I should have written this a few years ago but I was very busy continually making excuses as to why I wasn’t going to start blogging 😁. There’s a sentiment I still see a little bit around the ‘net, but was way more prevalent around 2020-2021. There is the thought that by upgrading (side grading?) MacBooks to use Apple Silicon, this somehow made the iPad redundant or “killed” the iPad. Neither idea ever really made any sense to me. The argument of a MacBook in general making the iPad redundant? Sure… I can see that, even if I don’t agree with it. But the idea that Apple Silicon specifically made a difference in this regard is…strange.

(I’ll be using the terms “Apple Silicon Macs” and “ARM Macs” interchangeably)

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Perspective 1: Apple Silicon Macs Killed The iPad

For many Mac enthusiasts, the 2016 – 2020 years were seen as something of a down or “dark” period for the Mac. The MacBook Pros were getting thinner and lighter, but running up against the thermal output of the Intel chips they were using at the time. Fan noise was a constant under mid-to heavy workloads, and in some cases, the machines throttled so much, you lost the benefits of the more advanced processors. MacBook Pros were limited to 16 GB of RAM when people were expecting at least the option to go to 32 GB. And of course, there was the infamously problematic Butterfly keyboard. Oh, and that cool looking Mac Pro ended up not really working out.

Side note: Despite all of those issues listed, that may be one of my favorite periods in my (short) history with the Mac. Everyone has their own definition of what is “Apple-like”. For me, that definition solidified around the iPhone 5 era as “thinner, lighter, faster”. And this era of MacBook was very much thinner, lighter and (a little) faster. This is also the era that yielded my all time favorite Mac, the 12-inch MacBook. It is the only Mac that has come close to displacing my iPad. I thankfully never had any issues with the Butterfly Keyboard across three different machines, otherwise I would understandably feel different about this period.

Apple Silicon in the iPad became faster, and in some benchmarks performed comparably to the MacBook Pro. It was fun to theorize what the Mac would look like running on these iPad chips. Well, that’s just what we got with the Apple Silicon Mac transition in 2020. The results were that MacBooks became faster with significantly better battery life. These were two of the major benefits iPad had over other portable computers. ARM Macs also gained the ability to run iOS and iPadOS applications alongside their macOS applications. You seemingly get the best of all options.

Perspective 2: Apple Silicon Macs Did Not Kill The iPad

The argument that Apple Silicon Mac somehow made the iPad irrelevant ignores the things that make the iPad a unique product. It takes more the using the same chip to make two computers the same. Remember the things that did not come to Apple Silicon Macs (despite some predictions to the contrary).

• Touchscreens: This is rumored to change in 2025 or whenever the OLED MacBooks start shipping. It will be very interesting to see how Apple positions these models. Simply adding touch support to a laptop doesn’t really change anything without….
• Touch support in macOS: Apple has proudly proclaimed that macOS was designed with the precision of a mouse and keyboard in mind. So in theory, if you’re going to add a touchscreen, there would have to be some meaningful UI changes across the board to macOS. Perhaps the addition of a “touch” mode, similar to the Tablet mode Windows used to have. Speaking of Microsoft, while they’ve been improving touch supporting Windows for years, the keyboard-less experience still isn’t great on my Surface. The biggest issue I run into is the virtual keyboard doesn’t consistently pop up when you tap in a text field. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s actually a core part of the tablet experience.
• Stylus support: You can attach something like a Wacom tablet to a MacBook to use with drawing apps like Photoshop, but that doesn’t really compare to the systemwide support in iPadOS. macOS used to have its own handwriting recognition software called Inkwell, which apparently is derived from the Newton OS, but it has been discontinued in recent years.
• Cellular: You can argue that using the hotspot feature on your phone gets around this. And it does. But that comes with its own downsides like heating up your phone and draining its battery. Cellular support, at least on Apple devices, also adds GPS which opens devices up to location enabled applications. There’s also the issue of data usage. iPadOS and iOS were built with data conservation in mind from day one. The downside of the additional freedom you get on macOS is that software can essentially do whatever it wants, including ignoring something like a “low data mode” and eating into your data allowance.
• Any kind of detachable of more tablet like form factors: Apple Silicon Macs do not cater at all of anyone that prefers the tablet or detectable form factor. People like to point out that a 12.9 inch iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard weighs and costs more than a MacBook Air. And while the cost part is very true, the weight part doesn’t tell the whole story. That iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard weighs 3 pounds….sometimes. Most of the time, it weighs 1.5 pounds once the keyboard is detached. That MacBook Air is always 2.7 pounds.
• Running “all” iPad and iPhone Apps: Apple Silicon Macs can run a subset of iPadOS and iOS apps, but developers have the ability to opt out this, and many do. There isn’t really such an option on iPadOS, so you can run a wider variety of iPhone apps. The experience is far from great, but approaches decent if you use Stage Manager. To be honest, after years of preaching the benefits of using software specifically designed for the device is runs on, I’m still surprised this feature ever shipped. I know you can run Android apps on Windows and ChromeOS devices, but I question the real world uptake on this feature. Most people I know just keep their phones next to their computer and use it when needed 🤷‍♂️.
  

Conclusion

Apple Silicon just made Macs faster and have better battery life. And those are great things! But if you’re a person who chose an iPad over a laptop, I don’t see how Apple Silicon would have changed that perspective. Unless your reasoning was entirely based on battery life. In that case, yeah, I guess an Apple Silicon Mac “kills” the iPad. Its going to be difficult for an iPad to ever meaningfully compete with an ARM Mac on battery life, if for no other reason than most Macs are thicker and accommodate larger batteries than an iPad ever could in its slim form factor.

But other than battery life and performance…nothing really changed. Look, I briefly bought into the hype. Like many others, I picked up a 2021 14 inch MacBook Pro. Its a great machine! I bought it with the intention of using it as my one and only device. But after a few weeks the reality set in. I realized I wasn’t using it any differently than I did any of my Intel MacBooks. Apple Silicon doesn’t fundamentally change the way you use your laptop. It just made the experience better, but it’s nothing new. And it certainly doesn’t present a compelling new reason to abandon the iPad.

In the end, the only thing Apple Silicon really did to the iPad was to raise expectations. Its not unreasonable for someone to think that since two computers use the same chip, that they should be able to do the same things. Especially at the prices that Apple charges. But it’s not unprecedented that they don’t. Remember, Apple just stopped using the same Intel chips that Windows and Linux PCs use. Those machines aren’t failures because I can’t easily run Final Cut or Logic on them (yes, I’m aware hackintoshing exists, but it remains far from mainstream). I don’t think the iPad should be seen as a dead or a failure for this reason either.