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) full-screen interfaces. The world might be very different today had that team not made so many bad decisions and in such a rush.

That, too, is history. But looking at the iPad today, I see the same frustrations that I see with each previous, sporadic release. And the user base is getting a bit edgy. Some are even suggesting the macOS option. Which Microsoft already tried and failed with Windows RT. So it is perhaps ironic—it’s definitely hypocritical—to see Steven Sinofsky, the mastermind behind Windows RT, Windows 8, and Surface, weigh in on this topic as if it makes any sense at all.

“The idea of a ‘dual boot’ device is just nuts,” Sinofsky opines. “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 ‘presto-change’ 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.”

OK. So, this is so obvious it almost doesn’t even need to be written. But he nonetheless goes on, in great length, unnecessarily explaining why running macOS on an iPad makes no sense. Right. Obviously.

He also notes that Apple had done work to allow iPad and iPhone apps to run on macOS, and I will just point out that the results of this work are so poorly promoted in the Mac App Store that I suspect most people are unaware it exists. What Apple hasn’t done, to date, is allowed the reverse: The ability to run macOS apps on the iPad. And that, too, is a non-starter. Not just because these apps were designed with different interaction and infrastructure assumptions, but because they are the past and the iPad could show us a better way. Should show us a better way.

Tied to this, I’ve seen some argue, incorrectly, that the problem isn’t iPadOS but is instead the apps. That Apple has, in fact, done everything it needs to do so that developers can create professional-grade apps that run on this system. And they point to apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro as evidence of their belief.

But it’s not true. Apple hasn’t done everything possible to help developers create professional-grade apps for the iPad. It has, instead, specifically limited their capabilities so that these apps cannot compete head-to-head with similar solutions on the Mac. The iPad has an unsophisticated file system that can’t be extended by third parties, especially cloud storage services, in meaningful ways. It has no sense of default apps for specific file types. And it lacks sophisticated multitasking capabilities: Among other issues, Stage Manager is limited to just four app windows, there’s no formal way to access other windows in one app, and there’s no Mission Control feature that could help obviate those two issues.

But here’s the real kicker: Despite the underlying power of the hardware, the iPad’s multitasking is so limited that you can’t kick off certain activities that would otherwise run in the background and then go do something else. That Final Cut Pro app that some are so proud of will stop exporting video if you switch to another app. And that means you have to sit there, staring at the screen, while it does so. Real Pro app, there.

These limitations material impact what’s possible on the iPad. And so the answer is obvious: Apple “just” needs to improve iPadOS. But as noted, this work should only apply to Pro-level iPads. Consumption iPads—the base iPad and iPad mini, today—don’t need these features. But Pro iPads—which, again, I define as iPad Air and iPad Pro—do. The division here is obvious, and the improvements I suggest would bring clarity to this messy family of products. You consume. Or you create (and/or do both). If it’s the latter, you need a Pro. This is reasonable.

Here in the Microsoft world, we always look forward to some future milestone like Build or Ignite when we don’t get what we want. The Apple community works similarly, and all eyes are on WWDC in June now with the ever-present hope that the company will finally do something to “fix” the iPad. The prevailing opinion is that Apple won’t do this because it would sabotauge Mac sales. But I think there’s now space between the iPad and the Mac, just as the iPad proved there was a space between the smartphone and the Mac, for a new kind of product.

It’s a post-PC product. It’s called iPad Pro. And it’s time to set it free, Apple.