Will the iPad survive its “mac-over”? I'm afraid that it is not

For all optimism when it is launched, it is quite clear that Apple does not really know what to do with the iPad these days.

You cannot kill a product that brings $ 8 billion in a good quarter and effortlessly dominates its market, but according to the company's notes, the iPad has never been a real commercial blockbuster and will probably never. It is also difficult to market a device with two separate audiences: creation professionals, who are relatively few, and occasional users, who upgrade once in a blue moon and avoid higher margin models. Overall, it's a bit of a nightmare.

Last week, a report by Bloomberg Leaker Mark Gurman underlined a possible solution: Apple will make the iPad much more like the Mac. In the update of the iPados 19, which will be announced at WWDC25 in June, the company would address “productivity, multitasking and management of application windows” by adopting elements of the interface and navigation of macOS. Not by installing macOS on the iPads, to be clear, but by bringing macos' iPados closer.

The details remain rather vague at this stage, and as usual, we must emphasize that the plans can change and that radical directors of this type are inclined to be put aside when things become difficult. But my reaction to the idea as it is at the moment is double: something must definitely change, and it could happen very, very bad.

Partly, I fear that what works on a material format will necessarily work on another. The Mac window system has evolved as the simplest system to navigate using a mouse and a keyboard, not a touch screen. (The iPad can use a mouse and a keyboard as optional accessories, of course, but its operating system must still operate mainly via touch.) If it was so easy to cross formats, we would have had a hybrid mac / iPad a long time ago.

But my biggest concern comes down to this branched off market that I mentioned earlier. Most creative professionals are not only Mac users but Mac power Users, accustomed to making the most of the most advanced office and laptop computers in Apple, and I am sure that this group of customers will appreciate the iPad to obtain a MAC style window management system (assuming that it is well done). But the majority of the owners of iPad are, I would say, much less comfortable with complex interfaces and choose to use the Apple tablet preferably to a MacBook or an iPhone on the big screen precisely because of its simplicity. They do not want to unravel the file management structures or modify the parameters at a granular level. The point of sale of the iPad for most customers is its lack de Faff.

Perhaps Cupertino decided that he no longer wanted to continue the casual tablets market. This would not be entirely out of character: the launch of the iPhone 16th earlier this year involved a desire to abandon the budgetary market for smartphones and to focus on a smaller number of more profitable sales at the average and upper end. Occasional iPad users tend to buy the cheapest model, then cling to it for many years, and it would be understandable for Apple to decide to leave Samsung or OnePlus to have this market. I cannot imagine that tablet users are numerous enough to bring in $ 8 billion per quarter, but focus on this segment rather than on the tablets as a whole would unleash resources for other areas of interest.

What is more likely is that the iPad range separates in two.

The simplest approach would be to make new mac-esque productivity features and the Windows management system in iPados 19 an exclusive, optional and default activated M-series chip on the devices that support it. Therefore, an iPad Pro out of the box would behave more like a Mac, while allowing you to return to the classic interface if you wish, perhaps when you do not have access to a separate mouse and / or keyboard. The iPad and iPad Mini budget owners, on the other hand, would never realize that something had changed. Apple would begin to approach the iPad as two distinct products, which is indeed since the first iPad Pro was released in 2015, but the brand of any person outside the company would remain unified. It would be to sell the updating interface as an upgrade.

A more daring strategy would be to start marking the standard and professional iPads as a separate lines. You can divide them at the operating system level, just as Apple divided iOS and iPados in 2019, and call the new interface … Createos, perhaps. You can go further and also divide the equipment, and stop using the iPad brand for a range of the range. I would love to see Apple launch a new MacPad at WWDC25 to replace the iPad Pro, then market it as the tool of choice for travel professionals on the go.

Too big to kill, too embarrassing to love, Cupertino's red head-to-head needs a new approach, and soon. Keep the iPad the same risks alienating professional users, while bringing it closer to the mac risks alienating everyone. Perhaps the time is ripe to accept that the iPad is two products, not one, and to treat it as such.

Foundry

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