So, Why Bother Buying an iPad Pro in 2021?

Does Apple Really Have Something Up Its Sleeve?

I’ve ordered a new iPad Pro, and it’s currently backordered.  But, lately, I’ve been debating about canceling the order.

(Note: I’m posting this a week before WWDC 2021, so I’m hoping that Apple proves me wrong, but I doubt it.)

What’s got me thinking are the reviews of the new 2021 M1 iPad Pro. The consensus of many of them seem to be — well, sure the M1 is faster than the 2020 iPad Pro. But, the 2020 (and even 2018) iPad Pro was already a fast machine. But —


It seems like a number of reviewers feel like the iPad Pro is now being held back by the constraints of iPad OS.  That’s feeling especially true now that we’ve seen that the M1 chip is perfectly capable of running Mac OS.  Sure, developers have to optimize their programs to take advantage of the new chip, but even in emulation, applications run very well on the M1 chip on Mac OS.

Plus, Apple has started to blur the lines between iOS and Mac OS even further by allowing iOS apps to be compiled to run on Mac OS. (Kind of a dick move by Apple to its developers IMO — here, have another platform that you should make apps for with free updates forever. A rant for another time) 

So, the question is: What, if anything, does Apple have planned for the iPad Pro? What’s the point of having an iPad Pro with an M1 chip if it’s still constrained by iPad OS?

It’s like handing someone the keys to a brand new Ferrari that’s limited to driving no faster than 30 mph. 

It still has a pencil. The 12.9 has a new screen. Sure.

The original iPad Pros had better screens and the ability to support the Pencil to distinguish them from the rest of the iPad lineup. Now, though, most of the current iPad lineup supports one of the Pencils, and the screen enhancements have mostly trickled down as well.

But, as we move towards a world where ALL Apple devices are running with Apple silicon, where does that really leave the iPad Pro?

Well, there are some options: 

1) Do Nothing: Apple can keep doing what they’re doing, which isn’t much. 

They might make some folks happy by creating Final Cut for iPad OS, but I think it’ll be severely limited. I don’t think Xcode will ever happen, or if it does, the workflow will be such a pain in the ass that most developers will simply not bother. 


But, mostly, this means Apple makes a few tweaks here and there, but they leave the iPad Pro completely limited by the OS. Eventually, the iPad Pro features will likely be absorbed back into the main iPad line. 

Why just take the boring route? Why not do something more with the iPad Pros?

Like what, you might ask?

2) Start experimenting with bringing Mac OS features into iPad OS.

Give the iPad a true “desktop” and a fully functional file system. Maybe a terminal, but I don’t think Apple will ever do that.  What about bringing more interconnectivity between a Mac and an iPad Pro? Let an iPad use an external display as an extended desktop (which is rumored to be coming). Or, what about this? Allow Macs to use iPads as pen displays. Connect an iPad to a Mac, and then, as long as they’re tethered, you can run Mac OS apps on the iPad and use the iPad Pro and Pencil as an input device. Wacom won’t like it, but they still have larger/better displays. 

How about this? Bring full multi-user support to iPad OS, which a lot of people have been wanting for years.

It’d be a bit tricky because Apple may have to “split” iPad OS into two: one for Pro features and one for normal iPads. Apple will likely never allow apps to be installed without going through the App Store. Tools that would be useful for developers would also likely be not be allowed on the platform.

3) Let’s just go all out: Mac OS Touch.  Allow touch to be fully integrated into Mac OS, and allow the iPad Pros to be the first machines to run it. 

Touchscreen Macs?!? That’s crazy. Apple would never invest in a niche market like that. Or, would they?

Microsoft has already built this niche with the Surface line of products, and there seems to be a decent sized community of folks who are using or would like to use the iPad as their main computer. 

 We know the M1 can run either iPad OS or Mac OS. So, why not push the envelope? It could be a way to keep the iPad Pro line more relevant by pushing them to the Mac side.

This might take longer — and it might become a phased thing like they’ve been doing with converting iOS apps to Mac OS apps and the migration to Apple silicon.

The long term goal, though, would be to evolve the iPad Pro into a new line of Macs with touch support. They’d probably have a new name, and they’d probably come with two thunderbolt ports, but they’d be Macs. 

Imagine running a full version of Mac OS on an iPad, even in some limited form until Apple was ready to go to the next step. Maybe you can run it in emulation? Maybe you can choose to configure the iPad Pro to run in either Mac OS or iPad OS? 

iPad Pros are already at a price point where they kind of sit between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pros. The only Mac that might be cannibalized would be the 13 inch MacBook Pro. But, Apple can solve that by keeping the iPad Pro (MacBook Touch?) a generation behind the MacBook Pro M-series of chips. There are rumors abound that Apple is planning on a new M-series for the MacBook Pro line.

Unless it proves otherwise, Mac OS and the rest of the Mac line would remain without touch. Likewise, iPhones and the rest of the iPad line would stay within the bounds of iOS and iPad OS.

But, the main goal would be that Apple would have a platform where they could be free to experiment with the idea of truly integrating  iOS and Mac OS. Chances are, they’ve already have. The lessons learned from the new platform could result in new enhancements to either line. Maybe it becomes worth adding touch in some form to ALL Macs? Or, maybe features would evolve out of Mac OS Touch that could enhance iOS and iPad OS?

This is all fantasy, however. 

At the end of the day, though, I don’t think Apple will take any risks with pushing the limits of iPad OS. I would love to be wrong about this, but I seriously think that the only things that will be announced for iPad OS at WWDC this year will be some minor tweaks to the OS. Apple will put M chips in the iPad Pros, but the machines will continue to be limited by Apple’s constraints on the OS. 

And that’s a damn shame. 

We’ll see, though, what Apple announces at WWDC. 

The question of WWDC

This year, Apple took a different approach to selling tickets to their annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC or “dub, dub” as some devs call it).

They announced a day ahead of time when the tickets would go on sale instead of taking the traditional approach of selling tickets as soon as the announcement went out. 

With the conference selling out faster every year (last year tickets went in two hours),  pre-announcing the sale at least gave everyone a fair shot at getting a ticket. Last year, tickets were gone before most people on the west coast even knew they had gone on sale.

So, at 10 am PST yesterday, the mad scramble began. 

Two minutes later, it was over. 

Sold out. 5,000 tickets were gone.

A lot of well known developers were unhappy on Twitter because Apple’s system blocked them from completing their transaction. There were a number of complaints of people who had the ticket in their carts, but could not complete the transaction before tickets were sold out.

Apple has been reaching out to some of those individuals by phone and giving them a second chance at getting a ticket. They’re also increasing the speed of when the session videos will be available, promising that they’ll be available during the conference.

There are still a lot of developers left out in the cold, though.

How do they fix it? 

One option, some argue, would be to provide a lottery system. In a way, they’ve kind of already done that. 

If they make it more organized, then how do you determine who qualifies for the lottery? Do they add qualifications to it above just having a developer membership?

One thing they could do, I think, would be to offer a 1 day pass. The one day pass would basically only allow people into the first day of sessions, which would cover the keynote and the overview sessions. 

The firehose of information usually doesn’t get turned on until day 2. 

They may have to scale things up for that first day, but it might eliminate some of the people (like press) who buy tickets and only attend the first day of sessions.

Another option. They could scale up the conference. I saw someone mention that JavaOne hosts 20,000 in Moscone. 

That sounds easy, right? 

Apple sends 1,000 engineers to the conference and makes them available to answer developers questions. Right now, that’s a 5 to 1 ratio of attendees to engineers. If you scale things up to 20,000, then that ratio goes up to 20 to 1.

Okay, then, someone argues – send more engineers. 

Assuming Apple has the manpower, that means they could be pulling more guys off major projects. They may be able to mitigate that to some extent, but I don’t know if they have enough manpower to keep the 5 to 1 ratio.

It’s more than just the engineers, though. What about sessions?

Even when I went in 2009, some sessions were impossible to get into. I’ve heard that the problem hasn’t gotten better, and that’s with only 5,000 attendees.

How much harder will sessions be to get into when you have 10,000 or 20,000 people trying to get in?

They could repeat sessions, maybe. But, there again, you’re pulling engineers away from labs to present multiple times.

Okay – how about this? Let’s host multiple WWDC’s either in San Francisco or regional ones around the world.

The major challenge there is that now you have to pull engineers off for additional weeks to attend multiple WWDC’s. If you host it outside of San Francisco, now you have to spend the time and money sending developers to location X. 

Certainly, Apple could afford to do that. Can they afford to take engineers away from their projects for the additional weeks? 

Here’s another thing for you to think about? I may be wrong, but I thought I had read something in the stories about the new “mothership” headquarters in Cupertino being large enough to host WWDC there. 

Could they scale the conference up and host it at the “mothership”? 

While I would love for Apple to do something to allow more developers to attend WWDC, there are no easy solutions.