Greg Joswiak and John Ternus spoke to The Independent for a recent interview and they addressed the speculation that the iPad would get macOS, or that the iPad and Mac would merge.
iPad, Mac, M1
People have been wondering if Apple would merge iOS and macOS for years. In 2010 The Mac Observer’s John Martellaro asked the question. Others have wondered the same. There are two different suppositions:
- Apple will merge iOS and macOS together into one unified Apple OS.
- Apple will put macOS on the iPad
The second one gained greater traction after Apple’s Spring Loaded event when the company announced the 2021 iPad Pros have the M1 chip that started in the Mac. Once again, though, Apple is saying no.
On the one hand, people say that they are in conflict with each other. That somebody has to decide whether they want a Mac, or they want an iPad. Or people say that we’re merging them into one: that there’s really this grand conspiracy we have, to eliminate the two categories and make them one.
And the reality is neither is true. We’re quite proud of the fact that we work really, really hard to create the best products in their respective category.
They also mention the complaint that the iPad is “too powerful for its own good” stressing that the power has to come first to give developers the room they need to build more capable apps that can take advantage of that power. “The best Apple Silicon that we make has always gone into iPad Pro. And M1 one is the best Apple Silicon that we make.”
Apple should make a Mac tablet. Not for heavy work, but the ultimate Keynote and PowerPoint presentation tool.
Apple always says they’re not doing something right up until the point that they do. I can imagine a dock that could turn the iPadPro into a Mac (or your choice of Mac or iOS) when docked, but reverts to iPadOS when undocked. I suspect there will be hackers working on this almost immediately, and you know Apple has this running in a lab now.
And if you read what Joz actually said, it wasn’t a hard “no, we are never going to do that.”