For all the optimism when it launch , it ’s passably light that Apple does n’t really know what to do with the iPad these days .
You ca n’t kill off a production that brings in$8 billionin a secure after part and effortlessly dominate its market , but by the company ’s sublime standards , the iPad has never been a honest commercial blockbuster and in all probability never will . It ’s also difficult to market a gadget with two discrete hearing : creative professionals , who are relatively few in act , and casual users , who upgrade once in a blue synodic month and avoid the higher - allowance modelling . Overall , it ’s a bit of a incubus .
Last week a report from Bloomberg leaker Mark Gurman pointed to one possible solution : Apple is going to make the iPad a whole caboodle more like the Mac . In the iPadOS 19 update , which will be announce at WWDC25 this June , the company will reportedly address “ productivity , multitasking , and app windowpane management ” by adopting chemical element of macOS ’s interface and navigation . Not by installing macOS on iPads , to be unclouded , but by bringing iPadOS closer to macOS .
detail remain rather vague at this point , and as common , we must level out that plans can transfer and that revolutionary makeover of this variety are prone to be shelved when the going stupefy baffling . But my response to the theme as it stand right now is threefold : something unquestionably demand to change , and this could go very , very wrong .
Partly I ’m worried that what works on one hardware format wo n’t necessarily work on another . The Mac ’s windowing system evolved as the easiest organization to navigate using a mouse and keyboard , not a touch screen . ( The iPad can use a computer mouse and keyboard as optional accessories , of course , but its type O still involve to work in the main via touch . ) If it was that promiscuous to cross formats , we would have had a hybrid Mac / iPad a long time ago .
But my biggest fear make out down to that bifurcated market I mentioned earlier . Most creative pros are not merely Mac users but Macpowerusers , accustomed to getting the most out of Apple ’s most advanced desktops and laptops , and I ’m sure this chemical group of customers will apprise the iPad dumbfound a Mac - style windowpane management system ( take on it ’s done right ) . But the majority of iPad owners are , I would reason , far less well-situated with complex port and indeed choose to use Apple ’s lozenge in preference to a MacBook or big - covert iPhone precisely because of its simplicity . They do n’t want to practise down through file direction structures or tweak configurations at a granular level . The iPad ’s selling peak for most customers is itslackof faff .
Maybe Cupertino has decide it does n’t need to pursue the everyday tablet marketplace any longer . That would n’t be completely out of character : the launching of the iPhone 16e earlier this year implied a willingness to abandon the budget smartphone food market and focalise on a pocket-size routine of more profitable sales at the in-between and upper ending . Casual iPad users tend to bribe the cheapest model and then hang on to it for many years , and it would be understandable if Apple adjudicate to let Samsung or OnePlus have that market . I ca n’t reckon pro tablet users are numerous enough to add in $ 8 billion per one-quarter , but center on that segment rather than the pill grocery store as a whole would free up resource for other field of interest .
What ’s more likely is that the iPad batting order will split in two .
The simple approach would be to make the new Mac - esque productivity features and windows direction organisation in iPadOS 19 an M - serial publication cow dung undivided , optional , and activate by nonremittal on devices that support it . Hence , an iPad Pro out of the box would conduct more like a Mac , while letting you go back to the classical user interface if you wish , perhaps when you do n’t have access to a separate mouse and/or keyboard . Budget iPad and iPad mini owners , meanwhile , would never realize anything had convert . Apple would lead off to come near the iPad as two separate ware , which it in effect has been since the first iPad Pro came out in 2015 , but the branding to anyone outside the fellowship would remain unified . It would be a affair of sell the interface refresh as an rise .
A bolder strategy would be to actually jump branding the standard and Pro iPads as separate lines . You could separate them at the OS level , much as Apple divided Io and iPadOS in 2019 , and call the new interface … createOS , perhaps . You could go further and break the ironware too , and stop using the iPad firebrand for one section of the lineup . I ’d love to see Apple launch a young MacPad at WWDC25 as a permutation for the iPad Pro , then market that as the shaft of choice for creative pros on the go .
Too openhanded to kill , too clumsy to get laid , Cupertino ’s red - headed stepchild require a new access , and shortly . Keeping the iPad the same risks alienate pro user , while bring it nigher to the Mac risk alienating everyone else . Maybe the meter is advanced to accept that the iPad is two product , not one , and address it as such .
Foundry
Welcome to our hebdomadary Apple Breakfast column , which includes all the Apple newsworthiness you missed last calendar week in a ready to hand morsel - sized roundup . We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it go bad great with a Monday dawn cup of coffee or tea , but it ’s nerveless if you desire to give it a read during dejeuner or dinner party hours too .
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Reviews corner
The rumor mill
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