[outcoldman]

I believe it is time for Apple to rethink iPad and MacBook. They both have the same chip now.

iPad should be a Macbook Air.

Apple already allows to run iPad applications on macOS. They should completely destroy iPadOS, and let macOS run on iPad. I would prefer to have powerful OS (macOS) with some glitches on iPad, than to have an iPad with limited OS (and still have glitches to be honest). I even ok to use similar to Windows 8 idea, you aren't plugged in to keyboard - it is going to look like an iPadOS (with different app launcher), and when you connect keyboard you can use macOS.

The only reason I am still own iPad (to be honest two of them), is because I cannot disconnect screen from my laptop, even that is not the biggest issue, but because there is no Netflix app, and I cannot download movies to watch in the plane.

[simonh]

>iPad should be a Macbook Air.

Isn’t there already a MacBook Air?

It just seems that trying to use the Mac UI purely by touch would be godawful. I mean how do you Command-click, or right-click a UI element with your finger? These are solvable, but only with horrible compromises. The iPad has a completely different interaction model to very good reasons, and this would utterly butcher it. Microsoft tried this approach and it was disastrous.

Yes the iPad has its limitations, but also incredible strengths. The new multitasking gesture system is a vast improvement.

[hollandheese]

> It just seems that trying to use the Mac UI purely by touch would be godawful. I mean how do you Command-click, or right-click a UI element with your finger?

That's already in iPad OS/iOS. It's the long touch.

>Microsoft tried this approach and it was disastrous.

Surface Pro/Go is a pretty successful product for Microsoft.

[sseagull]

I got a Surface 7+ recently and really like it. I can put full desktop applications (firefox + ublock origin, pycharm) and have it better mirror my dev environment with WSL.

Windows 11 on a tablet is really not that bad.

(I also run linux on a desktop and have an iPhone and Apple Watch, so not a hater by any stretch of the imagination)

[smoldesu]

The Surface has come a long way. I had (and still have) a Surface Pro 3 that had pretty much everything going for it: excellent build quality, great high-res screen, nice optional keyboard and decent PC-grade specs. There were two major flaws, though:

1. Linux support was pretty bad. You needed a custom kernel for an enjoyable experience, and even that was pretty unusable on anything other than x11 GNOME.

2. The overheating was a dealbreaker. I presume this was either a driver issue or hardware failure, but the device would regularly hit 55c in normal workloads, which was a no-go for that sort of product.

It was so close to being the Linux iPad of my dreams, but fell just short. I might give one of the later models a shot someday, but I'm not really in a rush. Maybe once Alder Lake makes it's way into a decent Windows convertible, it will finally be The Year of the Linux Tablet.

[hollandheese]

I have a m3 Surface Go 2. It's making a fairly decent Linux tablet with Arch using Gnome 42 (Wayland) and the mainline kernel. The camera doesn't work well, but everything else does including LTE.

It's actually a ton faster in Linux, but with a bit worse battery life.

The biggest flaw with using Linux on the earlier Surface line was the shit Marvell Wifi. That would drop out all the time. So glad they switched to Intel for the later ones.

[smoldesu]

Hm, I think I'll still wait for the Alder Lake update, but it really does sound like a good setup. If I didn't disagree with the direction GNOME was going in this choice would be a lot easier...