The divergence between macOS and ipadOS is not technical, it's that Apple believes a touch-oriented and a pointer-oriented interface are completely different things.
Touch and Pointer are different in emphasis not user intent. User Intent can span across device classes for different contexts -- i.e. jotting notes in a long form document in a meeting vs. at your laptop in private, all revolve around making progress on a text based deliverable.
Before recent MacCatalyst developments, the UI libraries were on different continents with CC and UIKit. Now, the major differences are design limited, not API limited.
UIMenuBuilder and UIHoverGestureRecognizer tells you most everything you need to know about how Apple is viewing the touch vs. pointer environment.
That might be part, but it's not the whole picture.
The only way to put software on the iPad is through Apple's app store, which is a hill they seem awfully willing to die on. It's possible they give that up for the iPad but hold onto the iPhone, but that would weaken the PR value of their security argument.
I've worked a full week away from an office using only VNC even before Apple added mouse support. It's fine. Touch-oriented vs Mouse-oriented is an odd philosophy to hold when it's used to oppose a workflow being somewhat supported vs not at at all.
While that makes sense, Apple's recent changes with the iPad Keyboard case adding a trackpad makes me think that they might have something else brewing for the long term. Time will tell, but I would love to see more MacOS applications like XCode become available on the iPad.
Edit: Also the fact that MacOS has been changing the UI to make it more touch friendly, for example: new control center.
Quite honestly I don't think Xcode is ready for the iPad. It's a complicated software that has a lot of bugs that has to be fixed manually a lot of times by accessing or clearing files directly. I'm pretty sure they have a version of it already running on the iPad but the workflow or software quality is just no there yet. However if SwiftUI becomes the standard I can imagine an Xcode light as a starting point with way less panels and options.
Plus the Big Sur interface changes seem to be touch-oriented. They made a lot of pointer targets much bigger than they used to be, and added a new special window type for modals.
Sure, but it's not really like Craig would say "yeah, touchscreen Macs are coming eventually, and this redesign is preparing for that" if they were. Apple doesn't do that. What I would glean from this is that they're not coming soon, and it's probably not going to be a conventional "add a touch screen to an existing interface" type deal. At the very least it leaves the option open for them here.
> It's not a large stretch to see some overlap between allowing macOS features on a large screen mobile device.
It is in fact a rather large stretch. macOS allowing the larger targets of iPad applications is a rather different proposition than macOS's rather small targets being on touch devices.
ipadOS has pointer support and the preferred way to do pointer interactions on macOS seems to be touchpads (not mice), so the gap is definitely not as large anymore.
> A touchpad is a pointer device with a similar level of precision and interaction as a mouse. One completely unlike touch.
The main difference is if you aim by using a pointer on the screen or if you aim by touching what you want to interact with. Some things like gestures are basically the same (or could be).
> The main difference is if you aim by using a pointer on the screen or if you aim by touching what you want to interact with.
Yes. That is not a small difference. That is, in fact, a huge difference.
The buttons on my phone are physically larger than those on my laptop's screen, yet they are significantly harder to hit reliably. Manipulating text remains a chore on touch device, except when those touch devices provide a pointer erzats (of which Apple removed a large part of the convenience when they broke selection support with the deprecation of 3D touch).
My guess is that they prefer to sell more than one device to everybody, so not anytime soon.
Really interested to hear Apple’s excuse not allowing to run MacOS on M1 iPad pro with an external monitor and keyboard. The standard "optimized for different use case" argument doesn't make that much sense with that setup.
I wonder even if that never comes to fruition, there'll be a "hackpad" that's essentially flashing/installing macOS onto an iPad Pro. Same M1 SOC hypothetically should be straightforward.
I don't think it's about features, but mostly about the input methods.
Until this day we (as a society) haven't found a way to combine pointer based and touch based UIs in a single product in a way that at least one of them doesn't suck hard.
