Column My decade-old and very well-travelled 13" MacBook Pro finally died, and I hoped my new-ish M2 iPad Pro could replace it.
Yet no matter how hard I try, an iPad cannot serve me like a Mac does and I can’t help but wonder why.
Some of it must be my mindset: Nearly 50 years of using computers equipped with keyboards and screens "programmed" me with certain expectations. Fourteen years of using iPads has programmed me with a very different set of capabilities.
I think I could unlearn some habits but only after enormous efforts.
Operating systems therefore look like another reason I can’t make the iPad my main machine.
I've written about the M2 iPad Pro and M2 MacBook Air sharing many components yet running different OSes. But even if I could somehow get macOS running on my iPad Pro, would that resolve this tension?
I don't think so. A tablet lacks a keyboard and trackpad and even if I buy models designed for the iPad, tablets are all about push, poke, and drag.
Steve Jobs reportedly held back the release of the iPad (despite huge pent-up-demand) until he felt the iPad interface reflected more than just a 'scaled up iPhone'. What we see today is the outcome of almost two decades of design choices that have only recently started to accommodate keyboards and external pointing devices.
Any computer that can't offer me a terminal window, root access, and the ability to type "python" to get into a REPL shell feels fake - an incomplete simulation of a real computer. Yes, I have iSH and aShell on my iPad Pro - great tools, yet neither offering the kind of power that I need when using PyTorch (which runs great on a bare-metal M2).
I could single out Apple for its ridiculous policies that make iPads less useful than Macs, but Cupertino is not alone: Microsoft won't let users upgrade their older boxen to Windows 11. I have a first-generation Surface Go (magically, both a laptop and a tablet) that still works perfectly, and which will become so much electronic detritus later this year because Microsoft refuses to let its own hardware run its own operating system.
It's infuriating, largely because it all feels so self-serving.
The promises of "safety and security" vendors intone as they guide us into their monopolistic cages mean something very different when looking out from inside those bars. Safety feels like vulnerability, and security becomes entirely dependent on the steady attention of a vendor that suddenly has no fears about losing customers even if they fumble the ball.
Crowdstrike, anyone?
I already know I'll ignore my misgivings and buy an M4 MacBook Air to replace already-missed 2015 machine. Apple builds well - this laptop might make it with me well into the 2030s.
What kind of OS and services will we be using then? Will 'office' software still come from one vendor (ok, possibly two, for those using Google's apps)?
Will we still have just three operating systems to choose from - of which only two are really suitable for a worker's desktop? Will we have just two mobile OSes? Will everything continue to consolidate, an ensh*ttification demanding more and more from us while offering less and less in return?
Or are we closer to a different kind of world in which improving AI interfaces mean none of this really matters? Can all of this entrapment be abstracted away by agents? I'd like to think so - but if history is any guide, AI providers will be tempted to lay down a breadcrumb path to another cage.
Time to find an angle grinder. ®