[adezxc]

If only Apple allowed to run VMs and other software like Linux on their iPads, it would be a game-changer. Right now, the iPads are mostly limited to media production tools + everything else you could get in an Android tablet, so it's pretty pointless for a user like me

[wilsonnb3]

If the tablet form factor was really a game changer for software development, wouldn’t the surface line and high end android tablets be more popular for programming?

Wouldn’t there actually be some popular Linux tablets out there? (I am aware that there are a couple of niche options)

Touch screen interfaces are just not good for programming. Apple already brought all of the useful parts of the iPad to the Mac when they switched to the m series SOCs. Fanless design, long battery life, instant sleep/wake.

An iPad running macOS has some niche appeal for people who want to travel light but I really don’t see it being a game changer at all.

[user_7832]

> If the tablet form factor was really a game changer for software development, wouldn’t the surface line and high end android tablets be more popular for programming?

Not necessarily. The surface line has several hardware fumbles (especially regarding power budgets/efficiency). The A & M series chips could easily whip up most of their competition in the low power (>10 watt) segment, if Apple wanted. AMD and Intel push for high performance at 15-28watts on portables, which is too high for thin tablets.

For maximum contrast: x86 tablets have fans. M1/m2 laptops can be fanless.

(This isn’t to say it’s impossible but rather no company with deep enough pockets cares enough.)

[wilsonnb3]

I don’t think I’ve heard people complain about the surface performance, power usage, or battery life in a long time. Probably not since the surface pro 3, around the time that intel was making haswell.

Also the Surface Pro 7 was fanless with x86 processors, plus the small one (surface go, I think) is fanless and x86 but does have performance issues.

[curt15]

Maybe I'm just getting old, but my eyes find even a typical laptop display too straining for programming. I like my desktop monitors.

[bee_rider]

I used an iPad+ssh for programming with a detached Bluetooth keyboard for a while. It was great.

It was much lighter than what I have now, a 2-in-1 with a fold-back keyboard. This opened up possibilities like using a car suction cup mount and a lap desk to get a slightly taller computer while on the couch. Or a lightweight armature.

Plus, vertical orientation on a “laptop” felt really novel and nice. My 2-in-1 can be vertical, but it is clearly an afterthought. The iPad ~4:3 aspect ratio is much nicer for vertical use, and there’s something about the pixel alignment or maybe the screen viewing angles… my laptop screen doesn’t work quite as well sideways.

I switched because I missed i3wm mostly, and generally all of the local Linux software. But no complaints about the hardware.

[adezxc]

I agree regarding the touch interface, but look at the steam deck example, connect it to some monitors and peripherals using Type-C and you have a computing monster that you can use for everything. And having the portability + other programs like final cut and w/e accessible right at your fingers is amazing!

[jmkni]

If they could combine iPadOS and macOS, and have some clever way to flick between the iPad UI and the mac one, it would be an incredible device

Plug it into a usb-c dock connected to a screen/keyboard/mouse and it's a Mac, put it on the little stand with the magic keyboard and it's a MacBook, hold it in your hand and it's an iPad

My dream device

[cletus]

Have we forgotten the cautionary tale of Steve Ballmer's Windows Phone boondoggle already? Ballmer wanted to use the same codebase for desktops, laptops, phones and tablets.

It goes back further than that too. Microsoft bought the Sidekick and squandered their lead by bringing it onto the Microsoft platform.

I'm reminded of this quote: "A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds."

Laptops and tablets are different devices. We should stop trying to merge them. Every time we do, we end up with something that is a worse version of both things. Tablets need a battery. If the display is detachable, then that creates a weight problem for the laptop. The tablet keyboard is worse than any laptop keyboard.

I said over a decade ago I thought Apple was smart to just have a tablet OS as well as OSX. Don't spend 3 years trying to merge those things. It's a waste of time and gains you nothing. Even the tablet and phone OSs are somewhat distinct (but a lot less so than with OSX).

I always thought Eric Schmidt (at the time) did the right thing with ChromeOS and Android too. There were always questions from people seeking faux "consistency" like "why have 2 OSs? Shouldn't we merge them?" Again, phones and laptops are different things. Let each OS evolve and see if one emerges as a "winner". Otherwise, leave them alone.

[wishfish]

Chrome OS does a fairly decent job with the transition now. I used to use a Lenovo Duet at times. If you had the keyboard / touchpad attached, it would go into the usual desktop mode with floating windows. If it was just the tablet, then windows would tile. Gestures for the usual tasks. It wasn't a complicated system but it did work fairly smoothly.

And then there were the checkboxes which allowed you to extend the OS beyond Chrome OS's initial limitations. Enable Android. Enable Linux. Enable developer mode. But the user (or administrator) could ignore those checkboxes and keep the machine in a fairly locked down state.

Keep imagining a similar abilities on iPads. A seamless transition from desktop mode to touch and back again. With options allowing you to make it into more of a general purpose computer if you want. But the options can be ignored in favor of the walled garden, if that's what the user or school or corporate owners want.

[akasakahakada]

First let people seperate photos into different folders....

[mdavid626]

Well, Microsoft tried this, it was called Windows 8. It failed miserably.

[flohofwoe]

Windows 8 failed because it tried to merge desktop and tablet UI paradigms.

Switching between entirely different and separate "UI personalities" could work.

I don't think the pointer vs touch UI is the main thing that people have in mind when wishing for macOS on the iPad though, instead a "proper" UNIX-style filesystem and shell, and the ability to install any software outside the app store via a package manager and without Apple's nanny reflex getting in the way.

[api]

That's basically running two OSes. Don't think that's a great idea. We have enough cruft.

[yencabulator]

So you're saying my Steam Deck, which has both a "game console" UI and a desktop UI mode and lets you switch between them, is somehow running two OSes? Weird argument.

[jmkni]

Sadly it did, I had one of the OG Surfaces and really liked Windows 8

[s3p]

I mean, their strategy was awful. They replaced the start menu for the first time with a whole-screen abomination that ruined power user workflows. They made the desktop TOO much like a tablet, it seemed like they wanted one interface for everything.

Apple is very clear about their product differentiation and would never make macOS and ipadOS exact copies. Case in point: when they brought cursor support over, they painstakingly engineered it to work differently and snap to objects on the screen. I think if they did OP's suggestion and had a macOS screen show up when an iPad is connected to peripherals it would actually work out well.

[MrSkelter]

Easy porting would make everything slower. People would stop targeting Apple hardware and the machines would be running everything in emulation. Making porting difficult is a strategy. It requires publishers to make the leap and when they do they take full advantage of the hardware.

[dktp]

As much as I'd like to see it being more open, a lot of people seem concerned about security and are happy with the current state of iOS/iPadOs and not having to deal with troubleshooting of their families devices

[datpiff]

Those two scenarios are not mutually exclusive

[nunez]

I seriously hope that this is getting announced at WWDC this year. There is nothing obvious stopping these iPads from running Virtualization.Framework.

[levesque]

Is there really no way to do this?

[stetrain]

Not officially. You can side load UTM using AltStore which requires you to sign apps using your own developer certificate and re-sign them about once a week to keep it running.

The iPads have had the hardware in the M-series chips and the software in the form of Apple's hypervisor framework in iPadOS for a couple of generations now, but Apple hasn't enabled it to be used officially.

I really wish they would just allow this on iPadOS. It still maintains the sandbox model Apple wants for iOS, it would just give a (contained) outlet for doing things that are difficult in native iPadOS.

[fathyb]

> The iPads have had the hardware in the M-series chips and the software in the form of Apple's hypervisor framework in iPadOS for a couple of generations now, but Apple hasn't enabled it to be used officially.

They removed the hypervisor framework in addition to the kernel support for virtualization a few months ago unfortunately.

[hhh]

Within 6 months iPadOS will have side loading in the EU.

[jijijijij]

Source? I thought the DMA only covers iPhones.

In any case, Apple still wants to "review" apps, and we want (arbitrary) user code execution on device. That's something Apple strictly forbids on iOS/iPadOS AFAIK (which is why we can't even have Firefox addons). Unless we can have at least true side loading, a DMA extension to iPad won't help.

The DMA isn't really the right tool to liberate devices, since it's about market competition not consumer rights. I think it would be better to widely address this along right-to-repair, electronic waste reduction and consumer rights regarding actual ownership. Unconditionally locked hardware is ridiculous.

I wish they would simply unlock the bootloader, so we can have Asahi Linux for iPad. They don't have to do anything else. Although Asahi is on trajectory to exceed MacOS performance and dev usability, I don't think they would lose their existing appstore cattle to Linux, but rather gain new hardware only customers.

[Tomte]

That was only the beginning: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/30/apple-must-allow-app-si...

[jijijijij]

Thx.

Though, I don't see true sideloading (like on Android) specified. If apps still need Apple's approval, we will get "freedom" who to pay, not what to run. I still don't see device liberation within the scope of the DMA.

However, if we're lucky, Apple may decide the app approval process may not be worth it, if they are not allowed to extort developers anymore, so they may allow unsupervised sideloading as a consequence.

In any case, requirements and reality may take much longer to align than 6 more months, considering Apple's cringeworthy tantrums so far...

[whazor]

https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/6260

[s3p]

Sidecar sort of does this right now? If you are fine with the iPad functioning as a low res display that the Mac can send a few windows over to. It doesn't work amazingly well for me but I have used it a few times.

[anonzzzies]

Every new iPad release people beg for this…

[lm28469]

You'll have to quantify "people", we're in a bubble inside of a bubble here on HN

[anonzzzies]

There was a Bloomberg article[0] which clickbaity hope-lied about it even. They changed the title ; it said ‘turns’ before, not should; I still have a screenshot from what it really said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-05-05/apple-...

[user_7832]

In his recent video MKBHD said the same. He’s certainly a tech YouTuber (probably the biggest) but no where as techy as the average HN crowd. A lot of comments on fetter & reddit also speak about this.

[lm28469]

They sell 50m+ of them per year and according to Google there are 25m software devs in the world

Even if they made every single one of them buy a new ipad every single year that would still be single digit change of revenue for apple

[lonjil]

That 50m+ figure is surely iPads in general, rather than iPads Pro? iPad Pro is specifically marketed to media production professionals as a viable replacement for a laptop, but media production professionals (like the aforementioned tech youtuber) again and again complain that it isn't good enough. It's certainly good for some professional tasks, like drawing, but it seems lacking for things like video editing.

[detourdog]

I was really surprised by his review. His review made it seem like technical progress was not a worthy pursuit. We should be satisfied with the status quo and Apple should stop setting goals.

[user_7832]

I think it was more of how the latest iPads are still just a spec bump. The hardware has been perfect for several generations, it’s the software that’s holding the hardware back.

[detourdog]

I understand that aspect but Apple has no choice but to push the envelopw. How important is his review if he has nothing to say?