The vast majority of the market didn't need an iPhone at all until it was introduced. If you enable compelling enough use cases people will find ways for them to fit their workflows, and/or come up with brand new ones.
The biggest hurdle standing in the way is that making a single one of iPhone/iPad/Mac too powerful (in terms of usability, not just raw processing power) will take away sales from the other two.
The vast majority of the market didn't need an iPhone at all until it was introduced. If you enable compelling enough use cases people will find ways for them to fit their workflows, and/or come up with brand new ones.
It was a compelling value proposition to Crackberries of the era; Apple clearly did market research before flinging it to the masses. Danger Inc / Google were already converging on this with their first Android.
The biggest hurdle standing in the way is that making a single one of iPhone/iPad/Mac too powerful (in terms of usability, not just raw processing power) will take away sales from the other two.
Cannibalising their product line is probably the most plausible explanation, but I'm sceptical. I reckon it's just that they haven't found a "killer" use case for it and probably bottom in the list of ideas for improving the product (if it even made a list).
Yeah, the appetite for something iPhone like had been clear for quite some time, Apple was just the first to pull off a really solid version. Getting the touch interface right was a big factor.
But for earlier examples, I had a Palm VII back in 1999. I was working for a CRM reseller and we got one to play with as a potential solution for a client project.
It was super limited but being able to browse the web while on the go was immediately obvious as a very big deal. BlackBerries didn't get web until a couple years later but I'm sure users of that would say something similar.
There have been numerous attempts at dockable phones over the years.
> The biggest hurdle standing in the way is that making a single one of iPhone/iPad/Mac too powerful (in terms of usability, not just raw processing power) will take away sales from the other two.
No it won’t. Nobody is cross-shopping a full size laptop with screen and keyboard or a phone with a tiny screen and no keyboard.
the most recent attempt with linux is pretty good, but it was held back by the slow hardware and driver support.
If the pinephone had enough power to record a video, and maybe better waydroid integration I would use it. I like the convenience of using the same apps as on my laptop, and being able to develop on the same platform that I am targeting. That is a unique selling point.
Apple has the funding to do this, but they choose not to. It would damage their whole market segmentation scheme. It is a penetration strategy
> I like the convenience of using the same apps as on my laptop, and being able to develop on the same platform that I am targeting. That is a unique selling point.
And almost all of my apps have iPhone, iPad and Mac versions with cloud syncing of the data between them.
It’s just a flag for developers to allow iPad apps to run on ARM based Macs without any modifications.
> *and being able to develop on the same platform that I am targeting. That is a unique selling point.*
With ARM based Macs, they basically are the same except for the screen size. Compilation speed would be much slower on an iPhone than a Mac.
When the iPhone was introduced, the worldwide penetration of cell phones was already 1 billion. Jobs said he wanted to sell 10 million or 1% of the market during the first year.
The iPad and the Mac combined is 20% of Apple’s revenue. People buy iPads because they want a larger screen.
I mean you can carry around a portable USB C monitor and plug it into your iPhone today. I have one that gets power and video from one USB cord for my laptop. But most people don’t want to do that.
> I mean you can carry around a portable USB C monitor and plug it into your iPhone today. I have one that gets power and video from one USB cord for my laptop. But most people don’t want to do that.
Have some imagination? I know plenty of folks that use their phone as their main computer, but could use more screen space on occasion to finish a complex task at a desk with a mouse and keyboard.
Something like phone mirroring that utilizes the full display (Perhaps full macOS?) would be amazing for that use case. Could be wireless or a magsafe stand, or even a homepod-style handoff thing with the phone’s nfc chip.
The hardware for this is pretty much there, Apple just needs to productize it.
Okay you can already use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse on an iPhone and the USB powered portable monitor I have can be used with my USB C iPhone. Because of power constraints, it can only drive the display up to 50% brightness. But you can plug power up to the other USB C port on my monitor to power the display at full brightness and charge the phone.
This is my iPhone 16 Pro Max with my external portable monitor. The phone is connected with a standard USB C cord and the Anker battery is plugged in with another USB C cord into the monitor.
That’s really neat, I just wish Apple would go all-in on monitor support.
There’s no good reason I shouldn’t be able to plug my phone into my Studio Display when I need a bit more room to work on a task I started on my phone. Yes, there’s handoff between iOS & macOS, but it’s very tied to specific apps, and requires another Mac that may not really be necessary.
Well, that monitor has a just a regular old monitor with two USB C ports and a mini HDMI port. I am connecting it with a regular USB C to USB C cord. There is no reason you can’t use a standard USB C to HDMI cord to connect the phone to your Studio Display.
What work would you start on your phone that doesn’t either have an app on your Mac where everything is synced via cloud services and/or there isn’t a web app where you can’t start on one and keep going on another?
I can already use GSuite (work and personal), Office365 (personal subscription), and iWorks across my Mac, iPhone, and iPad using apps and/or the web and things automatically sync and of course notes, calendar, mail, messages, Slack, etc are synced between everything.
My personal Trello board is synced between all of them and even my third party podcast app - Overcast - has an iPhone, iPad, Mac and web interface that syncs.
> The vast majority of the market is totally uninterested in docking their phone like that though
s/uninterested/unaware/
In reality, for such hardware to make sense, it would have to be a full MacBook Air minus the PCB. Would you be willing to spend 500-1000 USD for a piece of hardware that only works when your phone is connected? (i.e. an iPhone accessory)
This works with Macs, Windows PCs and USB C based iPhones and iPads. You just connect it with a USB C cable. It gets power and video from the USB C cable.
It would be interesting to see a tablet sized dual mode device where the OS and user apps could seamlessly switch back and forth between a 100% touch mode UI and a 100% precision pointing mode UI without restarting or losing data.
It would mean a lot more work for developers though if your app needs two different UI designs.
One issue that sticks out is that touch controls of a usable size just take up so much more screen space.
Also, look at how many years it took Microsoft to provide touch friendly access to the Windows control panels.
So your reference point is a niche device from 2013 running a stillborn mobile OS with a 1ghz processor, and because that didn’t gain traction, you’ve concluded the segment is not viable.
My reference point is existing for many years and seeing many people pushing for dockable computers and seeing them repeatedly not take off.
Notably the people pushing for dockable computers are computer geeks who say things like "I only listen to OGG Vorbis, MP3 is unusable" and "no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame" and "I could build Dropbox in a weekend with rsync" and "I don't understand why people need to see pictures or video, text is all I need". Normal people aren't itching to SSH from their TV using a bluetooth keyboard connected to a smartphone with a VPN so they can do X-Forwarding of Brave browser. Normal people are fine with buying a laptop with Gmail and using an Android TV stick to watch from a streaming service.
Interesting how people rationalize this stuff. My phone can dock to a screen; I've never used the feature, but it doesn't obstruct anything I do. It's a nice-to-have, and it would be kinda appealing if Firefox and Spotify both work like normal. I might even deign to say I could get work done on it (though I've never tried).
Presumably the real reason is that Apple is still afraid to segment their market. A plug-in iPhone would stop people from buying the AppleTV or Mac Mini for home theater applications.
I'll chuck in another rationalisation from just one angle (of many). It's a low in demand feature that if they implement they would have to support. One thing that Apple does incredibly well (I really can't think of any tech company that comes close) is provide front line support for virtually every capability and feature in the Apple ecosystem. This means they have to resource support people to know how the feature works, and troubleshoot it when things have issue, dedicate engineer resources if an issue cannot be fixed and requires escalation, etc.
Just having such a feature involves a cost, and the juice is just not worth the squeeze.
Curious, if your phone supports the feature and it doesn't work, what is your recourse?
You really think Apple is worried about the sales of the AppleTV and Mac Mini? Two of their lowest selling devices? You can already plug an iPhone into a TV for video with a standard non proprietary HDMI to USB C cable and AirPlay is available on $49 Roku sticks.
Only around 10% of Apple’s revenue is the Mac and every estimate is 70% of those are laptops. The AppleTV is far behind in market share for media center devices or whatever you call Roku, Fire sticks etc.
You can already stream from your iPhone via AirPlay to at least Roku sticks/TVs and I assume others. The number of people who want to use an iPhone as a full computer is miniscule.
I think it largely comes down to the App Store limitation at this point (the UI is... livable enough now, though it does still seem a waste to not just have the macOS UI in keyboard-attached mode). Consumers can't take things like their Steam library over and workers can't just run existing enterprise apps - it has to be Apple approved apps which fit the Apple architectural requirements and are purchased/distributed through the Apple Store.
For a small subset that is absolutely also stuff like terminal and Docker, but there's nothing special about that group beyond "they use a different set of apps not allowed in the App Store".
Most “enterprise apps” these days are web based SaaS apps.
The PC games market is really not that large in the grand scheme of things and what serious game player would want to play games on laptop class hardware? Even with the iPad Pro you are talking about MacBook Air level hardware with worse thermals for games.
And the most popular office Apps - Microsoft Office and GSuite are a per seat license - for both home and office. Meaning you can use the apps on your phone, laptop, or mobile devices and sync apps between them.
How many productivity apps don’t “fit in Apple’s guideline”?
You should talk to this person for me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45399380 since they argue these chips are already ideal for high intensity video games. It doesn't have to be AAA titles though, many games (simple and advance) make it to the "top paid apps" section of the app store once they "make the leap across" so to say. The thing is, not every game/app has made the leap, and when they do they don't all transfer ownership.
I don't mean office apps, I mean enterprise apps. I do see them becoming more web focused with time (which I think is a good thing - it's ultra portable when they are) but we're certainly not ready to claim victory just because most email and document editing can be done from a webview. Hell, there's one app I have to use daily which is still officially only 32 bit Windows (it, thankfully, works in Crossover).
What are these enterprise apps? And how many of them would run on an ARM based Mac? If they don’t port them to Macs, what are the chances they would port them to iPads?
> Hell, there's one app I have to use daily which is still officially only 32 bit Windows (it, thankfully, works in Crossover).
As an example. This one is Intangi IRIS, a BOM and quoting tool for network products, and they officially support Crossover. They've been talking about native macOS support since before I started using it in 2019... but that's the speed of business for you :).
It's the long tail of apps like these that can make it painful - not the bulk of the day (email, conference calls, and web ticketing systems) itself.
Then it that case, it wouldn’t matter if the iPad gained the capabilities of the Mac. It would never run the bespoke enterprise software unless Apple ported the x86 emulator to it. Even then the x86 emulator doesn’t support 32 bit software.
I'm not sure I follow. As already explained, the example given works for me on macOS today since I can install Crossover (which is an officially supported install method by Intangi - not a custom hack) which is not allowed/supported on the App Store/iPad. Crossover handles 32 bit x86 Windows apps on Apple Silicon fine, even though Apple themselves don't, since right after Apple Silicon launched https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2020/11/18/okay-im-o...
You're saying there is some other reason it wouldn't work if I ran macOS/had macOS's capabilities on an M4 iPad chassis instead of an M4 MacBook chassis?
Btw, I don't think you'd intend to go against the site guidelines by it (I figure it's probably just two separate logins on two separate devices or something), but if you're using multiple accounts in the same conversations it does go against them.
That was not my intention at all (to have multiple accounts on the same conversation). I knew not to upvote myself or downvote a reply - which I did not do.
But back to the point, i always thought of custom bespoke enterprise apps were ones that usually ignored the Mac and especially ARM Macs.
Fair point - but a niche case I don’t see Apple going out of their way to support.
Before iPad OS 26 and real windows, I would have thought that the iPad would be frustrating even for mainstream office work. I could definitely see myself using my wife’s iPad 13 Air now full time - she does except for development tasks.
My old A12 iPad Air fromn 2019 runs iOS 26 halfway decently even with only 3GB RAM.
And Apple has never really cared about “the enterprise”
No worries, I figured you didn't mean anything by it I just didn't want you to end up in a surprise problem one day over something silly.
It always seems niche when talking about examples of stuff that can't be done. Prior to iPadOS 26 people would tell me I just didn't understand what an iPad wasn't supposed to have windowing similar to macOS too, but it was hard to say it wasn't a niche use case when the old way discouraged users who wanted that from using the platform.
I agree Apple doesn't typically target Enterprise directly, but they do support them. They maintain things like MDM support across all products, Apple Business Manager, and AppleCare for Enterprise. The big difference between supporting those kinds of use cases and this is that these enable more Apple products to be sold, while enabling iPadOS to do MacBook like things enables fewer and cheaper devices to be sold. I don't actually expect Apple to go down this path for that reason, but I still wish they would.
The same is still somewhat true of some consumer use cases like games they already own on macOS or peripheral support not in iPadOS, but Apple has given a little over the years in this regard (e.g. allowing 1 external monitor, allowing certain peripherals and dock types, adding decent windowing support). Of course, Apple's goal in this remains to align with what feature set will make them the most money, not what feature set people would use, the two things just align slightly better in the consumer space than the enterprise space.
But a person could still dream their phone/iPad more powerful than most people's laptops could take the role of one when plugged in, even if it wouldn't make Apple more money.
I work in customer facing cloud consulting specializing in app dev. My days are spent:
1. Zoom
2. The AWS console in a web browser
3. The terminal - and I can bring up CloudShell for simple things from the AWS web console
4. Slack/Notion/GSuite apps/Jira
5. Visual Studio Code and using Docker. For that, I would just spin up a Windows based AWS WorkSpace with the iPad client app and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference when using a regular Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
That's pretty much Microsoft's approach on every system now - even if you install Outlook or Teams, it's just a web app. If it weren't for that I wonder if keyboards on iPads would even still be common at all. That said, there is a heck of a lot more to enterprise apps than things like email still out there. When I was still at a health system we'd try to use tablets for new things whenever possible (they are just physically convenient in many work environments) but we'd inevitably end up with "web stuff" on the tablet and "everything else" on a laptop (sometimes with mobile cart) for this exact reason.
I also worked in B2B health SaaS companies. Even then some health systems used whatever you call the hosted Windows servers and people used their computers as dumb terminals to run apps. There were clients for iPads.
This is an option for a lot of things, e.g. we delivered Epic Hyperspace over Citrix, but it can be extremely expensive in terms of TCO to do for every app (we still had over 3,000+ individual on prem hosted apps maintained).
I think this is a pretty poor reading of the market. Everyone has a phone. An increasing segment now has little access to desktop or laptop computing. I know I hate that I have to pick up my laptop to do relatively small tasks that I'm halfway through on my phone.
Offering a dockable screen/keyboard/mouse, using the phone battery/compute/storage seems like it would be trivial for Apple.
Obviously cannibalises laptop or tablet sales, but that's not the market's disinterest.
