macOS On iPad Pro? It’s Complicated.
How Apple will (and won’t) bring macOS to the M1 iPad Pro.
It’s been a year since I wrote a story about WWDC 21 and how Apple lost a new M1-based iPad sale due to mismanaged expectations.
To put it bluntly, iPad OS 15 wasn’t the OS upgrade I was looking for, and so I moved along.
What I wanted, you see, was the ability to run professional apps on the recently announced M1-based iPad Pro. Especially when paired with the Magic Keyboard and trackpad. With an 8 or 16 GB M1 chip onboard, I wanted the ability to run Xcode. Or Final Cut Pro.
I wanted something that would utilize the power and promise of that M1 chip. I dreamed of being able to run the same tools and applications I could run on a 13" MacBook Pro or MacBook Air that had the same exact processor and capabilities.
But when the iPad OS announcements rolled around, what Apple gave us instead were better, more “discoverable” tile-based multitasking modes. No Xcode, although Playgrounds was beefed up a bit. Definitely no Final Cut Pro. And definitely nothing that looked like macOS.
So order cancelled.
Now a Apple new patent has appeared and it looks like my wish is about to be granted. Or will it?
