Apple rumored to be testing macOS for M2 iPad Pro
A leaker has claimed that Apple is working on a version of macOS exclusive for the M2 iPad Pro, with it expected at some point in 2023.

The M2 iPad Pro could get macOS in a future update
One of the leading complaints surrounding the iPad is its lack of desktop-class software support. There have been constant calls for Apple to port not just Final Cut Pro, but also a full version of macOS to the iPad.
Leaker Majin Bu's sources have shared that Apple is working on a "smaller" version of macOS exclusively for the M2 iPad Pro. It is said to be codenamed Mendocino and will be released as macOS 14 in 2023.
Testing is being done with a 25% larger macOS UI so it is suitable for touch. However, apps run on the product would still be iPad-optimized versions, not macOS ones.
It isn't clear why Apple would move the iPad to a macOS interface in a half-step like this. Those clamoring for macOS on iPad do so for the software more than the interface.
Rumors about software testing should always be taken with a grain of salt. Very little, if any, detail ever leaks out about Apple's software plans.
Rumors have been floating around about macOS on iPad for more than a decade, and rumors about the original iPad said that macOS was a possibility before that device's release. Also, Apple likely has versions of macOS running on iPads for internal testing and configuration. This leaker could have seen an iPad in a debug state rather than an actual operating system.
The other possible explanation is this wasn't macOS at all. Apple could be working to bring iPadOS even closer to macOS by adding a Menu Bar and other Mac-like interactions. It already introduced a Mac windowing feature in iPadOS 16 called Stage Manager, this could be the next iteration.
Majin Bu also suggests that the exclusivity to M2 iPad Pro could be a marketing push. If the feature is only available on that iPad, more people would buy it.
Read on AppleInsider

The M2 iPad Pro could get macOS in a future update
One of the leading complaints surrounding the iPad is its lack of desktop-class software support. There have been constant calls for Apple to port not just Final Cut Pro, but also a full version of macOS to the iPad.
Leaker Majin Bu's sources have shared that Apple is working on a "smaller" version of macOS exclusively for the M2 iPad Pro. It is said to be codenamed Mendocino and will be released as macOS 14 in 2023.
Testing is being done with a 25% larger macOS UI so it is suitable for touch. However, apps run on the product would still be iPad-optimized versions, not macOS ones.
It isn't clear why Apple would move the iPad to a macOS interface in a half-step like this. Those clamoring for macOS on iPad do so for the software more than the interface.
Rumors about software testing should always be taken with a grain of salt. Very little, if any, detail ever leaks out about Apple's software plans.
Rumors have been floating around about macOS on iPad for more than a decade, and rumors about the original iPad said that macOS was a possibility before that device's release. Also, Apple likely has versions of macOS running on iPads for internal testing and configuration. This leaker could have seen an iPad in a debug state rather than an actual operating system.
According with my source Apple would be testing a smaller version of macOS exclusively for the new iPad Pro M2!
"Mendocino" should be the codename for macOS 14. A simplified version should be planned for the M2. pic.twitter.com/f4RrainlZ1— Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial)
The other possible explanation is this wasn't macOS at all. Apple could be working to bring iPadOS even closer to macOS by adding a Menu Bar and other Mac-like interactions. It already introduced a Mac windowing feature in iPadOS 16 called Stage Manager, this could be the next iteration.
Majin Bu also suggests that the exclusivity to M2 iPad Pro could be a marketing push. If the feature is only available on that iPad, more people would buy it.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
As long as 'regular' macOS for Mac machines continued (and there's no reason why not), Apple could offer App Store-only A-series dual-OS iPads as a more easily-managed, updated, and security/privacy-oriented alternative in the vein of iOS. You wouldn't have to buy it if you didn't want it, but maybe a lot of people would go for it. I don't know.
As someone who loves his iMac and iPad mini, I'd personally consider going for a (large) iPad Pro if I could run Mac apps and have iPad apps too.
But I think that the Surface machines show how grafting touch onto Windows is sometimes good but usually a kludge, so I'd hope that if this was true then touch/Pencil support would be intelligently but very lightly integrated into macOS itself.
Personally, I’d love it if my Ipad Pro had more feature parity with MacOS. I’ve said for several years that iPads are being constrained by iPadOS. That’s still true and many things that they technically can do are kind of kludgy and much more difficult than they are on MacOS
"Personally, I’d love it if my Ipad Pro had more feature parity with MacOS." => Dan Moren posted an article regarding the vision behind the iPad and he summarized it well:
"When the iPad came out, it felt like a burgeoning third revolution, but a decade-on much of that potential has been squandered. None of this is to say that the iPad hasn’t been a success, but that it hasn’t been all that it could be. The real opportunity is for the iPad to be the best of both worlds: taking the modern aspects of iOS and combining what worked well on the Mac, and turning it into a device that’s more than the sum of its parts."
https://www.macworld.com/article/1339589/ipad-isnt-a-big-iphone-or-a-touch-screen-mac.html
But here's the problem - Touch UI.
The current MacOS is not optimized for Touch.
So it may mean that the MacOS elements will be modified for touch screen and the size of MacOS may be smaller than the regular desktop - eliminating all the legacy drivers and programs that iPad Pro does not need (which MacOS has a lot of them).
+ mouse
= no problem
It's a silly rumor.
There isn't anything to go the other way. For FCPX, LPX to run on iPadOS with a minimum of changes in FCP itself, Apple would have to have iPadOS host an implementation of AppKit - the macOS code library - to make that happen. An iPadOS AppKit library would change UI conventions from WIMP to Touch. Apple doesn't want to do that yet, because unknown reasons. The biggest one is that only recently are there iPads with enough RAM to do it, and perhaps even more recently, some iPads don't have the storage performance to really do it. The hard way is to rewrite FCP in some combination of Swift+ObjC+SwiftUI+UIKit.
Apple has an incredible amount of balls that they are juggling. FCPX surely has a bunch of crappy C++ code with Objective-C wrapped around it with AppKit code wrapped around everything. Then, there are probably custom Intel, PPC, and ARM machine code in it to make some things fast. On top of this, they are transitioning to Swift and SwiftUI, both themselves are moving targets. It's an incredibly capital intensive effort to get everything to Swift and SwiftUI. Basically a nation state effort.
That's why the MacOS needs to be updated for touch UI.