The new iPad Air 5 reminds me of an article I made for a newspaper several years ago. It’s a look at some of Apple’s most amazing patents, and one of my favorites features a computer – which I believe was a Mac at the time – that can be set up for printing, promoted for watching videos, or used in standard laptop configuration. It is clear from the picture above that Apple went ahead and built it. It is worth noting that the iPad Air 5 is not a Mac. Or, at the very least, it is not marked as such. The difference between it and the MacBook Air, on the other hand, is a hairi that makes me feel like Mister Magoo.
The new iPad Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro have a big deal in common. They have the same M1 system on the chip, with the same number of CPU and GPU cores and the same standard RAM. Both have strong storage. And they always run the same apps: there are tons of iPadOS and iOS apps that will work happily on my M1 Mac. And that’s just the Air. How powerful will the upcoming iPad Pro be?
Of course there are also differences. The iPad has a touch screen and Apple Pencil and MacBook support does not. The iPad may have a built-in cellular connection and the MacBook cannot. And so on. But in one they are the same computer. They are just kitted differently – and essentially, they operate different user interfaces. Under the hood there is a lot of crossover between iPadOS and macOS. That is one of the reasons why developers can build one altar and run on the other. But what you see, what you touch and what you can do is very different.
I know Apple has said it is not interested in making Macs touch screen. But Apple has always controlled things until it made them, at what point do you think that was the idea all the time. So I can’t wonder if the iPad and Mac have become such that they will end up being the same device. Sure, iPadOS interface is better to touch and mobile use than macOS and macOS better for multitasking and file management. But that just corrected. At heart the OSes is the same.
Will they mix? Now I doubt it, because they are also made for different types of use and types of users – since I would like to have Logic Pro X on my iPad Air, I would not want to do all my production and recording on it. I’m sure you have your own examples of things that just work best on the iPad or even the Mac. But I think what we will see a lot of time is even the line between the two platforms. Do you love a MacBook Pro 5G or an iPad Pro Ultra?
