Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, turned to a pair of metaphors in a recent interview to explain why macOS will not replace iPadOS on the iPad. Perhaps the most notable: “We don’t want to build sporks.”
Questions about iPad’s future came up after the unveiling at WWDC last week of iPadOS 26, which moves Apple’s tablet closer to the Mac than ever before.
No macOS on iPad because the result would be a ‘spork’
When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010, he described it as a device that fits in between a Mac (laptop/desktop) and an iPhone (smartphone). Nevertheless, many people adopted the tablet as their primary computer in place of a Mac and asked for more features to make this easier. The most extreme form of this calls for Apple to go “all in” and put macOS on the iPad.
New questions about whether Apple plans to do exactly that arose recently because iPadOS 26 makes huge strides toward making the iPad more Mac-like. It borrows many user interface features from macOS, including a windowed multitasking system quite close to the one on Apple’s desktops and laptops.
Apple software chief Craig Federighi has kept busy explaining that an iPad with macOS won’t happen. That’s the gist of an interview with MacStories published Wednesday. To make his point, the Apple executive compared a merger of iPad and Mac with an oft-reviled utensil sometimes seen in U.S. fast-food restaurants, the spork.
“Someone said, ‘If a spoon’s great, a fork’s great, then let’s combine them into a single utensil, right?’ It turns out it’s not a good spoon and it’s not a good fork. It’s a bad idea. And so we don’t want to build sporks,” said Federighi.
A car can’t be a truck; an iPad can’t be a Mac
And that wasn’t the only metaphor the Apple executive used to shoot down the idea of an iPad running macOS. He brought up Steve Jobs’ analogy from 2010 in which the then-CEO of Apple argued that a tablet is like a car while a Mac is like a truck, and not everyone needs a truck. Federighi extended the metaphor by saying that there are limits to how much someone can turn their car into a truck.
“It is awesome that the iPad can be the daily driver for so many people, but that doesn’t need a winch tied to the front of it, a trailer hitch to tow a boat in the back, and a flatbed with, you know, ties on the back,” he told MacStories. “Now, someone’s going to say, ‘But I got this thing and I love driving it, and can’t I just haul my boat and lumber?’ And at some point, what you’d have to do to that thing to make it do that, you’ve lost its essence.”
Taking macOS as inspiration for iPadOS
Federighi’s comments might leave some people wondering why iPadOS 26 borrows so much from macOS if the two operating systems won’t eventually merge. He explained that the iPad/Mac merger stops at inspiration.
“I don’t think the iPad should run macOS, but I think the iPad can be inspired by elements of the Mac,” Federighi said. “I think the Mac can be inspired by elements of iPad, and I think that that’s happened a great deal.”
Craig Federighi loves his iPad
Critics claim that the slow pace of iPadOS development proves that no high-level executive at Apple actually uses an iPad. Federighi’s remarks show there’s no basis for that suspicion … and that he understands the people who want to push iPad to always do more.
“I have an emotional attachment to my iPad and I’m not sure I can intellectualize it,” he mused. “It is the device that can manage to go with us into almost every nook and cranny of our existence, from kicking back and enjoying ourselves to getting something done, creatively or productively. That range makes it an extension of self for some of us in a way that I think fosters an emotional connection. I think that is why, for those of us that end up with that deep connection, it’s natural we keep wanting to push it further, right?”
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
