A number of commenters have made the point that iPad reviews havenβt really changed in years. Each generation, the hardware gets better, and the software gets left behind. That has led some to suggest a dual-boot iPad, which can switch between iPadOS and macOS as desired.
However, former Microsoft exec Steven Sinofsky β who was President of the Windows division for several years β says this idea βis just nutsβ β¦
The WSJβs Joanna Stern was one of those to propose a dual-boot iPad.
At first, maybe itβs dual boot. That is, just let the iPad Pro load up macOS if itβs attached to the Magic Keyboard and use the screen as a regular (but beautiful) monitor β no touch. Over time, maybe macOS is just a βmodeβ inside of iPadOS β complete with some elements updated to be touch-friendly, but not touch-first. Iβm sure itβs not exactly simple to do all of this, but it is straightforward and obvious now with such technology.
Sinofsky stops short of admitting that Microsoft Surface products failed in their mission to be both tablets and laptops, but does say that desktop UIs donβt work with a touch interface β and that it wasnβt a commercial success for the company.
He argues that neither running macOS on an iPad, nor turning a Mac into a touchscreen device, makes sense.
It is not unusual for customers to want the best of all worlds. It is why Detroit invented convertibles and el caminos. But the idea of a βdual bootβ device is just nuts. It is guaranteed the only reality is it is running the wrong OS all the time for whatever you want to do. It is a toaster-refrigerator. Only techies like devices that βpresto-changeβ into something else. Regular humans never flocked to El Caminos, and even today SUVs just became station wagons and almost none actually go off road π
He said you canβt use macOS with the βblunt instrumentβ of a finger instead of the precision of a mouse.
If you want βtouch-enabledβ check out what happened on the Windows desktop. Nearly everything people say they want isnβt features as much as the mouse interaction model. People want overlapping windows, a desktop of folders, infinitely resizable windows, and so on [β¦]
The metaphors that people like on a desktop, heck that they love, just donβt work with the blunt instrument of touch [β¦]
PLUS it would not run a bunch of Mac software not because the underlying hardware couldnβt run it but because huge chunks of those apps/tools would be somewhere between unusable and broken to try to use exclusively with touch.
If you change the OS to accommodate touch, then itβs no longer macOS.
9to5Macβs Take
To be fair to Stern, she wasnβt suggesting that macOS on an iPad be fully controllable by touch, but she was proposing some accommodations, which risks diluting the things we love about macOS.
While I get the financial appeal of buying one device instead of two, ultimately I think this just means we end up with a device which isnβt a great iPad or a Mac.
The real solution here is not to attempt to turn an iPad into a Mac, but to rethink iPadOS from first principles, and set out to create the very best touch-first OS possible. That might perhaps include some features which are only available when using an attached keyboard and trackpad.
