I was so sure that Apple was going to figure out some cool way of taking the iPad Pro with M1 in a "Microsoft Surface" direction when paired with the Apple Keyboard/Trackpad that I ordered a new iPad Pro with M1 on the first day it was available.
They didn't.
I just cancelled the order.
Should Apple reconsider, so will I.
FFS,
Apple has stated, over and over again, that it wasn't going to make a hybrid.
Furthermore, nobody cares if you canceled your order for the iPad Pro, but you sure showed Apple who's boss, somehow!
Maybe the should consider making a hybrid device, specially when you consider that the Surface has a better experience when using the keyboard + trackpad. I also find interesting how Apple was very negative about touchscreen notebooks, but a the end, is very similar to what they offer with the iPad Pro and the Magic Keyboard.
I am beginning to wonder if Apple just released the magic keyboard for those complainers who just had to have one; and then purposefully made as expensive as they determined they could just cause. I bought one, unfortunately it was attached to my iPad that was recently stolen. Now that I just received the new M1 I’m going to wait and see if I can adapt my workflow accordingly. I understand that most may not be able to adapt their workflow, and it may not work for me, but I’m going to give it a go.
So Apple releases expensive hardware with obvious capacity for future expansion of operating system capabilities, and the complaint is that the OS doesn’t max out the hardware out of the gate. Got it.
Of course, if iPadOS already took full advantage of the capabilities of the M1 model, there would be much louder complaints about how last year’s pre-M1 hardware has been rendered obsolete so quickly by OS features the pre-M1 devices can’t handle.
"Out of the gate"? iPadOS 14.5 was what was on the iPad Pro M1 out of the gate. To be honest, what I saw on WWDC should have been iPadOS 14.6. When there is a major version number change, I expect big changes. iPadOS 15 has been in the works for quite a while. Apple had plenty of time to design it to utilize the power of the M1 platform. Instead we get pretty much nothing. I think that is the point being made here.
Fortunately, Apple doesn’t build its plans around fiduciary quarters or itchy chat forum myopia. The M1 iPad hardware surely foreshadows interesting plans for coming years, despite all the kids who demand to be served cake as an appetizer.
I see what you’re saying, but I’ve been around computers long enough to be a bit gun-shy when something comes out and there are promises that “trust us it will be used/implimented in a year or so”. I have a history of computers with PDS slots, NuBuss slots, ports that “just need drivers”, and more that never actually became functional. I mean products from Apple and a lot of other manufacturers. This time we are only getting these assertions from columnists, leakers, and random people on the web, and not from Apple so it’s even sketchier. Will I get a new iPadPro? Probably, but iOS 15 did nothing to whet my appetite. Multitasking is better, but not full bore. We’ll see what the Files app does, it’s getting better, but it’s not full function. External monitor support is not improved at all. There’s a LOT of RAM in these things, but what is it for? I will be watching as iOS15 comes more clearly into focus over the next three months. That will likely define if I go for a 2021 iPP or wait to see what happens next year.
Apple doesn’t make it a habit of revealing anything up the pipeline that it isn’t necessary to reveal, for what should be obvious reasons. Because their hardware and software are planned concurrently in-house, they probably have a longer (to mix some metaphors) roadmap than most competitors. Undoubtedly there are indeed dead-ends and plans that ultimately don’t get implemented. I would argue their propensity not to try to be first to whimsically incorporate every new bell, whistle and shiny object makes those bridges to nowhere less common than with their competitors.
That said, it seems unlikely that they would roll out the current M1 iPad Pro with no plan for how they will use the headroom everybody’s all worked up about on this thread. It seems far more likely that there are plans ahead for that, and this device, being the first to use M-series guts is intentionally designed not to become obsolete too quickly.
So Apple releases expensive hardware with obvious capacity for future expansion of operating system capabilities, and the complaint is that the OS doesn’t max out the hardware out of the gate. Got it.
Of course, if iPadOS already took full advantage of the capabilities of the M1 model, there would be much louder complaints about how last year’s pre-M1 hardware has been rendered obsolete so quickly by OS features the pre-M1 devices can’t handle.
"Out of the gate"? iPadOS 14.5 was what was on the iPad Pro M1 out of the gate. To be honest, what I saw on WWDC should have been iPadOS 14.6. When there is a major version number change, I expect big changes. iPadOS 15 has been in the works for quite a while. Apple had plenty of time to design it to utilize the power of the M1 platform. Instead we get pretty much nothing. I think that is the point being made here.
Fortunately, Apple doesn’t build its plans around fiduciary quarters or itchy chat forum myopia. The M1 iPad hardware surely foreshadows interesting plans for coming years, despite all the kids who demand to be served cake as an appetizer.
I see what you’re saying, but I’ve been around computers long enough to be a bit gun-shy when something comes out and there are promises that “trust us it will be used/implimented in a year or so”. I have a history of computers with PDS slots, NuBuss slots, ports that “just need drivers”, and more that never actually became functional. I mean products from Apple and a lot of other manufacturers. This time we are only getting these assertions from columnists, leakers, and random people on the web, and not from Apple so it’s even sketchier. Will I get a new iPadPro? Probably, but iOS 15 did nothing to whet my appetite. Multitasking is better, but not full bore. We’ll see what the Files app does, it’s getting better, but it’s not full function. External monitor support is not improved at all. There’s a LOT of RAM in these things, but what is it for? I will be watching as iOS15 comes more clearly into focus over the next three months. That will likely define if I go for a 2021 iPP or wait to see what happens next year.
Apple doesn’t make it a habit of revealing anything up the pipeline that it isn’t necessary to reveal, for what should be obvious reasons. Because their hardware and software are planned concurrently in-house, they probably have a longer (to mix some metaphors) roadmap than most competitors. Undoubtedly there are indeed dead-ends and plans that ultimately don’t get implemented. I would argue their propensity not to try to be first to whimsically incorporate every new bell, whistle and shiny object makes those bridges to nowhere less common than with their competitors.
That said, it seems unlikely that they would roll out the current M1 iPad Pro with no plan for how they will use the headroom everybody’s all worked up about on this thread. It seems far more likely that there are plans ahead for that, and this device, being the first to use M-series guts is intentionally designed not to become obsolete too quickly.
That’s the reason I’m still leaning toward getting an M1 iPP. You’re right, Apple wouldn’t roll out this powerful a machine if they didn’t have plans for it. The question is how quick will they be able to do it? That said I can see some real benefits of updating my iPad now, even withiPadOS 14.x. 8GB of RAM is twice what I have now. That means more layers and larger layers in Procreate. The chip is much faster and has much better graphics. That means video editing, and games will be smoother and more capable. There are good reasons to update from my 2017 iPP.
But it’s like the first shoe has dropped and I’m waiting.
So Apple releases expensive hardware with obvious capacity for future expansion of operating system capabilities, and the complaint is that the OS doesn’t max out the hardware out of the gate. Got it.
Of course, if iPadOS already took full advantage of the capabilities of the M1 model, there would be much louder complaints about how last year’s pre-M1 hardware has been rendered obsolete so quickly by OS features the pre-M1 devices can’t handle.
"Out of the gate"? iPadOS 14.5 was what was on the iPad Pro M1 out of the gate. To be honest, what I saw on WWDC should have been iPadOS 14.6. When there is a major version number change, I expect big changes. iPadOS 15 has been in the works for quite a while. Apple had plenty of time to design it to utilize the power of the M1 platform. Instead we get pretty much nothing. I think that is the point being made here.
Fortunately, Apple doesn’t build its plans around fiduciary quarters or itchy chat forum myopia. The M1 iPad hardware surely foreshadows interesting plans for coming years, despite all the kids who demand to be served cake as an appetizer.
I see what you’re saying, but I’ve been around computers long enough to be a bit gun-shy when something comes out and there are promises that “trust us it will be used/implimented in a year or so”. I have a history of computers with PDS slots, NuBuss slots, ports that “just need drivers”, and more that never actually became functional. I mean products from Apple and a lot of other manufacturers. This time we are only getting these assertions from columnists, leakers, and random people on the web, and not from Apple so it’s even sketchier. Will I get a new iPadPro? Probably, but iOS 15 did nothing to whet my appetite. Multitasking is better, but not full bore. We’ll see what the Files app does, it’s getting better, but it’s not full function. External monitor support is not improved at all. There’s a LOT of RAM in these things, but what is it for? I will be watching as iOS15 comes more clearly into focus over the next three months. That will likely define if I go for a 2021 iPP or wait to see what happens next year.
Hello everyone, you make some very good points, technically. Financially, however, you're all ignoring the obvious. Apple remains a corporation geared towards profits, not technical perfection (what a world that would be!). i.e. while I would kill for a convertible iPadOS/MacOS iPad, the reason I would kill for it is that I could ditch my Macbook Pro or my iMac. And Apple would loose 2-3 grand by cannibalizing its own sales. Now this may not be strcitly true, as I am and always have been an Apple idiot since the Apple II+. I would probably end up spending that money on ludicrous earphones and a silly watch, but I doubt i would spend the full 2-3 grand. Maybe 1000-1200. And most others would spend less.
Apple is looking for the ideal marriage between technical excellence (innovation and progress) and financial excellence (a ginormous bottom line). I wish them luck, even though it will probably condemn me to the poor house.
What Apple has lost, and I doubt it will ever get back, is its vision (risk? not Apple). Where's the Newton? Where's the G4 Cube? Commercial failures, perhaps. But that's how you break new ground. iPod? iPhone? iPad? Small failures lead to great successes, that you can build on for decades (ages, in IT time).
We used to watch WWDC with baited breath together, gathered around a table, on edge during, elated after, and kicking ourselves for not being able to attend the sessions. Now? Well, I frankly couldn't care less about the latest Super Mario game or its 6 month exclusivity, minor interface tweaks that I can look up later (or not at all), and tweaks or feature bumps that are treated as headline news. I knew it was over for Microsoft when the only changes between versions of Word were an icon rehash and an excuse to bill you. Apple isn't there, but it's dangerously close to that path.
And one more thing....... I miss Steve. Apple's mind remains intact, but he was its heart and soul.
Exactly. Compare the iPad Pro to the Surface Pro. See what kind of jobs a professional in any field can get done on those two devices. The only thing holding the iPad back is iPad OS and Apple's extremely limited vision.
When Apple released an external keyboard and trackpad for the iPad they essentially made it a 2 in 1 from the hardware perspective -- but forgot to upgrade the software accordingly.
So, it's now a 2 in 1 running a touch based UI with an external keyboard and trackpad -- think of a MacPro running iPadOS instead of MacOS. Pitiful.
There are multiple ways to fix that. The iPad team simply has to sit down and do it.
This scene from the movie comes to mind:
Equine corpse and baton are reunited once again!
The lack of an intelligent response pretty much says it all.
Didn’t AI recently publish an article about how the iPad Pro, even with its multi-gigabytes of system RAM, was still setting a HARD LIMIT on how much RAM an application can utilize? That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about why the current XCode will not run on the iPad Pro.
iPadOS != macOS
There are more underlying architectural differences between macOS and iPadOS than you may believe, despite the fact that they are rooted in a common code base at the kernel level. As long as Apple is intent on maintaining and enhancing Mac and iPad separately there will always be a gap between these two products. The “solution” to the Blown Pinto dilemma is to put macOS on the iPad Pro, the “MS Surface Model,” but Apple has not yet demonstrated a desire to do so.
The problem with Surface Model is that it is a compromise. Another phrase for “compromise” is “both sides are losing something.” For Surface this means a shitty tablet user experience for tablet aficionados and a puny ass screen for desktop PC aficionados. With compromise everyone loses something. Apple is not yet willing to commit to pushing this sort of compromise on its customers.
The iPadOS is also compromised. iPadOS is an excellent as a tablet, but as soon as you add keyboard + trackpad it's terrible. That's the opposite from the Surface, which is not that good as a tablet (even though Apple had to copy some elements, like multitasking and side-by-side apps) but it's very good with keyboard + trackpad. At the end, every device has some compromise. Now we have to wait and see what they do with iPad. Are they going to keep the current set of compromises we are seeing today, or they will move to a "Surface (toaster / fridge)" device/? It think we'll have the answer in the next few years.
The MS Surface is a PC, not a tablet. It runs a desktop OS. Why would developers even bother redesigning any of their apps if the regular Windows 10 version works just fine? Why would users bother learning a new interface if they can always fall back to their regular keyboard/trackpad habits?
In the end MS Surface is just a very compact PC with some tablet capabilities. I call that a toaster/oven (I really do think toaster/fridge is an exaggeration). Not a great toaster (often burns it) and not a great oven, unless your diet strictly consists of Mozzarella sticks and Pizza pockets.
IMO, the Surface can be both, a tablet and a PC. For example, I see no difference between my Surface and my iPad while browsing, annotating PDF documents and watching TV / movies. And also works as a full PC, considering I connect my device to the Surface Dock, using mouse, keyboard and a 4k monitor. I think the iPad does better as a tablet. But when you attach a keyboard to the iPad, the Surface is better. At the end, Apple created a hybrid device with the iPad + Magic Keyboard, so it has limitations and compromises (toaster / oven), same as a Surface Pro device. And you can see them in the comments in this and other forums.
I own an iPad since the first model that Apple brought to market. I justified the purchasing prices for my by now three iPads (original, Air, Pro), by comparing it with the cost, weight, bulk and hassle of producing, maintaining and carrying paper photo albums vs. carrying an iPad.
Everything else, like watching Netflix in bed, jotting down a note, or quickly checking an e-mail, are fringe benefits. Despite the latest iPad of mine being a 12” A12X based iPad Pro with 1TB of storage, it NEVER was more for me than a photo album and media consumption device, and certainly NOTHING that deserved the name Pro, not even for something as trivial as e-mail does it deserve that name, for what sort of “Pro” solution is an e-mail system that doesn’t allow the user to inspect a messages RAW content to see if something is real or an elaborate phishing e-mail? At best, it might qualify as a semi-pro accessory to a Mac, if one uses it as a Wacom Tablet replacement with Sidecar or some third party software like AirDisplay.
When the MagicKeyboard hit the market, it endeavored into an expensive experiment: would a MagicKeyboard change how I worked with the iPad Pro? Would a cigarette box sized Raspberry Pi 8GB RAM Linux system attached, networked and powered over the USB-C connection and operated over RDP, make up for some of the shortcomings of iPad OS (e.g. by running a real e-mail client like Thunderbird on the Raspberry, by having Mathematica on the Raspberry, by having development and network testing tools on the linux system, etc.)?
The answer was a resounding YES in both cases, but more importantly, it showed me that the iPad Pro with MagicKeyboard was the HARDWARE I always wished a MacBook Air would be: Much better screen, touch screen, pen input, etc. At the same time, the more I worked with the MagicKeyboard, the more painful the shortcomings of iPadOS became.
Yes, I get the difference between a mouse/trackpad&keyboard driven UI and a touch UI. I get that macOS is the former and iPadOS is the latter… …BUT, branding aside, macOS and iPadOS are fundamentally the same OS (Darwin), with different UI layers. With the new iPad Pros (A12X and up with 6GB RAM or more) there is no hardware issue with running macOS. And just as macOS apps can have a windowed mode and a full screen mode, there’s nothing that stops the same app from in addition having a touch UI mode. So one could have an adaptive OS, which adjusts the UI based on whether docked with pointing device and keyboard, or used standalone in touch UI mode.
With the M1 version, and its up to 2TB of SSD and 16GB RAM, there could be even another solution: virtualization. Run macOS virtualized in an iPadOS app, and switch to it when docked, and suspend it when undocked.
Even working on a slow-poke system like a Raspberry Pi “remotely” over USB-C and RDP makes the iPad Pro feel like a seamless laptop, that lets me miss nothing (except for macOS rather than Linux), so how much better would a virtualized macOS be, that would run at nearly native speed, and would gain tablet input, and instant switching between iPadOS and macOS? How cool would it be to run Xcode on the virtualized macOS system, and then test the app directly on the iPad?
It would be awesome, beyond words. And what would Apple have to do to make this possible? Nothing. Less than nothing. All they would need to do is to stop actively sabotaging virtualization apps on iPadOS, and a third party solution would spring up in short order.
Now, why is Apple getting in its own way?
The answer is easy: they don’t have “software and hardware divisions”, which if they did, they wouldn’t care which of their operating systems you ran on which of their hardware devices, but they have “Mac, iDevice, aTV, etc. divisions”, and so the Mac division has no interest in driving iDevice sales by spending man hours making their software available on the competing division’s hardware, while digging their own hardware’s grave. The video of how the iPad division went to steal the M1 chip from the Mac division, was in a strange way revealing of why we have the problems as Pro users with the iPad Pro and its media consumption platform operating system.
The pessimist in me would offer another reason for why Apple won’t offer full MacOS capabilities on an iPad: $$. As long as they offer them as two different platforms with different capabilities they can continue to get people out there to purchase both. If they offered an iPad as a dockable system with full macOS capabilities it would cannibalise MacBook sales. Why purchase both if you can get an all-in-one experience.
Or, combining the two would create a single device that’s not as good as either machine separately.
You obviously don't have much confidence in Apple.
Microsoft did it pretty well. I think Apple can do even better.
This is a good example where the comments to an article are more insightful (and inciteful) than the original article. And after all that, I still don't know what the truth is. Maybe there's truth on both sides.
A pity that DewMe’s post isn’t getting more traction here.
I have very specific and narrow use cases for my 12.9 IPP that a MBP or some Microsoft-inspired Franken-device will absolutely not satisfy. Yes, I also own a 16” MBP too.
Complainers looking for one device for all use cases would be better served fleeing to Windows. No one wants to admit they just can’t afford to have the best in class of both form factors. That’s not Apple’s problem, it’s theirs. And they’re trying to shift the problem to someone else than themselves.
There are cases where someone cannot have two devices. And while it's true that it's not Apple problem, there are many cases where you cannot blame the customer. The pandemic have been very hard for many people, and they try to have the best device based in their budget. And maybe they decide for a hybrid device, considering they have something they can use as a notebook and as a tablet.
Also there are cases where someone prefer a hybrid device. I have a Surface Pro 4 and I have seen it's limitations, but also where it shines. I see no difference from my Surface and my iPad when browsing the internet, use social apps or watch TV / movies in Netflix or Hulu. Also works very good for annotating documents, spreadsheets and PDF files. And when I'm on the office, I connect it to the Surface Dock and my 4K monitor and it works like a full desktop device.
This doesn't means that the Surface is perfect. Like I said before, I have seen many of it's limitations. But it's clear that it has many benefits, and I can understand when someone prefers a Surface device over an IPad.
I can see that, too, which is why it’s great that the Surface exists for people who want one.
What I can’t see is why people who want a Surface feel compelled to insist that people who want an iPad and/or a MacBook should lose those choices by having iPad and MacBooks forcibly merged to become “me too” copies of the Surface.
There is simply no reason to assume that. None.
Dell, Lenovo and a host of others are already doing it and doing it well.
To my previous point: Microsoft doesn't make laptops or desktops. They have no sales to cannibalize, so they have no loss in creating a convertible device.
Interestingly, much of the angst in this thread can be filed under "Boy howdy, do people have short memories."
Prior to the introduction of iOS, there were no annual, free major updates to operating systems. Whether you bought a Mac or PC, you were buying a thing in its current state with the expectation that you would probably use it in that current state with that current operating system until it ran out of disk space and slowed to a crawl or just irreparably crashed and then you would get another computer with whatever the current OS was then. Yes, some people would upgrade memory or other hardware and buy OS updates to extend the life of the device, but not everyone by any means. The idea of a high adoption rate of the current-release OS on all active devices was not a thing. It's less than eight years ago that Apple announced that OS X upgrades would be free. So the concept that a device like an iPad would be released with hardware headroom for planned future OS updates must just not compute for some people.
The truth is that this is simply the manifestation of a new paradigm that came in with iOS devices. Apple has clearly been building hardware headroom into the device/OS roadmap for some time now, just as they've made internal hardware upgrades not a thing. Prior iPads were built with processor (and other hardware) headroom that anticipated several upcoming years' worth of new operating systems. It's the same thing now, but because they announced they're using an M1 processor like the new Macs, people are falling over themselves to complain that the current OS doesn't take full advantage of the hardware. Had they relabeled it as an A13X processor, this article and thread wouldn't even exist.
To my previous point: Microsoft doesn't make laptops or desktops. They have no sales to cannibalize, so they have no loss in creating a convertible device.
Apple does.
If Apple is afraid to cannibalize their own products, somebody else will. This was one of Steve Job's core philosophies when he returned to Apple.
Exactly. Compare the iPad Pro to the Surface Pro. See what kind of jobs a professional in any field can get done on those two devices. The only thing holding the iPad back is iPad OS and Apple's extremely limited vision.
Fucking yawn, and what a ridiculous strategy to compare ANYTHING to Micro$haft who never innovated anything but only stole and copied its way into a quasi-monopoly position. If you think the Surface is such a great device, get one and stop your fucking whining about Apple not copying that “hugely successful product.” [rolls eyes]
In the meantime adults understand iPadOS is being upgraded every year, and with each upgrade it brings with it millions upon millions of users with varying use cases of the machine, and the new M1 in the iPP portends even more expansion of this OS in the future which is very exciting.
This site, its articles and forum discussions turn more into yet another MacRumors wannabe every fucking day, how very Microsoft, nothing original whatsoever, just chasing the latest whatever fad for continued relevance.
To my previous point: Microsoft doesn't make laptops or desktops. They have no sales to cannibalize, so they have no loss in creating a convertible device.
Apple does.
If Apple is afraid to cannibalize their own products, somebody else will. This was one of Steve Job's core philosophies when he returned to Apple.
Apple isn't afraid to cannibalize their own products. When's the last time you bought an iPod? When's the last time you purchased music on iTunes? They're just not stupid enough to look at the MS Surface and think they need to scrap two vastly more successful products and sell a copy of that instead.
I don't quite like how iOS and its concepts are being forced upon staunch Mac users such as yours truly. I don't own an iPad, nor am I planning to purchase one in the foreseeable future, and I'm a very casual user of the iPhone. I just don't fancy all this scrolling-oriented, Tik-Tok-inspired, super-bright without and toned-down within stuff. Yet Apple seem most intent on turning my Mac into a big iPad, and ditching handy features and prosumer software in favour of less precise, quick-dopamine-hit insta-fun tools. What if I'm not into all that insta-life?
Didn’t AI recently publish an article about how the iPad Pro, even with its multi-gigabytes of system RAM, was still setting a HARD LIMIT on how much RAM an application can utilize? That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about why the current XCode will not run on the iPad Pro.
iPadOS != macOS
There are more underlying architectural differences between macOS and iPadOS than you may believe, despite the fact that they are rooted in a common code base at the kernel level. As long as Apple is intent on maintaining and enhancing Mac and iPad separately there will always be a gap between these two products. The “solution” to the Blown Pinto dilemma is to put macOS on the iPad Pro, the “MS Surface Model,” but Apple has not yet demonstrated a desire to do so.
The problem with Surface Model is that it is a compromise. Another phrase for “compromise” is “both sides are losing something.” For Surface this means a shitty tablet user experience for tablet aficionados and a puny ass screen for desktop PC aficionados. With compromise everyone loses something. Apple is not yet willing to commit to pushing this sort of compromise on its customers.
As far as XCode is concerned, in a two OS model, Apple would either have to dumb down XCode or smarten up Swift Playgrounds. As a developer I always prefer to start with a clean slate and would go for the latter approach of incrementally adding more capability to the newer and less complex implementation. This approach does not have to deal with legacy cruft. Dumbing down XCode from the top is bound to cause a lot more problems because you have to constantly ask the question “Who am I screwing out of a feature that they’ve counted on being there for years?” Building from the bottom has no such concern because they can’t miss what they never had.
If you’ve ever worked a real software product you would know that adding features is easy. Removing features is terribly difficult.
Microsoft dealt with this by having two separate products, Visual Studio (in many versions) on top and Visual Studio Code building from the bottom and gradually adding more features and capabilities over time. Will these two products ever converge? I doubt it because the “top end” product continues to grow and add features for ever larger and more expansive requirements, like integrated DevOps support and cloud (Azure). I think Apple will encounter many of the same concerns and doesn’t want to hold back the top end product by chaining it to what they still see as a less capable platform. We may all be enamored with the M1 today, but in a few years the M1 will be the 8088 of Apple’s SoC lineup with far more capable chips overshadowing the M1.
Finally, building in overcapacity is a way of life for many new products. Over time the workload thrown at the product may consume some of the capacity, but this is not always the case. I live in a household with two people and four bathrooms. Is this a Blown Pinto problem? Maybe we should “go pro” and start visiting Chipotle far more often to justify the excess bathroom capacity?
Actually, that is not the solution. The solution is to bring features of macOS to iPadOS but reimagined for a touch first environment. My wish for iPadOS is to become a modern desktop class touch first / touch optimized OS.
That’s not a contentious ask. In fact, current apps like Affinity Designer truly raise the bar in terms of what can be done on an iPad. Of course this means that Affinity Designer is only supported on a subset of iPad Pro and newer iPad NonPro devices. If third parties can up their game, so could Apple. But I’d bet that Apple would be far more hesitant to leave behind older devices or to fragment their first party apps even further, although they are going to be heading down this path on Mac as Intel fades in the review mirror.
I think some of the folks who are pissed off about their M1 iPad Pros spending most of their time in a near quiescent state really want big desktop type apps that need lots of horsepower running on their iPads because there is an M1 under the hood, just like whoever who owns a Ferrari or Hellcat Challenger wishes every road was the autobahn, when the autobahn is not congested with traffic or undergoing repairs, like Sunday mornings from 3-6 AM. Apple can do a lot more to improve some features like file management on the iPad, but the M1 isn’t changing that game at all. They should have addressed those kinds of changes several iPad generations ago.
I haven’t really thought about Apple’s “pro” apps other than Xcode. I’m hoping that Apple is going to build up coding support on iPad from the bottom. I’ve actually found Swift Playgrounds to be useful for some things, like prototyping algorithms and exercising code snippets. I think the “Playgrounds” name and its roots as an elementary level code learning tool may do it a disservice and make it seem like a toy that developers should avoid. But I think it is useful and not a toy. It is not remotely close to being even a lightweight replacement for Xcode. It could grow to be a really useful tool for a narrower development stack, like Swift UI, and it looks like Apple is driving it in that direction. Slowly.
I also don’t know what the Xcode source code base looks like. It’s not unusual for older products that have been around for a long time to have extremely fragile code bases. Apple may not want to get in there and poke around too much for fear of breaking something. I hope that Apple has refactored along the way and is an exception to what I’ve experienced. One would imagine that other Apple pro apps may be in fragile states as well and it’s just a matter of time before they get the attention they need. Unlike the M1 in the new iPad Pro, Apple’s engineers probably have very little slack in their schedules to refactor old code versus cranking out new features for new products.
Comments
But it’s like the first shoe has dropped and I’m waiting.
Prior to the introduction of iOS, there were no annual, free major updates to operating systems. Whether you bought a Mac or PC, you were buying a thing in its current state with the expectation that you would probably use it in that current state with that current operating system until it ran out of disk space and slowed to a crawl or just irreparably crashed and then you would get another computer with whatever the current OS was then. Yes, some people would upgrade memory or other hardware and buy OS updates to extend the life of the device, but not everyone by any means. The idea of a high adoption rate of the current-release OS on all active devices was not a thing. It's less than eight years ago that Apple announced that OS X upgrades would be free. So the concept that a device like an iPad would be released with hardware headroom for planned future OS updates must just not compute for some people.
The truth is that this is simply the manifestation of a new paradigm that came in with iOS devices. Apple has clearly been building hardware headroom into the device/OS roadmap for some time now, just as they've made internal hardware upgrades not a thing. Prior iPads were built with processor (and other hardware) headroom that anticipated several upcoming years' worth of new operating systems. It's the same thing now, but because they announced they're using an M1 processor like the new Macs, people are falling over themselves to complain that the current OS doesn't take full advantage of the hardware. Had they relabeled it as an A13X processor, this article and thread wouldn't even exist.
In the meantime adults understand iPadOS is being upgraded every year, and with each upgrade it brings with it millions upon millions of users with varying use cases of the machine, and the new M1 in the iPP portends even more expansion of this OS in the future which is very exciting.
This site, its articles and forum discussions turn more into yet another MacRumors wannabe every fucking day, how very Microsoft, nothing original whatsoever, just chasing the latest whatever fad for continued relevance.
I think some of the folks who are pissed off about their M1 iPad Pros spending most of their time in a near quiescent state really want big desktop type apps that need lots of horsepower running on their iPads because there is an M1 under the hood, just like whoever who owns a Ferrari or Hellcat Challenger wishes every road was the autobahn, when the autobahn is not congested with traffic or undergoing repairs, like Sunday mornings from 3-6 AM. Apple can do a lot more to improve some features like file management on the iPad, but the M1 isn’t changing that game at all. They should have addressed those kinds of changes several iPad generations ago.
I haven’t really thought about Apple’s “pro” apps other than Xcode. I’m hoping that Apple is going to build up coding support on iPad from the bottom. I’ve actually found Swift Playgrounds to be useful for some things, like prototyping algorithms and exercising code snippets. I think the “Playgrounds” name and its roots as an elementary level code learning tool may do it a disservice and make it seem like a toy that developers should avoid. But I think it is useful and not a toy. It is not remotely close to being even a lightweight replacement for Xcode. It could grow to be a really useful tool for a narrower development stack, like Swift UI, and it looks like Apple is driving it in that direction. Slowly.
I also don’t know what the Xcode source code base looks like. It’s not unusual for older products that have been around for a long time to have extremely fragile code bases. Apple may not want to get in there and poke around too much for fear of breaking something. I hope that Apple has refactored along the way and is an exception to what I’ve experienced. One would imagine that other Apple pro apps may be in fragile states as well and it’s just a matter of time before they get the attention they need. Unlike the M1 in the new iPad Pro, Apple’s engineers probably have very little slack in their schedules to refactor old code versus cranking out new features for new products.