APPLE SILICON

Can macOS save the iPad Pro?

The Ultra-Portable Mac We Didn’t See Coming

Mock-up of an iPad Pro running macOS | Image courtesy of the author

I’ve been railing over the last few months for Apple to launch an updated version of the 12-inch MacBook that was discontinued in 2019. I thought I had said all I wanted to say on this subject, but as I listened to the Nose-Biting Territory episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast yesterday, I heard Casey Liss say the following:

All right, let’s talk topics. And over the last week or so, maybe it was a little more than a week ago, there was a Mark Gurman report that, well, let me just read it. I’m told that iPadOS 19 will focus on productivity, multitasking, and app window management, with an eye on the device operating more like a Mac. It’s been a long time coming with iPad power users pleading with Apple to make the tablet more powerful. Okay, I mean, that sounds great on the surface, but what does that really mean?

I had already read about Mark Gurman’s report on MacRumors, so that wasn’t news to me. Then co-hosts John Siracusa and Marco Arment expounded upon the history of Apple’s multi-tasking efforts in iPadOS (it’s a two-hour podcast), which Arment summed up thusly:

We had slide over, then we had split screen, then now we have stage manager, and we have all these different things that keep…