Apple is working on bridging the gap between the Mac and the iPad with iPadOS and Catalyst apps. Earlier this year at WWDC, Apple unveiled the iPadOS, a spin-off version of iOS which can perform more operations compared to an iPad running iOS. The company is also working on bringing iPad apps to the Mac with the help of Catalyst – a tool that will help developers port their iPad apps to the Mac platform.
This year, Apple also introduced SwiftUI – a framework that will developers make apps for both Mac and iOS platforms at the same time without requiring any major changes in code. The company is definitely looking at ways to bring both the Mac and the iPad platform together. Apple’s competitor Microsoft has already done it with its Surface device(s) platform which is both a laptop and a tablet.
Well, if Apple is bringing iPad apps to the Mac, why is the company not doing vice-versa of that as well? It would be great to run Mac apps on the iPad and people would actually consider buying the iPad instead of the Mac which is already suffering from various issues like the keyboard, display, etc.
iPads are affordable compared to the Mac
Also, the iPad is comparatively less expensive when compared to the Mac as Apple creates its own chips and does most of the work by itself without relying on many outsiders. Of course, running Mac apps on the iPad will not feel natural but it could definitely be worked upon.
The Mac is a great platform but the iPad is promising too. So it would be nice to have both of them exchange their features and the Mac is anyways years old when compared to the iPad. The Mac was never exactly a success in terms of market share whereas the iPad did fairly well.
Apple could essentially offer a developer’s mode in iOS to enable the features that a causal iPad user would not want to use. If not using software, then Apple could make a developer’s edition iPad which could run Mac apps.