iPad Pro John Gruber made some interesting points about iPad

[Abazigal]

Looks line that Mac line really needs some string cleaning as well and there are lots of produces missing such as the M1/M2 Pro iMac, affordable 27 inch iMac, M1/M2 Pro Mac mini and where is the AS MP??? Why does the 13 inch MBP exist???

I suspect that Apple has no intention of releasing a 27" iMac (it's basically broken up into the Mac Studio and Studio display). When it's finally time to retire my 5k iMac, it will be sorely missed.

 

[iPadified]

Not really. The iPhone chips don't have Rosseta 2, Thunderbolt 4 and they only support 1 external monitor.

The only scaled up M chip that is based on A chip is the base M1/M2. The Pro, Max and Ultra are true Mac only chips. The codenames that Apple gives these Mac chips is 'T6xxx'.

The A chip and base M chip is 'T8xxx'. The base M1/M2 chip are A14X and A15X.

The Mac Transition is far from complete. The Mac Pro and the Intel Mac mini need updating. I would wait till Spring of 2024 for the Mac line up to make sense.

So the M1/M2 are A14X and A15X aka iPad chips? So the most sold Macs (MBA) is running an iPad chip?

Joke aside:are not all the important features directly taken from A chips (CPU, GPU, ML, media engines) and just scaled to the larger M/Pro /Max SoCs? Possibly the RAM access is unique to Pro and Max compared to A/M1/M2 chip but I doubt the architecture is significantly different from the A/M1/M2.

Talking about Mac chips, iPhone chips and iPad chips is meaningless.

 

[Retskrad]

If we look at iPhone, the flagship iPhones get specific features in the silicon tailored for iPhones specifically, like hardware accelerating computational photography and the new display engine in the A16 to make the Dynamic Island animations smoother.

On the Mac side, the highest end Macs get additional M-series features like high speed memory bandwidth And of course more cores, better graphics, RAM, etc.

How about the flagship iPads? Well, they only get whatever the MacBook Air gets. The iPad Pro is not in the driver seat in any way. It gets software features first developed for the iPhone and it gets whatever new silicon that is developed for cheapest Macs. The iPad has no agency, both on the software side and the hardware side. It’s truly the third wheel.

 

[iPadified]

If we look at iPhone, the flagship iPhones get specific features in the silicon tailored for iPhones specifically, like hardware accelerating computational photography and the new display engine in the A16 to make the Dynamic Island animations smoother.

On the Mac side, the highest end Macs get additional M-series features like high speed memory bandwidth And of course more cores, better graphics, RAM, etc.

How about the flagship iPads? Well, they only get whatever the MacBook Air gets. The iPad Pro is not in the driver seat in any way. It gets software features first developed for the iPhone and it gets whatever new silicon that is developed for cheapest Macs. The iPad has no agency, both on the software side and the hardware side. It’s truly the third wheel.

There is no need for an iPad chip. If it works in the MBA is is sufficient for iPad. Economy of scale.

The third wheel is likely outselling Mac 2:1 in numbers due to the average lower sales price.

 

[code-m]

It makes perfect sense to me.

For example, office has maybe like a fraction of the capacity of its desktop counterpart, and this is the 20% that I really need, which in turn means that there is a ton of bloat that I don't need to deal with.

Complexity is not the key selling point of the iPad. Simplicity is.

I suspect part of the challenge/balance is to make interactive object on a touch screen large enough for finger input while permitting pencil and trackpad options. Maybe what iPadOS can incorporate with apps is the moment a keyboard is attached either via smart connector or Bluetooth the app reveals an advance desktop equivalent mode. This method does not compromise on the experience and brings it in-line with macOS desktop apps while still being true as a tablet OS.

Apple has proven that once an external keyboard, mouse or trackpad is attached a cursor in iPadOS is revealed, that is the type of Apple “Magic” I like seeing, purchasing and using their products.