Couldn't Apple do something like refuse to accept app updates and/or remove them from the App Store unless they are modified to make use of the Files file system? I believe they've done similar things before to force devs to implement this or that change.
Well, the problem with that is the needs of different apps. To use some apps on my phone, it probably doesn’t make much sense for Drafts to use the system file picker. Instead, its lightweight sidebar makes sense for its “quickly capture text and perform actions on it” model. Whereas GoodNotes almost certainly should be using the system file picker but isn’t, instead it uses a custom file picker that doesn’t let you navigate the file system and is limited to its sandbox in iCloud. You can create subdirectories of the sandbox directory, but that’s it. The problem with forcing apps to use the system file picker is that, while GoodNotes would finally be using the picker it should be, it would force apps that don’t need it to also use it. Not to mention the impact on apps like GoodReader that part of their whole reason for being is to be a quasi file system (less need for them these days, but GoodReader still has features that are useful today, like its memory optimized PDF viewer [for viewing large PDFs] or file encryption). Maybe developers could get an override permission, but that would be a lot of work for small developers. The current system is suboptimal, but a market based approach, like the current system, is the only one that doesn’t step on any toes. It’s on users to ask (and only spend money on) apps that use the system file picker, I think.
What would Apple need to do to iPadOS to allow Microsoft to make Word more fully featured?
You can do it with iPadOS files, I've done it. But it is ever so much easier to open server folders on the desktop and move files where they need to go on a Mac. And none of these places they need to go involve iCloud.
I agree that the main issue is not the OS but the apps.
Honestly even some first party apps don't use files, such as Books, that can't save a damn PDF to files and needs some convoluted workaround like airdropping to another device then airdropping back to the original iPad.... 🤯
You have one mail app, one Safari app, one Music, etc. So the common programs are no problem. If you are looking at the Cornell bird call program, if I open that it should open in a window sized as the iPad app does, or maybe start at phone sized. (I do not have an iPhone, so I don't know what it looks like there. The phones don't all have the same resolution (do they?) so the app must have some capability to size appropriately. So the app is just another window, possibly with a fixed maximum size. Sort of like the widgets they brought back.
Does Books app allow you to create / edit PDFs? If not, why would you want to save a PDF from Books to Files?
that's not how it works, you cannot "add code" to the OS so that apps from another OS, especially a desktop one, can just run natively, without some kind of virtual machine (even things like Windows on Mac, Android or Linux on Windows require some sort of virtual machine). You can make the virtual machine look native, like Parallels does with coherence mode, but it's still a virtual machine (= some version of MacOS running in the background...)
These issues have already been discussed in this thread. I admit I don't quite understand all the details myself, but you should at least try and read through the posts first.
There have been many times I've thought "dang I wish this iPad was a laptop." But I have never wished for my Macbook to be a tablet.
And how difficult would it be to build such a virtual MacOS for iPad? We keep hearing how powerful the latest M series chips are. Wouldn't it be possible, at some point, for iPads with M chips to run MacOS in virtual mode?
Before the iPad came out, I constantly wished I could remove the keyboard from my laptops. It's not that I wanted the laptop to be a tablet, per se, just that the keyboard was in the way when I wanted to just read. And while it's true that I sometimes think, "Oh, this would be faster/easier if I had a keyboard," while using my iPad, it's not that I want it to be a laptop -- I just want a device that fits the task at hand, I'm not thinking I want a laptop or a tablet.
Absolutely. IPadOS literally drove me to the Android/PC ecosystem. I still use my MacBook Pro as my main system, but after 30 years of only Apple tablets/computers, I bought a Galaxy Tab Ultra three years ago, and haven’t looked back. My iPad Pro is literally sitting on my exercise bike to be a content screen… and it’s been out of battery charge for months. 😂
Not difficult at all for Apple, but why on earth would they do that. They have more to lose than to gain from it.
that's whats detachables do in the Windows world, I rarely use them as tablets but I do remove the keyboard sometimes
And I went a third way, using both equally.... In the past I was iPad mainly (I had Android tablets but used them very little), especially since the pro iPad in 2015.
