Tim Cook's fear of people not buying a full set of Apple devices for each person is the driving force behind not just the lack of multiuser support, but also the overall nerfing of iPadOS.

For the past 5+ years it's been, "This will be the year of real work on the iPad," but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

The stupid thing is that iPad does have this feature natively, but you need to use an MDM (or apple configurator profile) to access it.

I'm still of the opinion that there's a market, albeit a small one, for a "consumer" MDM product for use cases like this, better parental controls, etc. but almost all are for business and come with some kind of minimum device purchase like 30+ devices.

Apple has historically never been good at multiple users at the same machine. Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it. IMO incentives are not aligned here, they want everyone purchasing their own iPad, so i suspect that their strategy is to not invest too much into profile management as it risks cannibalizing their hardware sales.

It's doubly frustrating as iPads do support multiple profiles! Just education MDM managed iPad only. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...

Same here. Ours is just a streaming device. Because nobody can really own it. I won't put my password manager on it when the kids can use it, and without that it's near useless. It has my Signal profile so I can transfer stuff (and passwords) to the device but I already feel bad about that. My wife won't put Teams on it because it would bother others and conflict with all other MS accounts. The kids laptops have accounts for all 4 of us.

We switch in apps (ie in netflix). This whole "one person one device" just makes the iPad a shallow consumption device and keeps the laptops for work (and also often for streaming because of this. Btw they are all 2nd hand business laptops running Linux; for the Kids Gnome is very iPad/ChromeOS like and familiar).

It would be so much more useful a device, and maybe we'd even then start buying more, if we could just switch user profiles.

Oh, because it's just a consumption device when we "needed" another one, we got a Xiaomi. Who cares about al the niceties of the iPad anyway when all it does is show video.

It's inexcusable that customers must beg the vendor for features, especially such trivial ones. It's your device. They shouldn't have any ability to stop you from adding it yourself, or paying someone to add it for you.

I agree 100%. When I purchased my Steam Deck, I was actually surprised that it was so easy to switch between Steam profiles. Last year, my wife and I tried Apple Vision Pro. While we aren't the target audience for a $3,500 headset, we might be tempted at $1,200. But not if each of us needs to buy our own.

    1. Turn on Steam Deck
    2. Open Steam on your phone
    3. Scan QR code
    4. Choose whether or not to stay signed in on the Steam Deck

Could not agree more, it's wild my AppleTVs now ask for which profile is using it but the iPad still hasn't gotten this.

I think the iPad could be a full desktop replacement if they rebuilt the OS as a branch from Mac OS vs as a branch of iOS and allowed for automatic switching based on what it is docked to. That would not be a small task and would fundamentally change the product, but it would be interesting especially for the iPad Pro. When in portable mode it functions as an iPad, but plug into a keyboard folio an it switches to a laptop; plug into a monitor and have it switch to desktop. Plug into a certain mag safe 3 charger in the kitchen and it switches to tvOS; unplug and it is right back to an iPad. I think this kind of user controllable context switching would be really compelling for an iPad, but it would be a complete reengineering an I am not sure the incentive is there.

I agree that this would be an awesome feature, and it would also significantly enhance iPads' value for me.

That said, having worked on account/identity systems at another FAANG, I think that the commenters saying that Apple is holding this back purely to sell more iPads are underestimating the complexity of this feature.

This is not a feature that you just bolt on to the top. It will require a significant ground up rewrite of iOS' fundamentals if you want to support account switching without a full shut down of the device (and even with that, there are complications with shared storage).

There are likely tons of singletons across the iOS codebase for the "current account", and switching between users will easily lead to bugs where the new account shares/accesses state from the previous account.....and these "violations" are much harder to detect via static analysis than you might naively imagine.

UPDATE: I wasn't aware that Apple already supported a bunch of this via MDM. My only point was that if they didn't already build this into the foundational layer of the OS, then this is a very difficult feature to add later. If they already have this, then I don't have any defense left for them.

  Shared iPad overview

  Shared iPad allows more than one user to sign in to an iPad. The iPad needs to be supervised before Shared iPad can be used. Shared iPad can be used not only in education but also in business. Multiple users can use the iPad, and the user experiences can be personal even though the devices are shared.

  Shared iPad requires a device management service and Managed Apple Accounts that an organization issues and owns. Users with a Managed Apple Account can then sign in to an organization-owned Shared iPad. Devices need to have at least 32 GB of storage and be supervised. The following devices support Shared iPad:

The profiles work fine in Apple Classroom mode. Just a question of SSD space for the active profile(s) and a cloud source that can be used to swap them around if the SSD saturates.

This is actually one of those things I think the EU should consider regulating. It then means kids can have proper parental controls as they often get introduced to things by being handed a parents phone every now and then.

Same for the Vision Pro. Locking down a $3k media consumption device to a single user is such a greedy move, it's unbelieavable

Interestingly Apple TV now has this - which I find kind of annoying since it asks every time I turn on the tv. Agree though that profiles should be there.

An iPad is a great art production device. It's great for drawing / painting using Apple Pencil and software like ProCreate. It's good for doing music.

It may be a fine media consumption device (browsing, reading, watching); it's a bit heavy but has a large battery.

I don't see any other serious applications for a home user, such that would play the iPad-specific strengths.

If you are married to Apple Ecosystem then yeah but Samsung Tablets have this feature. Plus better S-OLED screens for content consumption.

It was rumored to be in the original prototypes and cut before launch. I don't know why. They also have very restrictive device limits per account / family and installing apps across accounts is a huge pain. I've mostly given up on solving that problem.

You can thank short-sighted, busy, unprincipled-asshole parents (like me and my wife) for this.

Would I buy each of my 3 kids an iPad every 2-3 years[1] if they had this capability? Hell fuck no. I'd let them use my iPad, which I myself don't even use that much.

But as soon as my kids started texting weird shit to business contacts, or accidentally declining meeting invites because they were playing ROBLOX and the notification was annoying — there was no choice. They'd already experienced the iPad, and I'm too busy to do the super-dad job of weaning them off screens in favor of paper books. Plus, iPads are actually really cool for kids, in a lot of ways.

But the lack of multi-user on iPad is unforgivable user-betrayal. It feels a lot like the gas station charging $25 for a 2L bottle of water right after the earthquake.

Might not be illegal, but... fuck you. The iPad is a great product but it leaves me with a burning napalm hatred for Apple in my heart, just the same as when I try to cancel a US newspaper subscription. Fuck you.

[1]: because, while admirably durable, kids do just wear them out and break them

I have two iPad minis, but they're so unfriendly to use they exist only to display home assistant dasboards. It's overkill, but only because I thought they would be good for other things when I bought them.

Apple is a closed ecosystem, multiple users feature is a opposite of that.

For example, it's hard to manage app store purchased Apps if it's easy to switch users in iPad. It's hard to manage iCloud sync when switching, it's also related with privacy.

The funny thing is that my Apple TV has profiles! Surely the iPad can too.

Wouldn't just good screen sharing solve your coffee table problem?

Just have the coffee table iPad be a display for your own iPad. You could even have a virtual iPad on your mac that you show on the coffee one if you don't have your own.

MacOS has 'high-performance' screen sharing using hardware encoder/decoder now. Windows has had this for years and it's so fast it's like actually using the remote computer. It's not like old-school VNC, the only real functional drawback is that you can't leave wifi range.

I hate this so much that I strongly considered creating a family Apple ID. Nowadays I’m just considering leaving Apple ecosystem altogether. Hopefully soon.

They finally added user profiles to tvOS. So there's hope. Maybe.

How would you handle user switching? Would users have to go through a password screen to use anything?

It's insane to me that Apple TV has this feature and iPad still doesn't.

I am convinced they’ve done research that says they would sell a meaningfully smaller number of units if they added this feature. Sigh…

It's not just that. The "Pro" nomenclature is useless if you work in software. It can't run anything despite all that power. The OS is basically crippled. For a few years, I used to run the GitHub cloud environment to work on software, but the latency would just make it insufferable. Any other alternatives, you would need to pay (replit, for example).

It's also quite heavy and bulky, so often times I would have to choose between carrying it or my Macbook Pro. And over time, I realized the MBP still was irreplaceable. I switched back to my MBP and physical books after lying to myself reading book on an iPad Pro was somehow better for nearly 3 years. Sold it off at a loss, but feels better without the useless paper weight in my bag.

There's nothing Apple can tell me to make me buy another iPad ever in my lifetime...unless it runs OS X (non-crippled).

Let’s see how the cheap rumored MacBook will do. It’ll have user profiles

I really agree with this. Right now I have a folder on my wife’s iPad Air 13 with Claude, brave, and other nerdy apps. This is totally a workaround for not having profiles/multi login.

You pick up the ipad off the coffee table, then what? This is the issue with the ipad since it has been released. What is the value proposition? Bigger iphone? Clumsier macbook? I guess it sells somehow or else tim cook would have shitcanned it already.

Android has this feature, even on phones where it barely makes sense

It's by design. Even Vision Pro - a 4k usd device - doesn't have user profiles because Apple wants to milk every last penny out of their users.

For me it would need vanilla linux or atleast MacOS.

I an afraid the same will happen with iPhone foldable. No, it doesn't need to have multiuser support, but how does Tim make you still want an iPad? And macOS - through limitations.

I find this especially galling on the high-price configs, which essentially cost the same as well specified MacBooks. I am in the situation right now where I have 4 iPads in my home which could easily be replaced by 1 to 2 with support for multiple user accounts.

Apple have built much of the software infrastructure to support multiple users on iPadOS, the feature exists for education market customers etc:

> https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...

I also suspect someone at Apple has run the numbers on device sales and has decided the status quo where an iPad is a 1:1 device and makes more money for the company is preferable.

I was pretty surprised when the AppleTV of all things got multiple-user account login support before the iPad did!

wow, had no idea. that's honestly hilarious!

how does this work from a security standpoint? per user encryption?

I hope that the EU can legislate this kind of functionality into iOS devices.

Absolutely the same thing here. It's why we went with a Galaxy tab, even though the iPad would have been a better fit (sheet music + MIDI)

I was recently given an iPad Mini and I thought, great, I'll just set up a few profiles for the users around the office.

What?

Sometimes the culture shock from Android is just too much. You expect things to be there that simply are not.

Definitely needed, but also, personally I don't have a need for yet another screen in my life. My iPad is powered like once every two weeks, only when kids beg the shit out of me. I don't particularly enjoy it using it over macbook either. Perhaps OK as your main device if you don't need a laptop I guess.

I mean Android tablets have this feature.

my youngest uses our iPad. My wife and I have iPhones and MacBooks and never see the need to use an iPad (I much prefer keyboard input, I like to read paper books and I don't play games; I prefer watching movies on the laptop too). Our teen has a phone, does everything on there, and wouldn't use the iPad either, + laptop for school and some entertainment.

Same! Reading through that announcement about MOAR power and AI and all I can think is, "This can't possibly play YouTube videos at me on my spin bike any better than my iPad from 8 years ago..."

I had an even older iPad I was happily using for similar use cases. Until one day a family member bricked it and I needed to factory reset. No big deal, I thought -- nothing important on it. Turns out it needed to phone home to do the factory reset, and since the server it wanted to talk to was no longer up (or perhaps the address changed?) I couldn't factory reset the iPad.

If someone has a work-around I'd love to hear it. Until then, or until Apple changes this design, I think I'm done with iPads. I don't want to pay that much to "own" something that Apple can simply make obsolete by reconfiguring or turning off a server somewhere.

Edit: fix typo

My iPad Pro must by the model ahead of yours. I just upgraded the OS to v26 and it’s awful - sluggish, jittery, inconsistent typing experience - borderline unusable for a fast work environment. With no downgrade option I’m forced to buy a new one for work and relegate the older device to entertainment or kids use only.

Being stuck on v17 is a feature for the older A-series chipset.

My iPad Mini from 2020 is also surprisingly good today. It's one of those devices that just quietly do their job forever. They are a dying breed.

Old ipads are great until apps start not working with the OS. I have a 2017 and Disney+ just dropped support for my current OS version and I can't update further.

Lifespan of Apple products continues to amaze me even if it should not.

An old iPadOS means an old safari, which means some of the websites are going to get suspicious. I remember one day not being able to open any Cloudflare website.

I bought magnetic self adhesive tape and mounted in on my fridge. Now it’s the family calendar. So nice.

The newer have worse ergonomics than the old ones. I used to use my previous ipads all the time for reading, but now I find them all fairly uncomfortable for reading and end up not using them. Slightly tempted to sell them and get older models tbh

I have the 2g iPad pro (I think I bought it in 2020 before the pandemic?). I keep looking for an excuse to replace it but it just works so well there isn't much to get from a new one.

My iPad 2011 is still going strong, except that my Airpods Pro won't talk with them anymore.

So should I buy a second pair of work-out earphones or a new tablet? A new tablet would give me back access to app store and many apps, which are no longer compatible with this old slab, but at least Amazon Prime Video and most importantly, VLC still works.

How was the battery held up? I have the same one, but the battery lasts only 25 minutes max, pretty sure it's shot. Any tips on making sure battery lasts a while? I might even switch out the battery myself.

When cleaning out my deceased father's electronics closet, I found a 1st gen iPhone. Fortunately its charging cable was nearby. I charged it and, miraculously, it turned on, and was in fact fully usable (minus calling, due to no SIM card). Note that the device is almost 20 years old at this point.

In contrast, none of the various Android devices he collected over the years turned on. One came close, then errored out right after booting.

Lightning cable unfortunately has a shelf life. My current SE2 barely seats the cable appropriately in the connector and if you look at it wrong it stops charging.

I also have and use this iPad. Mainly for procreate and watching things.

Even at 9 years old, I don't see myself upgrading in the foreseeable future.

That's what I use a 2014 Sony tablet for. The battery last surprisingly long, but heavy websites are an exercise (well, the other form of exercise) in frustration

How is the battery doing? I find sudden rechargeable battery/controller failures in the 5-10 year range to be my most common cause of upgrade or repair.

I bought and iPad Mini Nov 20th, 2013, and it still works. Slow, but it does. Enough for my daughter to watch YT Kids here and there.

Honestly this is iPads biggest problem. My is from 2019, and there’s just no reason to upgrade, unlike a phone I don’t need it to have a better camera or be lighter or whatever. They nailed it years ago and the hardware is so good the software never really challenges it.

Have a 7th gen iPad from 2019 I use as my daily driver. Has iOS 18 and works great. Was $80 on eBay a year or so ago.

Just curious, why don't you just use your iphone? Why the ipad? Why do you prefer it over an iphone?

Same here. Sucks that Netflix is no longer supported but YouTube works great.

I have an iPad 9th generation here, from 2021, and it appears to be at the end of its life.

I expected it to last a little longer, despite the cheap price of around $350 in 2022.

After the Liquid Glass update it became so sluggish that I had to turn off animations in the Accessibility settings. And it still is not enjoyable.

They can only go as far if Apple doesn't deprecate them, unfortunately

I have an iPad 4 that is now a single purpose scorekeeper for darts

Yeah same here, stuck on the 2018 one coz its still great.

There is no greater punishment for a corporation’s shareholders and employees than making a product so good and so reliable it doesn’t need to be replaced for a very long time.

Yeah, I think the number 1 use case for tablets is "portable TV" followed by "makeshift touchscreen kiosk". It really doesn't need a lot of features. I have an iPad setup as a little home dashboard and it's literally stuck on iOS 9 but it does it's job.

Thank you for making me feel old. The first iPad came out when I was doing my PhD. When I was a kid, Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the web.

I've never owned one.

My dad was at Stanford in 84, when the original Mac was announced. We were a Mac family from even before I was born. I watched Steve Jobs give the Macworld keynotes back before everyday people knew who he was.

When I was in college, I actually bought a TabletPC. I still identified as a Mac user - I even tried making it into a Hackintosh - but being able to draw and use gestures was interesting enough that I tolerated Windows on that device.

The day the iPad was released, my parents impulse-bought one. They were heading on an overseas trip that week and thought it would be a fun gadget to bring along.

They had me set it up for them, and I did exactly that. I didn't tinker with it, play around on it, pretend it was mine for an evening… It's the first time I remember a gadget not feeling like a new toy, even though I had spent my formative years dreaming about how cool a Mac you could draw on would be. It was just an object, and I had no interest in it beyond being a helpful family member.

Making "just a big phone" when their phone platform has always been so locked down has done the iPad concept a major disservice.

Mine is 98% for reading comics and 2% learning to draw on Procreate. Most everything else I find awkward to do on it.

I would have been using iPads as my primary computing device for the past 10+ years if they gave us root access. Without root they aren't usable and I refuse to buy them.

I got one a few years ago for drawing on, so far I haven't found it useful for much else. I got the 12.9" one which makes it hard to hold so it sits on a stand.

Later I plan to use it as a lighting control panel but other than that the use cases are limited.

There's a small army of pilots who can't live without one thanks to Foreflight.

Anyone who has all three and found iPad still useful? I’m mostly on my MacBook and use iPhone when I’m not on my MacBook, or Apple TV.

I'm kind of surprised that Apple hasn't full throttle on foldables. I'm more apt to spend $2500 on a foldable iPhone than I am $1500 on an iPhone and an iPad. I don't think I'm alone here.

My mom has loved the form factor, currently loves it and will continue to love it. That’s basically her hour or two of downtime at night. It’s the perfect form factor for consumers.

You'd be surprised by the horsepower some games require, my wife plays Love and Deep Space and she recently just bought a new iPad because the game requires some good specs and a LOT of storage space. She's not a "serious gamer" as your parlance.

Ive been using mine since 2018, the ipad pro. If you do any drawing then it’s a no brainer, and that’s why I got it in the first place.

Then it was so good that I used it to travel and to watch videos in bed in place of my computer. If I need to work I’ll take my laptop though.

IMO if you don’t use your laptop to work it doesn’t make sense to use a laptop instead of an iPad.

Music production is the killer feature that benefits a lot from CPU performance.

I only recently bought an iPad for the first time this year after realizing this was feasible. I’ve always preferred digital music workflows, but hated dealing with a laptop and DAW. iOS supports AUv3 plugins and cross app audio, so it’s pretty much a full DAW experience (I use loopy pro). The form factor forces AUv3 devs to design smarter interfaces.

Plus, I dislike using the iPad for literally anything else, so I’m less likely to get distracted :)

People complain when Apple doesn't do spec bumps. But when Apple does do spec bumps, people complain again.

Better chip = better performance per watt = longer batteries for similar levels of performance, running cooler. Also it never hurts the smoothness of the interface.

It just ultimately makes it a nicer device to use.

Artists benefit hugely from the extra horsepower. My brother works in the animation industry and uses an ipad as his primary work device when travelling.

iPad is the most absurd device ever. It is fully capable of running a full blown general purpose OS, but artificially restricted to be a YouTube machine. Something you give kids in a restaurant to be quiet. Putting an M4 in it is like Apple rubbing our faces in it. Look at this device that could do everything, but can't do anything.

It's a spec bump, soon they'll introduce M5 powered iPads. More GPU cores, more neural engine cores, more unified memory -- eventually iPadOS features will spring up to take advantage of this stuff. I assume the target audience for this is folks who want to make future-proof purchases or those who likely have more money than sense.

Since there is FinalCut and Logic Pro on iPad now, larger projects absolutely benefit from this.

Those are not high end processors? You can get them in apple's most basic laptops. They are just good, but not high end.

They're half a second away from offering an iPad running MacOS (or a tablet MacBook, take your pick). They're baby-stepping their way to this, obviously.

I've yet to figure anything you can do with these but watch videos and play some games; I always end up grabbing the laptop.

At the very least it is one less TSMC 3nm chip in the hands of competition.

So even if they break even, which I highly doubt, they would rather use it in a kids tablet than let the competition use it to power a flagship phone.

Web browsing modern websites like Github (or some worse ones)

It lets the iPadOS/app devs write slower software without you noticing too much

People who buy things, mostly.

Bill Gates, is that you?

It has some multitasking on the latest versions of iOS. You can drag a YouTube window up by the bottom right corner and open a Reddit window on another part or the screen if you truly need to be distracted from distraction by distraction.

You're complaining about things that were changed years ago.

It’s 15% if you’re not a (revenue) millionaire.

Things are only to get more interesting with the MacBook with an A chip instead of an M chip, and the MacBook Pro with touchscreen later this year.

I fear at some point we’re going to lose macOS.

The newer CPUs are more efficient and faster. In a mobile format you want the CPU to process everything as fast as possible and then return to a low power mode for battery life.

Apple re-uses the same core across their lineup because it’s cheaper to build 100 million of the same core than to design and maintain two separate CPUs that go into 50 million devices each.

I have an iPad Pro (2018) with A12X processor which at one point was a "holy crap this this is incredibly fast for how thin it is" device.

8 years later the local apps still run fast, but it struggles with web browsing.

Which is to say, you need a fast processor or web developers will out-bloat your device capabilities in a few years.

I have an iPad for the purpose of 3D modeling in Nomad Sculpt and Shapr3D. It’s an M2 Air, it’s still way overkill, and I’m regularly frustrated at how limited every piece of iPadOS software is compared to the hardware. The dichotomy of prioritizing iPad hardware but iPadOS being arguably their worst actively developed software is baffling.

Maybe there are people out there doing 8k video editing on their Pros, but I’ve yet to meet them.

It's Operations Management 101.

It's cheaper to use an old generation CPU, than the effort needed to design and manufacture a custom iPad-only chip.

Same reason why the Studio Display uses binned iPhone chips.

In theory it improves battery life by doing more for less power. It also future proofs it for future workloads giving it an extended lifespan. Also note that thermals will limit what this is capable of compared to your laptop.

There are some decently powerful apps available, like Final Cut Pro, and there is multi-window support including external displays.

I think the percentage of iPad users actually using this level of processing power is small, but there are some ways to do it.

I do really wish they would just allow running a VM on an iPad though at this point. Running a linux or even MacOS VM would be a nice escape valve for a lot of things that can't be done natively.

Can you explain, why not? If it’s easier for Apple to just maintain a fewer series of chips going forward, why not keep it up to date?

If your question is what do people use it for? Well thats different. iPads have a range of users from people who just browse the internet and will never stress this out, to people who do concept art and CAD who will appreciate the power.

But again, why do people always complain that a device got a spec bump?

In theory an iPad is a computer and then you could run whatever you want on it. So maybe the better question is, why can't you run whatever you want on it?

Photoshop and video editing. Until the M chips, the app options were slim, and now iPads get new M chips as they come out.

You might ask — doesn’t it suck to do either on an iPad? Yep, yet even on my iPhone, I use Photoshop all the time.

VMs are not very CPU demanding usually — usually more RAM demanding.

Some creative workflows genuinely benefit from the tablet form factor. I often do serious photo editing on the iPad because I have access to Apple Pencil, and, somehow, holding the thing in my hands like an actual physical object activates some different more analog brain region for me than using a laptop / desktop, and it’s helpful to my creative process. Lightroom for iPad is quite capable but it requires some power.

And then visual artists are often using Procreate, and those files can get heavy as well.

Plus, it’s nice to carry my iPad around with me in a sling and work in a cafe whenever I feel like it. I wouldn’t want to do that with my 16” MBP.

Try running liuliu's 'Draw Things' app, or any other tool that generates AI images locally.

https://drawthings.ai/

They don't need it. Apple is introducing new hardware for the sake of introducing new hardware.

Personally, they need to put the iPad on a two-year release cycle and focus on improving iPad OS.

I assume it's an economies of scale thing now.

It's not like Apple is putting any thought into either the UX or the engineering side of utilising the compute properly (except calculating those glass effects extra inefficiently).

Minimise SKUs and get some use out of the binned chips who have a few failed cores.

It doesn’t necessarily need it other than for niche use cases, but they can’t well have the SoCs stagnate for many years, because SoC updates drive upgrades, whether the buyers really need it or not.

I wonder if a big part of it is simplification at Apples end. It’s just easier and more cost effective to make more M4s regardless of where they end up?

Besides what the other commentators have said — if you're buying an iPad today, wouldn't you rather have the newest/best processor in it?

Poor software quality, especially websites

Now you can bring the power and convenience of your laptop to iPad with just a single VNC connection. Oh wait…

> Can someone explain to me why an iPad at all, let alone an iPad Air, needs as powerful a processor as a M4?

Because marketing? Seriously, the people I see using iPads in coffee shops are rich retired dudes looking at the news on it.

Pure marketing, in a couple years it will start lagging doing basic web surfing, like every other iOS device

I think the big difference why I would go for a pro if I ever replace my mini is ProMotion. It seems like even in this new model you are stuck with the old lower refresh rate which is quite jarring.

Performance wise, even older ipads were well beyond what I need so if you can handle lower refresh rate for sure a better deal.

Yes, exactly. Second this.

I've run nixdarwin + aerospace now for a while on the older macos version and it's insanely how the customized workflow can improve productivity.

Recently I started experimenting with nixos/asahi and it's waaaaay more better than even what I had on macos.

“If this was not remotely like what it is it would be an instant buy for me”. Ok.

Even JIT-enabled Linux VM on an iPad would make it a perfect travel workstation. Too bad Apple won't let iPad eat the MacBook pie.

Apple will repair or recycle for you.

The next day and the cheapest thing seems to be $1k (base M5 MacBook Air) sitting alongside new MacBook Pro variants and Studio Display XDR :D.

I hope the budget MacBook appears this week nonetheless.

Also "upgraders" (11 times, meaning a kind of buyer), that's a new one for me in these introductions.

At least they are not using "affordability"

If they wanted to provide value they'd add MacOS to their tablets.

Between the iPad Air and iPhone 17e it's definitely the "value" day. It will just be a ramp up to the MacBook Pro. Makes a good contrast and marketing scheme.

I can say they are used heavily in the construction industry for Autodesk Cloud to render drawings for field workers. Very resource intensive.

Ideally Apple would finally do their Surface/2-1 with iPads, but Apple being Apple, rather sell an overpowered tablet, and a Mac laptop to go alongside with it

Some places even do a bundle "discount".

GarageBand is fun, and capable of making surprisingly complex music. Logic Pro is also available on iPad now, but it's only available with a $15/month subscription, so I haven't tried it.

For artists, there are a lot of good tools: Procreate, Art Set 4, Adobe Fresco, Artrage, etc.

I really like this setup:

iPad + Korg microKEY-37 + KORG Gadget 3 + all a bunch of KORG apps

No subscriptions. Keyboard is wireless but no noticeable latency. In my workflow I pretty much never need more keys but if I do I just use a MIDI adapter and plug a larger keyboard.

KORG apps go on 50% sale several times every year.

It runs PlugData, the plugin version of Pure Data! You can easily bring down the best iPad processor with the circuit~ object. ;)

Still subpar, only real DAW available is Logic Pro, the audio stack behaves differently than macOS, no support for VSTs but has support for the AU format.

A friend who I make music together had an iPad that we tried to add to the setup, in the end after some months we chucked it aside and just got a MacBook for our shared studio instead.

Drawing on it is incredible, reading papers work well also but a folding phone is better.

I had the same problem with my M4 Pro. So I sold it.

-you can turn it off globally in settings

-some people use it docked

-if it wasn't available, someone else would be complaining about that

As the sibling says you can turn it off, but even the non-windowed UI is still not well-adapted to the small form factor. Apple doesn’t put any work into it. One can hope that some improvements might carry over from the upcoming foldable iPhone, whose inner display will only be slightly smaller, but I’m not holding my breath.

I have uBlock Origin Lite for Safari [1] on all iOS and iPadOS devices in my household. No one complains about ads anymore.

1. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

You might try wBlock:

https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock

DNS-based blocking is the way (possibly via conditional VPN if you can tolerate the minimal latency bump).

Your answer is Vivaldi, it has a built-in ad blocker that in my few years experience works exactly the same as ubo out of the box. If it wasn't for Vivaldi, I wouldn't buy an iPad because of what you described.

After having tried Firefox with UBO on Android, I can’t say I noticed any difference compared to Orion on iOS.

You can get Wipr 2 for iOS and (for me) it's been as good as uBO.

Doesn’t AdGuard work?

At this scale, don't companies lock in their prices well in advance instead of paying spot prices?

Don't vendors as big as Apple lock in their prices and contracts years in advance?

The base model has only 128GB of storage. IMO they are pushing uses to upgrade storage more aggressively than ever. This should make up somewhat for the increased cost of volatile and non-volatile memory.

iPad OS is already capable of complex work and has been capable of multitasking since it was iPhone OS v1.

I doubt the gripe has ever been about putting the latest tech in it. It’s more about putting the latest tech in it and then having very little to actually do with it.

Has been for a while, assuming you can get work done on the iPad UI. It doesn't do a normal mouse and there are some limitations to things like screen dimensions.

Works in a pinch but Apple is not going to compete with themselves on this front, they're expecting you to buy a macbook for serious work and an iPad for work in a pinch.

Had no problems connecting iPad Air 4 to external display via USB-C DP. Have not check whether periphery devices work this way though - I used BLE keyboard.

yes. Has been possible since at least M1.

Buy M-based iPad, nice monitor, keyboard and mouse. Connect mouse and keyboard to monitor via USB. Then iPad via USB-C/Thunderbolt to monitor. Everything "just works" and you can handle surprisingly high amount of work this way

I was about to ask the same. I'd like to get an ipad for the same purpose. The iPad pro can for sure, but I don't want to spend ipad pro money.

I'm still upset that they dropped the Smart Keyboard Folio. For me, that was the perfect keyboard case. I was hoping some third party would copy the design and release a new case but it never happened.

That's true of most OEM's. Most phones will be cases so I can at least understand that argument, but I don't think as many tablets are in cases.

The iPad 1 was released in 2010

You left out IMO the biggest difference (and the only one I'd pay for): the Pro is the only iPad model with ProMotion (aka. 120Hz refresh rate).

imo the Pro are for serious creative types who do either 3D modelling, illustration, photo editing, video editing or music.

If you just browse the web and stuff like that you might just get a regular iPad.

> does it have a camera bulge that makes it wobble?

Yes https://www.apple.com/v/ipad-air/af/images/overview/closer-l... from https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/

FWIW, the iPad Air I bought a couple years ago has a small protrusion for the single camera lens, but does not wobble when laying flat and is not really noticeable. This latest iPad Air has a similar design.

Wait for the alleged touchscreen MacBooks to drop, possibly this week

looks like never

Better chip (A series vs M series), better screen (sRGB vs antireflective fully laminated P3), more options available (1TB, 13”), little qol things like a better WiFi chip.

It’s just a nicer device for a bit more money ($349 to $599). Not everyone wants to jump all the way to $999 for the Pro.

So you drive a Chevy Spark or a Mercedes Benz S-class?

Ha, yes. I have a Galaxy A7 lite that is my TV. Much cheaper and has a 500GB SD Card in it as well.

That's very funny. Bravo.

Why did you get an iPad if you wanted to run a Linux VM? Wouldn't a Macbook Air have been a better choice?

ok

and Claude is remote inference anyway, just an http api

I didn’t understand iPads for years. As a half engineer half email monkey, doing work on them is still next to impossible, especially with nerfed versions of Office applications.

But, they are excellent for media consumption, particularly reading and marking up PDFs. I am able to focus while reading in a way I cannot on a computer. Procreate is amazing (drawing brushes with a pressure sensitive pen and layer/mask support all in one). Great for playing Civ on a flight. And it does all those things in a comfortable form factor while being fundamentally a pleasant device to use.

All that considered, the iPad Air is not that expensive, and it will probably last you a decade before it needs replacing.

You lay not travel much where opening a 16” MacBook Pro even in economy plus is a lean back risk and typing misery situation. iPad much better for tray table things. I have the 11” just for this purpose

Sure, there’s a chance. Don’t know why you’re asking, though, because those that know aren’t talking and those that are talking…

What’s wrong hardware wise with the current one?

Same here. I have tried my dangedest to want to need an iPad. Once the new wears off, I just cannot find a use for them.

The M4 has been out for a while, it's not anything special for inference.

Tablets need an edge where you can grip it. Without thicker bezels, it’s harder to hold it without your fingers being on the screen. This is much less of an issue for phone-sized devices.

I don't think it is technical. Because of their size, they would be hard to hold without covering portions of the screen, if the bezels were thinner. As is, my fat fingers get in the way already.

To each their own, but I would rather have a larger border where I can rest my thumb without causing an accidental press/scroll a few times a day. The software-based rejection is not good enough and I am very willing to go back to the older look of the iPad if offered.

I already have a hard time not accidentally touching the screen while adjusting my hands' position or whatever with today's iPad's "thick borders"

I think it's an ergonomic issue. Phones (even the Pro Max size) can be held with one hand or two hands without resting your palm or pinching the edge to hold it. You could but it could cause some erratic behavior.

A tablet though doesn't hold well when just pressing on the sides. So having some place to grab and rest your palm is more necessary here. They probably could go thinner with borders but it's a balancing act of usability and aesthetics. Also have things like the camera to account for and on tablets you don't have to make a punch-hole or teardrop. The iPad Pro's also package in FaceID cameras so it could be a product consistency choice too.

People take tons of photos and videos on their phones. Download 40 GB of music and podcasts on Spotify. Keep 50 GB of videos in their messages. All at once.

iPads usually aren't used as much for these things. They're used for browsing, streaming, gaming, reading... mostly things that don't take up nearly as much space.

It's not spite, just matching device capabilities to user needs without unnecessary upgrades that will lead to a higher price point.

I use tons of storage on my phone. Not much on my iPad. Pretty much just downloading TV shows before a flight, but 128 GB gives you plenty of hours of that.

I'm not really sure what's spiteful about that

I'd hazard a guess that people use significantly less storage on iPads than their phones. Phones get filled with photos and videos, whereas people use iPads primarily to browse social media and stream videos.

I have an iPhone and an iPad Pro, and I use far less local storage on my iPad than I do on my phone. I know it sounds counter intuitive. I wouldn’t be surprised that this is the norm.

The iPad mini is great for reading books (what I bought it for) and if you don't have an iPhone, any other iOS apps you want to run. I also use Chrome a lot for general web browsing.

Also. I inherited an older, full size iPad that I plan to leave on my piano for sheet music.

Have owned a couple iPads starting ~2010 -- mainly for reading pdfs, and comics in electronic form. Occasionally drawing / jamming some tunes - almost all via 3rd party apps. There are still plenty of decent apps in the ecosystem, even though their eventual obsolescence is as good as built in, and a lot of stuff I previously loved the platform for has now been gone for years with no replacement. Native apps have never been great at pretty much anything, with a notable exception of Garage Band which is an absolute banger for its money. Books is... passable I guess?

But the reading pdfs part is important -- and really hard to beat for me, the iOS drag/scroll/pinch/zoom UX perceived responsiveness is still unmatched IMO. It would take some real creativity beyond liquid glass to enshittify this aspect out.

Apparently today: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...

I prefer TouchID over FaceID also.

But I'm curious, why does FaceID work less well if the user has poor vision?

FWIW, my wife is a student and her ipad has probably helped out her out a lot, for a lot of reasons:

* compact form factor allows her to study anywhere easily, especially on public transportation

* can access the internet almost anywhere

* note taking and drawing diagrams with apple pencil

* communication wit for both personal (imessage) and school study buddies (discord)

* can entertain herself with netflix, youtube, games etc when she wants to wind down

* ai apps like perplexity has helped her a lot with writing and research

She also has a laptop, but is rarely used. She even tends to type on her ipad keyboard. The larger form factor for the pro helps with that too.

The pro has the perfect form factor for sheet music. Absurd over kill in terms of other hardware, but there's really no alternative for musicians (other than paper).

I fucking love my OLED display on my iPad Pro.

I know it's semantics, but Apple has never actually marketed their Air products as lighter than their Pro counterparts. The 11" variant is ~460g.

FFS I cannot believe this. I went and looked it up, and you’re 100% right. It’s slight, but it’s real.

Larger screen option, much better screen, better pencil support - not better support, but a much better pencil (this is HUGE for my daughter for example).

It's crazy to me that someone can look at a $350 device and a $1000 device and say there's not room for something in the middle...

> I don't understand the target audience of ipad air.

For me — 13" laptop replacement with cellular connectivity.

If a 13" version of the base iPad existed, I'd probably get that, but as-is the iPad Air is the cheapest 13" iPad.

I live in Asia and I see all students using iPads instead of laptops. The limitations of the OS are really not felt by the general public. Whatever you listed doesn't even make sense to them, they buy things based on what they can afford. Every iPad works the same to them.

Because it has a large screen and my wife uses it as her only computer and uses it with a regular $30 Bluetooth keyboard and mouse

It's the cheapest iPad that supports pressure sensitivity on the better apple pencil.

The Air has a better display (laminated, AR coating, P3 colors).

My kids (4 and 6) like to use the iPad Air with the pencil.

A properly built tablet OS UI would also have those differences in the OS that make it more than just a larger phone screen, which so far seems to be most of what the foldables are doing with a gimmick thrown in here or there.

iPadOS may not fully be to the point of being an OS UI that really utilizes the benefits of a tablet sized device, but it does have elements that are unique to it that would not really make sense on a phone.

That being said, if your tablet use case really is just a larger phone than a foldable would be great. But i know for myself the way I use my iPad it would not be a suitable replacement. Especially not now, maybe in 5+ years once someone figures out how to make an OS that actually manages different ways of interacting with it in different form factors work, but that has yet to happen.

IMHO technology (and price) is just not there yet. I can buy a phone and 2 tablets for less month than a foldable.

I'd love a 10 inch screen in my pocket but maybe in 2035. Nokia imagined this 20 years ago and we're barely there yet.

I wouldn’t put too much hope into foldables, at least not because of Apple’s involvement. They also released the Vision Pro. And there’s still the unsolved(?) problem of the screens getting easily scratched/destroyed if they’re not heavily protected and kept clean. (There are some informative teardown videos, e.g. by JerryRigEverything.)

I can get a foldable phone that extends to a 13 inch screen.

I’d rather have no moving parts in my screen.

I have a hard time justifying buying a trifold when my 13-inch iPad Pro was 1263€ and the Samsung trifold is probably gonna be closer to 3000€ for a 10-inch display. If I assume that it'll be 2999€, you can get a 13-inch iPad Pro (1519€), a Magic Keyboard for the iPad (399€), an iPhone 17 (999€) and still have money left over. And this is straight from Apple.com. It's possible to get better deals elsewhere.

Dunno if Apple's foldable will support Apple Pencil. (For that matter, not sure a touchscreen MacBook would either.) That's one use case for a properly rigid, solid, flat surface.