Wouldn’t there actually be some popular Linux tablets out there? (I am aware that there are a couple of niche options)
Touch screen interfaces are just not good for programming. Apple already brought all of the useful parts of the iPad to the Mac when they switched to the m series SOCs. Fanless design, long battery life, instant sleep/wake.
An iPad running macOS has some niche appeal for people who want to travel light but I really don’t see it being a game changer at all.
Not necessarily. The surface line has several hardware fumbles (especially regarding power budgets/efficiency). The A & M series chips could easily whip up most of their competition in the low power (>10 watt) segment, if Apple wanted. AMD and Intel push for high performance at 15-28watts on portables, which is too high for thin tablets.
For maximum contrast: x86 tablets have fans. M1/m2 laptops can be fanless.
(This isn’t to say it’s impossible but rather no company with deep enough pockets cares enough.)
Also the Surface Pro 7 was fanless with x86 processors, plus the small one (surface go, I think) is fanless and x86 but does have performance issues.
It was much lighter than what I have now, a 2-in-1 with a fold-back keyboard. This opened up possibilities like using a car suction cup mount and a lap desk to get a slightly taller computer while on the couch. Or a lightweight armature.
Plus, vertical orientation on a “laptop” felt really novel and nice. My 2-in-1 can be vertical, but it is clearly an afterthought. The iPad ~4:3 aspect ratio is much nicer for vertical use, and there’s something about the pixel alignment or maybe the screen viewing angles… my laptop screen doesn’t work quite as well sideways.
I switched because I missed i3wm mostly, and generally all of the local Linux software. But no complaints about the hardware.
Plug it into a usb-c dock connected to a screen/keyboard/mouse and it's a Mac, put it on the little stand with the magic keyboard and it's a MacBook, hold it in your hand and it's an iPad
My dream device
Apple is very clear about their product differentiation and would never make macOS and ipadOS exact copies. Case in point: when they brought cursor support over, they painstakingly engineered it to work differently and snap to objects on the screen. I think if they did OP's suggestion and had a macOS screen show up when an iPad is connected to peripherals it would actually work out well.
Switching between entirely different and separate "UI personalities" could work.
I don't think the pointer vs touch UI is the main thing that people have in mind when wishing for macOS on the iPad though, instead a "proper" UNIX-style filesystem and shell, and the ability to install any software outside the app store via a package manager and without Apple's nanny reflex getting in the way.
It goes back further than that too. Microsoft bought the Sidekick and squandered their lead by bringing it onto the Microsoft platform.
I'm reminded of this quote: "A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds."
Laptops and tablets are different devices. We should stop trying to merge them. Every time we do, we end up with something that is a worse version of both things. Tablets need a battery. If the display is detachable, then that creates a weight problem for the laptop. The tablet keyboard is worse than any laptop keyboard.
I said over a decade ago I thought Apple was smart to just have a tablet OS as well as OSX. Don't spend 3 years trying to merge those things. It's a waste of time and gains you nothing. Even the tablet and phone OSs are somewhat distinct (but a lot less so than with OSX).
I always thought Eric Schmidt (at the time) did the right thing with ChromeOS and Android too. There were always questions from people seeking faux "consistency" like "why have 2 OSs? Shouldn't we merge them?" Again, phones and laptops are different things. Let each OS evolve and see if one emerges as a "winner". Otherwise, leave them alone.
And then there were the checkboxes which allowed you to extend the OS beyond Chrome OS's initial limitations. Enable Android. Enable Linux. Enable developer mode. But the user (or administrator) could ignore those checkboxes and keep the machine in a fairly locked down state.
Keep imagining a similar abilities on iPads. A seamless transition from desktop mode to touch and back again. With options allowing you to make it into more of a general purpose computer if you want. But the options can be ignored in favor of the walled garden, if that's what the user or school or corporate owners want.
The iPads have had the hardware in the M-series chips and the software in the form of Apple's hypervisor framework in iPadOS for a couple of generations now, but Apple hasn't enabled it to be used officially.
I really wish they would just allow this on iPadOS. It still maintains the sandbox model Apple wants for iOS, it would just give a (contained) outlet for doing things that are difficult in native iPadOS.
In any case, Apple still wants to "review" apps, and we want (arbitrary) user code execution on device. That's something Apple strictly forbids on iOS/iPadOS AFAIK (which is why we can't even have Firefox addons). Unless we can have at least true side loading, a DMA extension to iPad won't help.
The DMA isn't really the right tool to liberate devices, since it's about market competition not consumer rights. I think it would be better to widely address this along right-to-repair, electronic waste reduction and consumer rights regarding actual ownership. Unconditionally locked hardware is ridiculous.
I wish they would simply unlock the bootloader, so we can have Asahi Linux for iPad. They don't have to do anything else. Although Asahi is on trajectory to exceed MacOS performance and dev usability, I don't think they would lose their existing appstore cattle to Linux, but rather gain new hardware only customers.
Though, I don't see true sideloading (like on Android) specified. If apps still need Apple's approval, we will get "freedom" who to pay, not what to run. I still don't see device liberation within the scope of the DMA.
However, if we're lucky, Apple may decide the app approval process may not be worth it, if they are not allowed to extort developers anymore, so they may allow unsupervised sideloading as a consequence.
In any case, requirements and reality may take much longer to align than 6 more months, considering Apple's cringeworthy tantrums so far...
But if Apple abuses its position as platform gatekeeper with the app approval process and rules, the EU will probably slap them down. The DMA doesn't care about device liberation, but it does care about fairness, so Apple will probably only be allowed to continue this if they act in very good faith towards 3rd parties, which doesn't seem like an Apple thing to do.
They removed the hypervisor framework in addition to the kernel support for virtualization a few months ago unfortunately.
Even if they made every single one of them buy a new ipad every single year that would still be single digit change of revenue for apple
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-05-05/apple-...