I just left for a trip today and have a macbook I purchased three days ago along for the ride. Both the spouse and I were uncomfortable with only having ipads - and within 4 hours of landing it's already been the right call.
It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
>A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
There are many, many ways to acquisition that, just because apple won't let you do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Anything that can run linux with the KDE plasma desktop environment will, at very least, feel very familiar to OSX. You might have to seek out some app alternatives if you're doing something specific, but nowadays general desktop computing like you'd do on a laptop is well covered in most distros, and if you're looking for a place to start, Kubuntu is likely your best OOB experience.
Combine that with basically any windows native tablet computer, and you're off to the races. You'll likely have to play with some things to get it how you want it, but the nice thing about linux is you can play with those things.
The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.
I think MS got the closest to sort of addressing it with windows 8, but everyone simply defaulted to the desktop mode rather than the touch mode (didn't help that the windows store was/is incredibly poorly done).
This is why devices like the surface pro or other 2 in 1 devices never really seemed to work out. You are either harming the tablet experience or the keyboard experience.
> The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.
This is really not the case with iPadOS though. It already works quite well with a touchpad and keyboard. The hardware is already there to control a full desktop OS, iPadOS already allows itself to be be controlled as if it’s a desktop OS, and with continuity mode, it’s already possible to control macOS via an iPad.
All of these things already work pretty well, and paint a pretty decent picture of what might be if Apple decided to go further.
Some things just work better on a touchscreen, even when they’re running on macOS. Some things just work better with a mouse and keyboard, even when they’re running on iPadOS.
As long as there’s some way to transition between them, I do really think a best-of-both-worlds option exists, because it’s mostly there already.
> "A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail."
A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.
What are you missing? If only a few tasks you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks. I would assume most things that requires such OS requires an internet connection anyway.
I still primary use a laptop, but that is because I like the form of it. So I have no actual experience trying to survive with only iOS.
> you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks
There are many places in the world where the availability of the internet is so spotty and so poor, that trying to use VNC to get work done would not be possible.
It really is -- my iPad has the same CPU as my Mac, and it highlights just how much iPadOS lets the hardware go to waste. MacOS is better in essentially every possible way -- faster, can run whatever you like, better multitasking.
This is a new development, and only on the most expensive versions. Historically, the iPad has always been running an iPhone-class processor.
I'd bet that Apple is still shipping 5x-10x as many A-series iPads as M-series iPads.
I'd love to be able to run a more capable OS on an M-series iPad, but not if that means all the rest have a worse experience. Maybe Apple needs to release an iPadOS Pro to go along with the M-series chips?
It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.