[_ph_]

The ironic thing is, that the question isn't so much one of hardware, but software. With the iPad Pro, Apple has an almost perfect piece of hardware, that could be used as an ultralight laptop alternative. The problem is, Apple does not allow the use of an iPad as a computer. File handling - though a little bit improved on iPadOS - is still extremely limited and even more so is the software. There are no real development environments on the iPad because of the app store limitations, there is no Termux for the iPad. Even if fully sandboxed, that could increase the productivity as a computer a lot.

So the simplest way for Apple to get a ARM-based computer would be allowing the iPad to be more of a computer. Alternatively, they do it the hard way and launch ARM-based Macbooks. That would be nice too. But putting iPadOS onto a Macbook would rather go in the wrong direction. MacOS should run well on ARMs anyway.

[ubercow13]

Have you tried iSH? It’s kind of like Termux

[_ph_]

I have heard about it, but not tried it. It is sad how many heroics iSH has to go through, if Apple could just provide a sandboxed Termux.

[tambourine_man]

iSH is a x86 emulator running on an ARM phone. It’s crazy.

A nice proof of concept, but I don’t think it’s the right path for a serious tool.

[ubercow13]

True, most stuff doesn’t work and it’s very slow. But it runs youtube-dl well enough which is something.

[tambourine_man]

No re-encoding I hope :)

[ubercow13]

Not reencoding but it can remux separated streams quickly using ffmpeg