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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,924
1,312
I tried to make my IPP 12.9 a MBP replacement but it did not work well. I see the performance of the new device is impressive but the OS is still a limited iPad OS. With such powerful hardware, why don't they make the new iPP to run Mac OS?
 

isoft7

macrumors 6502a
Oct 3, 2011
965
564
Impressive to have the M1 for sure, but yeah, this is a great point. There really isn't a need with iOS as fluid as it already is, and it's not as if programmers can target the M1 directly since previous generation iPad performance would suffer (in other words, the vast majority of users heh).

Still, neat to see, but is it worth an upgrade? Nah... maybe the 12.9" for the display, but for the internals? Less obvious.
 

hsiunghsiung

macrumors member
Dec 27, 2020
36
17
oh, I missed the IpadOS part. I thought just because the M1 chip was in it, it'd be like the mac air, but a tablet form. If it is still just ipadOS, it's not worth it for me then for now. I would love to do final cut pro on it though if that comes for it later
 
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meDANOcine

macrumors regular
Sep 18, 2014
100
116
It seems like today was only the first half of the announcement. It's a chicken or the egg problem ... release the hardware or software first? If you release the software first, the hardware doesn't exist to take advantage of it, so Apple had to release the M1 iPads first then follow it up with software-related changes later. This is classic Apple playbook. UWB chip is another that comes to mind - how many years did they let those languish in devices?
 

richpjr

macrumors 68040
May 9, 2006
3,763
2,594
It seems like today was only the first half of the announcement. It's a chicken or the egg problem ... release the hardware or software first? If you release the software first, the hardware doesn't exist to take advantage of it, so Apple had to release the M1 iPads first then follow it up with software-related changes later. This is classic Apple playbook. UWB chip is another that comes to mind - how many years did they let those languish in devices?

Using (roughly) the same chip in the iPad as in the Macs gives Apple some economies of scale as well.
 
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KittyKatta

macrumors 65816
Feb 24, 2011
1,058
1,212
SoCal
Maybe iOS 15 will take advantage.
Haven’t we been saying that every year? :D

Wait for iOS 11
Wait for iOS 12
Wait for iPadOS
Wait for iPadOS 14

I really like the new iPads but to be honest then (for me) there is nothing I am missing out on until Apple puts out a much better OS and quits relying so hard on 3rd party to compensate for their lack of 1st party apps.

Bottom line, iPad gets interesting when apple gets interested. (Which will hopefully happen at WWDC)
 

AutomaticApple

Suspended
Nov 28, 2018
7,401
3,378
Massachusetts
I tried to make my IPP 12.9 a MBP replacement but it did not work well. I see the performance of the new device is impressive but the OS is still a limited iPad OS. With such powerful hardware, why don't they make the new iPP to run Mac OS?
Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X?
 

sparksd

macrumors G4
Jun 7, 2015
10,013
34,356
Seattle WA
Haven’t we been saying that every year? :D

Wait for iOS 11
Wait for iOS 12
Wait for iPadOS
Wait for iPadOS 14

I really like the new iPads but to be honest then (for me) there is nothing I am missing out on until Apple puts out a much better OS and quits relying so hard on 3rd party to compensate for their lack of 1st party apps.

Bottom line, iPad gets interesting when apple gets interested. (Which will hopefully happen at WWDC)
Wait for iPadOS 15
Wait for Godot ...
 

Mac4Fun

macrumors newbie
Nov 6, 2016
20
16
Florida
It’s great hardware. But I’ll wait for the software to catch up, because it may be a few years before that happens.
I bought an iPad Air4 just two weeks ago. When I see the new M1 iPads doing things my iPad Air4 can’t do, I’ll get one.
 
Last edited:

isoft7

macrumors 6502a
Oct 3, 2011
965
564
Why do so many think MacOS is ever going to come to the iPads? It's never going to happen. We might see some unified OS in a few years where the two are one in the same, but it won't be MacOS as we know it now.
 

Surfer13134

macrumors 65816
Jun 12, 2010
1,047
790
Florida
With the M1 I am praying devs are that already been designing apps for the macs with M1 will be able to slide over apps on the iPad with ease and hopefully run close to the desktop experience. I know Adobe already has Photoshop and Illustrator for the iPad but they are pretty crippled so I am praying they can export the M1 version of photoshop and other apps to the iPad and we can start to get full featured desktop software apps on the iPad.
 

kc9hzn

macrumors 68000
Jun 18, 2020
1,824
2,193
Honestly, iPadOS is more hampered by software than the OS itself. The hardware clearly isn’t holding it back (except maybe on the low end), and the OS, in my experience, is sufficient for most workflows, the workflows just need to be somewhat re-engineered to use iPadOS technologies and approaches instead of macOS ones. The point of limitation is more the apps on the platform* than the OS or the hardware. A good photo editing app or pro video editing app could easily run on the new iPad Pros (and with Thunderbolt, external PCIe becomes available, so even custom hardware isn’t necessarily a limitation), though it would help for Apple to release its pro apps on iPadOS.

* The one workflow where iPadOS does have some issues is as a software development device (particularly native iPadOS software, or “legacy languages” and IDEs, think Java and Eclipse, the iPad works sufficiently well for web development [assuming you have a server to deploy your web frontend and/or backend to]). There’s nothing stopping iPadOS from doing pro level CAD (I’d expect CAD to shine on the iPadOS, assuming good CAD software exists), computer art, audio and video editing, remote desktop technologies, that sort of thing can all be done within the software constraints of iPadOS. About the only thing that can’t is non-web/non-server software development.
 

sparksd

macrumors G4
Jun 7, 2015
10,013
34,356
Seattle WA
With the M1 I am praying devs are that already been designing apps for the macs with M1 will be able to slide over apps on the iPad with ease and hopefully run close to the desktop experience. I know Adobe already has Photoshop and Illustrator for the iPad but they are pretty crippled so I am praying they can export the M1 version of photoshop and other apps to the iPad and we can start to get full featured desktop software apps on the iPad.
What's interesting is that the mobile Photoshop is built from the same code base as the desktop version - why cripple it to begin with?
 

kc9hzn

macrumors 68000
Jun 18, 2020
1,824
2,193
With the M1 I am praying devs are that already been designing apps for the macs with M1 will be able to slide over apps on the iPad with ease and hopefully run close to the desktop experience. I know Adobe already has Photoshop and Illustrator for the iPad but they are pretty crippled so I am praying they can export the M1 version of photoshop and other apps to the iPad and we can start to get full featured desktop software apps on the iPad.
That’s less an M1 vs A14 thing and more a touch vs keyboard+mouse thing. It’ll likely take Adobe some time to make Photoshop and the rest of the Creative Cloud suite touch-fluent.
 
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luxborealis

macrumors newbie
Jan 10, 2011
28
41
Canada
Why do we need a more powerful iPad Pro 2021 when the OS is just iPad OS?

Exactly - WE DON’T. C’mon Apple, stop farting around with a handcuffed OS and port the capability of macOS to iPad. We you separated out iPadOS, I honestly thought you would morph iPad into something beyond a glorified phone!
 

janicewiig

macrumors newbie
Apr 20, 2021
3
3
I'm wondering if the M1 will make it to the iPhone in future.

Or there will be a marriage of the M-series chips and the A/Bionic chips, so they run on everything: iWatch, iPhone, iPad and Mac. One chip to rule them all.
 

kc9hzn

macrumors 68000
Jun 18, 2020
1,824
2,193
I’d be tickled pink if we only got Windows 10 on iPad through Parallels or another virtualization product.
I don’t know about virtualizing Windows on an iPad. A virtualization feature would be handy for software development (think a version of node.js bundled with NPM that could be used for local development on the iPad, it can even be a fairly locked down virtualization environment for that). But I’d be more inclined to just remote into a Windows box than try to shoehorn a full Windows install (even ARM Windows) onto an iPad, seems more useful to buy a cheap Windows 10 box. Saves battery that way, too.
 
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