[benoau]

> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad

I think if the hardware differences really mattered Sidecar wouldn't exist, Mac wouldn't run iOS apps, iPhone wouldn't stream to Mac, and the AVP wouldn't stream/run apps from both platforms.

Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?

[troupo]

> Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?

Yes, yes they would. You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. And not, for example, shitty lazy port of mobile apps to MacOS

[benoau]

> You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device.

Or you would just have a void where that hypothetical software could be, and this is what actually happened to the iPad (and AVP).

[troupo]

iPad could run iOS software since forever. Did it help iPad?

[benoau]

Compared to having even less software? Yes.

Compared to a hypothetical scenario where developers care to build iPad apps? No.

I don't think the availability of iPhone apps on iPad is what derailed development of iPad apps either, practically all the ROI building software for Apple hardware comes from impulse spending on the iPhone and even with 500+ million iPads in circulation today it doesn't come close.

[troupo]

iPad was sabotaged by Apple themselves, as they never figured out how to position it, and what capabilities to give it.

Multi-tasking? Half-assed. Keyboard and mouse support? Half-assed. OS capabilities beyond iOS on a laptop-like device? Non-existent. This was additionally hamstrung by "just check a checkbox, and a half-assed port of your app will run on iPad".

We've now seen the same play out with MacOS: why bother creating an actual app when you can just run a mobile app? Even Apple's first-party apps do this now.