I'll preface my responses to the below by reiterating that I don't want a touch-screen Mac. I want my money's worth out of the M1, M2, and presumably - in the not too distant future - M3 in an iPad. Otherwise, barring things that make it easier for me to do more precise drawing on, why am I buying a higher-end iPad?
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.
With fewer ports and many of the same hinderances that iOS has, I'd argue that the iPad is less flexible. Then again, your definition of flexible is entirely based on form factor.
Tbf, I think what you desire… is a touchscreen Mac (some 2-1).
Not at all! I don't want a 2-in-1 Mac! macOS was never designed for touch input. iPadOS was designed first and foremost for touch input. iPadOS is just a larger iOS. That's all it is right now. And, again, for the base iPad and the iPad mini, that's absolutely fine! But, for the M1 and M2 iPads, we ought to be getting more than just a larger iOS. Stage Manager is a joke. Virtual memory is a good start, but it's only a start. And yay, I get Final Cut Pro on my iPad? The bar of entry for these things is too high for them to just be mere consumption devices and that's all the platform currently offers.
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.
I never said that they made
no improvements. I said that they haven't made
enough 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.
Again, I don't want a touch screen Mac. I want an iPad Air/Pro that can stand toe-to-toe to a MacBook Air in terms of features. Right now, what you describe falls short of that. And considering there's the same M-series chips in the iPad Pros (let alone versions with the full GPU core count) that are being underutilized with iPadOS, that
It is a misconception that the OS should use the power of a CPU/GPU. An OS should uses as little as possible of systems resources but should allow for powerful apps to be used (which the iPad needs). Current iPad OS can allocate 16 Gb RAM to one app which is more than sufficient for most cases but RAM management with the lack of swapping can be enhanced.
You're misunderstanding me. The 2021 and 2022 iPad Pros and the 2022 iPad Air are all powerhouses. And yet, other than Final Cut Pro, the dumpster fire that is Stage Manager, and virtual memory support, there's nothing to warrant my buying anything anywhere near that high end of an iPad outside of heavy Procreate usage.
Would it hurt if iPadOS had Xcode, terminal and "advanced features" - no as long as the easy straightforward usage is the primary focus of the GUI.
When is that ever not the focus of ANY of Apple's GUI's?
You and many others complaining about iPadOS not being fit for purpose.
The only purposes that the iPad seems perfectly suited toward (across the board) is media consumption. You have a couple of art use cases wherein the combination of iPad Pro and Procreate makes indispensable sense. But past that and media consumption is the only use case that seems to make sense.
So, what is to justify my buying an iPad Air or an iPad Pro if I'm spending several hundreds of dollars more and ending up with...what? Better displays? Better speakers? Why even give me that M1 or M2 processor at all? And if I'm not getting anything out of that processor (and only getting marginal improvements anywhere else), what's to justify my buying a current model instead of a 2020 or 2018 Pro (or a 4th Generation Air for that matter)?
Apple has positioned the iPad as a personal device.
Like it or not, I don’t see this changing in a hurry, in the same way it will not change on the iPhone.
Apple positions all of their devices as personal devices. I have no clue what your point is. Even still, every OS of theirs is built on top of UNIX which is, at its core, a multi-user operating system.
Help me understand. Are you asking for tools to develop MacOS apps on an iPad, or for an iPadOS development platform?
I want an M-series iPad offering to be equally featured to their M-series MacBook Air equivalents. Doesn't seem like a tall ask, considering the processors are plenty powerful.
…and here we go again with the usual bottom line complaint, the File System.
So let me ask you, can you explain to me what can you do on a day to day basis with MacOS Finder that you cannot do with iPadOS Files?
Run scripts? Modify .plists? Y'know, have some control over my OS and installed apps??? Is that really such an out there thing to want in computing platform?
How is Files stopping you from performing your day to day activities on the iPad?
I am genuinely curious to know why this is an issue for so many people.
It's not an issue for a $400-700 iPad. It should be for an iPad rivaling the cost of an actual Mac containing the same computing innards.
As for the Disk Utility and things like the disconnection of external disks, etc… I agree that they would be useful tools.
Once again, these are functionalities that can be implemented by Apple today if they want to.
If this is what people want, this is what people should be campaigning for.
We are! And people like you are responding by asserting that no one needs them!
I just can’t see the appeal of a touch screen mac. Horrible to use. If you want touch screen keep to the iPad. If you want to run pro apps buy a Mac.
Not talking about a touch screen Mac. Just a more advanced OS running on an M-series SoC equipped iPad than the current iPadOS release!