Soon, everything will be an iPad

Over the weekend, my Apple will kill iPadOS article caused some feelings, to say the least. The post title was meant to catch eyes, and it did, but I also think that it brought people into the article with the wrong energy. They were ready to fight, and read my (admittedly hastily written) post ready to disagree with it.

I'll talk more about this on episode 2 of the new pod, but I wanted to say that "Soon, everything will be an iPad" would have been an equally valid title for the exact same thing I wrote. Not only would the iPad UI be available to people using iPads already, but it would also be coming to the iPhone Fold, and Mac users would get the iPad Pro-style tablet hardware they've been jealous of for years, just running their OS of choice. I did sour this part of the message by suggesting the iPad Pro hardware would only continue with macOS as an option and that the new windowing features from last year would maybe be removed…my bad on that one.

The difference between iOS and iPadOS is basically a bunch of feature flags in the software, after all, so it's more of a matter of marketing than anything else. Did you know that in Apple's developer apps, it's all referred to as "iOS" already?

Or did you know that you distribute an "iOS" and a "macOS" build of your app, but there is no option to distribute an "iPadOS" app? Apps can run only on the iPad if the dev wants, but it's still an "iOS" app.

And honestly, the flagship iPhone run the same OS as iPads could be the best thing to every happen to the iPad software experience. No more off years or wondering if Apple still cares about you…nope, when their most important product runs your OS, suddenly the OS on your iPad is Apple's most important OS. What a gift!

Anyway, I didn't mean to suggest Apple was merging iPadOS and macOS, nor was I trying to say that Apple was giving up on iPads in any way shape or form.