MacBook Neo and How the iPad Could Be
The iPad should be radically (though obviously) touch-only. No keyboards. No pointers. No mice. No trackpads. Just your disgusting fingers flopping over the screen and mooshing into icons. It should not have any window’d modes. Each app should fill the whole screen and only the whole screen. […] iPadOS shouldn’t be anything like Windows or macOS or Linux, it shouldn’t be iOS made big, it should be only like iPadOS — a singular thing of finger-poking joy.
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These kinds of workflow paper cuts are everywhere on the iPad. In terms of power, that original iPad Pro is still pretty much all the iPad you could ever want or need. I’m sure there are a few of you doing more with your iPads than the original Pro could deliver, but I’m not sure there’re many. Almost anything that doesn’t involve the Apple Pencil (Procreate being one of the true killer apps, the app that may have sold more iPads to creative professionals than anything else) could be done better on a MacBook. Even email feels better on a MacBook.
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This sense of iPad “not working” has only grown in the past two years with the explosion of LLMs and tools like Claude Code. macOS is the place to run the things because macOS is malleable and its constituent parts fungible, it’s able to embody the role of tool by trusting the user to be an adult.
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You’d think that Apple would have seen the launch of the M1 as a clear moment to maximally delineate between MacBooks and iPad. But no, Apple got weird. Some kind of internal velocity set in motion perhaps years ago by an errant project manager continued to push the company into fuzzy software spaces. For instead of making iPadOS more iPad-focused — a touch-only wonderland of touch-computing joy — they began to make it more like fake macOS. […] And each time we’d peek — a few times a year or so — our hearts fell a little in dismay to see how far they’d strayed, how utterly uninteresting it all was, how much it was trying to be “macOS lite” but somehow, mostly, worse. […] Slowly, then quickly, those of us on macOS felt squeezed in the opposite direction.
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I just love the idea that the specificity of our tools should be radically clear.
Later this year, the MacBook Pro is expected to undergo one of its most significant transformations ever with a touchscreen OLED display. At around the same time, the iPhone Fold will bring a tablet-sized screen to Apple’s handset for the first time.
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However, while Apple’s laptops and tablets have been largely evolving along parallel lines, they’re now seemingly en route to an intersection. The looming strategy shift suggests that Apple is thinking differently behind the scenes. iPads and MacBooks are actively borrowing hardware and software features from each other, and, at this pace, they could realistically become a single product within a few generations.
Similar to how the iPhone rendered the iPod redundant, Apple’s upcoming touchscreen products appear to be starting to dig the iPad’s grave.
Most authors who write articles like this simply don’t understand how iPads are actually used in a productive environment and what makes people who use them as their main machine really like them. I have both mac and my iPad pro and mostly I live on my iPad pro. What I need the iPad for would not be solved by a touchscreen mac. The MacBook Neo is not truly competition for the iPad because they’re different tools and anybody buying a Neo to replace their iPad wasn’t using the right tool to begin with. The less expensive iPad compared to a Mac made some people pick the wrong tool for cost reasons, so in that sense it looks like competition. And in that sense it looks like the Neo is the shiny new object dislodging the iPad. The question might be how many people who bought an iPad really wanted a mac and what does that do to the iPad market? That is an open question but not for the reasons pundits typically write about.
The Neo Taught Me I Never Needed an iPad
Don’t get me wrong, I still really enjoy my iPad and understand why it’s a great tool for so many people. However, for most of my daily activities, the NEO is all I need. I don’t play games or draw on it; I mainly use it for social media and watching videos. Occasionally, I need to do more computer-based tasks like typing emails, writing word documents, or creating Excel sheets, which are much easier with a keyboard. Up until now, an iPad was the only option for me because of its price. I wouldn’t spend $1000+ on a laptop for just a few tasks every now and then, but with my educational discount, the MacBook at $599 finally made sense. When I first got the NEO, I was a bit skeptical about how often I’d actually use it, but I’ve found myself using it more than the iPad.
I have been really thinking about the place of the iPad now that the new $599 MacBook Neo has been replaced. I have seen countless videos and articles saying some version of “Why would you even buy an iPad anymore? Just get the Neo”. I think that this sentiment is both right and also very wrong.
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I predict, and I hope this bears out, that as time goes on, the iPad will be looked at as less of a laptop, and more of an iPad again. Let’s let the iPad just be an iPad again. Because iPads are awesome! They’re great for drawing, journaling, reading, shopping, entertainment, gaming, lounging around with, and the list goes on and on. An iPad is an awesome “tablet computer”, it doesn’t need to be an awesome laptop. The iPad as a third device, slotted in between the smartphone and the laptop, is where it excels.
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I don’t believe for a second that the new MacBook Neo is going to kill the iPad. Rather, I think the MacBook Neo may kill the mainstream desire to make the iPad a laptop replacement.
I think the iPad is an amazing thing when its allowed to breathe its own air, and the MacBook Neo might just let it have that chance.
Apple never really took a definitive decision with the iPad, so they kept changing course and approach. They kept throwing stuff at it, at this iPad that kept becoming a jack of an increasing number of trades, while being a master at very few of them, comparatively. They built an increasingly higher tower of ‘stuff the iPad can potentially do’ over the inadequate foundation that iOS/iPadOS was and is. They thought that the problem was solvable by throwing faster and faster CPUs at it, while the actual work should have been done on the operating system front. There are still things a Newton MessagePad 2100 with a 162MHz ARM processor can do better than an M5 iPad Pro because NewtonOS is a better-designed OS for the device it runs on than iPadOS is on the iPad.
They also thought that remaining vague enough about the iPad’s core purpose was a good strategy, perhaps to buy time or to avoid taking a defining direction for the iPad that couldn’t be easily reversed. Apple’s way of remaining vague was perfectly epitomised by the phrase, We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it. Like, here’s this obscenely powerful slab of glass and aluminium, do with it whatever you wish.
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First Apple tried to make iOS and iPadOS more complex because the iPad needed to be a more sophisticated device than an iPhone, but apparently there’s a ceiling after which complicating iPadOS makes the whole system unintuitive, with increasing discoverability issues, and the insurmountable obstacle that is a touch interface — and a touch interface can only do so much.
So, when the complication of iPadOS didn’t go very far, the natural next step for Apple was simplifying Mac OS.
The iPad’s external display support is underrated.
I connected my iPad to a Studio Display and ran Workbench. Now my headless Mac mini (back in Minneapolis) is running full-screen on a 27" display in Ohio.
Remote Mac on a Studio Display through an iPad. Pretty wild. 🤯
Alex Reframe (translated):
Apple really needs to put macOS on the iPad. Not a lite version, macOS adapted for the iPad.
Here I tested it with the screen mirroring from the Mac mini, the screen adapted and touch works. It’s absolutely amazing!
At most, being able to switch from iPadOS to a version with macOS capabilities depending on the user’s needs and what they’re looking for.
Meanwhile, the redesigned MacBook Pro will likely offer a slimmer shell and OLED touchscreen, bringing its form factor closer to an iPad Pro. That’s not to mention that Apple code has revealed in the past that the company is testing 5G-enabled MacBooks, so the overhauled model could potentially pack an in-house cellular modem, too.
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If the touchscreen Pro is successful, it’s almost certain to expand to the Air and the Neo, making it even harder to justify buying an entry-level iPad.
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The same goes for the iPad mini, which is in danger of being eclipsed by the iPhone Fold. For one, iPadOS is increasingly gaining desktop-like features that make more sense on larger screens. And those who want a small book-like tablet will surely opt for an iPhone Fold instead, which is expected to cost roughly what you’d pay for a mini and an iPhone Pro.
Apple has reportedly abandoned plans for a foldable “iPad Ultra” following years of disappointing sales performance for the iPad Pro.
The next step for Apple seems clear to me: make an iPad Neo and lock up the tablet market. Give us a brightly coloured £200/$200ish full-sized tablet, with Apple’s peerless handle on the whole software and hardware pipeline, and its impressive custom silicon operation.
Previously:
- John Ternus Replaces Tim Cook
- macOS Post–MacBook Neo
- iPadOS Post–MacBook Neo
- An Ultralight MacBook and Other Apple Silicon Roads Not Taken
- “No” Part 2
- iPadOS 26 Announced
- The State of iPadOS in 2024
- System Settings
- Galaxy Unpacked 2019
5 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I would argue the largest problems with the iPad are:
1. It is locked down -> The software ecosystem cannot grow and explore the way the Mac ecosystem can.
2. Apple's urge to simplify UI -> Liquid glass breaks fundamentals of good UI design and many other recent rewrites even on macOS involve simplification of the UI and removal of features.
3. Third party devs building baby versions of their apps or versions that have most of the features but hide everything behind a menu.
I think 1 is key, the Mac is powerful because it is free to be opened up, people like John Gruber pretend that the iPad would be ruined by being open but I disagree. People underestimate the possibility of progressive disclosure of complexity to provide both a streamlined, beautiful, iPad 18 style UI that is clean and super-easy to use while also using progressively hidden settings that can add complexity to the UI to make it more powerful.
I also think that the idea that "let the iPad be an iPad" crowd are wrong because I think they have given up trying to imagine better UI since Apple decided to give up on ease of use.
I can't work on my iPad because it is locked down and Apple refuses to build Xcode for it.
Honestly with liquid glass and the general direction of Apple the last few years (and the kowtowing to the orange menace) I'm personally only still in the "community" because I still have most of my Apple products, if nothing changes in the next 2-3 years I won't be buying anymore personal Apple devices and haven't bought anything for the last 2 years.
The iPad is not a laptop. Do not try to make it one.
And this "Almost anything...could be done better on a MacBook" is unmitigated poppycock and balderdash, at a similar level to the Blackberry fans who suggested that the iPhone needed a hardware keyboard.
The only thing iPads do better than Macs are things that benefit from stylus input like art programs, and those a crippled on some iPads because of how limited memory is.
“In terms of power, that original iPad Pro is still pretty much all the iPad you could ever want or need.”
I own an original, 9.7" iPad Pro, and it's been a couple or more years since its power was enough. Any website not heavily optimized makes it crawl, and most apps also suffer to open and work properly.
@Benjamin it's like I refused to buy Apple laptops during the Butterfly Keyboard era.
@Total: indeed. I bought the keyboard cover for the first iPad Pro, never used it and stopped buying them. That said, the real superpower of the iPad is Portrait Mode, where you get more precious vertical space, which is why I am enraged at Apple putting the camera on the long side. If the M5 iPad Pro were not the only model that has a matte display available as an option, I would have stayed on my M1.
