iPadOS Post–MacBook Neo
Matt Birchler (pre-Neo):
I think Apple is going to discontinue iPadOS. I know, I know, it’s a big swing, but put the pitchforks away and hear me out. iPadOS, as it exists now, is being stretched too thin. The idea of having one operating system, with the same features, that spans from a small, 8" tablet up through a 13" laptop-style slab that also connects to a 32" monitor is fundamentally problematic.
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So here’s the prediction: Apple will discontinue iPadOS. The regular iPad, iPad mini, and iPad Air will continue to exist, but they will run iOS. These iPads will not have the Mac-style window management they have today, but they will maintain Split View and (probably) Stage Manager. Of course, the iPhone will continue to run iOS, and the iPhone Fold will adopt a more iPad-style layout when the 8" inner screen is exposed.
That leaves the iPad Pro, which I believe will begin shipping with macOS. No, not some fork of macOS or “macOS lite,” the real deal. This will live alongside the other Macs in the lineup, and it will be the tablet-style Mac while Apple will keep the clamshell laptop and desktop machines in the lineup. The strongly rumored touch-enabled MacBook Pros on the horizon will come with a new build of macOS that fully supports touch, opening the door to a tablet-style Mac, and why mess with perfection? Put macOS on the iPad Pro and instantly have the best convertible computer on the planet.
As someone that considers themself an iPad power user, I’m fairly confident I make use of more features than the average person. However, the external display limitations on the iPad mini coupled with the small screen size have kept me from really digging in to the new desktop-style interface on iPadOS 26. If the mini could run a separate, external display, I think that would be a damn-near perfect computer for most of my needs—at the desk, it could use a large monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but then be something ultraportable that can even fit in some jacket pockets. Instead, I simply get a mirrored, pillarboxed image, so I’ve used it with an external display maybe twice? Until Apple creates some feature parity with the experience, the iPad mini (and to a lesser extent, the adjective-less iPad) will tend to be used the way iPads have always been used, like oversized iPhones.
Likewise, the iPad Airs and Pros have so much computing power, and despite all the improvements, iPadOS is still holding them back.
Mark Gurman (via Steve Troughton-Smith):
Publicly, Apple has denied wanting to do such a thing. Behind the scenes, though, engineers have been exploring the idea. They’ve discussed all sorts of ways to bring the two systems together — from running the current version of macOS on beefier iPads to building a new type of operating system befitting a hybrid product. There’s even been talk of completely folding together the Mac and iPad app ecosystems.
At the risk of being hyperbolic: is the MacBook Neo throwing the iPad under the bus?
For $599 you can now buy a 128GB A16 iPad ($350) + Magic Keyboard Folio ($250)…or a 256GB A18 Pro MacBook Neo. $250 for the keyboard has always felt excessive, now it’s just absurd.
I’d love to see the Magic Keyboard Folio come down to $150, along with the expected A18 iPad upgrade.
I wonder what the future of the iPad is. It’ll be around - but the MacBook Neo feels like a concession that the Mac and not the iPad is the future.
I worked at a school district deploying laptops to students in 2000s. The MacBook Neo looks a lot like the laptop we were begging Apple to make. (We might have asked for plastic casing, students can be rough on laptops!) Instead Apple started pushing the iPad for schools when it came out - and the place I worked switched to Chromebooks instead.
That’s why I’ve long thought the best (Apple) computer for most people was probably an iPad. You can watch TV/movies, browse the web, play games, read emails, etc. It does everything most people need.
But there’s still one “problem”. It runs iPadOS. And even as far as it’s come, it’s still not macOS or Windows. So there was always some level of adaptation needed, even if minor. As a lot of paradigms on how computers are used are simply different.
Whereas now, if you want an Apple computer, and you either don’t need to do particularly complex tasks, or you’re on a tight budget, then I don’t think the iPad is the best choice anymore.
The reason Apple has managed to get Microsoft’s dream so, so wrong, is they never fully committed to the consequences, or rather they wanted to maintain the thing that was most important to Apple - that you had to buy multiple devices.
A Surface Pro is a One Device computer experience - it’s a tablet tablet when you want it to be a tablet, or it’s a proper laptop when you want to do “real” work, but plug it into a dock at home, with multiple displays, external GPU etc, and it’s a normal desktop PC. All your data there, no cloud sync nonsense, just keep working as you were.
Apple would never do that, because they want you to buy an iPad, AND a Mac, and then dick around with this awkward shifting your user session states between devices through iCloud and maybe your files come with you but not for important stuff because that’s all too large and structured to move via cloud syncing…
The iPad would have been a better device if it iPadOS had never existed, and you just had the option to install iOS, or macOS on it. It’s been the exact same hardware as the Mac since the M1 was released, so there’s no good reason for iPadOS to exist.
I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned. iPad Pros, encased in Magic Keyboards, are expensive and heavy. So are iPad Airs. My 2018 iPad Pro, in its Magic Keyboard case, weighs 2.36 pounds (1.07 kg). That’s the 11-inch model, with a cramped less-than-standard-size keyboard. I’m much happier with this MacBook Neo than I am doing anything on that iPad. Yes, my iPad is old at this point. But replacing it with a new iPad Pro would require a new Magic Keyboard too. For an iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard, that combination starts at $1,300 for 11-inch, $1,650 for 13-inch. If I switched to iPad Air, the cost would be $870 for 11-inch, $1,120 for 13-inch. The 13-inch iPads, when attached to Magic Keyboards, weigh slightly more than a 2.7-pound 13-inch MacBook Neo. The 11-inch iPads, with keyboards, weigh about 2.3 pounds. Why bother when I find MacOS way more enjoyable and productive? My three-device lifestyle for the last decade has been a MacBook Pro (anchored to a Studio Display at my desk at home, and in my briefcase when travelling); my iPhone; and an iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard for use around the rest of the house. This last week testing the MacBook Neo, I haven’t touched my iPad once, and I haven’t once wished this Neo were an iPad. And there were many times when I was very happy that it was a Mac.
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I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600?
I didn’t mean to imply, for even a moment, that there aren’t use cases where the iPad clearly wins. I’m just coming to the realization that they’re not mine. I’ve had it stuck in my head for a long time that it’s somehow silly to have a MacBook as my main computer and another MacBook as a secondary one. But that’s what I want, really.
A $499 MacBook Neo with the brains of a couple-year-old iPhone can run Xcode, Photoshop, Blender, Terminal, and pretty much everything else you can think of, yet your $3,200 iPad Pro, with a desktop-class chip, cannot 😑
What are we doing here?
Without even having the laptop in hand, I can already tell you that I will absolutely be able to do my day job, all of my side projects, including web development, app development, video editing, and podcasting, all from this new device. Meanwhile, I have a more powerful iPad Pro sitting next to me that literally cannot do most of those things, or if it can, it does many of them in a hacky workaround way that would be inconvenient at best.
I won’t re-litigate this whole debate here, but I’m a product manager by day, and there is absolutely no way even a maxed-out iPad Pro would be as functional for me as even the cheapest, slowest Mac money can buy. Not video editing, not development, just a normal job that happens at a computer.
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When Steve Jobs originally presented the iPad, he showed it off explicitly as a device that could live in between someone’s desktop computer and their smartphone. As people have enjoyed the product, and as Apple has explicitly changed their marketing over the years to encourage more people to at least attempt to use iPads as their primary computers as well. And what we’re seeing now is that, yeah, an iPad spec’d out as a primary computer is a pretty expensive investment, often more expensive now than even the equivalent MacBook in the lineup.
But if you do treat the iPad as a third device, then I think the pricing is much more compelling.
Apple, on the other hand, saw the average selling price of an iPad go from $527 in Q3 2025 to $583 in Q4 2025, a roughly 10% jump that helped offset the broader market cooldown and reinforced Apple’s dominance in the premium tablet segment.
Daniel Rubino (via Mac Power Users Talk):
I want to talk about the gaslighting Apple has done here and how tech media, as usual, just goes with it without even noticing it, which makes me perturbed. (And don’t get me started on how no one in the tech press reviews low-end Windows PCs, but now they suddenly care about the category.)
For more than a decade, Apple insisted the iPad was the future of mainstream computing. Not a companion. Not a tablet. A replacement. The company spent years telling students, families, and budget‑conscious buyers that a $599 Windows laptop was unnecessary because the iPad was lighter, faster, more modern, and (if you believed the ads) simply a better computer. “What’s a computer?” wasn’t just a slogan. It was a thesis statement.
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And then Apple released the MacBook Neo. […] But it’s also the clearest admission Apple has made in years: the iPad was never the laptop replacement Apple wanted it to be.
It’s folly to look at the MacBook Neo and presume that an Apple laptop with iPad-like specs must be iPad-like in its capabilities. Anyone who finds iPads limiting for work — and I’m one of them! — isn’t limited because of the hardware. It’s because iPadOS isn’t designed to suit the way we work. The MacBook Neo is a full-fledged kick-ass Macintosh. It really is.
[This] just proves Apple users and Windows users wanted all along a cheap Macbook and not an iPad. Neo for sure will make Apple rethink the tablet segment now. Is not the fact that iPads are not good, the problem is the OS on them.
See also: Nilay Patel and David Pierce.
I’ve gone from using the ipad daily, to rarely, to never. I’ve thought about donating it. I’m a little surprised people are buying them.
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Today I said:
My iPad lives in a keyboard case. Tonight I glanced at it while sitting on the couch and reaching for my phone, and I said to myself, “Maybe if I took it out of the keyboard case I might like using it?” And I did and I do.
In other words: I was holding it wrong.
I expect that in iPadOS 27, these 3 options will remain, but the full screen apps option will bring the return of split screen that does not involved free-floating windows like we have now in iPadOS 26. In June, this will make a lot of iPad users happy who didn’t love needing to opt into full windowing to get the split views they used to love.
However, this new full screen apps mode will also come to the iPhone Fold this fall, allowing those users to run apps full screen and with a more iPad-style layout, while also allowing side-by-side apps on the internal screen. The iPhone would not need free floating windows, so I would not expect that to come to the Fold.
Apple could keep the naming of the OS different on the iPhone and iPad, but if this prediction comes to pass, it really does feel like in 2027 they could unify the OS naming across all their phone and tablet devices, but we’ll see…that stirred people up last time I suggested it…
Apple was once convinced the future of computing was ‘apps’, so iPad was designed married to that idea. But we’re 16 years on now, and the present of computing is AI, and IDEs, command lines and virtualization, and Python, and git, and scripting and automation. iPad risks being completely left behind as a computing platform by not supporting any of that stuff properly, and developer interest has been waning for years now. It’s well past time for iPad to get its shit together, and open up.
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Apple has steadily aligned closer and closer to what I’ve been asking for all that time. iPad has been my only ‘laptop’ since 2012, and I use it for hours a day[…]
Not necessarily the most powerful or the most spec’d-out machine — just a versatile and reliable companion that is there whenever I need it.
Until recently, the device that came closest to that ideal was the iPad Pro.
With the Apple Pencil and the Magic Keyboard, I was able to use it as my primary computing device for more than two years. Computational power has never been an issue with iPad Pro models. Instead, it was the software, iPadOS, that held the hardware back from unleashing its full potential.
It is now more obvious than ever all the iPads with the M series and some of the A series can definitely run Mac OS.
With each iteration of the OS’s, their UI are becoming more and more alike if not practically the same. The M series chips in the iPads are overkill, and the app developers are moving onto iPad OS in a snail pace (I am looking at you Adobe).
Given how lacklustre iPad OS is in some aspects when compared to Mac OS, would Apple ever a) allow Mac OS on iPad or b) finally merge the two OS’s?
I can see how this would turn the market upside down again.
I needed a new iPad. Almost bought the Neo instead. Went with a standard iPad simply for touch. So I can say that if Apple ships a touch device that runs macOS I’d buy it immediately.
Historically, at this time of year, there’s been quite a bit of angst from hardcore iPad users, after the shine of features introduced at the last WWDC has worn off and we’re left with, well, iPadOS. This year? Blissful silence.
The changes to iPadOS 26 went a long way to solving a lot of the biggest problems, and giving the platform runway. There are still major things that I think the platform needs to see — like Xcode, Terminal, virtualization, fully-external-display/clamshell mode and more.
iPad feels more like a ‘next-generation Mac’ than ever, but there are still a few key pillars of the platform missing. Everything else at this point just needs incremental improvement, which is such a step forward from where we have been historically.
Previously:
- An Ultralight MacBook and Other Apple Silicon Roads Not Taken
- MacBook Neo Sales
- MacBook Neo Reviews
- MacBook Neo
- 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card
- One Size Does Not Fit All
- “No” Part 2
- iPad Air Runs Windows 11 ARM via Emulation
- Apple’s Spin on AI and iPadOS Multitasking
- iOS 19 More Like macOS?
- Gemmell Is Back to Mac
- Mini vMac for iOS Rejected via Notarization
- The State of iPadOS in 2024
- Where iPad Fits In
- MacPad: Hybrid Mac-iPad Laptop and Tablet
- Schiller on Chromebooks in Education
8 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I really don't understand people who are frustrated with iPad's limitations for work. Why did you get the device, then? It's clearly not a fit for your use case, so get the MacBook Air or Neo. Why does an iPad, which isn't made for your workflow, need to conform to it when there's a different device that already does? Is it the lack of touch screen on the MacBook? Maybe I'm missing something here.
The attempts by Apple to make the iPad more Mac-like with OS 26 have only made things worse, IMO. There are now more gestures to have to memorize, accidental app window manipulations, and generally a more complex experience. This is the opposite of what these portable devices have been about - ease of use, simplicity.
For the things that I require iPad Pro to do, it excels in pretty well. Apple Pencil has great integration with the key apps that use it, and there is a great convenience in the handful of apps that do one thing well that are instantly available. For serial processes, I find the iPad a delight to use and in many ways much easier to work with. For instance, I can record a lecture in which I annotate slides in powerpoint, convert to a video with title screens and overlays, then upload to the cloud; the process is pretty painless and easy to learn. And as consumption device for traveling there still isnt really a comparable experience.
But the second I need anything in parallel the experience becomes awful. Things as simple as copying an image from one document to another are far more complicated, and forget it if you need to do any kind of actual code development. I had hoped that cloud tools like colaboratory would reduce friction points, but in practice I give up in frustration. It is simply too hard to do anything professional.
15 years ago, I could understand a bit of the value proposition, the iPad filled in what the smaller iPhone couldn't. Now I find myself using my iPad less and iPhone more for computing on the go as it has become more capable. I used to think that the solution would be a hybrid mode, in which you could swap between iOS mode and macOS mode. But the Neo runs full macOS! A lot of app functionality already exists with the native support for running apps, or incorporated into better widgets and native apps.
People are catching up to my longstanding comments here that iPadOS is pointless, esp with macOS touch coming.
iPad will forever-suck with text interaction without a built-in keyboard, but if it ran macOS instead of iPadOS at least it wouldn't forever-suck at basic computing.
iOS is complete garbage for productivity and there's no way to fix that. You have exactly 11 ways Apple /allows/ you to background an app. Instead of real windowing, everything launches fullscreen and you're dealing with "size classes" over responsive layout. You don't have a real Desktop. Files are silo'd to apps and file interaction is derpy. Security theatre gimps basic tasks. You're limited to the Crap Store. Using iOS for productivity is like swimming in a straight jacket.
So just ship macOS on iPads. Add a checkbox during device setup labeled "I'm too Boomer to Computer". If you check it and log in, it'll launch iPadOS 26 in a kiosk-mode VM and you can keep using your device like a Boomer without any changes. If you don't check it, you get real macOS.
Kill iPadOS.
If you want macOS on an iPad, the iPad is not the device for you.
It's really astounding how many members of the tech intelligentsia (so-called) utterly fail to understand this fact. They think the world should revolve around them. They are wrong.
What Drew said. Stop trying to turn the iPad into a laptop. It’s not. It’s a tablet. The things it’s great for are not laptop things.
Flip it around to see how silly this is: write an article complaining about how bad the Neo is at touch screen work. Can we attach a touch screen over it? Wow that’s awkward. How about hooking up a Wacom? Well, that’s expensive and clumsy.
The iPad is not a laptop.
@Tom @Total If you like how iPadOS works now, I don’t think anyone is suggesting taking that way from you. What I find strange is the suggestion that nobody should want a desktop OS running on a tablet form factor or touch screen on a laptop form factor. Both of these exist on other platforms, and some people like them. Frankly, both seem less contrived and awkward to me than the state of the art with iPad keyboard cases.
“ What I find strange is the suggestion that nobody should want a desktop OS running on a tablet form factor or touch screen on a laptop form factor”
That’s not what most of your quotes were saying and that’s not what I said. What I said is the iPad is not a laptop. Stop trying to make it one and stop complaining when you can’t. The iPad is not a laptop. A laptop is a laptop.
@Total It seems to me that it’s Apple that’s trying to make the iPad a laptop by building all those cases that give it a laptop form factor. Running actual desktop software—rather than “desktop class” software—on an iPad wouldn’t make it a laptop any more than giving the MacBook Pro a touch screen would make it a tablet.
