Every time I see something like this, I'm a bit sad, that we live in a world where tablets (especially iPad M4) have comparable performance to most laptops, but we still cannot run a general purpose OS (macOS/Linux/Windows) on them.
Tablets are surely capable of running VSCode, Docker, VMs, etc. locally, and from UX standpoint, VSCode is basically Chromium, so experience would be the same if these tools ran directly on device.
I agree, but we should also make restrictions on smart TVs and gaming consoles illegal too.
Both the Xbox and PS5 are 100% commodity hardware, not being able to run our own software on it is a really weird limitation. One that people even on HN have accepted while simultaneously ragging on Apple's "walled garden".
And you can say "Actually that is not the case with iPad, you can have your own applications there without rooting it." have you heard of Xcode? still... you are missing the point, you can't even use an iPad to properly code for iPad
But can you use the Xbox itself to locally develop and run your own software? Or do you still need to use another computer or an online service via web browser?
There are many people who can’t afford to buy both a computer and a PS5 and some of them choose to buy PS5. Would be nice to let those people use the PS5 hardware for what it is really capable of, including being able to run a desktop OS on it.
The number of people who can so barely afford a PS5 that they can’t also afford a computer (these are a hell of a lot cheaper than a PS5), but are willing to screw with their PS5 in ways likely to mess it up in one way or another (if only making gaming impossible without further tinkering) is approximately zero.
If you just changed "but" to "and" you'd get your point across with less a sense of whataboutism.
Yes, all platforms should be free. Personally it feels like devices that are marketed as general purpose have a higher expectation that people can use them for general purposes, but it is definitely true that any device you purchase should allow you to run whatever software you want on it.
Because it's an artificial limitation to make the company more money, at the expense of customer experience and the environment (yes, locked-down hardware is also a sustainability issue!).
Ideally, companies would exist to serve the public and so such selfish anti-consumer behaviour would be illegal. Unfortunately, they don't and current law seems to affirm that.
I’d also like to be able to run anything on an iPad. But I know I can’t so I don’t buy it.
I find this notion that companies should do what we want ridiculous. You know the features and capabilities upfront or you can at least and then you can decide to buy or not.
There are many problems with the "just don't buy it" argument. Mainly, that often times, the alternatives have huge unrelated down-sides. Apple makes the best tablet hardware by a large margin, but it's totally locked down. If I want a good tablet, I have bo real alternatives.
No, I'm saying that Apple is so far ahead of the competition and this market is so hard to enter, that they essentially have a monopoly in the category "tablet computer that isn't shit".
And no, it's not that they should make what I want, it's that they should not prevent me from using their device in a way that I want.
Microsoft and Google are not tiny little companies. They have their own operating systems and the resources to make a good tablet.
Microsoft has just announced a tablet running full blown Windows running Qualcomm chips that from all indications is competitive with what Apple makes.
The latest Qualcomm ARM chips were designed by a bunch of ex-Apple folks.
But every hybrid solution sucks in one way or the other. I would much rather work on my MacBook Air M3 with a 2TB SSD and 24GB RAM with a 20+ hour battery life than an iPad Air/Pro with a keyboard and mouse attachment that hypothetically runs MacOS.
What problem are you trying to solve by not having both a MacBook and an iPad?
Cost? Give me a fully decked out MacBook Air + a cheap $349 low end iPad any day over an iPad Pro. Just the specs of the MacBook Air makes it better. As a bonus I can use my iPad as a second monitor.
The M4 in the iPad may be just as capable as an M4 in a future Mac. But the MacBook Air has better battery life and the iPad still makes trade offs between portability and power like less RAM (RAM takes battery), OS optimizations, sustained performance tradeoffs, etc.
Portability? The iPad is so light you don’t even feel it in a backpack. I literally traveled with both the entire year last year.
Short version: my wife and I took one way trips last year across the country visiting over a dozen cities while I worked remotely…
> I find this notion that companies should do what we want ridiculous.
The thing is, we actually have a vote in this by buying or not buying their products. So apparently, too many people are content enough with what Apple (for example) is doing.
Temporarily at best. If I invent fire and lock it down so that only my grill can use it, while also releasing feel good propaganda to convince people that it is the only way fire works, yes it’s more beneficial than not for a time. As society grows around the concept, the artificial limitations begin hindering the elevated stage more than helping.
These companies have convinced unwitting masses that this is in their long-term best interests. I assure you it is not. It is about being controlled, and the invisible limitations placed on an individual when they grow to love their chains.
> Ideally, companies would exist to serve the public
That would not be "companies" in the common sense anymore, but rather something like the East German "Volkseigener Betrieb" or the Russian "design bureaus". Which is something worth considering probably, but then you'd need larger changes, not just some laws that prohibit companies artificial limitations like this.
> Because it's an artificial limitation to make the company more money
Market Segmentation 101.
Even back in VCR days the el-cheapos would let you set (say) 4 recordings, the mid-range 8, and the high-end 16. All the manufacturers did was tie down pins.
Hobbled hardware is a (dis)honorable tradition in tech.
Because it's slowing killing the the environment for kids to learn. Parents give kids an iPad, they don't give them a notebook. Kid has hands tied for really exploring programming.
I'd be willing to bet if the same restrictions were in place in the 80s and 90s that 30-50% of the people who are programmers today wouldn't be programmers because they'd never have gotten started.
There are many excellent web based programming environments that cater for beginners.
As someone who was learning how to develop in the 80s your comment is hilariously ridiculous. It is 1000x easier to learn now with the wealth of tooling, content, AI assistants etc than it was for me trying to learn C++ on a Mac Plus with no internet.
There is Swift Playgrounds, but if you're talking more about general purpose programming - sure. But, I don't think it changes anything. As devices have entered all aspects of our life, the vast majority want to use them as an appliance to take and edit pictures/video, draw, communicate, and play games. To say it's killing the environment for kids to learn feels a bit myopic by implying programming is the only way to learn.
Because we want to. Of course the political capital of bunch of nerds isn't enough to make it happen but while the reasoning is different, I can't buy a new car that I can register without seatbelts, so the concept of making things illegal to buy is not entirely foreign. Of course, those are for safety, but I also can't buy a car that won't do at least 55 for the freeway unless I want a golf cart, so suitability for purpose is another concept. We'd just have to define computer in a legal sense, and then categorize the iPad as a computer, and finally make it a requirement that you can run your own code on computers. Of course, carrots are better than sticks, so maybe put a tax on all non-computer electronics, and a rebate for computers. All just to be able to run my own code on an ipad. Which, you can actually do with Pythonista. There's a small ecosystem of apps using that, as well as the official Shortcuts app, which I'd call programming. it's not Xcode on an iPad (though I'm sure there's a lucky engineer at Apple that has one that can do that, but then doesn't get to have any fun with it), and it's not really close either.
Who is "we"? Apparently not enough people want this.
> I can't buy a new car that I can register without seatbelts, so the concept of making things illegal to buy is not entirely foreign.
That's a strawman argument. Not having cars without seatbelts has safety implications. A better analogy would be cars which don't allow you to replace the built-in car stereo for example.
> so maybe put a tax on all non-computer electronics, and a rebate for computers. All just to be able to run my own code on an ipad. Which, you can actually do with Pythonista.
Then maybe we should also have a tax for computers that run Python, because it's so energy inefficient. Only make the ones tax-free that only allow C++ and assembly language.
Everybody who wants Xcode on iPads to happen. If you do not want such a thing, I am not talking for you. There may be dozens of us and we don't have the political clout to make it happen, but maybe we can agree that something has been lost here.
Is it still a straw man argument when I explicitly point out that I know it's not the same thing, twice, with the phrases "while the reasoning is different" and "Of course, those are for safety"?
As far as taxing Python for energy inefficiency goes, If it means violating Wirth's Law, I can't say that I'd be entirely against it in the hypothetical because we both know that's never going to happen. It takes longer to open some apps on my iPhone that's a million times faster (though, to be fair, also does a million more things) than it took to open vi on a Linux box in console mode (no X) in the previous century.
I get your point, especially given the enormous power of the hardware and capabilities, but there is no surprise here: their hardware, their software, and you know what you are buying (it's not like it was open then it was remotely locked down) so everyone agreed at the time of purchase.
Anything can be made illegal. I agree it's tricky to create a general rule here. My suggestion would be to require bootloaders to be unlocked such that custom operating systems can be installed on it (and yes this could apply to smart TVs, games consoles, etc too).
That wouldn't get it us macOS, but it would get us Linux and incentivise Apple to provide macOS too.
My fear is that such a regulation would end up being a net negative for the consumer. Apple would protect MacBook sales in other ways, e.g. crippling iPad hardware. Genuine question: if it was a net negative, would that still be worth it in your eyes?
Companies should be able to make whatever device they want. I use iPhone/iPad when I want to be fairly confident that nobody's actively screenshotting my every move.
The more doors you open intentionally, the more doors become open unintentionally.
If I wanted a device that allows installation of any OS, I would buy one.
Companies like “Honor” are already doing a good job of cloning Apple’s UX. Go right ahead… nobody’s stopping manufacturers from making fully hackable phones.
So should it also be illegal for game consoles not to run a general purpose OS? The Apple displays also run a version of iOS, should it also be illegal for them not to run full versions of iOS?
I have some sympathy for the argument about side loading, the inability to have alternate app stores etc and the things that the EU is addressing haphardly.
But saying the government should mandate that Apple must support MacOS on iPads is a bridge too far.
> Every time I see something like this, I'm a bit sad, that we live in a world where tablets (especially iPad M4) have comparable performance to most laptops, but we still cannot run a general purpose OS (macOS/Linux/Windows) on them.
Many devs are also to blame, there are enough hybrid laptops around to pick from, so basically they are voting with their wallet validating that this kind of workarounds are acceptable.
Or even smartphone-sized devices (not saying "smartphone" because of the expectations for those in terms of battery life and telephony). With keyboard in my backpack I could have a legit pocket-size general purpose computer.
I am keeping an eye on Starlabs new intel-based linux tablet [1], I am curious what the reviews will be like once it finally ships.
The iPhone 15 pro could be a general purpose computer, but Apple doesn’t want that.
Imagine plugging your phone into a Lightning dock and then it is running full macOS or Ubuntu in a vm, with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support.
This is possible from a hardware perspective (look at Samsung dex), and would actually bring innovation to the smartphone market, but we allow Apple/google/friends to lock down our hardware bc of profits.
It boggles my mind that Apple don't release an iPad that runs macOS. It would sell like hotcakes. And with the M series chips they have already developed the technology to have multiple securely segregated OS's on the same device (so they could have it run iPad OS too if they wanted to).
The answer seems obvious to me, ipad running macos would then compete with the mac. It’s the same reason apple does not release a laptop with a touch screen.
This is baloney. Here's a literal quote from their iPad Air "Why iPad" [0] page, "iPad is so versatile, it’s more than up to any task." They market them as do anything devices with art as a option. Hell that same page even talks about building your coding skills in Swift Playground although who knows what you're supposed to do when you advance beyond that level? I guess in Apple's mind buy a Mac?
Not in the App Store, and I believe on recent iOS versions not even with reasonable performance (due to a lack of JIT and/or hardware virtualization support, I believe).
Even if it’s possible, the point is that iPad OS really feels like it’s intentionally holding back the power user experience for the sake of being more accessible to new users in a way that e.g. macOS doesn’t.
From what I understand it is in AltStore which is installable without another device in UE and still installable running AltServer on a separate computer.
Annoying I understand. But fairly easy to anyone motivated to get it.
As for the performance they say:
"The lack of hardware virtualization on Apple A-chips means that even for ARM code we must re-compile it with JIT. Therefore performance would never reach the levels possible with KVM. There is also no support for GPU virtualization so that means no DirectX or OpenGL. This makes most modern games non-playable."
I guess it would be at least good enough to run an IDE, git and have terminal access provided any serious compilation is done remotely and not locally. And might even be good enough to run some lightweight containers.
EDIT: seeing that on ios 14 devices it needs to be jailbroken, so I guess it is best used on "obsolete" models.
The Altstore they are referring to is the sideload version, not the EU store that was just released. This requires a computer to install the IPA file. Once you install UTM using this sideloading method the only way to activate JIT to make UTM useable in any meaningful way is to be on the same local network as a computer with SideJitServer installed and running. Then you can use an emulated OS and drain your battery super fast.
Long story short UTM is not currently a solution. Apple either needs to allow JIT for all apps or SideJitServer needs to do the impossible and figure out a way to activate over a remote connection.
I guess with the dell xps 13 having tandem oled now, this might arrive eventually. However, right now the screens are big differentiators between the ipad pro and macbook air.
Tablets are surely capable of running VSCode, Docker, VMs, etc. locally, and from UX standpoint, VSCode is basically Chromium, so experience would be the same if these tools ran directly on device.