Of all of Apple’s major product lines, it seems like none has been the subject of such intense debate and scrutiny over the last decade as the iPad. Can one do “real work” on it? It is a replacement for the Mac? Is it going to replace the Mac?
While products like the Mac and the iPhone have always had a clear role in our technology lives, the iPad’s place has been more ragged around the edges. It fills in the gaps between our lives and solves problems that neither the iPhone or Mac can. However, it does not replace either.
Despite all this, the iPad continues to exist under the shadow of its progenitors. And as it embarks upon its second decade, the future of the iPad is less than clear: its recent evolution–especially when it comes to the much anticipated Stage Manager feature–seems to suggest it heading in one of two directions.
The big iPhone
While the iPad may have been an idea before the iPhone arrived, it’s undeniable that Apple’s smartphone platform provided a basis for the tablet. iPadOS was an updated version of iOS. This is what it looked like until recently. Features that set it apart, like multitasking and external file support, didn’t arrive until much later, and it’s only in recent years that iPadOS has been spun off to make its own way in life.
iPadOS is starting to stand on it’s own, but it needs to evolve much more to provide an experience that separates itself from the iPhone.
Apple
The iPad is rooted in these underpinnings. still largely remains, for better or for worse, a big iPhone–a criticism often levied at it in its earliest years. It’s got the same home screen and the same interface conventions as the smartphone, which makes it all the more perplexing when new features arrive on iOS and don’t come to the tablet: for example, homescreen widgets debuted in iOS 14 but didn’t appear on the iPad until iPadOS 15 and, this year, iOS 16’s customizable lock screen remains sadly absent from iPadOS.
iPadOS being forked into its own platform means that it can offer features that aren’t available on iPhones, such as Split View multitasking and Stage Manager. But this attempt to fill one of the iPad’s biggest missing feature is still mired in the reality of its iOS origins: iPhone apps don’t really have a concept of “windows”, which means the iPad has to work backwards to create a multitasking system that actually makes sense. The beta has seen its fair share of bugs and pitfalls; it will be interesting to see what the release version looks like (and, given how Apple has continued to iterate upon its previous multitasking approaches on iPad, I’m not expecting this to be anything but a first stab).
Perhaps with a little more time and distance from iOS, iPadOS will finally come into its own, but the iPhone isn’t the only device with whom the tablet has shares a big chunk of its DNA.
The Mac daddy
In some ways, the Mac is the much older sibling whose presence has overshadowed the iPad’s every move. External file support? This is a staple feature of the Mac experience. You can multitask! It has been around for over 30 years on the Mac. Windowing? It’s been on the Mac since day one.
The upcoming macOS Ventura will also include Stage Manager, a new feature in iPadOS 16.
Apple
What’s fascinating is that the iPad has seemed determined to chart its own course in implementing many of these technologies, and it sometimes seems that it’s just for the sake of being Different. Rather than adapting some version of the Mac’s tried-and-true multitasking system, iPadOS has instead insisted on inventing its own approach: first with Split View and now with Stage Manager.
There’s certainly something to be said for forging a new path and not assuming that what came before was the best possible solution…but there’s also the argument that when something has worked well for decades, you may just be trying to reinvent the wheel. If anything, the iPad’s avoidance of Mac features—in particular the freedom of the Mac platform, as opposed to the locked-down nature of iOS—has held the iPad back from becoming all that it could be.
Granted, just making the iPad into a Mac isn’t really a solution for the tablet either.
The middle path
The iPad shouldn’t be a big iPhone and it shouldn’t just become a Mac. So what’s left? This is the most difficult needle to thread: Making the iPad its own device. You can start by questioning the assumptions that the iPad inherits from iOS. For example, is a simple screen full of application icons the best use of the device’s most valuable real estate? There’s no reason to be beholden to decisions made for an entirely different device.
The next step is to be careful when you steal. There should be no shame in stealing a feature from the Mac that would benefit iPad users. The company’s already shown it can do this with its excellent adaptation of keyboard and pointer support via the Magic Keyboard. You can see more of this.
It felt like an emergence when the iPad was released. third revolutionBut, a decade later, much of that potential had been wasted. None of this is to say that the iPad hasn’t been a success, but that it hasn’t been all that it could be. The iPad’s real chance is to be the. Best of both worlds: taking the modern aspects of iOS and combining what worked well on the Mac, and turning it into a device that’s more than the sum of its parts.
