9secondkox2

spheric said:

cpsro said:

10GbE or it's no dice.

Since the current M1 Mac mini comes with an option vor 10Gb Ethernet, why on earth would you think that the upgraded next generation wouldn't?

Marvin said:

Joswiak said Apple has no plans to merge the products. Instead, the addition of the Mac-focused chip is part of the company's continual goal to make each product the best in their own categories.

"There's two conflicting stories people like to tell about the iPad and Mac. On the one hand, people say that they are in conflict with each other. That somebody has to decide whether they want a Mac, or they want an iPad. Or people say that we're merging them into one: that there's really this grand conspiracy we have, to eliminate the two categories and make them one. And the reality is neither is true. We're quite proud of the fact that we work really, really hard to create the best products in their respective category."

There is some conflict in their marketing with this. They've shown ads about the iPad as a replacement for a traditional computer and they've heavily promoted Swift coding in education and talked about the jobs the App Store supports. Tim Cook said learning to code is more important than English as a second language:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/apple-ceo-tim-cook-learning-to-code-is-so-important.html
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/why-tim-cook-wants-ipads-in-every-classroom-20180413-p4z9fc.html

But you can't code outside of tutorial environments on an iPad, there are restrictions on dynamic code in the OS. Software development is one of Apple's largest segments of pro users. Dynamic code is also used for scripting and plugins inside creative software.

Take a student of science and art. The iPad allows them to draw, paint and sculpt art in a convenient and comfortable way. The Mac allows them to develop software and have unrestricted access to the filesystem for data, backups, downloads and run all kinds of powerful software.

What they are saying is somewhat true, both these products perform well at those respective tasks but a student of both has to choose between them or buy both.

If they started with an iPad and allow it to run macOS when connected to a keyboard (no touch input) then it would behave no differently from a standard Mac laptop in that mode. It's not a merged OS, it's just allowing the same hardware to perform both functions. The only tricky part would be switching between them, whether the iPad mode is like an app inside macOS that goes fullscreen or it's an OS switch with suspend/resume or macOS runs as a mode inside iPadOS.

Here's a video of how the latter option would look:



The part with touching the macOS UI is obviously not a usable experience, the main Mac use would be around 5:00 with keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

Microsoft has demonstrated that a converged device doesn't work well and this is always what Apple has said they won't do for years, which is convergence. The fridge-toaster:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/tim-cook-customers-dont-want-a-combined-ipad-and-macbook/
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/04/tim-cook-on-windows-8-converging-a-toaster-and-a-refrigerator





Where convergence goes wrong is when two products perform different functions (fridge and toaster) or are designed for different inputs (Windows with a touch UI). It works very well for things that are complimentary like iPod + GPS + phone + PDA = iPhone. Most of the functions of an iPad and Mac are identical, web browsing takes up most of the usage and is the same on both. Games, email, calendars and so on are the same on both systems. The biggest difference between an iPad and a Mac experience is how the user interacts with it, which is determined by how the user holds the device.

If it's held it like a tablet, nobody wants to be poking at desktop UI elements with their finger, that requires different software.
If it's in a dock like the magic keyboard cover, nobody wants to be poking at the screen at all, the keyboard and trackpad are much more comfortable.

Look at the use case shown in the following video at 6:45:





That's an iPad Pro hooked up to an XDR display. It looks amazing and powerful but in reality not usable at all as it's just mirroring the output and you can't use it like you could a Mac system. If that hardware allowed switching over to the Mac system in that environment, it could do everything a Mac could - run Final Cut, Logic, all the Adobe Suite, Da Vinci, Xcode, Node JS, Python, web servers, app publishing.

It could lead to a problem where people end up preferring the power of macOS on the iPad and that would push towards the system becoming more of a converged mess. There's also the issue that a Mac system on a 10" tablet display is not a good experience either (although it could be scaled up a bit), it would mainly be useful on a 12" model and/or external display. But it would be a much better value product for a student or anyone that only wanted a single device to offer the best experience for both tablet and desktop use.

Looking ahead at other products like AR, that can change things entirely because the interaction is no longer a choice between hand-held tablet or keyboard-based, it's a superset of both. The UI can be as big as it needs to be and allow for touch input.

Maybe iPadOS will just continue to improve to the point it doesn't matter but it's now 11 years in and that would surely have been the case by now. Apple's preference is for people to do some things on iPad and some things on Mac and buy both if they need both. The spec of the new iPad Pro offers an opportunity to have those functions on the same hardware. It would be a neat addition to an iPad, even in a limited form to be able have the extra freedom and power macOS offers when the need arises.

mixinmaster23 said:

I know I’m probably in the minority but I truly believe Apple should buy Sony. The two companies share a similar history and culture. While Sony would offer many many new fronts that could benefit Apple greatly. From TV panels, to movie and television studios (boost Apple TV+), game studios and consoles and services, and even music labels if they’re ere to choose to get that as well. If it were allowed to happen then it would be huge for Apple.