[ghaff]

One has to assume that the ultimate direction is for some sort of convergence of iPad and MacBook. But no one at Apple has figured a good way to do that which isn't a fatal compromise. I use my iPad but it's a pretty optional device for me and I mostly use it when traveling. (I admittedly can't draw to save my life and I really want to get back on a computer pretty quickly when I'm doing things like searching.

[JumpCrisscross]

> one has to assume that the ultimate direction is for some sort of convergence of iPad and MacBook

Why?

[ghaff]

Because, for example, I'd prefer to travel with a single device and the MacBook is better than the iPad at certain things and vice versa. It's not that big an imposition to take two devices to be sure--and I'm sure Apple doesn't mind the extra sales. And I can mostly sub my phone and maybe a Kindle if I'm trying to go light. But it feels as if there's the potential for a unified device someday there--if it can be without compromises.

[moistly]

Everyone knows two screens are better than one. So take both, and use the iPad as the second screen when using the laptop, and as a tablet when you’re not?

[reducesuffering]

The trajectory is obvious, and includes iPhone. You don't need three different chips, just different interfaces. One unified computing and storage general purpose computer, available via mobile, audio (Airpods), visual (AR), large UI (Macbook / Mac), health (Watch), etc. They're already unifying under M1 / ARM.

[JumpCrisscross]

> already unifying under M1 / ARM

It's far from obvious to me. Unifying back ends and unifying products are night and day propositions. Nothing Apple is doing points towards a thin-client strategy.

[lbotos]

I mean, they are building their own processors now, and both the macbook and the iPad have the same processor. Why maintain two operating systems if one could work. I say that because obviously there are differences with iOS and MacOS, but apple controls both.

[threeseed]

Because iOS was designed for touch and MacOS designed for mouse.

Very hard to unify completely different paradigms.

[_ph_]

The problem with the iPad in my eyes isn't the mouse vs. touch issue. Yes, you want the UI to be designed for touch, on the other side the iPad now also supports a mouse.

The thing is a quite different point: the availability of software and the interactions. The iPad limits software to the App Store and its very restricted rules. Which makes the iPad nice for tasks which can be done completely inside one App, if that App exists in the first place. But it is really bad at any work flow which would involve multiple programs and a lot of programs aren't even allowed on the App Store.

On the Mac, one is free to run any software one wants, it is very easy to write your own. If it only is a quick shell script or python program. And it is trivial to combine multiple software in one project, just access the project directory from all involved programs.

There seems to be some capability of sharing file space between apps on the iPad, there is a great Git client called "Working Copy" which I can highly recomment which can interact with other apps, but that is quite an exception. In most cases, Apps on the iPad don't really support free data exchange with each other. My pet peeve: you cannot even add your own music to the music player on the iPad. It is sitting uselessly in Files and I can't access it.