A Bigger iPad Would Just Be a Bigger iPad

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information:

Apple is developing its largest iPad yet, a model with a 16-inch screen that it hopes to release in the fourth quarter of next year, according to a person familiar with the project. The device would further blur the line between the iPad and MacBook, bringing the tablet’s screen size in line with that of Apple’s largest laptop, which also features a 16-inch display. Apple’s biggest iPad currently sports a 12.9-inch screen. [...]

The move would again raise speculation about whether Apple will one day merge the iPad and MacBook into a single product line or merge the two operating systems given their overlapping features. Apple executives have said they consider the MacBook and iPad different products. MacBooks are designed to work best with external inputs like keyboards and trackpads, while the iPad works best with touch.

A 16-inch iPad Pro would just be a 16-inch iPad Pro. It would neither mean nor suggest anything other than that some iPad users would enjoy and make good use of a larger display. This obsession with “merging” iPads and Macs is nonsense. “Apple executives have said they consider the MacBook and iPad different products” is the dumbest sentence I’ve read in weeks. They are different products. Even adding touchscreen displays to MacBooks — which I doubt will happen more than ever — would not imply a platform “merger” is in the works.

Only someone who has no understanding of one or both of the two platforms could even think a “merger” is possible. Any scenario where Apple unifies both platforms into one OS would be pointlessly destructive — utterly ruining one or the other platform (and most likely ruining both).

★ Thursday, 27 October 2022