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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

Why would they? You might not buy one of each platform if they weren't differentiated.

Cannibalizing themselves is something Apple does frequently.

They did it with the iPod to iPhone, for a famous example.

The iPhone is a more profitable platform than iPod. Cannibalizing the iPod market was a move that maximized long-term profit.

Jobs wanted the iPad to represent a unique interface and experience that was distinct from a laptop. They failed to do that and the touchscreen is the only difference that remains. Merging these products is only likely if they doesn't reduce overall expenditure on Apple products in the long-term.

>* Jobs wanted the iPad to represent a unique interface and experience that was distinct from a laptop. They failed to do that*

Who said that? In my experience they succeeded. That's also why it's the main tablet that ever sold shitloads and still does after a decade...

Who said that?

If you look at the development of the iPad UI over the past 2-3 years it's clearly converging more and more with laptops, rather than trying to differentiate itself. The differences between a 12.9 inch iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard and a MacBook Air are getting fewer and fewer with each OS update.

You pick a platform for a usecase, dualboot makes sense

Merging 2 usages into a single experience = you flop like Win8/Win11/Gnome/Unity8

On other hand Android/ChromeOS and macOS/iOS/iPadOS is a big winner

They wouldn't need to promote it forwards into the public eye like Microsoft did with Windows 8. ChromeOS being able to run linux via Crostini and Android apps isn't such a headlining feature, but it makes a Chromebook have more utility for power users. M1s are the first chip to support virtualization in iPads, they could just start supporting that avenue to enable users.

Touchscreen-only use actually works really well on GNOME, perhaps best of any OS. (The default on-screen keyboard is sadly very substandard compared to something like the open source Hacker's Keyboard for AOSP, but there are workable alternatives if you're running an Xorg session.)

Buying one of each platform is a bug, not a feature. The goal is to maximize customer LTV. This hypothetical product could be strictly superior to _and_ more expensive than separate purchases of a MacBook and iPad.

I wouldn't expect to see this on the Air or even Pro models as standard; it makes sense as an expensive upgrade akin to the M1 Max.

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