iPad Pro & MacBook Air get mashed up into the MacBook Apple won't make
The iPad is pretty great, and so is the MacBook Air. This creator thought they'd be even better if they were combined to make the ultimate convertible Apple computer.
Why settle for an iPad or a MacBook when you can have both?
People love the M4 iPad Pro because it's super portable and incredibly performant. But there are still times when a Mac makes the most sense for a ton of people.
That's why it's great that Apple offers iPads and laptops that do different things for different people. But YouTuber ShuCanTech wanted to see what would happen if the two devices were merged, mixing the best of both worlds.
The result is similar to the Tablet PCs of the turn of the century -- a touchscreen display that can be removed, turning into a tablet as it goes.
In this case, the display is actually an iPad Pro running iPadOS.
Attaching an iPad to a MacBook's keyboard is one thing, but this video goes a step further. While iPadOS is fine, it isn't macOS. So what if you could run both?
That's where the magic happens.
"Is it a tablet, is it laptop? No, it's super-Mac!"
You can watch the full video to get the lowdown on exactly what happened, but you'll need to speak Chinese to get the best from it. It's fairly easy to follow along regardless, and it's still a great watch.
From what we can see, the creator took the display off a M1 MacBook Air and 3D printed a mechanism that would allow an iPad Pro to replace it. So far, so good.
But things get really interesting when they dock the iPad Pro and hit a shortcut to enable "MacBook mode."
It isn't clear exactly what that mode does, other than invoke SideCar or similar, but the result is a fully functional macOS experience on the iPad Pro display. The result is impressive -- including passthrough Apple Pencil support.
The result is a hybrid machine that runs macOS when it's a laptop and switches to iPadOS when its display is removed.
The best of both worlds? You bet, and now we've seen it, we really need Apple to make it.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
The trick is to jailbreak the iPad, or to get Apple to allow us to run Mac OSX on it. OS-X already supports running iPad apps. A lot of people would really love the option of running OS-X on a suitably configured iPad.
I also don't think it's ever going to happen.
However, I have no problems with Apple allowing macOS to run on iPad, but only as long as I'm not paying more for or losing any iPad functionality in the process. I'm sure there are a some folks who would like it. Good for them.
I think Apple would get more bang for their buck by developing a device-focused Family Sharing feature for the iPad devices. This would allow multiple family members to share a single iPad without exposing the iPad owner to the risks associated with sharing Apple Account and iCloud credentials with other users. Of course there would be storage allocation limits, differentiation of use account types, and other technicalities to be overcome. But many of these issues have already been addressed in the educational use of iPads. The software-focused and cloud storage features provided by the existing Family Sharing features would play very nicely with a device-focused Family Sharing plan.
It would be a case of downloading the Mac VM app (they can partner with Parallels to use it as the official app) and installing the OS, then boot into the Mac. Its filesystem can either be installed in a folder or a disk image. A folder allows better space management.
GPU rendering would be native and the CPU calls are virtualized.
This would be best done on an iPad with 16GB RAM and could have this as a minimum requirement so the VM gets at least 8GB RAM.
End user gets the full functionality of the Mac, Apple compromises nothing about the iPad and doesn't have to officially support it.
This use case would be for someone who uses the product as an iPad most of the time and needs a Mac for some very specific things like running After Effects, Blender, VS Code etc. Someone who uses a Mac most of the time would be better with a Mac plus an iPad.
This would encourage more people to buy iPad Pros with 16GB RAM, $1599+ and offer more value to people who bought them already.
When I saw Steve Jobs announce the iPad in 2010 I immediately "got it" in terms of why the iPad exists. I used to have piles of printed magazines, a bookcase filled with technical journals and references, a bookcase filled with fiction and non fiction books, a couple of floor standing CD stands filled with music, movies and music videos on DVDs, movies and music videos on VCR tapes, a dedicated music player, photo albums, etc. With the iPad, all of these things and much more were consolidated and available on a device that I could carry anywhere, relax with on the sofa, or prop up on my desk. Add in web browsing, email, Facetime, social media, text editing, photo editing, calendar, etc., and it became indispensable if only as a way to simplify and declutter my content.
When I traveled a lot I always had a work computer and never conducted any personal business on it. None. The company computer did all of the heavy lifting for everything job related within a highly managed multinational corporate computing environment for new product development. My iPad was mine and only mine, which was vital when on the road for weeks at a time. When traveling to most countries I could obtain a country specific SIM card and have constant connectivity when WiFi was not available, Some countries like Singapore had excellent unlimited cellular access for very low prices. Totally worked for me.
My personal experience has obviously shaped how I feel about the iPad as a product and how it fits in my life alongside a MacBook Pro/Air or PC. I can understand that other Apple users don't see things the same way that I do. If I could only have a single device and had heavy productivity, creation, design, programming, modeling, etc., needs that needed to be available to me in similar scenarios I would probably opt for the MacBook Air exclusively. It's obviously not as comfortable to use as the iPad when it comes to content consumption and personal productivity needs, but if you need to run something like XCode it may be the only option. Truth be told, the combined weight and thickness of my iPad Pro and MacBook Air is less than that of my company Windows laptop and its giant power brick.
The real question is whether you want to carry two devices or pay for two devices. As I mentioned in an earlier post, if Apple allowed multiple users on the same "family" iPad the cost savings of that feature alone would be considerable. The whole notion of sharing a single "family" account on a single-user personal device makes me want to run for the hills. It's like playing Russian Roulette with no empty chambers.
The virtual machine option may be a viable option. I can already do a remote connection to my Mac (or PC) from my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard. This is in a lot of ways mimicking the experience you would get if you were running macOS on the iPad. I've never found it to be a particularly pleasant experience for me but probably because my smallest Mac has a 15" screen and the largest iPad screen I've owned is 13". Give it a try if you are curious, both with the on-screen keyboard and with a physical keyboard and mouse/trackball.