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m1 ipad pro!
- Thread starter Ratsaremyfreinds
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So, I'm sure the usual lines will be said about this, but it's becoming patently ridiculous that you can't run Mac OS on the iPads.
This thing completely kicks the Microsoft Surfaces ass, but you cannot run professional video and audio applications on it. In audio specifically, plug ins are absolutely better to operate on touch screens, and it's getting frustrating watching Apple beat MS and others in the chip market, have arguably better touch screens on their iOS hardware, yet not allow the Mac OS merger. Running Logic X on this would be great, if you could...
Or more to the point, what is the point of a ridiculously fast chip and new connectivity if it's to be used only for dumbed down iOS apps only?
This thing completely kicks the Microsoft Surfaces ass, but you cannot run professional video and audio applications on it. In audio specifically, plug ins are absolutely better to operate on touch screens, and it's getting frustrating watching Apple beat MS and others in the chip market, have arguably better touch screens on their iOS hardware, yet not allow the Mac OS merger. Running Logic X on this would be great, if you could...
Or more to the point, what is the point of a ridiculously fast chip and new connectivity if it's to be used only for dumbed down iOS apps only?
Apple’s solution to this will be the first generation “MacBook” that is actually designed for M1, which will essentially be a Mac with the ipad form factor. Stay tuned.
The only thing missing is allowing it to run OS X application. I think I will wait for the WWDC before ordering, because even my current 12.9 iPad Pro is overkill for what you are able to do currently with iOS.
Given the use of the M1 and accordingly the
Given the M1 + up to 16gb ram / 2tb storage... The only (technical) barrier I can see to Mac OS support is proper touch screen support in the next version of Mac OS.
Interesting idea-- being able to run an M1 universal app in iPad OS. Kind of the reverse of what they've been trying to sell us with "running iOS apps on your Mac".
Guess Apple really wants total synergy between the MacOs and iPadOs from the developers and not to separate both creating two apps market. So you have a full fledged AutoCad, Photoshop on any hardware that Apple releases (eventually on 399$ iPad). What puzzles my mind is why not to launch Final Cut and Logic Pro for the iPad since yesterday.
Indeed. Though maybe we'll see that (pro apps-- Final Cut, Logic Pro, etc) at the "pro" focused WWDC?
I think we’re going to see that at WWDC, alongside a much more macos-like ipados, with rethought multitasking, etc.
Well I’m wondering about that. Why move the market in a direction that the market doesn’t want to go? The iPad excels at certain things, the couch, the bed, as a second screen device behind the tv, outside for professionals on the move. None of that says to me, here is a device that’s going to replace the Mac in the office for serious content creation.
Yes with the M1 processor it has reached computing power parity with the desktop, but the nature of the device constrains what it can do: it is primarily touch-based, it has a screen of limited size, it lacks a mouse. That makes it better at some things and worse at others. Apple should try to embrace that, and find those areas where they can create complementary relationships.
Yes with the M1 processor it has reached computing power parity with the desktop, but the nature of the device constrains what it can do: it is primarily touch-based, it has a screen of limited size, it lacks a mouse. That makes it better at some things and worse at others. Apple should try to embrace that, and find those areas where they can create complementary relationships.
People buying ipad pros (as opposed to ipads) have a different use case. They increasingly do use keyboards, trackpads, etc. May as well embrace it.
I hope you're right about this. I'm a little sick of being jealous of the Surface, and appalled at it's bad CPU performance.
Essentially though, this is what they just announced, this iPad Pro has no physical barrier to running Mac OS, connectivity and chip wise it's there. I feel like we're living through the remake of the obstinacy that Apple showed with the one button mouse all over again, if they're not an early adopter they deny and deflect until one day they concede.
Like most people that do not use applications like logic Pro that have plug ins replete with knobs and sliders, that also eat up CPU, you don’t get it, but anyone who does audio and has used various iOS synth plug ins for example has wanted this for Mac OS and touch. There are even full workstations that use multi touch in the application itself to do all sorts of things on Windows, but they can’t do anything on Mac OS, because Apple doesn’t support it... you’re arguing for a one button mouse, that’s all there is to say about it.
Sure, for little things like typing a long email. But for most serious uses you should still get a laptop. I’ve seen more than a few cases of people going through multiple Magic Keyboards Because they try to do too much with it.
Ah, the old “what *I* do is real work but these other people doing paid work on this device are only doing fake work” theory.
I'm not quite as optimistic here. I maybe give it 50/50 odds Apple will make the sort of waves you are thinking of here. And worse odds that the changes Apple is more likely to make (i.e. evolve iPadOS vs evolve macOS) actually move the needle when it comes to third party devs. If I'm wrong, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
The big hurdle has been the APIs on top of the OS. Without AppKit on "iPadOS", Mac apps still need to be ported to UIKit (or SwiftUI which is honestly a bit of a mess right now). Considering how few large developers have done so at this point, I don't see that changing much anytime soon. It's a bit like the problem Microsoft has with .NET and UWP. It's the modern API they've been pushing forever, but without a sufficient carrot or stick, engineering teams on established products tend to ignore it.
Apple has the advantage that the huge bulk of the API stack other than AppKit/UIKit is source compatible, and even so they've had the same uphill battle as Microsoft. I originally thought they'd have more luck based on my experience working on a project to port a larger macOS app to iOS, but I guess not. Inertia is a pain.
To be fair, the M1 has a lot of overlap with what an A14X would look like. It's a customized A14X, if such a thing were made. I half suspect Apple did this because it makes things easier for the hardware team by sharing the same part.
I think you’re conflating things. I was talking about features of the OS (multitasking, specifically), and that has nothing to do with UIKit vs AppKit. You are also seeing a lot of hypervisor hooks and things that suggest to people like Stroughten-smith (who has a good record of reading the tea leaves) that we are about to see a much more robust iPadOS. And once iPadOS can do things like allow the user to properly manage windows, run arbitrary background apps, etc., then that paves the way for more developers to redesign their apps based on UIKit/Catalyst. It will take time, but every developer I know knows that the future of Mac is not AppKit, and they are all lusting after the large mobile customer base.
What I'm trying to say it doesn't matter if iPadOS can dance the flamenco if developers are unwilling to port to it. And that's dependent on the APIs, budgets, and addressable market. Although App Store limitations also play a factor here too. There's really been nothing stopping folks from bringing these sort of full-featured apps to iOS today, for the most part. It can be done, and has been demonstrated on more complex apps, including the one I worked on.
The thing is, I've started to lose the optimism that businesses are really thirsting after this market enough to pay the cost. I was the one arguing 2-3 years ago the sort of thing you were saying here. But partly because I was on a product team putting in that effort. I honestly didn't expect the sheer amount of shrugging, and bean counters noping out in the last couple years that I've seen.
I still kinda hope newer, more nimble teams like Serif start eating the lunch of the established firms, though.
EDIT: I also didn't expect Apple to land SwiftUI half-baked, or Catalyst in a form that makes it really weird to work with on the Mac that prevents you from using it to evolve the Mac app in any interesting way that you can with AppKit.
Well, we’ve already seen adobe working on it, etc. And, as you note, we have newer companies like Serif doing a great job. And as someone who was one of the first few hundred external iOS developers, I’ve seen UIKit gain a heck of a lot of power over the years, and it’s getting very close to AppKit at this point. So my point is I think we’ll see some welcome developments in June.
In my view, Adobe is more in the "about time" category. They've been super conservative on the platform to date, IMO. Photoshop is what, 6-7 years after Office? Yes I know they started with a couple small "on the go" editors including a mobile version of Lightroom, but they spent an awful lot of time avoiding the cost of bringing full-fat Photoshop to the platform, despite folks asking about it.
And I absolutely agree that UIKit is powerful, it feels a modern approach to AppKit in many ways, and does stuff better than AppKit does. But it's different enough from AppKit that we had all sorts of fun adapting keyboard input logic from the stuff that assumed Win32, Classic MacOS and AppKit behaviors, for example. And there have been recent projects where I considered using Catalyst only to discover in prototyping that it would actually shut me out of macOS-specific functionality because UIKit never needed to support it. It was niche stuff, sure, but it's a consideration that has to be made if an app does hit one of these gaps. I was an early adopter of Swift, and I do have a couple personal tools written using SwiftUI, but I'm not yet a fan of SwiftUI because the gaps there are even bigger than with Catalyst right now on iOS 14 and Big Sur.
And don't get me wrong, I think Apple's goal is to continue to evolve iPadOS into what some might consider the next evolution of macOS. I just think that Apple's track record here on how quickly they are doing it, and how slowly legacy devs adopt things (or how Electron/RN folks actively avoid it) means that whatever Apple announces at WWDC... I'll get excited and then see it not get adopted for a depressingly long time.