My original iPad Pro 12.9" died back in December and I’ve been waiting for the next refresh ever since. I originally thought that it would be in March, but it was in April this year to correspond with new Apple TVs, iMacs, and AirTags. Preorders were this morning and I secured a new 11" iPad Pro as I don’t think the price increase of the 12.9" model is for me. However, both models contain the M1 chip (which I thought was just for Macs) which leads to an interesting problem: iPadOS.
Since the new iPad I am getting has the same CPU, GPU, and RAM as my Mac Mini, I expect great performance out of it (which I do not doubt that I will get). The problem lies with what am I going to be able to do with those resources. In the marketing, the iPad is positioned as the tool for photo and video editing as well as complex 3D + AR workflows (of which I do nothing of the sort). Another issue is multitasking since iPadOS basically only allows 2 applications to be in use at once and you can popover a 3rd application for light tasks.
If I were to be running macOS, I could be running Terminal, Xcode, Firefox, Spotify, and a whole bunch of other apps and have no problems. So, to make the iPad more productive, you would need to remove some of the iOS-like limitations on apps as well as allow true multi-window multitasking. My hope is that the hardware landed before the software and WWDC (and likely next year’s as well) will introduce a better OS for the iPad.
Now, while I would like to say “just run macOS”, Apple has time and time again said that they are not merging iPadOS and macOS. While I think merging the two would be fine, you could also use virtualization to run mini macOS containers on the iPad to run Mac apps (although this would be like reverse Catalyst and I’m not sure it would work well). Otherwise, if Apple keeps the status quo, there really is no point in continuing to throw massive hardware at this tablet as there is no real competition other than perhaps really expensive 2-in-1 machines (but the 2-in-1s have the OS advantage).
With WWDC only a few weeks away, I am really excited to see what is shown this year and hope I can turn my new iPad into a productive machine.