Why isn't Apple thinking bigger?

[adamjackson]

For years, we've seen MacOS and iOS become closer linked and now the system architecture powering both platforms are nearly identical. The technologists of the past looking at 2020 were envisioning a world where our computers would go everywhere with us and now they do.

So why can't Apple just sell me a $499, 5K tablet on a stand (a'la 2021 iMac redesign rumors) and my iPhone docks into it and alive comes my MacOS system powered by the phone but maybe a co-processor in the display that has more power?

I know docks have been a thing for a while. MS Surface devices have/had a mode for docking the tablet and it would open up IO, storage, etc. Apple can easily pull this off. An A14 on my iPhone Pro w/ a proprietary connector that sits on an iMac like stand. Use hand off to make calls / send texts on the iMac when docked, it uses zero power as soon as my phone comes off and charges the phone.

The iMac could have Mac mini like internals at the low end and pro internals up to a certain price point. I'd pay $2000 for the 'pro' version of this.

Today I have an iMac at home, MacBook Pro at work, iPad Pro for short trips, airline seats and cafes and iPhone for everything in between. getting rid of the 2 computers would be great it'd save me time I spend maintaining them.

This is the radical thing I want Apple to do in 2021, not put out a redesigned iMac.

 

[ArPe]

You’re talking about Samsung Dex but that has been a flop.

Maybe in 10 years something like a phone that becomes a desktop when it is docked could be practical. If you did it today, or maybe even in the future, you’d still see mad comments like ‘How come my phone burns up so much when I’m running Cinebench? Shall I open it and install thermal pads?’ ?

Business-wise it makes more sense for each product line to perform its own ideal use cases rather than becoming a Swiss Army knife. I’m more comfortable having a sub notebook for bed/couch use. Full notebook for work on the go. Desktop tower for power usage. Tablet for tableting. Smartphone for sending memes to shut my mother up.

 

[Dovahkiing]

So why can't Apple just sell me a $499, 5K tablet on a stand (a'la 2021 iMac redesign rumors) and my iPhone docks into it and alive comes my MacOS system powered by the phone but maybe a co-processor in the display that has more power?

Because they are still making a lot of money by selling people full desktop/laptop computers? I'm not trying to be facetious here; I think the answer to your question is that most people don't want what you're asking for. Apple is just responding to the market.

Putting that aside, the M1 mac is substantially more powerful than the iPhone 12 that shares the same system architecture. So, at the moment, the phone side of that equation would need to get more powerful (likely larger and more expensive than M1 too because you need cell modems and everything is smooshed into a smaller package). M1 and Apple Silicon are definitely really promising, but my point is that the feasibility of what you're asking has only even been in the realm of possible for light compute needs for like 2 months now. Give it some time...

 

[Apple_Robert]

For years, we've seen MacOS and iOS become closer linked and now the system architecture powering both platforms are nearly identical. The technologists of the past looking at 2020 were envisioning a world where our computers would go everywhere with us and now they do.

So why can't Apple just sell me a $499, 5K tablet on a stand (a'la 2021 iMac redesign rumors) and my iPhone docks into it and alive comes my MacOS system powered by the phone but maybe a co-processor in the display that has more power?

I know docks have been a thing for a while. MS Surface devices have/had a mode for docking the tablet and it would open up IO, storage, etc. Apple can easily pull this off. An A14 on my iPhone Pro w/ a proprietary connector that sits on an iMac like stand. Use hand off to make calls / send texts on the iMac when docked, it uses zero power as soon as my phone comes off and charges the phone.

The iMac could have Mac mini like internals at the low end and pro internals up to a certain price point. I'd pay $2000 for the 'pro' version of this.

Today I have an iMac at home, MacBook Pro at work, iPad Pro for short trips, airline seats and cafes and iPhone for everything in between. getting rid of the 2 computers would be great it'd save me time I spend maintaining them.

This is the radical thing I want Apple to do in 2021, not put out a redesigned iMac.

Your radical thing is extreme in my opinion, and not currently representative of where Apple tech currently is. I also don't think there is a large contingent of Apple users opining over a device like this at the moment.

 

[rui no onna]

I'd settle for them tackling that on the iPad Pro first.

The hardware is already there. Apple even used the A12Z from the 2020 iPad Pros in the Mac Mini Developer Transition Kit. If the A12Z is considered too slow and 6GB RAM too small, then the next model should have sufficient hardware. I expect the A14X/Z chipset on the upcoming iPad Pro to have very similar performance to the M1 chip on the new Macs.

Keyboard+mouse/trackpad would likely be necessary but we already have the Magic Keyboard for that.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Because the Bean Counter enjoys collecting as many beans (and counting them) as possible.

Doing what would be forward looking or best for the consumer is pretty far removed from Apple's goals at this point, regardless of their rhetoric or that of those who endlessly defend and support their every move.

 

[Jorbanead]

This would all have to be done via a singular cable. I don’t know the USB4 capabilities, but im not entirely sure if it would be able to handle 5K ontop of connecting processors and co-processors, memory bandwidth between the two, and other externals all via one cable. You’d also be limited on peripherals too. I don’t know how processing would work in that way (how a co-processor would handle things being strained by a USB bus and on a separate device etc. and the amount of work that goes into putting a co-processor on the display. At some point why not add more memory in there too for when you need it? Maybe some more ports. At some point it literally just becomes an iMac and defeats the whole purpose). Plus, it’s looking like Apple is trying to remove the port which would make this nearly impossible without some sort of wired solution.

Also, while iPhones are crazy powerful right now when it comes to processors, iPhones are lacking in memory and GPU power needed to drive a 5K display while still giving people the ability to do what they want (like edit video or photos on their phone, and by extension on their 5K display which would have much worse performance). You’d also have to compromise on OS. Either your phone has a heavily bloated OS to facilitate 5K screens and UX, or your desktop experience is going to be limited to mobile UI and a stripped down UX. They also can’t handle sustained workloads for very long, and typically people who sit at a desktop do so for hours and hours.

For now at least, I don’t feel the user experience and the technology are quite at the level they need to be to offer this type of product. Apple would rather just make a phone a really good phone, and a desktop a really good desktop than try and compromise one of the experiences to satisfy a niche group of people who want their phone to also be a desktop.

Someday maybe, but for now I’d just prefer to keep them separate.

 

[adamjackson]

Good feedback so far. It seems the reasons not to do this is

1. Profit
2. no one would buy it
3. Not technically possible (I/O isn't up to the task)
4. Samsung failed at it so Apple will fail
5. iPhone would overheat

I believe there is profit in converting an iOS user to a MacOS user with an 'accessory'

I think in time, this will become an option and has been prototyped already. Phones are getting faster, computers will continue to slow in sales and this will become very possible with a future connection port. I think it will happen eventually.

I'm about to buy an M1 iMac for $2500 and an M1 MacBook Pro for $2000 and I'd much prefer to buy iOS extension devices that I plug into for half that.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Hard to argue they'd profit more from anything that involves users buying a smaller number of discrete hardware units.

 

[adamjackson]

Hard to argue they'd profit more from anything that involves users buying a smaller number of discrete hardware units.

If you flip the coin, they'd be profiting from users who were only using iPhones. I live in rural New Hampshire where everyone I know does all of their computing on iPhones. They can't afford a $1200 Mac so they have an iPhone along with a $300 laptop they've had for 10 years for everything else like during Christmas shopping where they want to have a lot of windows going. They'd be prime candidates to work on a tablet that is an extension of their iPhone. the pros would still work on their full size iMacs or MacBook Pros seeing these 'iPhone screen tablet things" as a downgrade.

We have $799 iPhone customers already spending $169 for AirPods and other accessories.

 

[turbineseaplane]

If you flip the coin, they'd be profiting from users who were only using iPhones. I live in rural New Hampshire where everyone I know does all of their computing on iPhones. They can't afford a $1200 Mac so they have an iPhone along with a $300 laptop they've had for 10 years for everything else like during Christmas shopping where they want to have a lot of windows going. They'd be prime candidates to work on a tablet that is an extension of their iPhone. the pros would still work on their full size iMacs or MacBook Pros seeing these 'iPhone screen tablet things" as a downgrade.

We have $799 iPhone customers already spending $169 for AirPods and other accessories.

Plausible - but I'd argue those users aren't going to be able to (or want to) afford the offerings Apple would end up having.

They simply don't care about low price/value conscious users (underneath a certain threshold)

The entire premise of your post is just nuked, right away, in my view by the fact that Apple is a fairly premium offering provider. The thought of them offering a full featured, do everything, amaze-balls $500 tablet is just completely counter to their ethos and financial direction these days.

I'd love to be wrong - love your idea here

 

[jz0309]

I'm in agreement with you in that Apple should lead us to the future of computing, and what you're describing could be just that. And, I'm rather confident that they might have some of those devices already in a lab, or something to that nature. I don't know to which extent the world is ready for this, but I still love how the Star Trek world interacts with a computer, and I don't mean that as a joke and hope that we'll get there before the 23rd century ...

 

[turbineseaplane]

Apple will shows us some of this stuff - I'm convinced.

But I'm also convinced that it will not be even remotely inexpensive for a long time -- and when it is, it might not be Apple offering the very affordable, mainstream, solutions.

i.e. I think they will lead on a lot of this, but continue to maintain their place at the upper end of the price spectrum.

 

[djlythium]

'OMGosh, what a day! I'm really glad Apple finally developed the uniOS because I got a *lot* of extra work done on my Pad Mini on the way home from my office. Simply grabbed the Pad off my dock at work, and continued on the Rail. I was super hungry and ready for dinner when I got home, BUT I had a few small 'fires' to put out, so, slid the Pad Mini onto my monitor's dock at home, and BAM!, full OS to use! Love it! AND, I started some export processing at work, and it was finished by the time I got home, which means the uniOS was working on it in the background! ?'

☝?Somewhat inline with your thoughts above, OP, this is the near-future I envision. My ideal scenario would be a 9" iPad Pro Mini w/ full cell capabilities that I could simply set on top of a dock, and have it wirelessly link straight to an external monitor to run full macOS WHILE charging. ? Now, that type of multi-os & wireless throughput is not yet developed, so, in the interim, I'll accept a single connector. ?

I'll think we'll see this in the next 10 years.

 

[thisismyusername]

I don't think this is radical thinking at all. Lots of people have suggested this kind of product over the years. It's only a matter of time.

You’re talking about Samsung Dex but that has been a flop.

Tablets were also flops until Apple came along and showed the world how to do it right.

 

[Zazoh]

Infrastructure is there. Apple needs to be 'courageous' enough to stop enabling legacy technology.

I get blasted for having a 256GB HD, even though I have 207 GB free. Folks claim they need 2TB on device. This breaks your paradigm. I'm doing what you propose. I have an iPhone, iPad, and laptop that connects and shares the data in the cloud. So I can start a document on my iPhone and finish on my laptop then send from my iPad.

What I need to finish this out, is the iPhone becomes the authenticator and processor and the other two are dumb terminals, throw in the car, and other things IoT. (Internet of Things)

 

[adamjackson]

Infrastructure is there. Apple needs to be 'courageous' enough to stop enabling legacy technology.

I get blasted for having a 256GB HD, even though I have 207 GB free. Folks claim they need 2TB on device. This breaks your paradigm. I'm doing what you propose. I have an iPhone, iPad, and laptop that connects and shares the data in the cloud. So I can start a document on my iPhone and finish on my laptop then send from my iPad.

What I need to finish this out, is the iPhone becomes the authenticator and processor and the other two are dumb terminals, throw in the car, and other things IoT. (Internet of Things)

Great point in your last sentence There's been the ongoing joke for half a decade now of people spending $2-3K on MacBook Pros and then living in their web browser. Yes, Javascript can be taxing but do we really need 8 cores for Facebook?

But what users do need sometimes like once a month is to have true multi-tasking. Earlier I used the Christmas shopping bit. My GF who only uses her iPhone when not working, will break out her 2014 MacBook Pro during Christmas time because she'll have a spreadsheet going, buying from multiple retailers, tracking deliveries in Deliveries.app and then using UPS.com to setup shipping labels and such. There's a use case for that weekly or monthly "work mode" that iOS people likely struggle through on their phones.

Offering my grandmother who loves her iPhone a 'terminal' that leverages IOT and the power of Apple's M1 would open up her world for her..she was never going to buy a MacBook Air but she'd love an Apple Glass that didn't require passwords or other nonsense since her iPhone is authenticating the experience. Apps just carry over and she can run Mac apps as well.

We already work a lot of the time with the cloud doing all of the processing. as usual, trucks will still exist but I'm thinking of a product that allows the sports car hot-hatch owner to throw on a topper or add a small tow hitch for their mountain bike. It's still a hot hatch...but it's making the hot hatch a little more functional without the user buying a truck.

 

[blackNBUK]

I'm in agreement with you in that Apple should lead us to the future of computing, and what you're describing could be just that. And, I'm rather confident that they might have some of those devices already in a lab, or something to that nature. I don't know to which extent the world is ready for this, but I still love how the Star Trek world interacts with a computer, and I don't mean that as a joke and hope that we'll get there before the 23rd century ...

To me Star Trek's approach to computers fits much better with a cloud-centric view than with a device/dock-centric view. Much of the time the computer is just a disembodied voice that answers questions and obeys commands. In other situations characters end up using several different PADDs at the same time, which are presumably all communicating with the ship's computer.

Storing everything on a single physical object would seem peculiarly old-fashioned when so much of the other technology is so advanced.

 

[BootLoxes]

Where can I buy a 5k screen for $499?

 

[senttoschool]

Maybe when phone SoCs are using TSMC's 0.1nm node and the speed is more than enough for most professionals, you might see something like a screen + phone dock combo.

But I don't see it until then. The most obvious reason is that when you have more physical space, you can make things faster or cheaper or both.

 

[Toutou]

powered by the phone but maybe a co-processor in the display that has more power

It's this part that's problematic. The thermal envelopes of mobile and desktop devices are very different, so using the same hardware to drive both the phone and the combo you either have an underperforming combo (Samsung DeX) or a massively overkill phone.
The co-processor thing is something that was doable forty or thirty years ago, but nowadays the clock frequencies of both CPUs and RAMs are so high that even the distance between the different parts on the motherboard counts. Splitting a CPU in two halves and coordinating tasks and memory access between them across nothing than a single proprietary connector of some kind and doing all that seamlessly (imagine that disconnecting the phone could literally bring the system down. Not an error popup, not a kernel panic, literally a hard reset with total data loss)... Well, maybe that's why we're not doing it.

 

[MBAir2010]

Apple should make better thumbprint readers/sensors first
then develop the next innovative product.

 

[senttoschool]

It's this part that's problematic. The thermal envelopes of mobile and desktop devices are very different, so using the same hardware to drive both the phone and the combo you either have an underperforming combo (Samsung DeX) or a massively overkill phone.
The co-processor thing is something that was doable forty or thirty years ago, but nowadays the clock frequencies of both CPUs and RAMs are so high that even the distance between the different parts on the motherboard counts. Splitting a CPU in two halves and coordinating tasks and memory access between them across nothing than a single proprietary connector of some kind and doing all that seamlessly (imagine that disconnecting the phone could literally bring the system down. Not an error popup, not a kernel panic, literally a hard reset with total data loss)... Well, maybe that's why we're not doing it.

Not to mention that co-processor means it needs to share memory, share resources, etc. This is very inefficient and complicates software.

What's more efficient is if the display is its own computer and the phone is its own computer, aka, you have a laptop/desktop and a phone. This is what we have today.

I don't think the OP really understands how computers work.

The only way this works is if processing power outpaces software requirements. Then a phone docked into a display might be all the power that a professional needs.

 

[Toutou]

I don't think the OP really understands how computers work.

Keep in mind that most people don't and it's nothing wrong. Somethimes a little bit of that is what drives progress. Visionaries refusing to believe that something can't be done, throwing a lot of money and engineering on the problem anyway.

 

[Jorbanead]

What's more efficient is if the display is its own computer and the phone is its own computer, aka, you have a laptop/desktop and a phone. This is what we have today.

Right. I think what provides a better solution is to just be able to open up applications that you started on your phone, on your Mac. They already do this with most apps - say Garageband/Logic. I can create a basic demo on my phone from a recording I did, and then when I want to get serious, I can just airdrop the file to my computer and continue working on it in Logic. Same with iMovie and Final Cut.

I could see iPhones supporting external displays at some point, and maybe Bluetooth mouse/keyboard. So you could somewhat use your iPhone as a desktop, but it would be running iOS not MacOS.