In 2010, Jobs released the first generation of iPad, with excellent design and powerful features and high ease of use, iPad can be said to be a hit, only two months after the release, sales have exceeded 3 million units. It's no exaggeration to say that even the concept of a tablet was sparked by the iPad.
Amusement? Productivity?
The success of iPad is inseparable from its precise positioning. In Jobs's eyes, he defined the iPad as a "third type of device," neither a phone nor a laptop. Using iPad is more convenient and convenient to use than a laptop or smartphone to complete some tasks such as web browsing, picture browsing, video viewing, and more.
To be honest, products such as iPad are not as rigid as mobile phones and computers for consumers, but iPad still accurately finds the gap between mobile phones and laptops, so the card slot is not inaccurate.
But for the iPad, it is really successful and the positioning is also positioned, why is it so? Because the times are developing, the positioning of the iPad has quietly undergone some changes. In 2015, with the release of the iPad Air, Apple announced that the iPad began to officially enter the productivity market. This means that the iPad is no longer a pure entertainment device, and the iPad, which was originally only used to browse the web, pictures and watch videos, has been given a new task by the times.
In order to make the iPad more productive, Apple released some accessories for the iPad, such as the Apple Pencle and the Magic Control Keyboard. This does make the iPad more efficient and more productive in a way.
But what makes the iPad officially labeled "productivity" is the iPad Pro, just from the suffix of this Pro, it is not difficult to see that it is higher than the previous iPad positioning, Apple hopes that the iPad Pro can complete more and more complex tasks. Even used "Your next computer, why should it be a computer?" "Such advertising slogans. This shows Apple's ambition for the iPad Pro in terms of productivity.
Not only in the surrounding supporting and publicity, in order to make the iPad have stronger performance, Apple even at all costs to put the desktop-level M1 chip into the latest iPad Pro, its top version of the memory also reached 16GB. Such hardware is even a bit of a surplus for tablets, as it has fully reached the level of a high-end Macbook Air.
But as performance gets stronger, does productivity go up? As it turns out, it doesn't seem to be! The problem is clearly at the software level, with the iPadOS system bearing the brunt of it. Even though the iPad has the most powerful performance, iPadOS was designed for tablets from the beginning, and did not think too much about the needs of productivity.
The iPad of the past was a great success with its excellent product positioning, and now that the iPad is positioned as a productivity tool, iPadOS seems to be a stumbling block for it. For this, there have long been enthusiastic netizens to give a simple and rude solution: directly to the iPad Pro on MacOS!
Technically, this completely works, because the hardware of the iPad Pro is almost exactly the same as the Macbook series today, so as long as Apple wants, it is a matter of minutes to use MacOS for the iPad Pro. However, Apple's official attitude is clear. Scott of iPad Product Marketing According to Scott Broderick, iPad and Mac are two distinct platforms that are different and distinctive, now and in the future.
Is the iPad expected to be powered by MacOS?
Good guys, look at this attitude this is iron heart not to let the iPad Pro on MacOS anymore? In fact, not necessarily, after all, the advantages of MacOS Apple must have a number. Recently, Patently Apple found that although Apple said that it would not do macOS iPad, it was quietly researching and developing behind its back and applied for a patent.
From the patent diagram alone, this does not seem to be much different from the traditional iPad. It's worth noting, however, that it's running macOS, not the iPadOS that has always been the same in the iPad product line.
Judging from Apple's new patent, it is similar to the detachable base of the iPad. It includes a trackpad, keyboard, connector, full-featured and looks more professional, and can also be transformed into a variety of forms, such as tent mode, laptop mode, somewhat Microsoft Surface visual sense.
Apple has further equipped it with a magnetic keyboard hinge to adsorb the Apple Pencil, as well as a series of accessories such as cameras, projectors, microphones, etc., to meet various professional needs, no matter from which point of view this is a productivity full of iPad.
All indications are that Apple is not completely out of consideration for the macOS version of the iPad, but it is still unknown whether it will eventually go public and when it will be available.
Zaker Technology wants to say that in fact, in many cases, the form of the product does not have to have a clear boundary, and some seemingly cross-border or niche products can still be successful. A prime example is Microsoft's Surfaces Pro series, a tablet but also a laptop that runs Windows without any sense of violation. With the keyboard and Surfaces Pen, everything is so appropriate.
Although at the price of surface pro, it is doomed to have too high sales, but I believe that no one will deny the success of Surface Pro. The success of the Surface Pro is largely due to the fact that it runs the Windows system that everyone is familiar with, which makes it extremely productive.
Conversely, the ARM version of surface ProX was snubbed because it did not have a full version of Windows.
Today's iPad is also often ridiculed by users to buy pre-productivity, after buying iQiyi. This also reflects the limited productivity of iPad, and its positioning is still difficult to get rid of jobs' original vision of web browsing, picture browsing, video viewing, etc. This is clearly contrary to the productivity that Apple is now so much advocating.
In fact, iPadOS and macOS are also based on the Darwin kernel, so it is not difficult to adapt macOS to the iPad. As we all know, macOS has many excellent software in the field of creation, such as Apple's own Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, etc., and the iPad Pro itself and its powerful peripherals are also loved by many creators, if Apple can combine the advantages of the two, it may be able to get 1+1>2 effect.
I believe that many netizens have imagined the Final Cut Pro or the full version of Ps running on the iPad.
From the perspective of the iPad itself, it already has a hardware performance comparable to that of the Macbook, but iPadOS limits the play of M1, which is somewhat heroic and useless.
On the other hand, iPad equipped with macOS is conducive to the popularization of ARM desktop ecology, especially at the moment, Apple's Macbook has also begun to fully embrace the ARM architecture, which is facing the pain of the transition period. In terms of macbook market share, it is really not conducive to Apple's rapid promotion of the desktop ARM software ecosystem. But with iPad, that would change dramatically.
Given that Apple has now fully switched to the ARM architecture, it seems more reasonable to have the iPad equipped with macOS. Some users even think that if Apple really wants to popularize the ARM desktop software ecosystem, it should let the iPad be equipped with macOS.
There are already pioneers, but everything is still unknown
However, many people may not know that the macOS version of the iPad was once a real product, but it is a bit old, even earlier than the iPad, and it is not officially produced. The product, called Modbook, debuted at Macworld in 2007 by Axiontron.
It ran the macOS desktop system, and even more amazingly, at the time, it was equipped with an "Apple Pencile" with programmable side keys and erasers, which was groundbreaking in the zero years. It even launched a second-generation product called the Modbook Pro.
But as the saying goes, one step ahead is a pioneer, and too much ahead is a martyr. In the end, the Modbook series was abandoned by the market due to high prices and other reasons.
But today, the conditions seem to be more mature than it was then, and there are more rumors that the iPad Pro2022 will adopt a design language similar to the Macbook Pro, and even Liu Haiping has been inherited.
Does this imply that Apple has a different idea for the iPad with MacOS than in the past?
Produced by ZAKER Technology
Text / Tan Zhaofei