Well I guess power users would really have to make a lot more noise than it is today on this one, or vote with their wallet HARD. unfortunately, even if every single power user using apple device leaves, nothing will change.
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All iPads iPads shouldn't run macOS - Stage Manager shows it clearly
- Thread starter AlexESP
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I need some context here. How did you place WeChat underneath the Safari browser? Because I think in order to have this result.. you had to resize Safari browser to have it placed behind WeChat. And if you resized the Safari browser… then obviously you can resize it in order to switch to WeChat.
Which is why Apple don’t care about power users, and rightfully so.
That way, they don’t even need to build the most powerful computer on the planet anymore.
Eventually customers will be stupid enough to never think.
Not stupid - that's insulting. It's just that most customers level of use don't rise to the point where it matters.
Yes, I achieved that through resizing window. And actually, it’s not even that necessary. All I need to do is drag the app icon and bam, another app in full screen in front. Place safari underneath WeChat? Use the dock to switch to WeChat. Done. But why I have to use docks? If I use docks, I’m doing essentially the same multitask thing existed in iPad since it’s inception in 2010.
The point is, there’s no way to switch to the so-called recent app by using The left hand sidebar shown in one of those screenshots. What’s the purpose of that one then? Other than having the ability to keep multiple apps active (which is the coolest thing of stage manager most people don’t really appreciate), I don’t see a ton of practical use out of it.
Or? Did Apple want us to switch to different app stacks, each holding 4 apps, to 20 apps total? Is that what they want us to do? Whats the benefit of stage manager using touch screen only then?
If you think this whole drama is intuitive, good for you.
True. Then Apple should continue to tailor their iPadOS into a better glorified iPhone that’s insanely easy to use, while populating M1 in it making it super future proof. Wonder why they relent.
In this particular scenario... Whenever you drag an app onto stage it is placed behind the existing apps... but it won't necessarily hide them. You will still be able to select any app unless you resize them in an effort to hide it as you did.
You seem tech savvy enough to understand Stage Manager... you clearly know how to use it. Is it perfect? Absolutely not.
But it's a step in the right direction... because you are asking for "macOS mode" on an iPad which wouldn't benefit Apple, at least be realistic. Reason why I mention virtualization with 3rd party apps like Fusion and Parallels is due to the potential in app purchase fee in the App Store that Apple will take a cut from.
Customer is not obligated to think for Apple. Just like apple is not obligated to think for customers. it’s one thing to understand. It’s the other to relent and back off.
Regardless, it is a clunky UX mess as-is. My only hope is they did all the fundamentals of stage manager this year and next year make it easier to use than today. Optimise for touch screen. Or disable it entirely without keyboard attached.
This seems likely.
Slide-over, split screen, and the app-switcher view are much better now than at release.
there is no need to run macOS on iPad . just more efficient multi tasking instead of apps, browsers reloading in background even with enough ram! I think the problem is maximum ram allocation to one app. The lack of pro apps as in the pathetic excuse of office apps for iPad. Instead of just making it another surface pro, if the removal of unwanted restrictions is done by apple I think many of issues with iPadOS will be solved.
the UI is good and snappy.
the UI is good and snappy.
You can google browsername multiple profiles and you will find instructions. On MacOS most browser support different profiles within the same instance making it simpler.
I think that will happen - this is a typical first release from Apple where they sell customers something that barely works and then one or two major OS upgrades later it's at a point where it's actually pretty decent. Currently anyone using stage manager is essentially doing the beta testing for Apple. Though I suppose it's helpful for Apple to see how their new idea fares out in the wild. Apropos wild, I do find it wild that Apple has so much money and expertise clustered together in one company and they can't get it right the first time around. They must really have been given a deadline by manglement to get this feature out the door no matter what.
Sure there is no need, but combining MacOS with the iPadOS UI would go a long way towards removing these unwanted restrictions. Developers could then concentrate on programming a single "pro" app, instead of having to maintain a MacOS and an iPadOS version. Some pro features might require attaching the magic keyboard, sure, but then at least there is a way to get the full "pro" UI version you are used to from the Mac, on the iPad.
And it would automatically get rid of some of the ridiculous iPadOS restrictions since the underlying apps are all fully featured MacOS apps that merely get a different UI for the iPad mode. For example right now there is no way to edit the tags in my Music library on the iPad. There is no reason not to let me do that, renaming something can't be a UI issue. No, Apple wants this to be a one-way street. Right now owning a 2TB iPad Pro is pretty much a waste of money because you can't manage your 2TB of storage in any meaningful way. No file system access, mere syncing of some individual apps but not that many, no way to even fill the 2TB. If I import photos of my camera I can only import them to an app. I just want to send them to the 2TB of local storage the iPad has, and then copy them back to the Mac later. If I copy them to the iPad locally, they are then stuck in the Files app where you can't easily import them to Photos, so then I have to connect the finicky SMB and hope hundreds of GB don't get interrupted in the middle and I have to start all over.
It's absolutely silly to sell the iPad Pro with M1, or M2, and 8GiB of RAM, and 2TB of storage, and then give it this lackluster iPadOS where you tack yet another unfinished feature (stage manager) on top whilst crippling the user experience starting from the very OS foundation.
I have no idea how Apple would improve iPadOS that is essentially a fork of iOS towards something more akin to macOS alongside any benefit and drawback that macOS has. Nowadays, UI/UX is really just part of the story for app development, and there are way more under the hood stuff we as customer have no idea about that prevents iPadOS app becoming as powerful as customer would expect. I'd like Apple to unify their development platform between macOS and iPadOS into a single one but seems that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Well, with USB-C on iPad Pro with decent speed, 2TB is a bit more tolerable to use. But Apple is developing iPadOS on top of iOS, so all the limitations placed on iOS get carried over to iPadOS. Now, customers expect most new iOS features get "ported" to iPadOS as well, preferably together, meaning Apple is having an even harder time than back in iOS 13 to differentiate iPadOS from iOS. Remember Apple kept insisting they won't port macOS to iPad? What they are doing right now is attempting to merge iPadOS with macOS without actually merging them, providing an experience that's somewhat similar to macOS but not quite, while maintaining its iOS root. I don't know why that is a good idea. What's iPad's purpose then? An expensive independent computer that is only supposed to be an accessory of either Mac or iPhone (buying a $3k accessory to accompany your $500 iPhone anyone? lmao)? Or a weird hybrid that can do a bit of everything but not everything efficiently?
You probably have heard about surface tablet, which is Microsoft's attempt to bring touch to desktop OS, and the result isn't great. I dunno where those folk's confidence come from believing Apple bringing desktop OS feature to a touch-centric mobile OS is a great idea either. Apple had 3 years to do so, and iPadOS 16 is still riddled with issues people have been complaining for months or years.
You can keep the touch UI from iPadOS and make the full desktop OS features available when the magic keyboard is attached, instead of the rudimentary mouse and keyboard support for the touch UI that iPadOS has right now. You yourself just said:
That's what it is right now, unless you need the pencil feature or the touch screen you get more features in a Macbook Air for 800 bucks with a full desktop OS, or if you don't need the big screen the iPhone can do nearly everything that the iPad can. Right now the iPad very much is a Mac accessoire as it needs a desktop computer to sync anything into apps like Music and won't run most desktop OS apps. That's fine for the base iPad but definitely not ok on an iPad Pro that costs as much as a Macbook and even has the same SoC inside.
Something needs to change at least with the iPad Pro, what percentage of users even have a single app installed that could make reasonable use out of the M2 chip on the iPad Pro? (Aside from games, that gaming consoles and desktop computers are more suited for, amongst other things due to their bigger library.) For many the iPad Pro is nothing but a couch-streaming-in-HDR-miniLED device. It could do so much more if it weren't running an OS forked from a phone.
Which is what Microsoft is doing right now On Surface. The question is, will Apple do that? I don’t really have much hope right now.
I don’t get the dual boot argument. I want you to imagine for a moment, that you finish watching a movie on your iPad and decide to do some work. You place it on its keyboard. Now you wait roughly 60 seconds for it to reboot into macOS. You log in, and it takes another ~15 for firevault to finish its thing. You do some work.
When you finish, you take it off the keyboard. You wait 30-60 seconds for it to reboot back into iPadOS. You then remember you forgot to email a work file. Time to do it all over again just to grab that one file, as trying to merge the file systems of two OSes would be an unworkable nightmare and the partitions are surely both encrypted.
Not to mention the overhead of having two OSes installed on the tiny drives that the lower spec iPads have. This also goes for the idea I’ve heard thrown around that it could be instant by keeping both loaded in memory. Two entire modern operating systems with 4GB each?
And for “merging” this idea sounds awful. The only acceptable way to do this in the eyes of pro users would be for macOS to replace iPadOS, and MacOS would be an horrid to deal with as the exclusive OS of the iPad. It would destroy what makes iPads an iPad instead of just a clunky surface clone. I’ve had a surface, and it’s a fine laptop but a borderline unusable tablet. The buttons on windows are too small and very few programs optimize for it.
Not to mention hardcore Mac users are already pissed about the “iOS-fication” of macOS. Imagine if it had to be totally optimized for touch. Touch on an 11” screen. Maybe even a 10.9” if the Air users get their way.
It was a mistake to ever put an M1 in the iPad. They should have stuck with the A-Number-X/Z chips.
When you finish, you take it off the keyboard. You wait 30-60 seconds for it to reboot back into iPadOS. You then remember you forgot to email a work file. Time to do it all over again just to grab that one file, as trying to merge the file systems of two OSes would be an unworkable nightmare and the partitions are surely both encrypted.
Not to mention the overhead of having two OSes installed on the tiny drives that the lower spec iPads have. This also goes for the idea I’ve heard thrown around that it could be instant by keeping both loaded in memory. Two entire modern operating systems with 4GB each?
And for “merging” this idea sounds awful. The only acceptable way to do this in the eyes of pro users would be for macOS to replace iPadOS, and MacOS would be an horrid to deal with as the exclusive OS of the iPad. It would destroy what makes iPads an iPad instead of just a clunky surface clone. I’ve had a surface, and it’s a fine laptop but a borderline unusable tablet. The buttons on windows are too small and very few programs optimize for it.
Not to mention hardcore Mac users are already pissed about the “iOS-fication” of macOS. Imagine if it had to be totally optimized for touch. Touch on an 11” screen. Maybe even a 10.9” if the Air users get their way.
It was a mistake to ever put an M1 in the iPad. They should have stuck with the A-Number-X/Z chips.
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Stage manager really sucks on top of MacOS too.
I just want an iPad that runs full MacOS with keyboard and mouse (or finger to move the cursor like most VNC apps do).
I agree there are probably significant UX compromises with dual boot that people aren’t acknowledging, either because they don’t realize the compromises or because the compromises are acceptable to them and not worth mentioning. But I think the latter group is too small of a minority to change Apple’s mind. If it was a sizable market—extrapolating to non-Apple customers—, I think we would see more Windows + Android tablets, but I’ve never seen one.
So, dual boot is bad because switching modes can take a long time, quite a long time.
Running both OS simultaneously eats away lots of resources, especially for lower end iPad.
Merging macOS with iPadOS is awful because of the UX, UI, interactions etc on macOS don’t transfer to touch screen.
And the conclusion is it is a mistake to put powerful chips on iPad?
What is an iPad then? Apple has been given 12 years to try to answer this question and they have yet to find one, nor end user figure out what it is for, other than using it as glorified iPhone.
What I see is Apple slowly converting macOS into iPadOS, dumbing down a more powerful OS to eventually bring it on par with iPadOS, which surely pisses hardcore Mac users but won’t lose much in terms of revenue in the long run. A win for apple and a sure sign of old Mac users being thrown Away.
I will not be surprised macOS losing full filesystem, terminal, ability to virtually install anything you want, more powerful multitasking, among other things once Apple decide to pull the plug.
The iPad is quite a nice product. I enjoy mine a lot. It is a glorfied iPhone, and that is what I love about it. I like using a device like an iPhone, but having an 11 inch canvas to do that on. Planning day trips, browsing the web... It's a dream. It is not something for everybody and is never going to be something anybody needs.
I think them putting M-series chips in the iPads was a mistake because it has turned up the heat on this entire debate over if iPads need to be turned into poor quality Macs running software that isn't designed well for them. iPadOS should probably get Final Cut and the rest of the "Pro" suite, but I am still unconvinced it should get macOS after my time with a Surface Pro. I got my first iPad specifically because I didn't like how it running a desktop OS made it terrible as a tablet. I would use the Surface Pro as a laptop and then grab the iPad when I wanted to take notes or draw or just consume content, as one does on a tablet. I imagine even the most ideal Apple implementation of the same idea would still be not very great.
The iPad is fine as it is, moving along the path that it is. Somebody who wants a Mac should get a Mac. The fact that Apple is consistently the leader in the tablet space shows they're doing something right. And second, third, fourth, and fifth place are also companies that make Android tablets, not Windows ones.
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Well, one thing for sure, Apple is iOS-ifying macOS into a glorified iPadOS, slowly but surely, starting with Big Sur. We will see how good apple is at blurring the boundary between macOS and iPadOS In the coming years.
Interesting scenario but not entirely based in reality. Various forms of virtualization can make the switch seamless. Literally making macOS like just another app on the iPad (it would probably be a more interesting integration than that, but that’s the gist of it). Extra RAM will make the experience better, so perhaps they reserve this for the higher RAM models.
Yeah, especially for 2TB model where there are plenty of room putting two OS on the system drive.
Rene Ritchie actually posted a pretty good video about this recently.
The great thing about iPadOS is its emphasis on highly optimized single focus experiences, derived from mobile. It’s made computing accessible to the less “techie“ minded in a way that PC’s failed to for decades.
Continually trying to turn iPadOS into a task switching windowed operating system risks going down the “everything but the kitchen sink” path that has defined other tablet OS’s and made them unsuitable for the kids and grandparents in all of us.
We have a full productivity OS that’s been designed for and improved for 40 years. It’s called macOS. Let those of us who want to run it, run it. And keep iPadOS simple. It will never be macOS.