iOS 19 More Like macOS?

> "Improved productivity
Improved multitasking
Improved app window management"

This rings a bell.

Isn't what they have been promising for the last decade? And where they have always failed.

As long as it's still a pain to type text on the iPad (without using a physical keyboard), productivity will never improve.

We're slowly but surely reaching a point where essentially the main differentiator between an iPad and a Mac laptop will be the multi-touch input on the screen. And maybe, for some, the compactness. What a terrible journey for the iPad.

I'm distancing myself from the Apple ecosystem at the moment, but if I were ready to upgrade anything, I would certainly prefer, say, a 13-inch Mac laptop rather than an iPad with all the accessories and a 'Mac OS Lite' operating system to (badly) emulate the Mac experience.

@someone yes my thoughts exactly. We've been through this, with almost the exact same words, so many times.

Personally I feel the problem with the iPad has always been that Steve Jobs introduced it, and then tragically died shortly after. He kicked over the anthill, but wasn't around to pick up the pieces, to mix a metaphor. Microsoft lost their shit and ruined Windows for a decade, arguably to this day, as a direct result.

But nobody ever truly finished the original vision. It is better than a laptop for some things, better than a phone for some things, but they never really leaned into those things. They just kept it a big phone that is also kind of a computer sometimes if you don't need much of a computer.

I don't know what to do with the iPad, much less iOS, but the much bigger problem seems to be that neither does Appke.

Doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean sideloading.

They keep threatening to offer productivity on mobile devices, but they do nothing to remove the obstacles! They gave us a grade-school-project File Manager, but still have nonsense throughout the OS, like settings that aren’t part of each app, no way to easily move stuff around windows, etc. Sure, they may have “ways” but they are terrible, and absolutely not productivity oriented.

Then, to top it off, they go and neuter macOS to make it look like iOS and less productivity oriented, with endless security hassles, notification nightmares, ridiculous Settings redesign that isn’t even designed for a large monitor and relies on search to get anything done, advertisements for Apple products/services, and removal of useful things like scripting languages.

So, yeah, not only are they not going to deliver productivity, they don’t even know what productivity is. I would love to spend a day at Apple HQ and watch how employees actually use poorly implemented products like Apple Mail, on a day-to-day basis.

iPads are great for watching videos on the train or plane. I know a lot of people like to pretend they get work done, but they could easily do more with a macbook air for the same weight and cost.

@Bart - I agree.

I think Steve Jobs and Forstall had bigger ideas and intentions for the iPad. They really loved calling it "magical" when it was first released. I suspect it was originally intended to blur the lines of structured/rigid computing, making it more like a digital, interactive portal that blended into to the real world.

When iOS 7 hit, it's like they just gave up any pretense of that vision and doubled-down on the mega-sized iPhone. And then funny enough, people started loving/gravitating towards actual mega-sized iPhones.

I have had various versions of the iPad Air for years, I don't use it nearly as much as I do my Macs or my iPhone (the iPhone is probably one of my least used pieces of tech these days, seconded to only the iPad Air). Anyway, the iPad is only really enjoyable to use when I've connected a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to it, imo.

Why couldn't iPadOS just become macOS?

View iPadOS as a locked-down Mac running a modern "Simple Finder" with some MDM settings (like only installing apps from the crap store).

Catalyst serves as the backwards-compatibility layer for an iPad switch to macOS (like iPad's Rosetta).

Going macOS gets more pro apps running on iPads (whereas Catalyst just resulted in trash apps on macOS). Xcode for iPad, finally!

The rumored upcoming UI changes in macOS could both prepare macOS for laptops with touch screens *and* for an iPad that runs a version of macOS.

Going macOS removes all the kludgey nonsense for multitasking and multi-app workflows.

Going macOS removes hacks like the Files "app" and dumb features like Stage Manager (which doesn't serve a point when Exposé exists).

Going macOS finally gets iPads supporting multiple user accounts.

macOS mogs iPadOS for real work. iPad's only distinguishing work cases are drawing/Pencil apps or as a mobile monitor.

The future of computing is macOS. iOS (and by extension iPadOS as it is currently) are failed-fork toy OSes.