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).
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".