The M1 Mac processor in the recently-revealed 2021 iPad Pro forced Apple to reiterate that it’s not planning to combine macOS and iPadOS. According to two top-level executives, the company is producing the best Mac and the best iPad it can make. Not a mashup of them.
John Ternus, the VP of Hardware Engineering, said “We’re pushing to make the best Mac we can make; we’re pushing to make the best iPad we can make,” in an interview with Independent. “We’re just going to keep making them better. And we’re not going to get all caught up in, you know, theories around merging or anything like that.”
Greg Joswiak, Apple’s VP of Marketing, agreed. “We’re quite proud of the fact that we work really, really hard to create the best products in their respective category.”
Joswiak said that there’s no truth to the theory that “there’s really this grand conspiracy we have, to eliminate the two categories and make them one.”
This isn’t the first time Apple management has said they won’t merge Mac and iPad. Back in 2018, CEO Tim Cook said that combining the two product lines would require too many compromises.
Leaves a plot of wiggle room
Ternus‘ and Joswiak‘s comments certainly mean that Apple won‘t stop making MacBooks in favor of iPads, or vice versa. And apparently the same goes for putting macOS on an iPad, as the resulting device would be a Mac.
But Macs built around Apple’s own M-series processors can run iPadOS applications. And the opposite is now possible — there have been calls for Apple to port its professional apps like Xcode to its tablet operating system. Or allow iPads to run Mac applications.
