Completely Misunderstanding What’s Wrong with the iPad (Premium)

The iPad doesn't need to run macOS, nor does it need to run Mac apps. It just needs a slightly more sophisticated OS of its own, tailored to the form factor.

Last week, I wrote about my frustration with Apple's "strategy" for iPad in the wake of Steve Jobs' passing. Since then, I've spent an embarrassing amount of time watching the iPad segments of various Apple launch events. and this experience has only driven home the slapdash nature of what's happened to this product line under Tim Cook. It's a shame. This history is so convoluted it's almost not worth discussing.

And we could write this all off as the past, except that it keeps happening. Each time Apple takes a step forward in giving the iPad more laptop-like capabilities—via various keyboard and then keyboard plus trackpad cases, four generations of Apple Pencil, an iPad Pro family of products, and so on—it has actively undercut these capabilities via iPadOS. Which is curious, because one might have assumed, as I did, that splitting iPadOS from iOS would specifically lead to more sophisticated iPad experiences.

To be fair, that has happened to some degree. The iPad supports split screen capabilities and other ways to view two apps on-screen at once, and other features the iPhone lacks. But it hasn't gone far enough. And I'm going to suggest something radical here to address this obvious problem: Apple should use iOS for the base iPad and iPad mini, which should be the same product but with different screen sizes, and it should use iPadOS only in the iPad Air and iPad Pro product lines. And then update iPadOS more aggressively with professional capabilities that iOS—and, today, iPadOS—lack.

But overall, the story has never changed. Apple issues some update to make the iPad or its underlying software more sophisticated. Reviewers thrill over hardware advances they can't even take advantage of. And the fan base gets excited, only to realize that once again Apple hasn't delivered the software innovations that iPad needs to be a true laptop replacement.

What everyone gets wrong—OK, not everyone, but most—is that the iPad doesn't need to be the functional equivalent of the Mac. And it very much doesn't need to run macOS, in a dual-boot setup or otherwise. That goes against the entire point of the iPad, a post PC product that should point to a different future, one that repudiates the complexity and bloat of the PC (and Mac) past.

Running the legacy platform was one of the many mistakes that Microsoft made with Windows RT: This was an opportunity not taken, to break from the past and deliver a modern new platform. But Microsoft blinked, and then it delivered Windows RT (and 8) too soon: Given another year, the firm could have worked to consolidate the Windows 8, RT, and Phone app platforms and build out a single system that worked well on each form factor. Including legacy Windows 8, which could have run that app ecosystem without adopting Windows RT's terrible (for PCs)...