iPads are actually much higher volume than Macs. Apple sells about 2x to 3x as many tablets as laptops.
Of course, phones dwarf both.
Of course, phones dwarf both.
I'm very curious how much iPad Pros sell. Out of all the products in Apple's lineup, the iPad Pro confuses me the most. You can tell what a PM inside Apple thinks the iPad Pro is for, based on the presentation: super powerful M4 chip! Use Final Cut Pro, or Garageband, or other desktop apps on the go! Etc etc.
But in reality, who actually buys them, instead of an iPad Air? Maybe some people with too much money who want the latest gadgets? Ever since they debuted, the general consensus from tech reviewers on the iPad Pro has been "It's an amazing device, but no reason to buy it if you can buy a MacBook or an iPad Air"
Apple really wants this "Pro" concept to exist for iPad Pro, like someone who uses it as their daily work surface. And maybe some people exist like that (artists? architects?) but most of the time when I see an iPad in a "pro" environment (like a pilot using it for nav, or a nurse using it for notes) they're using an old 2018 "regular" iPad.
Hypervisor support was removed from the iOS 16.4 kernel, hopefully it will return in iPadOS 18 for at least some approved devices.
If not, Microsoft/HP/Dell/Lenovo Arm laptops with M3-competitive performance are launching soon, with mainline Linux support.
I have been seeking someone who’ll be willing to put money on such a claim. I’ll bet the other way. Perchance you’re the person I seek, if you truly believe this?
Compared to macOS on M3 doing the same
At Qualcomm SoC launch, OSS Linux can't possibly compete with the deep pockets of optimized-shenanigan Windows "drivers" or vertically integrated macOS on Apple Silicon.
But the incumbent landscape of Arm laptops for Linux is so desolate, that it can only be improved by the arrival of multiple Arm devices from Tier 1 PC OEMs based on a single SoC family, with skeletal support in mainline Linux. In time, as with Asahi reverse engineering of Apple firmware interfaces, we can have mainline Linux support and multiple Linux distros on enterprise Arm laptops.
One risk for MS/Asus/HP/Dell/Lenovo devices based on Qualcomm Nuvia/Oryon/EliteX is that Qualcomm + Arm licensing fees could push device pricing into "premium" territory. The affordable Apple Macbook Air, including used M1 devices, will provide price and performance competition. If enterprises buy Nuvia laptops in volume, then Linux will have a used Arm laptop market in 2-3 years.
So.. your test case might be feasible after a year or two of Linux development and optimization. Until then, WSL2 on Windows 11 could be a fallback. For iPad Pro users desperate for portable Linux/BSD VM development with long battery life, Qualcomm-based Arm laptops bring much needed competition to Apple Silicon. If Nuvia devices can run multiple OSS operating systems, it's already a win for users, making possible the Apple-impossible. Ongoing performance improvements will be a bonus.
But I’m happy to take that bet with “Linux” replaced with “windows”
This is everything wrong with the iPad Pro in a nutshell. Fantastic hardware ruined by greed.
Apple currently has 5 major build trains: macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS (which also runs HomePod), and visionOS. Huge amounts of the code are already the same between them: they literally just build the same stuff with different build settings… except for the UI. The UI has actually unique stuff in each train.
This has become more true over time… teams are likely sick of not having certain dependencies on certain trains, so they’re becoming more identical at the foundation/framework level every release.
Saying they’ll make a macOS with a touch UI is like saying Honda is finally going to make a motorcycle with four wheels and a full car frame. The UI is the differentiating factor in the OS’s. Everything else has already converged or is rapidly doing so.
If the goal is to support macOS apps on iOS then there’s a dilemma: how do you suddenly make apps that are designed from the ground up for a mouse, good for touch? The answer is you don’t: you just make the rest of the system identical (make the same APIs available everywhere) and ask developers to make the UI parts different.
I could almost believe that they’d make a macOS VM available for use with a keyboard and mouse within iOS. But to me it’d make more sense to do a sort of reverse version of how iOS apps are supported on macOS… where macOS apps are run natively on the iPad, but rendered with the iPad’s window management (modulo whatever multitasking features they still need to implement to make this seamless) and strictly require a keyboard and mouse to be in this mode. There’s just no reason to make a VM if you’re doing this: you can just run the binary directly. The kernel is the same, the required frameworks are the same. No VM is needed.
Even if a macOS VM had only a CLI terminal and a few core apps made by Apple, using a Swift UI framework that was compatible with a touch interface, it would be a huge step forward for iPad owners who are currently limited to slow and power-expensive emulation (iSH, ashell). Apple could create a new app store or paid upgrade license entitlement for iOS-compatible macOS apps, so that users can pay ISVs for an app version with iOS touch input.
Apple will never ever take macOS and change its UI to be optimized for touch. Or at least if they do, it’s time to sell the stock. They already have a touch UI, and it’s called iOS. They’re converging the two operating systems by making the underlying frameworks the same… the UI is literally the only thing they shouldn’t converge.
I like the fact that a number of iPad and iPhone apps now run on macOS without a simulator or any ceremony. While they are touch-optimized, they're easy enough to use with a pointing device. The gotcha to such mythical OS convergence is the inverse is untrue since a desktop UI is unusable 1:1 on a tablet with the coarser granularity of tapping and less keyboard access.
Perhaps OS-level AI in the future will be able to automatically follow design guidelines and UX rules and generate a usable UI (Storyboards or such View parts) on any platform given a description of data, its importance, and a description of what it should try to look like.
EU and US regulators are slowly eroding that service monopoly.
> Fantastic hardware
Hopefully Apple leadership stops shackling their hardware under the ho-hum service bus.
It's been rumored for years that a touch-optimized version of macOS has been in development for use in iOS VMs. With the launch of M4 1TB 16GB iPad Pros for $2K (the price of two MacBook Airs), Apple can sell developers the freedom to carry one device instead of two, without loss of revenue, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40287922
Apple is in the midst of a cold war with regulators now. Every new feature will be scrutinized to check that it offers no threat to their golden goose if regulators force them to open it up. Allowing one type of VM means that regulators could force them to allow any type of VM.
Asahi Linux already runs on Apple Silicon.
The EU could try to unlock Apple device boot of owner-authorized operating systems.
Ding ding ding ding ding! The iPad Pro is useful primarily for those people. Or at least it was. The original selling point of the Pro was that it had[0] the Apple Pencil and a larger screen to draw on. The 2021 upgrade gave the option to buy a tablet with 16GB of RAM, which you need for Procreate as that has very strict layer limits. If you look at the cost of dedicated drawing tablets with screens in them, dropping a grand on an iPad Pro and Pencil is surprisingly competitive.
As for every other use case... the fact that all these apps have iPad versions now is great, for people with cheaper tablets. The iPad Air comes in 13" now and that'll satisfy all but the most demanding Procreate users anyway, for about the same cost as the Pro had back in 2016 or so. So I dunno. Maybe someone at Apple's iPad division just figured they need a halo product? Or maybe they want to compete with the Microsoft Surface without having to offer the flexibility (and corresponding jank) of a real computer? I dunno.
[0] sold separately, which is one of my biggest pet peeves with tablets
A lot of teachers now project their iPad screen wirelessly in class, sometimes almost to the exclusion of any other teaching method.
I value the high performance both for everyday ease of use and specifically for screen recordings.
It is not a laptop replacement; it is a wonderful complement.