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Comment by pedrogpimenta | Hacker News Reader

> Is it headed toward functional parity with the Mac or will it always be hamstrung by Apple’s strict App Store policies and seemingly inconsistent investment in iPadOS?

I see this converging in two possible ways (aside from killing the iPad):

- Macs will have iOS

- iPads will have macOS

I don't see Apple giving that kind of freedom on the iPad, though.

Another possibility is Apple making some kind of 2-in-1 Macs with touch screen. The paddings they added to all kind of UI elements on macOS seems to point in this direction.

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From my point of view and the whole Apple culture towards UNIX based platforms since its inception, expect "Macs will have iOS" to be the final outcome.

UNIX support was only a side-effect of NeXT's acquisition (BeOS wasn't a UNIX based OS), and a question of survival to get the geeks to rescue the company.

Besides A/UX, Apple was never serious about that market and now they are printing money, so if it doesn't need to be a proper UNIX clone, then any OS will do, including an evolution of iOS.

Although it makes me nervous, I think iOS and macOS will continue to move closer together. Big Sur feels already much like iOS.

Macs being able to run iOS apps now should give you a hint of the direction where it's going.

I'm convinced a not insignificant number of people high up at Apple see the near future of the Mac as where you go to run multiple iOS apps, at least until iPads start to do that too. I think when the true next gen 14 inch MBP drops next year this will become a lot more obvious.

This is uncomfortable to think about for people who are fans of computers but just look at the profit charts and when you follow modern Apple leadership actions, Macs where they don't get a cut of software and where users do have that freedom are the anomaly and there are some extremely juicy pieces of software that side of the fence which they are currently not profiting from.

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