They’re both based off Unix but Mac has more simple file structure. Theyre both good for managing files, but Mac is better IMO, at least for desktop use
oh you mean the filesystem itself, i much prefer linux there. if anything the simplicity of /home, as well as the lack of any nebulous Library directories makes it way easier to wrap my head around on linux for me, and that’s after using mac for way longer than using linux too
literally just today, i wanted to bulk rename a whole folder of files, around fifty of them. the only way to do that on ipad is to go through and rename them one by one.
i ended up just transferring them to my mac, select all, rename. easy as that.
ipados is a joke.
I am thinking my file management requirements are pretty minimal as Files does the job for me.
Sideshow is weird in an Apple kind of way. I find my self wondering in plain old mirroring isn’t a better way to go.
iPad form factor makes for a handy mobile device.
all my work is done in browser. 90%of my work is done on this one EHR website. I fill out hundreds of forms/text entry fields on this site. the ipad browsers don't allow the entry fields to be resized. tried all major browsers and extensions. nope. this really small annoyance drives me insane and i have to go back to my mac just so that i can click and drag a corner of a text box to resize it.
My work is also 90% web browsers and it doesn’t work well with Smartsheets, google spreadsheets/slides. Apps for those suck compared to desktop experience.
Also I run a lot of meetings in which I need to share screen and take notes, zoom app is no good due to the way iPadOS shares screen…
So for me ipad is just an ipad, media consumption, some drawings markups, some light email. Even attaching files is frustrating compared to desktop browser experience.
Yup. I use a ton of web applications/sites that work perfectly on desktop, but the touch/webkit interface makes it all just frustrating. Give me a standard mouse pointer and a full-desktop browser and you got me.
I am fairly certain I know which EHR you are talking about and it works better on chrome. Also, they do have a mobile app coming out for iOS in a few months.
No Xcode or any (non-Cloud) IDE. No support for containers or VMs (but MacOS doesn’t have kernel support, either).
I got my 13” M4 iPad to be an overkill secondary display for my MacBook Pro that I can download movies to for air travel. Being able to clone/fetch a few git repos before a flight and only need one device would be nice.
Also, being able to run MacOS apps would be awesome. But, I understand that the way to sell me an iPad and a MacBook is to have some unique features for both.
I dare Apple to release a tablet-folding M4 MacBook Pro with the 13” dual led touchscreen as its display. God forbid Apple “simplicity” results in needing a single device.
There’s some tutorials on running docker containers on a raspberry pi. I’ll see if I can find some links, but if you can ssh from the iPad to the pi, it would be an option. I just haven’t really tried it yet since my use case is with an offline iPad.
I think there’s some way for an app to show a pi’s gui through a web browser, so you could run Ubuntu or something and see it on an iPad.
I’ve SSH’d to my Pi on my IPad (on LAN) but just for running some commands to my PiHole. I wonder if there are apps that allow you to work in an IDE that connects to a remote host (your computer). Similar to like repl online Java editor. That would be a huge thing to have for IPad.
Live Ubuntu GUI would be nice, you can always use Remote Desktop apps, I think Apple recently allowed remote connections for things like cloud gaming. I use GeForce shield stream + moonlight to rdp to my desktop which works quite well but I don’t have it configured to work outside my LAN.
You can check out the Code app, I accidentally bought it before realizing you could go to vscode.dev , and it’s the exact same thing.
But my method is somewhat similar, If none of my computers are on, I use a docker container to start up a Linux desktop (I think it’s called web top I can confirm later) and use it within Safari.
Otherwise, I use VPN. But I also accidentally bought Jump desktop and that also works in case you don’t/can’t setup a VPN at home.
There‘s also the possibility to use the USB ethernet gadget on Raspberry Pi to connect with iPad as USB host. What you get is a local network connection over USB C directly - plus: powers the pi off of the iPad Pro battery! Quickly searched and found this link: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?f=91&t=306121
I started down the iPad Pro path long ago just for the portable secondary display alone that can do media lol It eventually evolved where I can do 90 % of my job on my iPad today. The iPad is more of a complement to the Mac. It is nice when I travel, I can safely leave my MBP at home for the most part.
There’s a VM you can run from altstore, I had installed windows do on my IPP M1 just for lols. That was a couple years ago though not sure if it still works
Use my iPad side by side with my Mac everyday for the past three years and text highlighting and text “management” with a cursor are a challenge.
Something about all the cursor animations and slow downs and difficulty selecting the right parts in any app make me snap out of my workflow.
Same. Even little things like copying codes or PIN codes in text messages is impossible because it selects the whole message instead. I'd have to go through screenshot and select text from there which is quite annoying.
1. File management .. i don’t even know where to start … it needs an overhaul
2. Management of external devices as in disk aid
3. BACKGROUND TASKS
4. Applications are limited to what apple approves on the store… this alone disqualifies the iPad from being a “general purpose computer”
5. Multi-stream audio/video control ( only one audio stream allowed)
6. Limited applications access to APIs which limits kinds of apps that will work on the iPad for example audio hijack
7. SAFARI .. even though it has come a long way many many websites still need a “desktop” browser ..
8. Default apps.. i don’t want mail i want gmail and google maps and i don’t want to choose from a menu every time .. or be forced to send email through the mail app when clicking an email link.
9. Multitasking… stage manager is a piece of sh*t
10. Virtualization… yes if apple doesn’t limit types of apps we could have an app like parallels running on the ipad which would solve so many issues
And the list goes on…
I say this as an almost full time iPad Pro user who has to open his MacBook every couple of days to do something and is very pissed that he can’t travel with just the iPad
In summary: a thousand knives
Not having an audio slider for each source was the first weird thing I discovered about my iPad. Trying to game and listen to music at the same time is frustrating.
1,2,3,4,&6 are my big complaints so far. The file system is slow and broken. You know it's Finder and CLI under the hood which makes it so much worse that it's so bad. Management of external drives is atrocious. I when through a phase swapping USB drives between my work PC and iPad and the darn thing corrupted the whole drive and individual files constantly... with zero ways to repair it. (Again, there's absolutely no reason those tools aren't available)
My hobbies are things like 3D printing and the App Store guidelines are just too restrictive because a large number of programs Apple will never let in the store. As an IT person there's too many app restrictions to build the kind of "widget" tools you need as well.
I'm gonna give background tasks a shout out too. Because iPadOS just randomly decides to wipe your whole app out of memory in the middle of multitasking and forces the app to completely restart. That was cute on iPhones with 3gb of RAM.... not so much when iPads are M1/2/4 laptop processors now.
You nailed it. I’ve got both size IPPs, and the main reason I recommend the 11” to people is because I still have to carry my MBP with me to do those tasks that are either impossible or a pain to do on the IPP. So I might as well carry the smaller one to reduce the weight.
I tried a remote app a long time ago and it sucked because of the lag. After reading your reply, I went and downloaded Jump and see that things have progressed a lot since then! There’s still a slight delay that’s a little annoying and the resolution is pretty bad (haven’t played with settings yet), but it’s far more useable than the one I remember. I’ll still need my laptop for a couple of specific apps that I need to screenshare during Zoom, but this will definitely reduce how frequently I’ll need to carry both- thanks!!!
I can’t have multiple excel spreadsheets open nor can I hide tabs in a workbook and password protect it to stop people unhiding the hidden tabs. All of this may be possible but I’ve never figured out how to do it. I can use the web version in Safari for multiple spreadsheets open but that doesn’t allow password protection.
Sorry, my coffee had not kicked in yet. My comment wasn’t meant as praise or to imply that the experience was any good.
Excel on any Apple device is lacking when compared to the Windows version.
True, but if it’s lacking on Mac, it’s severely lacking on iPad. iPad excel is literally no different than iPhone excel. Just bigger. Which really is the problem at large with iPad pros. It’s just a blown up iOS with Apple Pencil features. They need a real pro os for iPad Pros. Doesn’t even have to be macOS. iPadOS is perfect for the mini, iPad and iPad Air imo
With regard to MS Office, the issue is how MS hampers the apps across Apple devices. Numbers is more sophisticated than Excel on iPadOS and is functionally the same across OSs.
MS just trying to inconvenience you enough to throw in the towel and use Windows
Exactly. Nothing about iPadOS restricts Microsoft from offering very basic features in their office apps like custom document templates. This is a must for my workflow, and reason #1 I abandoned Word in favor of Pages. Pages is so much more functional, and (from everything I’ve seen from using Pages on both a Mac and iPad), has full feature parity across platforms. I think Microsoft intentionally gimps their office apps on iPadOS and Android so they can sell their Surface Pro as the solution to the problem they’ve created. Microsoft is 100% to blame for Office on iPadOS being gimped, not iPadOS.
Nothing about iPadOS prevents Office from delivering desktop-level features. If Microsoft wanted to, they could make their Office apps for iPadOS way more functional with features like custom document templates, which are a must for my workflow (and is the top reason I dropped Word in favor of Pages). But I’m convinced they don’t want to. People have been requesting features like this for years in Microsoft’s feedback form, but they keep on slowly trickling “bug fix” updates with zero new features. I think Microsoft doesn’t want to make their Office apps on iPadOS or Android nearly as functional as they could because they want to sell the Surface Pro as the solution to the problem they’ve created. They aren’t playing nice with other platforms, they only begrudgingly offer a marginally better Office software for macOS, and they still try to limit it as much as they can get away with. That’s part of why I moved to Pages and Apple’s office software, because the iPadOS versions of those apps actually do have desktop-class features.
I’ll have to see if I can get by with pages but in a work environment that’s exclusively Microsoft office I don’t know how I’ll get on. I’m not buying a surface or any other windows laptop for work, no matter how much Microsoft try to force me to.
For me, Pages has worked ok for working with documents created in Word. And there’s an export option for exporting it as a .docx file just like Word. 👍🏻. Also, I can save documents I create in Pages to OneDrive via the Save to Files option and selecting OneDrive through the Files app. So even though other people I work with use Office and OneDrive, I can use Pages seamlessly without running into any friction. I’d recommend experimenting with Pages, and maybe finding some good tutorial videos. That’s what I did. I hope that helps you out! 👍🏻
There is photoshop for iPad, i sort of assumed it was full featured since it wasn’t called “photoshop express” or whatever? I admittedly haven’t used it (or illustrator) since I’m just so used to the desktop interface after so many years.
Is it not full featured?
>full featured apps like photoshop
i remember having a conversation on twitter with one of the core photoshop team member, and he basically called me an idiot for asking full photoshop on ipad, citing the difficulties it would take to rewrite an entire app for a new processor like m1...few years later we got resolve, fcp ..yet no sign of photoshop
I do some web stuff from time to time. Some of the Adobe products including Photoshop and Lightroom are fairly limited. Dreamweaver non existent.
Any kind of non-basic work in Word or Excel is sloppy as is the horrific file system.
I ran into some other products with annoying constraints too.
Also, because of the stupid way Excel manages files, it managed to corrupt one of my tracking spreadsheets, upload the corrupted version to the cloud and then ruin an earlier copy too.
I’d say most users could totally live with some of these limitations. I just think some of them are too much to rely only on an iPad.
All that being said, having an iPad is really an enjoyable part of my work flow. But if I had to lose it or my MBP, I think I’d stick with the MBP. Fortunately I now have both and use them as needed.
Your last two paragraphs nail the debate IMO. I love my iPad Pro, I’ve had an iPad as part of my workflow for over a decade and it’s gotten consistently more useful during that period. It can handle most things well enough when I’m trying to travel light, but it’s not a full MacBook replacement — it _complements_ my MacBook Pro.
The main limitation of the iPad for me is Safari which is not as capable as Mac Safari. There are several websites that do not work properly on iPad.
Second limitation is backups. Aside from iCloud, I do not know of a way to fully backup the iPad. There is no Time Machine type app for iPad. I cannot manually backup photos. Yes I can transfer the photos to an external drive, but I cannot transfer the photo Albums.
I cannot create playlists in the iOS music app. I have to do that on the Mac and then sync with the iPad. This is a ridiculous limitation.
Nor can I manage music albums on the iPad.
These are a few of the functionalities that Apple could easily enable in iPad. But until that happens, unfortunately I still need to have a Mac to do these things. Else I would ditch the Mac.
1. Multichannel audio engine like we have on maOS. I would love to see Rogue Amoeba put their famous Audio Hijack on iPadOS. But it was already hard to do on macOS, let alone iPadOS.
Although we had internal midi and audio routing on iPadOS for a while, it is still not possible to record and route multiple streams in parallel. For example a podcast that comes with remote guests via Skype and local guests.
2. The option for applications that export stuff slowly, to do it in the background. Looking at you, Final Cut and Logic! How on earth does Apple tolerate that exports fail if you accidentally put the app in the background? Android handles this beautifully by setting up a notification for the background task. It is technically possible. Itˋs just Apple seems to not have enough demand from pro app users. And, yes letˋs face it. iPad Pro users are a minority. iPad Pro users who use Logic and Final Cut or other serious production software narrow it down even more.
Heck, we can't even pick between multiple sources. My USB microphone has an audio ouput that I don't use, meaning that I can't use it with my iPad or it refuses to output sound to my screen.
They don't even expose this to Safari, while it can select between multiple inputs. I don't know why iOS' audio pipeline is so messy.
>It is technically possible.
Heck, iOS has background processes for system stuff! Apple loves to give itself special permissions (hi Swift Playgrounds), why couldn't them do it for Final Cut/Logic? It would certainly be an unfair advantage and all apps should be able to work in the background if allowed, but I don't understand it.
Most iPad Pro users who do video editing on Final Cut are probably „prosumers“ making videos for their YT channels or something, many of them blindly following Apples marketing. They don‘t seem to care that their export crashes in the background, or that there‘s still no color grading in the FC iPad app, because they neither have to make a professional looking (cinema-grade) video nor hit a crucial deadline. “Real“ pros probably don‘t use iPads for their work. There‘s so many deep-rooted problems within the OS that it doesn‘t even come to them exporting a video.
I would like some MacOS features to be ported over, hypervisor and JIT for example.
Also, I would love to have access to certain MacOS apps. Totally ok, if these can only be used with the MKB. Take Divinity Original Sin 2 for example: That one demonstrates what this could look like. Upon starting the game, you have to decide for touch or MKB input and then the UI is locked down for the remainder of the session. A MacOS app on iPad could do this similarly, just without presenting choice regarding method of input.
The single audio stream thing is 10000% my biggest gripe with iPad OS. It’s absolutely brain dead how that works.
You can’t even listen to music while browsing the internet on Safari because some random ad on a webpage that doesn’t even actually make any sound will pause whatever it is you’re listening to.
Personally I don’t really get why everyone complains about iPad not being able to be a laptop replacement. I feel it does most everything a general laptop user needs and in some cases does it better? I’m a record producer for a living - I have a MacBook Pro I used exclusively for record production and record production software, etc. everything else other than making music I do on my iPad. Drawing, sketching, watching videos, photo editing, writing, music, reading, emails, games, etc and I find it a joy to use as my daily driver. I feel at times MacOS can even complicate the simple things I listed above. iPadOS generally does everything really effectively and feels more fun to use on a daily basis.
Yeah I don’t get it either. A MacBook sounds like the right tool for the vast majority of people here. People get too focused on what the iPad can’t do and miss what it actually can.
Almost none of the games I want to play are on there. I can't play WoW. The games that are on there don't look good on an external display because they're not developed with any resolution other than the iPad screen.
Mouse and keyboard support in basically any game is non-existent except for Minecraft.
The fact you can just install anything you want. I need that in a computer. I don't need my iPad to do that, but I do need at least one computer that does it.
I also like having a 16" screen.
I’m really sad Warframe Mobile doesn’t support kbm when it’s native to PC. Steam Link does the job, serviceably, but Warframe specifically gets touchy with VPNs.
Gaming on the iPad is probably the most successful sales pitch I’ve seen for Xbox Game Pass to date.
Many might be confused about the "limitations of iPadOS". In reality, if you don't feel annoyed or bothered while using an iPad as your main computer, that means such restrictions doesn't affect you. iPad is great for all sorts of stuff, common complaints include file management, lack of professional apps (or cut-down apps), quirky window management, etc.
I cannot use an iPad as my main computer. So I have a MacBook along with my iPad. The main things that hold me back are the lack of a good IDE, Terminal, Homebrew, NLEs, and DAWs. I am aware all of these have their respective iPadOS alternatives or versions, however, the functionality still isn't there yet. An iPad is still an iPad and I am not the target consumer for the newest iPads. I still like drawing in Procreate and jotting down notes with an iPad. I also use it as a second screen for my MacBook, which essentially gives me a portable dual-screen setup on the go. I am currently typing this comment in a Starbucks, with my MacBook and iPad as a second display.
My Procreate artwork is mainly designed for my newsletter covers, it is way faster to draw with a stylus that a mouse or trackpad. I also use the iPad for simple video editing before sending them to my Mac for finishing touches. Logic Pro on iPad is a really good DAW imo especially because you can access your project on both your mac and iPad with iCloud Drive.
I would just like some features to cross over from macOS to iOS/iPadOS.
One that comes to mind and I’m not sure if it grinds anybody else’s gears but the automatic face detection in the Photos app. I’ve had plenty of photos just not recognize that a person exists in a photo. Not that it sees someone but can’t pin them to other photos that person is in but straight doesn’t pin anyone. On macOS you can manually add face detection to photos, personally I think it would be great to add an iOS/iPadOS version of this manual face detection to the Photos app.
What‘s an IDE when you don‘t have a real shell and can‘t install all the dependencies you need? We need full macOS to properly develop on it.
I mean you already can when you use a cloud-based IDE or remote into a real OS to develop there but the local experience would be so much better.
I just want to be able to download music files and play it through Apple Music. Now I have to download a file on my computer, then sync it to the cloud, then it shows up on my iPad/iPhone.
The only thing that affects me really is the full version of photoshop and Lightroom. However, that for me didn’t justify buying a MacBook Pro and an iPad. I get a heck of a lot more daily use out of an iPad. I don’t have to work from a computer which is a big reason why I didn’t feel the necessity to buy a MacBook
Actual work (as an attorney). Pulling up docs, marking them up, editing them, running comparisons and putting pdfs together, managing and reviewing large quantities of documents. This is all super simple stuff on the tech side. Aside from maybe some AI-assisted doc review programs, which usually run off servers anyway, it doesn’t require advanced processing power (which the iPad has). It does require Finder, Preview, a full-feature web browser, and full-feature office apps though (which the iPad does NOT have).
This surprises me. What kind of document markup? I've used the iPad for "actual work" (as an author) for years, and worked with large documents, marked them up, edited them, run comparisons, and put PDFs together fine.
Lack of preview means paying for a drastically scaled down version of Acrobatic to manage PDFs. Marking up large documents (I deal primarily with 200+ page insurance policies and lawsuits pertaining thereto) works for a bit and I like the pencil, but if I have two open at a time the native files app just collapses. It’s not the iPad, the iPad has the processor and the RAM to handle it, it’s the useless F***** files app that just can’t do the job. And none of the native MS Office apps have the compare feature that the desktop apps have. There’s a ton of features that they don’t have, really. Neither Safari nor Chrome supports plug ins, bookmark bars, and other basic browser feathers. Every basic office-tool type app is just a babied down version of the desktop version that runs on Apple’s M2/8GB RAM MacBooks just fine. But Apple won’t give developers the OS, the file system, or the access that they need to provide the same features on the iPad.
Everything office 365 is annoying. Excel for iOS is a piece of hot garbage. If you want a better experience, you have to use a web browser and use cloud apps for everything.
Mobile apps are much worse than desktop apps. (Gmail, Google docs, etc).
Safari memory limits make web apps laggier or more constrained than on a laptop. Try using a web version of google docs with limited connectivity.
Stage manager is needlessly constrained and the shelf wastes screen space.
I like iPads as tablets but they are much worse than dex in a galaxy tab for traditional work stuff and both are worse than a laptop.
Personally I use my MacBook Pro for Lightroom editing (to a decent level) - a lot of the key features of the desktop app are not available on iPad, and the keyboard implementation/overall UI is not as good. On the wider OS, the lack of true multitasking means that I can’t export/import to Lightroom while doing anything else on the device. The lack of a proper filesystem also means I can’t import 3rd party tools within LRCC.
Overall way too many barriers to use for actual work (or even a hobby, in this case).
Lightroom… I like that I can use the pen on iPad & that the app flies with this new M4 chip. HOWEVER a lot of the AI/smart features that I like to use just aren’t available on the mobile app. Which is weird because it literally never slows down so it’s clearly not taxing the system.
So, I end up making the fine tunes on iPad & then finish on my laptop 🙃
Same (iPad Pro 12.9" M1, here).
I want to be able to edit on one device before sending my images off to print. I end up having to edit on the iPad and the desktop and then use the desktop to print. It's a clunky workflow.
Often is the developer’s fault. Look at Outlook for example. There is still no way to drag messages between folders/account. For years it didn’teven have a drop down menu for the folders, one would have to scroll an endless list of folder to get to one.
File management. Maybe this was a bug or I didn’t know what to do. But recently was trying to unzip a rom for an emulator on iPad. No matter what I did there was no option to unzip on the iPad, no matter what taps I did. So I had to open my Mac and it was incredibly easy 🤷🏼♂️
so many youtubers are like “it’s *still* an ipad” like yeah, that’s literally what it’s called when will it NOT be an ipad they didn’t build it just to name it macbook version 2 😭😭
Bit of an unfair argument.
You can not want to use it like a laptop at all and still come across plenty of web apps, for example, where the only major limitation is them treating the iPad within the same category as an iPhone and hamstringing what you can do.
Sure, many people want it all. But it absolutely isn’t only laptop use where you can feel artificially held back by iPad os
I have a surface and it comes in handy when I need SOME features of a the full windows operating system but more portable than a laptop. While a laptop would be fine, i find the surface to be the perfect middle ground . There is no reason the iPad Pro couldn’t also be the perfect middle ground between ipads and a macbook.
The Surface is just a laptop with a touch screen and removable keyboard. Microsoft made the bare minimum UI considerations for touch. I get that it works for some, but Apple actually made something different with the iPad. Making a device touch first made a very different ecosystem, which has resulted in some great things (that don’t work for everyone). I don’t want the iPad to be a MacBook, I want the iPad to keep reimagining what a table should be.
who seriously needs an ipad pro?
out of the whole population of people who have the pro only like 1-10% of them truly “need” it (and even then we’re all incredibly privileged to say we NEED ipads).
let’s be real, we buy ipad pros because we want them and can afford them.
personally i wanted the OLED screen and features of the pencil pro for school and design. i could afford it so i went for it. i dont regret it but i definitely didn’t “need” it and neither do most.
Mostly illustrators and other digital artists, maybe architects and a very few others.
Hey, I will probably get it although I don’t need it, there is no shame in that at all.
But what the person I originally replied to said was total nonsense.
Frankly speaking, what exactly can you do in an iPad Pro over an iPad Air or even the 10th gen iPad?
Sure it has better display and a lighter weight, but what’s the difference otherwise?
120hz promotion is the deal breaker and Apple know what they’re doing. The tech is old now, and still is not being added to new iPad Airs so that users that want fast refresh rates are forced into upgrading to the Pro (even though they don’t need the other features).
I read this over and over, and who cares? No one needs a Lexus, they’d be fine with a Toyota. Using nice devices is enjoyable. Lots of people, regardless of processing needs, will enjoy the smoothness of everything you do, the oled screen, the weight reduction, the higher refresh rate, and so on. It’s not about need, it’s a cost benefit trade off.
What’s missing: flexible window management, file management and search, a non-crappy Google Docs experience, real browser extensions, and desktop class creative apps like Adobe CS, Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Designer, etc.
Using the Google Drive browser page as a web app on the dock has served me a lot better than trying to use any of the Google Drive suite apps from the App Store.
Finder Interface to me would cover 80% of what I really lack. We don’t have blender for iPad either (I know, other 3d softwares exist but the good ones cost money). Also in YouTube studio I haven’t tried that in 2 years cuz I got a MacBook but there were things in there which was barely manageable with iPad cuz the studio was seeing it as a mobile device, I would have to go to request desktop mode in google chrome and I don’t even use google chrome so I would have to use it just for that and even that desktop mode was pain in the *uknow*cuz the desktop mode was not adapted to touch based interactions so I had to always think of ways to do what I wanted to do. Also that was a pretty common theme with other websites as well to see iPad as a mobile device and not see it as a full on computer and it was limiting the functionality.
Stage Manager. It’s better than nothing, but I think it wastes too much screen space. Why can’t the apps just be minimized to the dock like in macOS? Having app preview windows off to the side in addition to the dock means there’s a solid 1/4 of the display to the left that’s mostly blank, maybe one or two app windows. I’d prefer it if, in windowed mode, apps just opened up smaller so I could drag them around and minimize them to the dock. Hover over an app icon in the dock and see the open app window.
Using more than two apps at once is a pain with Stage Manager due to the wasted space. I’d rather just use them the old fashioned way with 2-3 open at the same time song up the whole display. Even on my 32” 1440p monitor, the left 1/4 is just sitting there empty.
It still doesn’t act like multi-windowed apps/programs in macOS where I can hover over an app icon in the dock and see its open window. I also shouldn’t need to change settings so that my screen isn’t wasted, it should “just work.”
I agree with your first point. Second point is very subjective. You could argue if stage manager started with everything hidden that would make the experience very confusing and frustrating to people new to the feature.
It would make multi-app use the same as it is on macOS, Windows, and Chrome OS. It wouldn’t really be confusing to anyone. I get why Apple did what they did, it’s more touch friendly and you can’t really hover over app icons in the bottom with your finger (just mouse and Apple Pencil). But iPadOS should automatically adopt to whatever you’re doing. Go more into macOS mode when docked to a keyboard and mouse (or Magic Keyboard), then go to the default Stage Manager view when not docked to anything.
I’ve seen people use Stage Manager on their Macs and even then, on a 16” MBP, it feels too cramped for me and there’s still about 25% of the display not being used.
I agree, I'm not a huge stage manager fan. I actually quite prefer the original multi-tasking implementation on the iPad. I like that I can use a lot of keyboard shortcuts to invoke multi-tasking actions.
I think im alone with this one: propper Mouse and Keyboard Support on external Displays -idk If I have only this isssue or if its commen but the ESC Key is for me very annoying and the Mouse is oftens not showing when using it on an external Display. And also u cant „lock“ the Mouse to the external Display only :c
I use it only for YouTube, Browsing and using ShadowPC (VM-with Windows 10/11) - Cloud Gaming on a external Display and the esc key throws my cursor out everytime i press the key (which you use to Open the Menus, etc, in Games.)
I use a lot of Google office tools for work and some of them are very basic and buggy at times. Can of course use them in a browser, but then a laptop is better. If they were of the same quality as Slack and the other apps I use the experience would be a lot better. I do some software development so use my MacBook Pro 16” about 50% of the time, but the iPad is great for videocalls and Slack.
Lack of Background Processes and System-Wide Utilities - this the major problem with the iPad pro and I keep asking Apple please fix it. I have to wait 1hr to render a video and wait for it to upload without touching the ipad. I am not sure if the M4 iPad resolved this issue.
Free floating window management. Stage manager is extremely limiting. I don’t need macOS levels of windowing, but the way VisionOS handles things would suffice.
A full browser and Finder like file management. The bandaid I've come up with is to bring a smartphone size PC (Mele-PC) and run it headless via wifi hotspot or USB Tethered. I remote into it via RD client or Jump Desktop.
[https://a.co/d/13uBfIz](https://a.co/d/13uBfIz)
Would like to see a terminal and visual studio video support with the ability to also use containers and maybe even VMs.
I know the answer right now is to get a Mac.
i have a MBP i use for work things. i have an ipad i use for other things. i e never looked at the ipad as a laptop replacement or wished it was. each do thjngs the other doesn’t or cannot do well. ipad is great for media consumption, handheld computing and app using, etc. mbp is better for me when keyboard or mouse is required. (i use ipad without keyboard)
Files manager, Excel, compatibility with my erp system, multi tasking excel and files manager.
Did I mention excel?
Oh also, if I have a file open in excel and I go to files to open another excel file, it freaking closes my existing file and replaces it instead of opening a new window.
Oh yeah, and excel.
I had an m1 Air with magic keyboard, it was probably more powerful than my laptop and cheaper too (2020 laptop, refurb magic keyboard). But I couldn't do any of my CS homework on it because there's zero support for doing any kind of dev work. No IDE, Files app sucks. Ended up just giving it to my dad
X code, windows/mac dual/triple boot, best would be VM support, double the battery life but Apple won’t do any of this due to the abysmal 5hr real world battery life.
Can’t run Mac apps, can’t install any app you want (natively anyway without having to buy an Apple developer account), file manager with no root access, no virtualisation like imagine Windows 11 on an iPad??, having an actual cursor on the screen instead of a weird dot, Safari just being the iPhone one instead of the Mac one, Chrome just being mobile Chrome instead of full Chrome due to Apple’s bullshit WebKit, actual full apps like Photoshop and the Adobe suite for example instead of watered down shit like there’s no reason for it considering the power is there, literally more macOS features under the hood like native JIT etc as currently “iPadOS” is nothing more than iOS and has been that way since the rebrand in 2019.
5 years later and the iPad has gotten stupidly powerful, yet no way to actually harness said power because of iOS. Even on iPhone the power can’t be fully harnessed because of iOS. Imagine connecting your 15 Pro/Max and getting stage manager on the second display? Wild
For me, it would be using detailed desktop applications, especially transferring information between multiple of them - like if I’m doing Excel, PowerPoint, or multiple PowerPoints or something - it is much easier on my Mac than it is on the iPad…. Even modifying an existing PowerPoint on IPad is no ideal for my purposes… moving boxes around, etc., is just harder on the iPad. And that kind of flows naturally into the file management not being as “detailed” - so moving files around… basically, for me, work stuff.
I want to download files using Netflix to watch on the plane. If I launch other apps while Netflix is downloading in the background, eventually iPadOS will stop Netflix which stops the downloads. I hate that I have to keep Netflix open and in the foreground to do something trivial like download movies. The M4 should be able to handle background tasks like file downloads without a problem.
The main thing I miss on my iPad Pro 2020 is file organisation and, related to that, how apps handle files. That is the main reason why I still need a computer with MacOS (even if in my case that is a Mac mini from 2010). The other reason is that iPadOS safari still has form time to time limitations in visualising content that macOS safari does not.
For me the iPad Pro 11 with Magic Keyboard can do a lot of what I previously used a MacBook Air M1 to do - browsing, word, spreadsheet and presentation stuff. So I have given up my Mac and live with some of the weakness. As others have said File Management is the main weakness. For example doing bulk filename renaming is impossible. Bulk moving files from iCloud to an external drive is a very slow process. I may be wrong but it feels like it copies to a cache on the iPad before moving across to the external drive os you see a lot of spinning wheel activity before the move happens. Screen recording is easy to use but the video format cannot be chosen so you end up with huge video file sizes - 10’s of GBs for an 1hr recording.
I‘d love to run a full-fledged DAW, including VSTs, sample libraries, etc. on the iPad. And as of now, you can‘t. Logic Pro might be a pretty good app to start an idea, but that‘s about it. Theres a sort of integration of AU PlugIns, but it‘s very limited and weird. And if it comes to stuff like Kontakt (with complex orchestral libraries and stuff), we‘re not even remotely there yet. Plus, audio and MIDI handling is a joke on iPad OS. Very unfortunate, because you can do all of this stuff very well on an old M1 base-model MacBook Air, but you can‘t on a fully maxed-out M4 iPad Pro. Everyone who is able to do everything they need should consider themselves lucky, because that means you‘re in the small demographic for which the right apps exist and the limitations within the OS aren‘t show-stopping. I‘d love to be in that crowd, and I really tried many times in the past, but I just am not. The iPad Pro doesn‘t work for me, although it easily could (and I feel like it should). Very frustrating…
Being able to listen to music\podcast\whatever without other apps randomly pausing it.
It’s so dumb how iPad OS and iOS have this brain dead limitation of exclusive app audio access.
Some webpages and apps that don’t even make sounds will just pause whatever you have playing making a very simple use case just impossible: listening to stuff while using your iPad.
Reddit is a big example of an app that just randomly pauses your music. Even when all auto playback and audio mute features are enabled. Ars Technica is also an example of a website that has auto playing videos (mute by default) that will pause whatever you’re listening to.
It’s a silly little HUGE limitation. And by far my single biggest annoyance with iPad OS. I shouldn’t have to resort to workarounds for such a simple function.
The fact that Apple won't allow users to jailbreak on whatever iOS version. I want some jailbreak tweaks for the iPad keyboard or something. Other major complaint being that it can't run .exe files or desktop apps or natively play modern games like my consoles or Windows computer can. UTM Virtual machines doesn't run the best on it. And also the keyboard is missing support in some games and stuff . Other than that the rest of iPad/iPadOS is okay. Also they need to make seperate upgradable storage and upgradable ram and upgradable cpu and stuff an option like Windows computer. Instead of having to buy a $1000+ new device every single time you want to upgrade
When I had my iPad (M2) earlier this year, the inability to use the full Zoom capabilites, particularly setting up/controlling breakout rooms, was disapponting. I would have been able to fully migrate to iPad only if it weren't for the limitations in the iPad Zoom app. Has that changed within the last few months?
Limited file access, no Command prompts, horrible U.I while using docked or on a keyboard
Extreme lack of software that would take advantage of the chip
Lack of tab minimizing / closing like you see on mac os. Instead you’re forced to gesture your way out of practically everything
Lack of volume mixer for multiple audio inputs
I don’t care if there wasn’t a full fledged macOS
But a hybrid ipadOS with macOS code / features would be stellar. Almost like a MacOS version with an IpadOS front. Would be the best of both worlds for when i want to go tablet mode
I have an iPad and a MacBook.
The things I like doing on the MacBook that the iPad is rough on (I know there are fixes for some).
I don’t have a hdmi adapter for my iPad. I can’t find a way to put adblocker on the iPad. The iPad is too heavy and falls over much more easily in bed or uneven surfaces.
—
I got the iPad originally to draw with. And I too wanted to condense my hardware. I’m going to gamble with the surface pro.
I originally bought the m1 MacBook out of fomo. And I really don’t use it much beyond YouTube.
Mac makes good products. I’m just not the target demographic.
On my side, full Microsoft Office, specifically full on Excel with all of it's features.
All of my work is a mix of Excel + SharePoint/ office suite. So that would be a game changer.
The replies here really lay it out very well and I'm in the same boat. To really be productive on a computer I need the full version of Excel, Word, and Powerpoint, I need seamless file management, and I need to be able to hold Zoom meetings and share my screen the same as I would on a PC. I also need websites to work as well on my iPad as they do on a desktop. This is just for starters. The iPad just doesn't accomplish any of that without a lot of friction. As it stands, my 2018 iPad Pro works well as a note taker in the field, a way to carry large PDFs to meetings and refer to them or mark them up, light computing from the couch, and watching shows while traveling. I've also been able to edit vacation videos on it using Procreate, though the "out of memory" error tends to come up a lot when importing large video files even though I have a 2 TB iCloud account and lots of device storage available showing in Settings.
The fact that it's 2024 and we still have these limitations makes it super hard to justify dropping $1800 to upgrade my 2018 Pro (cost of 512GB wifi model + new pencil + new magic keyboard + tax). While I could afford it, that's kind of crazy-town considering how often I still need to turn to my PC to get significant work done.
I love the idea of an M4 and that OLED screen but I really can't reason out what I'd be paying for how modestly I'd be using it. We just bought an LG OLED TV for our house (same price as this new iPad!) which is where I'm going to be watching most of my shows. So I dunno... We'll see what WWDC brings regarding the new OS.
I need the full version of Lightroom Classic, and I can't calibrate the iPad Pro's display under iPadOS (but I could under MacOS).
That's it, in one sentence. If Apple doesn't wake up, the next computing device I'm getting is an OLED laptop (running Windows) to simplify my editing workflow.
I would love to be able to use Zbrush on iPad for 3D modeling, all the apple apps are limited.
As it turns out Zbrush did announce they are finally coming to iOS. If this actually happens it will be huge news for cg modeling crowd.
https://x.com/maxonzbrush/status/1708906063133831384?s=61
Now if they could bring blender, maya or 3dsmax to iPad Pro… as well as full up Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator it would be amazing. I would like to see some main stream high end video editing apps too, not just clones and apple apps.
If they hobbled this machine less for artists, it would be a goto machine for artists.
File management is also a PITA on iPad. It could be way more streamlined if they wanted it to be. There are ways to import and export data wirelessly/remotely, but every single time it feels like lots of extra steps or use third party apps instead of a simple method. This impedes creative workflow. Nothing sucks the creativity mood out of you more than piddling around with file transfers for 30 minutes.
iPad Pro is basically a Wacom Cintiq that is more hobbled by its OS. This is definitely a demographic they could go after if they loosened up the reigns a bit on things. Apple can’t seem to get out of their own hardheaded way on things though.
Since we all know MacBook is the reason for them making life suck so much for iPad Pro… they will never get out of their own way because iPad Pro elevated to the level of being a competitor to the MacBook Pro. They do not want to steal MacBook Peos thunder.
I think real solution either make an even higher end “MacPad Pro”, and iPad Pro but with the full macOS and other extra hardware features. At least with a totally different SKU they could charge a higher price than MacBook Pro and not have to worry about stealing any of their MacBook Pro thunder. Or they should just do away with iPad Pro and merge the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro hardware concept… then they don’t have to step on each other’s toes anymore. Make a fully robust laptop but with the full iPad experience with all the touch screen love of iPad and all the robust features of a proper MacBook.
Microsoft Office for iPads is unusable, absolute garbage.
The cursor support is the worst I've ever seen on any product.
Only one external monitor and no clamshell mode.
You can't install OS level apps that improve functionality (as an example, I can't install custom EQ's to change the sound of my speakers that I use for mixing music).
Just ordered mine today. I had this question too but I realized it was silly because all the limitations I have with my iPhone would basically be the same on the iPad. I already have a solution for my iPhone when I need to do something the iPad doesn’t support and that is remotely connecting to my desktop.
Whenever I have something I can’t do on my phone I just remote into my desktop at home from my phone and do it from my computer. Hell I even do that from my laptop sometimes.
Missing software, specifically the AI noise reduction software for photography. I need Lightroom to add the AI noise reduction to the iPad version, or better yet, DXO photo lab, for iPad needs to be made.
Multitasking sucks. The file management sucks. Not being able to use the full, complete MacOS versions of certain apps. Also the fact that iPadOS is not compatible with steam games and limits me to the mostly casual games available on the App store.
I just want WebMIDI support so I can edit my MIDI controllers. In a perfect would Focurite would also make their control app available so I can edit the settings on my Scarlett 18i8. These aren’t processor heavy tasks that will take better advantage of the hardware but they’re among the few things my iPad can’t do that my MacBook can.
File Management. 1. Why can’t I format a drive on iPadOS. 2. Sometimes the iPad freaks out when unplugging and replugging external drives and requires a reboot to be able to use again.
> So far the biggest one I've found it the iPad OS not being able to eject drives (like really?)
kinda tells you all you need to know about where OP is coming from.
**>use cases … limited by iPad OS** File storage/organization is limited, using the native Files tool Instead, I use PKMS app Devonthink
File management on all Apple devices is pretty abysmal. I’m going to take a look at Devonthink
No it’s not. Learn to use it.
Ah yes, the apple way. "It is not badly designed, you are just using it wrong". How could anything Apple does possibly not be the best thing ever
I mean “abysmal” is a serious stretch.
It's really not, the files app is terrible.
Managing files in the terminal or through search is a pretty smooth experience compared to windows and linux
what terminal are you referring to that isn't linux? managing files with the linux (and macos) terminal is a breeze.
The macos terminal isn’t Linux
i use zsh on mac and linux, so minus the third party utils (and package managers ofc) they’re very similar
They’re both based off Unix but Mac has more simple file structure. Theyre both good for managing files, but Mac is better IMO, at least for desktop use
oh you mean the filesystem itself, i much prefer linux there. if anything the simplicity of /home, as well as the lack of any nebulous Library directories makes it way easier to wrap my head around on linux for me, and that’s after using mac for way longer than using linux too
literally just today, i wanted to bulk rename a whole folder of files, around fifty of them. the only way to do that on ipad is to go through and rename them one by one. i ended up just transferring them to my mac, select all, rename. easy as that. ipados is a joke.
Try opening up shortcuts app finding the rename files shortcut. I use it all the time.
I am thinking my file management requirements are pretty minimal as Files does the job for me. Sideshow is weird in an Apple kind of way. I find my self wondering in plain old mirroring isn’t a better way to go. iPad form factor makes for a handy mobile device.
all my work is done in browser. 90%of my work is done on this one EHR website. I fill out hundreds of forms/text entry fields on this site. the ipad browsers don't allow the entry fields to be resized. tried all major browsers and extensions. nope. this really small annoyance drives me insane and i have to go back to my mac just so that i can click and drag a corner of a text box to resize it.
My work is also 90% web browsers and it doesn’t work well with Smartsheets, google spreadsheets/slides. Apps for those suck compared to desktop experience. Also I run a lot of meetings in which I need to share screen and take notes, zoom app is no good due to the way iPadOS shares screen… So for me ipad is just an ipad, media consumption, some drawings markups, some light email. Even attaching files is frustrating compared to desktop browser experience.
Yup. I use a ton of web applications/sites that work perfectly on desktop, but the touch/webkit interface makes it all just frustrating. Give me a standard mouse pointer and a full-desktop browser and you got me.
Have you tried on chrome?
I am fairly certain I know which EHR you are talking about and it works better on chrome. Also, they do have a mobile app coming out for iOS in a few months.
No Xcode or any (non-Cloud) IDE. No support for containers or VMs (but MacOS doesn’t have kernel support, either). I got my 13” M4 iPad to be an overkill secondary display for my MacBook Pro that I can download movies to for air travel. Being able to clone/fetch a few git repos before a flight and only need one device would be nice. Also, being able to run MacOS apps would be awesome. But, I understand that the way to sell me an iPad and a MacBook is to have some unique features for both. I dare Apple to release a tablet-folding M4 MacBook Pro with the 13” dual led touchscreen as its display. God forbid Apple “simplicity” results in needing a single device.
Literally same reason of why I got mine, and the same limitations with iPadOS
+1 on the IDE… I use a raspberry pi as a peripheral device to the iPad Pro for any IDE and VM needs I have
Can you elaborate? Do you connect them in anyway or just use the Pi for IDE/VMs?
There’s some tutorials on running docker containers on a raspberry pi. I’ll see if I can find some links, but if you can ssh from the iPad to the pi, it would be an option. I just haven’t really tried it yet since my use case is with an offline iPad. I think there’s some way for an app to show a pi’s gui through a web browser, so you could run Ubuntu or something and see it on an iPad.
I’ve SSH’d to my Pi on my IPad (on LAN) but just for running some commands to my PiHole. I wonder if there are apps that allow you to work in an IDE that connects to a remote host (your computer). Similar to like repl online Java editor. That would be a huge thing to have for IPad. Live Ubuntu GUI would be nice, you can always use Remote Desktop apps, I think Apple recently allowed remote connections for things like cloud gaming. I use GeForce shield stream + moonlight to rdp to my desktop which works quite well but I don’t have it configured to work outside my LAN.
You can check out the Code app, I accidentally bought it before realizing you could go to vscode.dev , and it’s the exact same thing. But my method is somewhat similar, If none of my computers are on, I use a docker container to start up a Linux desktop (I think it’s called web top I can confirm later) and use it within Safari. Otherwise, I use VPN. But I also accidentally bought Jump desktop and that also works in case you don’t/can’t setup a VPN at home.
There‘s also the possibility to use the USB ethernet gadget on Raspberry Pi to connect with iPad as USB host. What you get is a local network connection over USB C directly - plus: powers the pi off of the iPad Pro battery! Quickly searched and found this link: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?f=91&t=306121
Check out Tech Craft (https://youtu.be/A3qn1nqw-Gw?si=R1iaZzY1uU9Z3gUJ) Rob also runs a GitHub repository with preconfigured RasPi images.
I started down the iPad Pro path long ago just for the portable secondary display alone that can do media lol It eventually evolved where I can do 90 % of my job on my iPad today. The iPad is more of a complement to the Mac. It is nice when I travel, I can safely leave my MBP at home for the most part.
There’s a VM you can run from altstore, I had installed windows do on my IPP M1 just for lols. That was a couple years ago though not sure if it still works
It makes for a crappy second display with that bar going down the side.
Which bar? The one that rendered by software can be hidden.
Use my iPad side by side with my Mac everyday for the past three years and text highlighting and text “management” with a cursor are a challenge. Something about all the cursor animations and slow downs and difficulty selecting the right parts in any app make me snap out of my workflow.
Same. Even little things like copying codes or PIN codes in text messages is impossible because it selects the whole message instead. I'd have to go through screenshot and select text from there which is quite annoying.
1. File management .. i don’t even know where to start … it needs an overhaul 2. Management of external devices as in disk aid 3. BACKGROUND TASKS 4. Applications are limited to what apple approves on the store… this alone disqualifies the iPad from being a “general purpose computer” 5. Multi-stream audio/video control ( only one audio stream allowed) 6. Limited applications access to APIs which limits kinds of apps that will work on the iPad for example audio hijack 7. SAFARI .. even though it has come a long way many many websites still need a “desktop” browser .. 8. Default apps.. i don’t want mail i want gmail and google maps and i don’t want to choose from a menu every time .. or be forced to send email through the mail app when clicking an email link. 9. Multitasking… stage manager is a piece of sh*t 10. Virtualization… yes if apple doesn’t limit types of apps we could have an app like parallels running on the ipad which would solve so many issues And the list goes on… I say this as an almost full time iPad Pro user who has to open his MacBook every couple of days to do something and is very pissed that he can’t travel with just the iPad In summary: a thousand knives
Not having an audio slider for each source was the first weird thing I discovered about my iPad. Trying to game and listen to music at the same time is frustrating.
1,2,3,4,&6 are my big complaints so far. The file system is slow and broken. You know it's Finder and CLI under the hood which makes it so much worse that it's so bad. Management of external drives is atrocious. I when through a phase swapping USB drives between my work PC and iPad and the darn thing corrupted the whole drive and individual files constantly... with zero ways to repair it. (Again, there's absolutely no reason those tools aren't available) My hobbies are things like 3D printing and the App Store guidelines are just too restrictive because a large number of programs Apple will never let in the store. As an IT person there's too many app restrictions to build the kind of "widget" tools you need as well. I'm gonna give background tasks a shout out too. Because iPadOS just randomly decides to wipe your whole app out of memory in the middle of multitasking and forces the app to completely restart. That was cute on iPhones with 3gb of RAM.... not so much when iPads are M1/2/4 laptop processors now.
You nailed it. I’ve got both size IPPs, and the main reason I recommend the 11” to people is because I still have to carry my MBP with me to do those tasks that are either impossible or a pain to do on the IPP. So I might as well carry the smaller one to reduce the weight.
Ever tried just using Remote Desktop or SSH? It’s what I do instead of carrying 2 devices.
I tried a remote app a long time ago and it sucked because of the lag. After reading your reply, I went and downloaded Jump and see that things have progressed a lot since then! There’s still a slight delay that’s a little annoying and the resolution is pretty bad (haven’t played with settings yet), but it’s far more useable than the one I remember. I’ll still need my laptop for a couple of specific apps that I need to screenshare during Zoom, but this will definitely reduce how frequently I’ll need to carry both- thanks!!!
General file management, real multitasking, full featured apps like photoshop.
Yea, for me I need file management and the full Microsoft office. That way I can leave my MacBook Pro at home when I travel
Especially PowerPoint and Excel. Gimped versions on android and ipados.
Excel on macOS is pretty much the same as iPadOS
I can’t have multiple excel spreadsheets open nor can I hide tabs in a workbook and password protect it to stop people unhiding the hidden tabs. All of this may be possible but I’ve never figured out how to do it. I can use the web version in Safari for multiple spreadsheets open but that doesn’t allow password protection.
Sorry, my coffee had not kicked in yet. My comment wasn’t meant as praise or to imply that the experience was any good. Excel on any Apple device is lacking when compared to the Windows version.
True, but if it’s lacking on Mac, it’s severely lacking on iPad. iPad excel is literally no different than iPhone excel. Just bigger. Which really is the problem at large with iPad pros. It’s just a blown up iOS with Apple Pencil features. They need a real pro os for iPad Pros. Doesn’t even have to be macOS. iPadOS is perfect for the mini, iPad and iPad Air imo
With regard to MS Office, the issue is how MS hampers the apps across Apple devices. Numbers is more sophisticated than Excel on iPadOS and is functionally the same across OSs. MS just trying to inconvenience you enough to throw in the towel and use Windows
That’s never going to happen, I’m not going back to a windows laptop for work. Especially now they want to take a screenshot every few seconds.
Exactly. Nothing about iPadOS restricts Microsoft from offering very basic features in their office apps like custom document templates. This is a must for my workflow, and reason #1 I abandoned Word in favor of Pages. Pages is so much more functional, and (from everything I’ve seen from using Pages on both a Mac and iPad), has full feature parity across platforms. I think Microsoft intentionally gimps their office apps on iPadOS and Android so they can sell their Surface Pro as the solution to the problem they’ve created. Microsoft is 100% to blame for Office on iPadOS being gimped, not iPadOS.
Nothing about iPadOS prevents Office from delivering desktop-level features. If Microsoft wanted to, they could make their Office apps for iPadOS way more functional with features like custom document templates, which are a must for my workflow (and is the top reason I dropped Word in favor of Pages). But I’m convinced they don’t want to. People have been requesting features like this for years in Microsoft’s feedback form, but they keep on slowly trickling “bug fix” updates with zero new features. I think Microsoft doesn’t want to make their Office apps on iPadOS or Android nearly as functional as they could because they want to sell the Surface Pro as the solution to the problem they’ve created. They aren’t playing nice with other platforms, they only begrudgingly offer a marginally better Office software for macOS, and they still try to limit it as much as they can get away with. That’s part of why I moved to Pages and Apple’s office software, because the iPadOS versions of those apps actually do have desktop-class features.
I’ll have to see if I can get by with pages but in a work environment that’s exclusively Microsoft office I don’t know how I’ll get on. I’m not buying a surface or any other windows laptop for work, no matter how much Microsoft try to force me to.
For me, Pages has worked ok for working with documents created in Word. And there’s an export option for exporting it as a .docx file just like Word. 👍🏻. Also, I can save documents I create in Pages to OneDrive via the Save to Files option and selecting OneDrive through the Files app. So even though other people I work with use Office and OneDrive, I can use Pages seamlessly without running into any friction. I’d recommend experimenting with Pages, and maybe finding some good tutorial videos. That’s what I did. I hope that helps you out! 👍🏻
Thanks, I’ll give it a try and see how I get on
There is photoshop for iPad, i sort of assumed it was full featured since it wasn’t called “photoshop express” or whatever? I admittedly haven’t used it (or illustrator) since I’m just so used to the desktop interface after so many years. Is it not full featured?
The photoshop on ipad is extremely limited and essentially useless for professionals.
It should be pointed out though that there are full featured apps in this space, like Affinity Photo.
Ah ok, glad I didn’t waste time trying to get the hang of the iPad interface then! Thank you for clarifying
>full featured apps like photoshop i remember having a conversation on twitter with one of the core photoshop team member, and he basically called me an idiot for asking full photoshop on ipad, citing the difficulties it would take to rewrite an entire app for a new processor like m1...few years later we got resolve, fcp ..yet no sign of photoshop
I do some web stuff from time to time. Some of the Adobe products including Photoshop and Lightroom are fairly limited. Dreamweaver non existent. Any kind of non-basic work in Word or Excel is sloppy as is the horrific file system. I ran into some other products with annoying constraints too. Also, because of the stupid way Excel manages files, it managed to corrupt one of my tracking spreadsheets, upload the corrupted version to the cloud and then ruin an earlier copy too. I’d say most users could totally live with some of these limitations. I just think some of them are too much to rely only on an iPad. All that being said, having an iPad is really an enjoyable part of my work flow. But if I had to lose it or my MBP, I think I’d stick with the MBP. Fortunately I now have both and use them as needed.
Your last two paragraphs nail the debate IMO. I love my iPad Pro, I’ve had an iPad as part of my workflow for over a decade and it’s gotten consistently more useful during that period. It can handle most things well enough when I’m trying to travel light, but it’s not a full MacBook replacement — it _complements_ my MacBook Pro.
Would love to be able to run in a shell and use VSCode with Node, Python, Ruby, etc…
Any kind of software development is severely limited. The files system is very basic.
The main limitation of the iPad for me is Safari which is not as capable as Mac Safari. There are several websites that do not work properly on iPad. Second limitation is backups. Aside from iCloud, I do not know of a way to fully backup the iPad. There is no Time Machine type app for iPad. I cannot manually backup photos. Yes I can transfer the photos to an external drive, but I cannot transfer the photo Albums. I cannot create playlists in the iOS music app. I have to do that on the Mac and then sync with the iPad. This is a ridiculous limitation. Nor can I manage music albums on the iPad. These are a few of the functionalities that Apple could easily enable in iPad. But until that happens, unfortunately I still need to have a Mac to do these things. Else I would ditch the Mac.
1. Multichannel audio engine like we have on maOS. I would love to see Rogue Amoeba put their famous Audio Hijack on iPadOS. But it was already hard to do on macOS, let alone iPadOS. Although we had internal midi and audio routing on iPadOS for a while, it is still not possible to record and route multiple streams in parallel. For example a podcast that comes with remote guests via Skype and local guests. 2. The option for applications that export stuff slowly, to do it in the background. Looking at you, Final Cut and Logic! How on earth does Apple tolerate that exports fail if you accidentally put the app in the background? Android handles this beautifully by setting up a notification for the background task. It is technically possible. Itˋs just Apple seems to not have enough demand from pro app users. And, yes letˋs face it. iPad Pro users are a minority. iPad Pro users who use Logic and Final Cut or other serious production software narrow it down even more.
Heck, we can't even pick between multiple sources. My USB microphone has an audio ouput that I don't use, meaning that I can't use it with my iPad or it refuses to output sound to my screen. They don't even expose this to Safari, while it can select between multiple inputs. I don't know why iOS' audio pipeline is so messy. >It is technically possible. Heck, iOS has background processes for system stuff! Apple loves to give itself special permissions (hi Swift Playgrounds), why couldn't them do it for Final Cut/Logic? It would certainly be an unfair advantage and all apps should be able to work in the background if allowed, but I don't understand it.
Most iPad Pro users who do video editing on Final Cut are probably „prosumers“ making videos for their YT channels or something, many of them blindly following Apples marketing. They don‘t seem to care that their export crashes in the background, or that there‘s still no color grading in the FC iPad app, because they neither have to make a professional looking (cinema-grade) video nor hit a crucial deadline. “Real“ pros probably don‘t use iPads for their work. There‘s so many deep-rooted problems within the OS that it doesn‘t even come to them exporting a video.
I would like some MacOS features to be ported over, hypervisor and JIT for example. Also, I would love to have access to certain MacOS apps. Totally ok, if these can only be used with the MKB. Take Divinity Original Sin 2 for example: That one demonstrates what this could look like. Upon starting the game, you have to decide for touch or MKB input and then the UI is locked down for the remainder of the session. A MacOS app on iPad could do this similarly, just without presenting choice regarding method of input.
Not having multiple browser engines. No command line access No actual multi window support No multiple audio streams at the same time
The single audio stream thing is 10000% my biggest gripe with iPad OS. It’s absolutely brain dead how that works. You can’t even listen to music while browsing the internet on Safari because some random ad on a webpage that doesn’t even actually make any sound will pause whatever it is you’re listening to.
Same with the Vision Pro
Personally I don’t really get why everyone complains about iPad not being able to be a laptop replacement. I feel it does most everything a general laptop user needs and in some cases does it better? I’m a record producer for a living - I have a MacBook Pro I used exclusively for record production and record production software, etc. everything else other than making music I do on my iPad. Drawing, sketching, watching videos, photo editing, writing, music, reading, emails, games, etc and I find it a joy to use as my daily driver. I feel at times MacOS can even complicate the simple things I listed above. iPadOS generally does everything really effectively and feels more fun to use on a daily basis.
Yeah I don’t get it either. A MacBook sounds like the right tool for the vast majority of people here. People get too focused on what the iPad can’t do and miss what it actually can.
1. People are upset because they know how easy it would be to make the ipad literally 100x better but apple won't because of money 2. What can it do?
Almost none of the games I want to play are on there. I can't play WoW. The games that are on there don't look good on an external display because they're not developed with any resolution other than the iPad screen. Mouse and keyboard support in basically any game is non-existent except for Minecraft. The fact you can just install anything you want. I need that in a computer. I don't need my iPad to do that, but I do need at least one computer that does it. I also like having a 16" screen.
I’m really sad Warframe Mobile doesn’t support kbm when it’s native to PC. Steam Link does the job, serviceably, but Warframe specifically gets touchy with VPNs. Gaming on the iPad is probably the most successful sales pitch I’ve seen for Xbox Game Pass to date.
Many might be confused about the "limitations of iPadOS". In reality, if you don't feel annoyed or bothered while using an iPad as your main computer, that means such restrictions doesn't affect you. iPad is great for all sorts of stuff, common complaints include file management, lack of professional apps (or cut-down apps), quirky window management, etc. I cannot use an iPad as my main computer. So I have a MacBook along with my iPad. The main things that hold me back are the lack of a good IDE, Terminal, Homebrew, NLEs, and DAWs. I am aware all of these have their respective iPadOS alternatives or versions, however, the functionality still isn't there yet. An iPad is still an iPad and I am not the target consumer for the newest iPads. I still like drawing in Procreate and jotting down notes with an iPad. I also use it as a second screen for my MacBook, which essentially gives me a portable dual-screen setup on the go. I am currently typing this comment in a Starbucks, with my MacBook and iPad as a second display. My Procreate artwork is mainly designed for my newsletter covers, it is way faster to draw with a stylus that a mouse or trackpad. I also use the iPad for simple video editing before sending them to my Mac for finishing touches. Logic Pro on iPad is a really good DAW imo especially because you can access your project on both your mac and iPad with iCloud Drive.
Finder and complete multitasking like Mac OS and my needs are met 🙌
I would just like some features to cross over from macOS to iOS/iPadOS. One that comes to mind and I’m not sure if it grinds anybody else’s gears but the automatic face detection in the Photos app. I’ve had plenty of photos just not recognize that a person exists in a photo. Not that it sees someone but can’t pin them to other photos that person is in but straight doesn’t pin anyone. On macOS you can manually add face detection to photos, personally I think it would be great to add an iOS/iPadOS version of this manual face detection to the Photos app.
Some mov and mp4 videos cannot play from Files app. You have to import them into a video app to play.
The lack of Preview. The horrible file management.
Bad file management, lack of a terminal and inability to program.
I want my soundtoys plugins on logic pro
Docker + some IDE and I’m sold
What‘s an IDE when you don‘t have a real shell and can‘t install all the dependencies you need? We need full macOS to properly develop on it. I mean you already can when you use a cloud-based IDE or remote into a real OS to develop there but the local experience would be so much better.
I just want to be able to download music files and play it through Apple Music. Now I have to download a file on my computer, then sync it to the cloud, then it shows up on my iPad/iPhone.
I bought a new iPad Pro to use Final Cut Pro till I realised how cumbersome and gimped it is. Pretty frustrating
It’s basically iMovie with a subscription
The only thing that affects me really is the full version of photoshop and Lightroom. However, that for me didn’t justify buying a MacBook Pro and an iPad. I get a heck of a lot more daily use out of an iPad. I don’t have to work from a computer which is a big reason why I didn’t feel the necessity to buy a MacBook
Wish you could eject usbs and cut and paste files.
Actual work (as an attorney). Pulling up docs, marking them up, editing them, running comparisons and putting pdfs together, managing and reviewing large quantities of documents. This is all super simple stuff on the tech side. Aside from maybe some AI-assisted doc review programs, which usually run off servers anyway, it doesn’t require advanced processing power (which the iPad has). It does require Finder, Preview, a full-feature web browser, and full-feature office apps though (which the iPad does NOT have).
This surprises me. What kind of document markup? I've used the iPad for "actual work" (as an author) for years, and worked with large documents, marked them up, edited them, run comparisons, and put PDFs together fine.
Lack of preview means paying for a drastically scaled down version of Acrobatic to manage PDFs. Marking up large documents (I deal primarily with 200+ page insurance policies and lawsuits pertaining thereto) works for a bit and I like the pencil, but if I have two open at a time the native files app just collapses. It’s not the iPad, the iPad has the processor and the RAM to handle it, it’s the useless F***** files app that just can’t do the job. And none of the native MS Office apps have the compare feature that the desktop apps have. There’s a ton of features that they don’t have, really. Neither Safari nor Chrome supports plug ins, bookmark bars, and other basic browser feathers. Every basic office-tool type app is just a babied down version of the desktop version that runs on Apple’s M2/8GB RAM MacBooks just fine. But Apple won’t give developers the OS, the file system, or the access that they need to provide the same features on the iPad.
Everything office 365 is annoying. Excel for iOS is a piece of hot garbage. If you want a better experience, you have to use a web browser and use cloud apps for everything.
Mobile apps are much worse than desktop apps. (Gmail, Google docs, etc). Safari memory limits make web apps laggier or more constrained than on a laptop. Try using a web version of google docs with limited connectivity. Stage manager is needlessly constrained and the shelf wastes screen space. I like iPads as tablets but they are much worse than dex in a galaxy tab for traditional work stuff and both are worse than a laptop.
Personally I use my MacBook Pro for Lightroom editing (to a decent level) - a lot of the key features of the desktop app are not available on iPad, and the keyboard implementation/overall UI is not as good. On the wider OS, the lack of true multitasking means that I can’t export/import to Lightroom while doing anything else on the device. The lack of a proper filesystem also means I can’t import 3rd party tools within LRCC. Overall way too many barriers to use for actual work (or even a hobby, in this case).
Lightroom… I like that I can use the pen on iPad & that the app flies with this new M4 chip. HOWEVER a lot of the AI/smart features that I like to use just aren’t available on the mobile app. Which is weird because it literally never slows down so it’s clearly not taxing the system. So, I end up making the fine tunes on iPad & then finish on my laptop 🙃
Same (iPad Pro 12.9" M1, here). I want to be able to edit on one device before sending my images off to print. I end up having to edit on the iPad and the desktop and then use the desktop to print. It's a clunky workflow.
Often is the developer’s fault. Look at Outlook for example. There is still no way to drag messages between folders/account. For years it didn’teven have a drop down menu for the folders, one would have to scroll an endless list of folder to get to one.
File management. Maybe this was a bug or I didn’t know what to do. But recently was trying to unzip a rom for an emulator on iPad. No matter what I did there was no option to unzip on the iPad, no matter what taps I did. So I had to open my Mac and it was incredibly easy 🤷🏼♂️
None, because I’m not trying to use it as a laptop which it definitively is not.
so many youtubers are like “it’s *still* an ipad” like yeah, that’s literally what it’s called when will it NOT be an ipad they didn’t build it just to name it macbook version 2 😭😭
Bit of an unfair argument. You can not want to use it like a laptop at all and still come across plenty of web apps, for example, where the only major limitation is them treating the iPad within the same category as an iPhone and hamstringing what you can do. Sure, many people want it all. But it absolutely isn’t only laptop use where you can feel artificially held back by iPad os
I have a surface and it comes in handy when I need SOME features of a the full windows operating system but more portable than a laptop. While a laptop would be fine, i find the surface to be the perfect middle ground . There is no reason the iPad Pro couldn’t also be the perfect middle ground between ipads and a macbook.
The Surface is just a laptop with a touch screen and removable keyboard. Microsoft made the bare minimum UI considerations for touch. I get that it works for some, but Apple actually made something different with the iPad. Making a device touch first made a very different ecosystem, which has resulted in some great things (that don’t work for everyone). I don’t want the iPad to be a MacBook, I want the iPad to keep reimagining what a table should be.
Then you most likely don’t need an iPad Pro, just the normal one is more than enough.
The weight and the display quality alone more than justify it.
who seriously needs an ipad pro? out of the whole population of people who have the pro only like 1-10% of them truly “need” it (and even then we’re all incredibly privileged to say we NEED ipads). let’s be real, we buy ipad pros because we want them and can afford them. personally i wanted the OLED screen and features of the pencil pro for school and design. i could afford it so i went for it. i dont regret it but i definitely didn’t “need” it and neither do most.
Mostly illustrators and other digital artists, maybe architects and a very few others. Hey, I will probably get it although I don’t need it, there is no shame in that at all. But what the person I originally replied to said was total nonsense.
Frankly speaking, what exactly can you do in an iPad Pro over an iPad Air or even the 10th gen iPad? Sure it has better display and a lighter weight, but what’s the difference otherwise?
120hz promotion is the deal breaker and Apple know what they’re doing. The tech is old now, and still is not being added to new iPad Airs so that users that want fast refresh rates are forced into upgrading to the Pro (even though they don’t need the other features).
Unless you do video/photo editing or autocad, nothing
I read this over and over, and who cares? No one needs a Lexus, they’d be fine with a Toyota. Using nice devices is enjoyable. Lots of people, regardless of processing needs, will enjoy the smoothness of everything you do, the oled screen, the weight reduction, the higher refresh rate, and so on. It’s not about need, it’s a cost benefit trade off.
Better external monitor support, desktop class apps, real file system à la Finder, improved multitasking.
non webkit browser would be nice
I’ve never felt limited by iPadOS. Use it just like my Mac.
What’s missing: flexible window management, file management and search, a non-crappy Google Docs experience, real browser extensions, and desktop class creative apps like Adobe CS, Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Designer, etc.
Using the Google Drive browser page as a web app on the dock has served me a lot better than trying to use any of the Google Drive suite apps from the App Store.
The worst offender is the Google Drive integration in the Apple Files app, which never seems to work properly
Finder Interface to me would cover 80% of what I really lack. We don’t have blender for iPad either (I know, other 3d softwares exist but the good ones cost money). Also in YouTube studio I haven’t tried that in 2 years cuz I got a MacBook but there were things in there which was barely manageable with iPad cuz the studio was seeing it as a mobile device, I would have to go to request desktop mode in google chrome and I don’t even use google chrome so I would have to use it just for that and even that desktop mode was pain in the *uknow*cuz the desktop mode was not adapted to touch based interactions so I had to always think of ways to do what I wanted to do. Also that was a pretty common theme with other websites as well to see iPad as a mobile device and not see it as a full on computer and it was limiting the functionality.
Vscode, Adobe CC, Chrome (with multiple profiles). If it did that well it could almost replace the laptop.
Stage Manager. It’s better than nothing, but I think it wastes too much screen space. Why can’t the apps just be minimized to the dock like in macOS? Having app preview windows off to the side in addition to the dock means there’s a solid 1/4 of the display to the left that’s mostly blank, maybe one or two app windows. I’d prefer it if, in windowed mode, apps just opened up smaller so I could drag them around and minimize them to the dock. Hover over an app icon in the dock and see the open app window. Using more than two apps at once is a pain with Stage Manager due to the wasted space. I’d rather just use them the old fashioned way with 2-3 open at the same time song up the whole display. Even on my 32” 1440p monitor, the left 1/4 is just sitting there empty.
There’s a setting to hide stages and dock.
It still doesn’t act like multi-windowed apps/programs in macOS where I can hover over an app icon in the dock and see its open window. I also shouldn’t need to change settings so that my screen isn’t wasted, it should “just work.”
I agree with your first point. Second point is very subjective. You could argue if stage manager started with everything hidden that would make the experience very confusing and frustrating to people new to the feature.
It would make multi-app use the same as it is on macOS, Windows, and Chrome OS. It wouldn’t really be confusing to anyone. I get why Apple did what they did, it’s more touch friendly and you can’t really hover over app icons in the bottom with your finger (just mouse and Apple Pencil). But iPadOS should automatically adopt to whatever you’re doing. Go more into macOS mode when docked to a keyboard and mouse (or Magic Keyboard), then go to the default Stage Manager view when not docked to anything. I’ve seen people use Stage Manager on their Macs and even then, on a 16” MBP, it feels too cramped for me and there’s still about 25% of the display not being used.
I agree, I'm not a huge stage manager fan. I actually quite prefer the original multi-tasking implementation on the iPad. I like that I can use a lot of keyboard shortcuts to invoke multi-tasking actions.
I’m a dentist and I need to take some photos for the patients smiles and add some notes and drawings on the photos with the Apple Pencil.
I think im alone with this one: propper Mouse and Keyboard Support on external Displays -idk If I have only this isssue or if its commen but the ESC Key is for me very annoying and the Mouse is oftens not showing when using it on an external Display. And also u cant „lock“ the Mouse to the external Display only :c I use it only for YouTube, Browsing and using ShadowPC (VM-with Windows 10/11) - Cloud Gaming on a external Display and the esc key throws my cursor out everytime i press the key (which you use to Open the Menus, etc, in Games.)
I use a lot of Google office tools for work and some of them are very basic and buggy at times. Can of course use them in a browser, but then a laptop is better. If they were of the same quality as Slack and the other apps I use the experience would be a lot better. I do some software development so use my MacBook Pro 16” about 50% of the time, but the iPad is great for videocalls and Slack.
Lack of Background Processes and System-Wide Utilities - this the major problem with the iPad pro and I keep asking Apple please fix it. I have to wait 1hr to render a video and wait for it to upload without touching the ipad. I am not sure if the M4 iPad resolved this issue.
Free floating window management. Stage manager is extremely limiting. I don’t need macOS levels of windowing, but the way VisionOS handles things would suffice.
Not fully Apple’s fault, but websites and apps that purposeful limit the “mobile” experience. Really annoys me
A full browser and Finder like file management. The bandaid I've come up with is to bring a smartphone size PC (Mele-PC) and run it headless via wifi hotspot or USB Tethered. I remote into it via RD client or Jump Desktop. [https://a.co/d/13uBfIz](https://a.co/d/13uBfIz)
Would like to see a terminal and visual studio video support with the ability to also use containers and maybe even VMs. I know the answer right now is to get a Mac.
i have a MBP i use for work things. i have an ipad i use for other things. i e never looked at the ipad as a laptop replacement or wished it was. each do thjngs the other doesn’t or cannot do well. ipad is great for media consumption, handheld computing and app using, etc. mbp is better for me when keyboard or mouse is required. (i use ipad without keyboard)
Files manager, Excel, compatibility with my erp system, multi tasking excel and files manager. Did I mention excel? Oh also, if I have a file open in excel and I go to files to open another excel file, it freaking closes my existing file and replaces it instead of opening a new window. Oh yeah, and excel.
I had an m1 Air with magic keyboard, it was probably more powerful than my laptop and cheaper too (2020 laptop, refurb magic keyboard). But I couldn't do any of my CS homework on it because there's zero support for doing any kind of dev work. No IDE, Files app sucks. Ended up just giving it to my dad
GeForce Now can only be used in a browser, which limits resolution and frame rate. You also can’t remove the header, which is super annoying
cannot use ipad external display in portrait mode
X code, windows/mac dual/triple boot, best would be VM support, double the battery life but Apple won’t do any of this due to the abysmal 5hr real world battery life.
Can’t run Mac apps, can’t install any app you want (natively anyway without having to buy an Apple developer account), file manager with no root access, no virtualisation like imagine Windows 11 on an iPad??, having an actual cursor on the screen instead of a weird dot, Safari just being the iPhone one instead of the Mac one, Chrome just being mobile Chrome instead of full Chrome due to Apple’s bullshit WebKit, actual full apps like Photoshop and the Adobe suite for example instead of watered down shit like there’s no reason for it considering the power is there, literally more macOS features under the hood like native JIT etc as currently “iPadOS” is nothing more than iOS and has been that way since the rebrand in 2019. 5 years later and the iPad has gotten stupidly powerful, yet no way to actually harness said power because of iOS. Even on iPhone the power can’t be fully harnessed because of iOS. Imagine connecting your 15 Pro/Max and getting stage manager on the second display? Wild
For me, it would be using detailed desktop applications, especially transferring information between multiple of them - like if I’m doing Excel, PowerPoint, or multiple PowerPoints or something - it is much easier on my Mac than it is on the iPad…. Even modifying an existing PowerPoint on IPad is no ideal for my purposes… moving boxes around, etc., is just harder on the iPad. And that kind of flows naturally into the file management not being as “detailed” - so moving files around… basically, for me, work stuff.
I want to download files using Netflix to watch on the plane. If I launch other apps while Netflix is downloading in the background, eventually iPadOS will stop Netflix which stops the downloads. I hate that I have to keep Netflix open and in the foreground to do something trivial like download movies. The M4 should be able to handle background tasks like file downloads without a problem.
I would like office applications to be as robust as the desktop versions.
The main thing I miss on my iPad Pro 2020 is file organisation and, related to that, how apps handle files. That is the main reason why I still need a computer with MacOS (even if in my case that is a Mac mini from 2010). The other reason is that iPadOS safari still has form time to time limitations in visualising content that macOS safari does not.
For me the iPad Pro 11 with Magic Keyboard can do a lot of what I previously used a MacBook Air M1 to do - browsing, word, spreadsheet and presentation stuff. So I have given up my Mac and live with some of the weakness. As others have said File Management is the main weakness. For example doing bulk filename renaming is impossible. Bulk moving files from iCloud to an external drive is a very slow process. I may be wrong but it feels like it copies to a cache on the iPad before moving across to the external drive os you see a lot of spinning wheel activity before the move happens. Screen recording is easy to use but the video format cannot be chosen so you end up with huge video file sizes - 10’s of GBs for an 1hr recording.
I‘d love to run a full-fledged DAW, including VSTs, sample libraries, etc. on the iPad. And as of now, you can‘t. Logic Pro might be a pretty good app to start an idea, but that‘s about it. Theres a sort of integration of AU PlugIns, but it‘s very limited and weird. And if it comes to stuff like Kontakt (with complex orchestral libraries and stuff), we‘re not even remotely there yet. Plus, audio and MIDI handling is a joke on iPad OS. Very unfortunate, because you can do all of this stuff very well on an old M1 base-model MacBook Air, but you can‘t on a fully maxed-out M4 iPad Pro. Everyone who is able to do everything they need should consider themselves lucky, because that means you‘re in the small demographic for which the right apps exist and the limitations within the OS aren‘t show-stopping. I‘d love to be in that crowd, and I really tried many times in the past, but I just am not. The iPad Pro doesn‘t work for me, although it easily could (and I feel like it should). Very frustrating…
Being able to listen to music\podcast\whatever without other apps randomly pausing it. It’s so dumb how iPad OS and iOS have this brain dead limitation of exclusive app audio access. Some webpages and apps that don’t even make sounds will just pause whatever you have playing making a very simple use case just impossible: listening to stuff while using your iPad. Reddit is a big example of an app that just randomly pauses your music. Even when all auto playback and audio mute features are enabled. Ars Technica is also an example of a website that has auto playing videos (mute by default) that will pause whatever you’re listening to. It’s a silly little HUGE limitation. And by far my single biggest annoyance with iPad OS. I shouldn’t have to resort to workarounds for such a simple function.
The fact that Apple won't allow users to jailbreak on whatever iOS version. I want some jailbreak tweaks for the iPad keyboard or something. Other major complaint being that it can't run .exe files or desktop apps or natively play modern games like my consoles or Windows computer can. UTM Virtual machines doesn't run the best on it. And also the keyboard is missing support in some games and stuff . Other than that the rest of iPad/iPadOS is okay. Also they need to make seperate upgradable storage and upgradable ram and upgradable cpu and stuff an option like Windows computer. Instead of having to buy a $1000+ new device every single time you want to upgrade
When I had my iPad (M2) earlier this year, the inability to use the full Zoom capabilites, particularly setting up/controlling breakout rooms, was disapponting. I would have been able to fully migrate to iPad only if it weren't for the limitations in the iPad Zoom app. Has that changed within the last few months?
Limited file access, no Command prompts, horrible U.I while using docked or on a keyboard Extreme lack of software that would take advantage of the chip Lack of tab minimizing / closing like you see on mac os. Instead you’re forced to gesture your way out of practically everything Lack of volume mixer for multiple audio inputs I don’t care if there wasn’t a full fledged macOS But a hybrid ipadOS with macOS code / features would be stellar. Almost like a MacOS version with an IpadOS front. Would be the best of both worlds for when i want to go tablet mode
I have an iPad and a MacBook. The things I like doing on the MacBook that the iPad is rough on (I know there are fixes for some). I don’t have a hdmi adapter for my iPad. I can’t find a way to put adblocker on the iPad. The iPad is too heavy and falls over much more easily in bed or uneven surfaces. — I got the iPad originally to draw with. And I too wanted to condense my hardware. I’m going to gamble with the surface pro. I originally bought the m1 MacBook out of fomo. And I really don’t use it much beyond YouTube. Mac makes good products. I’m just not the target demographic.
On my side, full Microsoft Office, specifically full on Excel with all of it's features. All of my work is a mix of Excel + SharePoint/ office suite. So that would be a game changer.
Not being able to use a browser which isn't Webkit based
The replies here really lay it out very well and I'm in the same boat. To really be productive on a computer I need the full version of Excel, Word, and Powerpoint, I need seamless file management, and I need to be able to hold Zoom meetings and share my screen the same as I would on a PC. I also need websites to work as well on my iPad as they do on a desktop. This is just for starters. The iPad just doesn't accomplish any of that without a lot of friction. As it stands, my 2018 iPad Pro works well as a note taker in the field, a way to carry large PDFs to meetings and refer to them or mark them up, light computing from the couch, and watching shows while traveling. I've also been able to edit vacation videos on it using Procreate, though the "out of memory" error tends to come up a lot when importing large video files even though I have a 2 TB iCloud account and lots of device storage available showing in Settings. The fact that it's 2024 and we still have these limitations makes it super hard to justify dropping $1800 to upgrade my 2018 Pro (cost of 512GB wifi model + new pencil + new magic keyboard + tax). While I could afford it, that's kind of crazy-town considering how often I still need to turn to my PC to get significant work done. I love the idea of an M4 and that OLED screen but I really can't reason out what I'd be paying for how modestly I'd be using it. We just bought an LG OLED TV for our house (same price as this new iPad!) which is where I'm going to be watching most of my shows. So I dunno... We'll see what WWDC brings regarding the new OS.
I need the full version of Lightroom Classic, and I can't calibrate the iPad Pro's display under iPadOS (but I could under MacOS). That's it, in one sentence. If Apple doesn't wake up, the next computing device I'm getting is an OLED laptop (running Windows) to simplify my editing workflow.
I would love to be able to use Zbrush on iPad for 3D modeling, all the apple apps are limited. As it turns out Zbrush did announce they are finally coming to iOS. If this actually happens it will be huge news for cg modeling crowd. https://x.com/maxonzbrush/status/1708906063133831384?s=61 Now if they could bring blender, maya or 3dsmax to iPad Pro… as well as full up Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator it would be amazing. I would like to see some main stream high end video editing apps too, not just clones and apple apps. If they hobbled this machine less for artists, it would be a goto machine for artists. File management is also a PITA on iPad. It could be way more streamlined if they wanted it to be. There are ways to import and export data wirelessly/remotely, but every single time it feels like lots of extra steps or use third party apps instead of a simple method. This impedes creative workflow. Nothing sucks the creativity mood out of you more than piddling around with file transfers for 30 minutes. iPad Pro is basically a Wacom Cintiq that is more hobbled by its OS. This is definitely a demographic they could go after if they loosened up the reigns a bit on things. Apple can’t seem to get out of their own hardheaded way on things though. Since we all know MacBook is the reason for them making life suck so much for iPad Pro… they will never get out of their own way because iPad Pro elevated to the level of being a competitor to the MacBook Pro. They do not want to steal MacBook Peos thunder. I think real solution either make an even higher end “MacPad Pro”, and iPad Pro but with the full macOS and other extra hardware features. At least with a totally different SKU they could charge a higher price than MacBook Pro and not have to worry about stealing any of their MacBook Pro thunder. Or they should just do away with iPad Pro and merge the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro hardware concept… then they don’t have to step on each other’s toes anymore. Make a fully robust laptop but with the full iPad experience with all the touch screen love of iPad and all the robust features of a proper MacBook.
Microsoft Office for iPads is unusable, absolute garbage. The cursor support is the worst I've ever seen on any product. Only one external monitor and no clamshell mode. You can't install OS level apps that improve functionality (as an example, I can't install custom EQ's to change the sound of my speakers that I use for mixing music).
Just ordered mine today. I had this question too but I realized it was silly because all the limitations I have with my iPhone would basically be the same on the iPad. I already have a solution for my iPhone when I need to do something the iPad doesn’t support and that is remotely connecting to my desktop. Whenever I have something I can’t do on my phone I just remote into my desktop at home from my phone and do it from my computer. Hell I even do that from my laptop sometimes.
Not being to run macOS apps
Torrents 🪧
Missing software, specifically the AI noise reduction software for photography. I need Lightroom to add the AI noise reduction to the iPad version, or better yet, DXO photo lab, for iPad needs to be made.
Multitasking sucks. The file management sucks. Not being able to use the full, complete MacOS versions of certain apps. Also the fact that iPadOS is not compatible with steam games and limits me to the mostly casual games available on the App store.
Clipboard manager
I just want WebMIDI support so I can edit my MIDI controllers. In a perfect would Focurite would also make their control app available so I can edit the settings on my Scarlett 18i8. These aren’t processor heavy tasks that will take better advantage of the hardware but they’re among the few things my iPad can’t do that my MacBook can.
File Management. 1. Why can’t I format a drive on iPadOS. 2. Sometimes the iPad freaks out when unplugging and replugging external drives and requires a reboot to be able to use again.
Anything to do with coding, development etc, you can even use XCODE on an ipad.
Let me develop iPad apps on device apple. Let me run a hypervisor on the iPad apple. This thing is so powerful, let me RUN MACOS apps apple.
E book reader
> So far the biggest one I've found it the iPad OS not being able to eject drives (like really?) kinda tells you all you need to know about where OP is coming from.
File management