Jesus Diaz writing for Fast Company: RIP to the Almost Future of Computing: Apple Just Turned the iPad Into a Mac

We didn’t need a decade and a half to arrive at a mediocre compromise. If Apple had truly lost faith in the iPad’s unique vision—the vision that differentiated it—they should have had the guts to kill it. Just kill the damn thing and make a MacBook Air with a detachable keyboard. Go ahead. Slap touchscreens on every Mac in the line and call it a day. Just don’t make an iPad that’s less than it was meant to be, clumsily aping the thing it was supposed to replace.

Like most people in the tech commentary space, I too was generally happy with the iPadOS updates announced at this year's WWDC. There's little doubt the iPad will be a more capable machine this fall than it is right now, and iPad users who want more from their device. But this line from Craig Federighi during the keynote has been stuck in my head ever since:

Wow, more windows, a pointier pointer, and a menu bar! Who would have thought?

It's impossible to ignore the fact that almost every way Apple has made the iPad better in recent years is by bringing Mac features to it. And other times, they've done a Mac feature in an iPad-specific way, only to revet back to doing it like the Mac always has (see the cursor and window management). Looking at the iPadOS preview page, it's hard not to scroll through the feature highlights and intuit "just like the Mac!" after most of the main features.

  • A new, intuitive windowing system gives you more power and flexibility, just like the Mac!
  • You can now put folders in the Dock for easier access to them, just like the Mac!
  • The Preview app comes to iPad — a home for all your PDFs, just like the Mac!
  • New ways to control your windows. A familiar set of controls lets you close or minimize your windows, take them full screen, or arrange windows into easy-to-view layouts, just like the Mac!
  • Expose. Switch to the window you need. Simply swipe up and hold to see all your windows spread out, then tap to bring one to the front, just like the Mac!
  • Menu bar. Quickly find commands you need in an app with the new menu bar, which is always available with a swipe down from the top of the screen, just like the Mac!
  • Folders in the Dock. Access your downloads, documents, and more in folders in the Dock, now on iPad, just like the Mac!
  • A supercharged Files app. Find what you’re looking for faster with new folder colors and customization options. An updated list view gives you resizable columns and collapsible folders. And you can set the default app for opening specific file types, just like the Mac!
  • Background tasks, just like the Mac!
  • Preview comes to the iPad, just like the Mac!
  • Files app lets you choose what app to open files in, just like the Mac!

It makes me think back to this post I wrote last year, The iPad wasn’t supposed to have this until it did:

the iPad wasn’t supposed to have a file manager until it got one, the iPad wasn’t supposed to be used with a mouse and keyboard until it did, the iPad wasn’t supposed to have overlapping windows until it did.

Add more to the list this year, I guess.

Where I'm sitting now, I understand the excitement for the iPad updates, but I also appreciate the disappointment from some in the iPad community who are getting more and more annoyed that it seems like the ultimate vision for iPadOS at Apple is to make it do all the things a Mac does. And a part of me gets it! It does feel weird to cheer about iPadOS getting features that are implemented exactly the same as they have been on macOS for 20-30 years.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think the constant push from users to make the iPad more capable is in large part because many people using iPads really want a touch device that does everything they need, and since Apple doesn't make a touch-capable Mac, they're trying to make an iPad work. Meanwhile, those who liked the iPad as an alternate path for computing are getting a bit frustrated that the iPad is no longer forging its own path, all new features are focused around turning it into another version of the platform they tried to get away from. Of course, many of these new features are optional or opt-in, so you can maintain that simple experience if you want, but you've actually lost functionality in this release as split screen and slide over, iPad-first and touch-first usage models, have been removed and you need to use the new free windowing system if you want to get any form of that back.

I also fully recognize that just because two operating systems have largely the same feature set, someone might prefer one platform over another, with macOS and Windows being a great example of this. I can do basically everything I do on my Mac on a Windows PC (hell, I bought a Surface Pro recently for just that purpose), but I greatly prefer doing those things on a Mac. So yes, I absolutely get that there are people out there who see these new Mac features coming to the iPad and prefer them on the iPad since iPadOS gels more with them. That's all well and good, but if we extrapolate out to iPadOS 30, which surely will have many more Mac features added to it, why does Apple make two desktop-class operating systems that do the same things and compete with each other?

Ultimately, I have the same opinion I have had for several years now: Apple should expand their Mac hardware lineup to include convertible touch devices. Not only would this give users like me what they want (with larger touch targets to boot 😉) while relieving some of the pressure to constantly replicate macOS features on iPadOS. If the iPad is still meant to be that "third device" that Steve Jobs called it or if it's truly meant to be a separate path for computing for people who don't resonate with more traditional operating systems, maybe this would let them explore that more than they are today.