cinnamon and Xfce, but more so.

Or if you are old enough, switching between Classic (OS 9) and OS X back on Tiger (10.4). You could do that on a machine with a 40 GB hard drive and 512 MB of RAM.

 

[Siliconguy]

Their software is mostly bug filled hot garbage.

I just don't see than many bugs other than the sliding over windows sliding out when they weren't supposed to on the iPad, and Monterey breaking the SD card slots on the older Minis. The iPad bug hasn't happened since I figured out how to turn off the slipover function. The SD card problem isn't fixed, but a separate card reader is $10 and does full sized and micro SD, and CF too.

 

[bcortens]

Like switching between Cinnamon and Xfce, but more so.

Or if you are old enough, switching between Classic (OS 9) and OS X back on Tiger (10.4). You could do that on a machine with a 40 GB hard drive and 512 MB of RAM.

Except that classic and tiger together were a terrible compromise! That wasn’t a great experience that people loved, it was a compromise that let people run legacy apps during the transition. It did not let people transform their machine between two modes, which is what people are suggesting. And let’s not forget that switching between two versions of the same app in Classic and Tiger did not preserve state between the two.

You could run two OS’s simultaneously and see windows from both, but this suffers from the problem that you get iPad apps running on within a macOS environment and not being optimized for mouse and keyboard and macOS apps running that aren’t capable of being used in touch mode.
To get a transforming experience only one OS can be “frontmost” at a time. So you’d ether be in macOS mode or iPad OS mode, which again, has problems of data and workflow integration which I outlined above (and you and others just breezed on by as not important issues of user experience).

The alternative, a single OS that transforms its UI would be a huge technical task. It’s not undoable but it is not easy and getting app developers on board is likely a fools errand, dooming the idea to an abysmal user experience. It would likely have to start with macOS as a base, but given Apple’s behaviour lately they would likely lock it down just as hard as iPadOS is already locked down (no non-app store apps, hard app sandboxing, etc…) which would eliminate what many people want from it anyway.

 

[brofkand]

I think Microsoft has done a good job showing how a mouse/keyboard centric OS can run fine on a touch device. Millions if not billions of touch-enabled Windows devices are sold every year.

I have yet to hear a convincing arguement why macOS can't run on iPads. It'll need some UI changes, Windows did too. Apple has frameworks so the same executables can run on both macOS and iPadOS today, so they are getting there. But more can be done for sure. Just install macOS on an iPad. The only reason why it isn't is Apple wants to sell folks a Mac and an iPad.

 

[bcortens]

I think Microsoft has done a good job showing how a mouse/keyboard centric OS can run fine on a touch device. Millions if not billions of touch-enabled Windows devices are sold every year.

I have yet to hear a convincing arguement why macOS can't run on iPads. It'll need some UI changes, Windows did too. Apple has frameworks so the same executables can run on both macOS and iPadOS today, so they are getting there. But more can be done for sure. Just install macOS on an iPad. The only reason why it isn't is Apple wants to sell folks a Mac and an iPad.

I completely disagree with you on Microsoft, you just have to look at how people actually use Windows. Most people do not use windows in tablet mode. they use windows mostly in laptop mode with a keyboard and trackpad. Microsoft doesn’t have a better UI for touchscreen windows because they gave up after the backlash to windows 8. Sure macOS could run on iPads but it is not optimized for it and there are just countless cases where you’d likely run into rough edges, macOS apps aren’t built from default to avoid the software keyboard for example. You also have to keep in mind that iPads need to work out of the box, without a keyboard and trackpad.

This desire to get macOS on the iPad as the only OS is a terrible idea for the millions of people who buy iPads every year and would mostly just appease the tiny minority of dedicated mac users who really want a touchscreen mac but don’t think Apple will make that.

 

[RedWing512]

I think Microsoft has done a good job showing how a mouse/keyboard centric OS can run fine on a touch device. Millions if not billions of touch-enabled Windows devices are sold every year.

I have yet to hear a convincing arguement why macOS can't run on iPads. It'll need some UI changes, Windows did too. Apple has frameworks so the same executables can run on both macOS and iPadOS today, so they are getting there. But more can be done for sure. Just install macOS on an iPad. The only reason why it isn't is Apple wants to sell folks a Mac and an iPad.

I'll say it again, because I think most people missed it — the iPad doesn't need a desktop-caliber OS. It just needs better apps. So many apps on iPad are unnecessarily gimped, and that's the real reason why people have such a hard time getting work done on an iPad.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Here is ONE major reason why… the iPad Air/Pro is more versatile than a MBA in regards to hardware (imo), I can transform my iPad Pro into a laptop (or desktop)… the MBA cannot be used as a tablet.

Right but the limitations imposed by Apple on the app store and background app processes effectively prevents many apps that get used on a mac from working on an iPad. So while the physical device can double as a mac, the software is a massive limitation, as the OP stated.

 

[bcortens]

Right but the limitations imposed by Apple on the app store and background app processes effectively prevents many apps that get used on a mac from working on an iPad. So while the physical device can double as a mac, the software is a massive limitation, as the OP stated.

Removing or altering iPadOS limitations on long term background processing would be a much more desirable solution than just bringing macOS to iPad

 

[GCat]

I completely disagree with you on Microsoft, you just have to look at how people actually use Windows. Most people do not use windows in tablet mode. they use windows mostly in laptop mode with a keyboard and trackpad. Microsoft doesn’t have a better UI for touchscreen windows because they gave up after the backlash to windows 8. Sure macOS could run on iPads but it is not optimized for it and there are just countless cases where you’d likely run into rough edges, macOS apps aren’t built from default to avoid the software keyboard for example. You also have to keep in mind that iPads need to work out of the box, without a keyboard and trackpad.

This desire to get macOS on the iPad as the only OS is a terrible idea for the millions of people who buy iPads every year and would mostly just appease the tiny minority of dedicated mac users who really want a touchscreen mac but don’t think Apple will make that.

I agree, and this was the point of my original post on this thread.

It would be lovely if it was possible to run MacOS on an iPad and it would make many people in this forum happy.

However, Apple is not a charity, but a profit-driven company. Based on your comments, it seems the cost of porting MacOS to the iPad is significantly higher than I initially estimated. The market size for MacOS on the iPad is likely very small---I know many iPad users; none of them (including myself) care about running MacOS on the iPad.

It is what it is ... 😉 Lucky me, I'll have an OLED iPad Pro pretty soon.

 

[Ludatyk]

Right but the limitations imposed by Apple on the app store and background app processes effectively prevents many apps that get used on a mac from working on an iPad. So while the physical device can double as a mac, the software is a massive limitation, as the OP stated.

Massive limitation? I didn’t think massive word was used.

The best way to combat aggressive app background processes is to use Stage Manager and adding an external display can help matters.

Removing or altering iPadOS limitations on long term background processing would be a much more desirable solution than just bringing macOS to iPad

I don’t think that would be sufficient enough for Mac folks.

 

[bradman83]

Removing or altering iPadOS limitations on long term background processing would be a much more desirable solution than just bringing macOS to iPad

The biggest challenge to allowing more background processes on iPadOS is the impact it would have on battery life (which isn't exactly stellar on current M1 and M2 models). An iPad Air and 11" Pro's battery has roughly half the watt hour capacity of a 13" MacBook Air, so keeping the CPU busy with Mac-level background processes would be even more taxing on the small battery.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Here is ONE major reason why… the iPad Air/Pro is more versatile than a MBA in regards to hardware (imo), I can transform my iPad Pro into a laptop (or desktop)… the MBA cannot be used as a tablet.


Tbf, I think what you desire… is a touchscreen Mac (some 2-1).

But there is this consistent narrative that Mac/PC users continue to harp on being that Apple needs to fix iPadOS or something… it never fails. Yet, they refuse to acknowledge how much Apple has done to improve on it. It’s as if the narrative has been Apple made no improvements.

They have added external display support that runs Stage Manager, introduced PlayGrounds (I think this gets overlooked), virtual memory swap, tons of keyboard shortcuts and desktop class API’s. But the features you are seeking might never come to the iPad… and that’s why the Mac exist.

It's because the improvements have led to an "uncanny valley" situation, where the closer Apple gets to making iPadOS have the same functionality as MacOS, it just ends up showing how far it really has to go.

 

[bradman83]

I'll say it again, because I think most people missed it — the iPad doesn't need a desktop-caliber OS. It just needs better apps. So many apps on iPad are unnecessarily gimped, and that's the real reason why people have such a hard time getting work done on an iPad.

Not even just that the apps are gimped, it's that many of them don't properly embrace the changes made to iPadOS to make them more robust.

A common criticism of iPadOS is that it lacks a real file system. In reality the Files app gives you the same level of access to the iPad's internal file system via the "On My iPad" sidebar location as a user's home folder does on a Mac. Yes, you cannot go poking around through the various Libraries folders in the Finder or sudo-manipulate files in the bowels of the system via Terminal, but those are things most users rarely do. In terms of organizing files into folder structures you have the same options you do on macOS.

The problem is most third-party iPad apps continue to store their files in their own internal sandbox. You can import from and export to the Files app, but working files are stored in the sandbox and therefore not accessible from Files, only from within the app.

Apple's own first party apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote do this properly; when you open them they bring up the equivalent of an Open/Save dialog from Files and you can save the files wherever you want. Microsoft Office has gotten slightly better at this but still uses a custom interface. But if I want to open a file from Photoshop, ProCreate, Affinity, or any similar app I have to use the in-app interface and whatever organizational tools I'm given.

That's not anything Apple can fix, that's on the app developer to use the tools they've been given.

 

[Ludatyk]

It's because the improvements have led to an "uncanny valley" situation, where the closer Apple gets to making iPadOS have the same functionality as MacOS, it just ends up showing how far it really has to go.

But I don’t think it’s as far as critics make it out to be…. Especially for the vast majority.

It’s just those rare cases where you see the limitations of iPadOS and even then it’s not as massive, you got folks buying a M3 Max MBP just for browsing the web and doing light document editing.

 

[kc9hzn]

Here is ONE major reason why… the iPad Air/Pro is more versatile than a MBA in regards to hardware (imo), I can transform my iPad Pro into a laptop (or desktop)… the MBA cannot be used as a tablet.


Tbf, I think what you desire… is a touchscreen Mac (some 2-1).

But there is this consistent narrative that Mac/PC users continue to harp on being that Apple needs to fix iPadOS or something… it never fails. Yet, they refuse to acknowledge how much Apple has done to improve on it. It’s as if the narrative has been Apple made no improvements.

They have added external display support that runs Stage Manager, introduced PlayGrounds (I think this gets overlooked), virtual memory swap, tons of keyboard shortcuts and desktop class API’s. But the features you are seeking might never come to the iPad… and that’s why the Mac exist.

Let’s be honest, a touchscreen Mac is precisely what these people want out of the iPad, and they won’t ever be satisfied with iPadOS. Most people probably DON’T want that (most iPad power users clearly prefer something about the iPad experience over a theoretical touchscreen Mac experience, otherwise they’d make do with non-touch MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros), but some people clearly do.

I think it would be better for Apple to put out an explicitly touchscreen based Mac running macOS than to abandon iPadOS for the macOS or force iPadOS to work more like macOS. There probably IS a market for such a device in the Apple ecosystem, but the question is just how big the market is for it. (I have to assume that Apple feels that there’s a bigger market for the Vision Pro than for a touchscreen tablet Mac. Vision Pro is pretty niche hardware, but Apple’s projections* probably suggest that the touchscreen tablet Mac would be even more niche. I don’t think cannibalism is really a concern, it wouldn’t cannibalize the sales of the base iPad or iPad Air. It might cannibalize iPad Pro sales, but it would probably be pushing $2000 USD entry price**, so probably not by much.)

* Because, yes, I have no doubt that they’ve considered such a device and have done a market analysis on it

** I’m assuming it would be a MacBook Pro model at 14” or 16” or so, I doubt they’d add a touch screen to the MacBook Air 13” (definitely too much cannibalism with the iPad lineup there)

 

[brofkand]

I completely disagree with you on Microsoft, you just have to look at how people actually use Windows. Most people do not use windows in tablet mode. they use windows mostly in laptop mode with a keyboard and trackpad. Microsoft doesn’t have a better UI for touchscreen windows because they gave up after the backlash to windows 8. Sure macOS could run on iPads but it is not optimized for it and there are just countless cases where you’d likely run into rough edges, macOS apps aren’t built from default to avoid the software keyboard for example. You also have to keep in mind that iPads need to work out of the box, without a keyboard and trackpad.

This desire to get macOS on the iPad as the only OS is a terrible idea for the millions of people who buy iPads every year and would mostly just appease the tiny minority of dedicated mac users who really want a touchscreen mac but don’t think Apple will make that.

How many people have iPad Pros with those stupid heavy keyboards attached to them and would love to have a powerful OS?

Apple is the one calling a device that can't even run a full version of Word "Pro" - not me. I get that Pro is a marketing term for them with no meaning, but if they want the iPad to be Pro, it needs a grown-up OS.

I'll say it again, because I think most people missed it — the iPad doesn't need a desktop-caliber OS. It just needs better apps. So many apps on iPad are unnecessarily gimped, and that's the real reason why people have such a hard time getting work done on an iPad.

It needs a desktop caliber OS to have those apps. Chicken and egg problem. Developers aren't going to write an app for iPadOS when it will always be better on the Mac or Windows anyway.

 

[Ctrlos]

IPadOS does need to move a little further away from its iOS roots but a complete rewrite is not needed. Better use of screen space would however be most welcome.

 

[Siliconguy]

You could run two OS’s simultaneously and see windows from both, but this suffers from the problem that you get iPad apps running on within a macOS environment and not being optimized for mouse and keyboard and macOS apps running that aren’t capable of being used in touch mode.

Is it that big a problem? You can already use a trackpad and a mouse at the same time, you are placing a cursor, clicking a button, or dragging something somewhere. Finger on screen or trackpad seems like little difference. Keyboards, you have one on screen if there is no keyboard attached, or not on screen if one is attached. Either way Unicode gets sent to the active window.

The iPad (even more the iPad Pro) has the resources to run a full desktop OS, it mostly does already. It's the hamstringing of its IO and filesystem that holds it back.

 

[kc9hzn]

Is it that big a problem? You can already use a trackpad and a mouse at the same time, you are placing a cursor, clicking a button, or dragging something somewhere. Finger on screen or trackpad seems like little difference. Keyboards, you have one on screen if there is no keyboard attached, or not on screen if one is attached. Either way Unicode gets sent to the active window.

The iPad (even more the iPad Pro) has the resources to run a full desktop OS, it mostly does already. It's the hamstringing of its IO and filesystem that holds it back.

It’s more about the apps and how much support third party developers would tolerate for such an environment. But there’s also the difference between interaction models. How exactly would you suggest Apple interleave windows from iPadOS and macOS?

 

[sparksd]

Stage manager is really not great for managing lots of windows. If you have multiple windows across multiple stages that you want to move between stages then stage manager is just measurably harder to work with than splitview + slideover is. Or as I’ve brought up before a bunch of safari windows that end up in an inaccessible stack of 7 windows you cannot rely upon the switcher to find them. The App/Stage switcher view is just a broken mess.

If you’re just working on a few stages with a few windows it works well but it doesn’t scale the way Mission Control, spaces and Expose do on the Mac. It doesn’t even scale as well as SplitView + Slideover

But I still would not typify as an "abject failure of design". I wholly disagree with that.