Opinion | Will Apple eventually merge iPads and Macs into one device? Here’s why they should

For those who celebrate Christmas, It’s always a little sad to see the aftermath of the holidays in January: the bare space where the tree once stood, a wine rack looking emptier — and, in my case anyway, fingerprints all over the TV.

Those mementos would be courtesy of our young nephews. It’s not their fault, though. So accustomed are they to the idea that every screen is meant for touching, the idea that this large, inviting one is immune to it just never seems to linger — and I have a TV covered in fingerprints as proof.

Strange as it may sound, however, this little domestic dilemma is the problem facing Mac maker Apple — and, ironically, it’s one that it created for itself.

An entire generation who have known nothing but reactive touch screens for their whole lives is now coming of age, and they consider screens that aren’t touch as not just an aberration, but backwards.

Apple, however, has not just resisted touch screens on Macs for years but has loudly and publicly derided them. While it has not yet harmed MacBook sales — to the contrary, they are growing healthily — the basic assumption that touch screens are the default is inevitably going to become an issue long-term.

Apple’s stance, however, appears set to change. Reliable Bloomberg scribe Mark Gurman reported this week that Apple is now considering touch screens on Macs. By 2025, the MacBooks that populate coffee shops and university campuses might also be blessed with glass covered in smudges.

If it comes to pass, however, it is only a half-step. A touch screen Mac is undoubtedly a nice and necessary idea. More than anything, touch on a laptop is less a feature than a backup, a kind of concession to the habit and muscle memory we now all have about touching screens.

What is actually far more useful and forward-thinking would be a device from Apple that both combined the iPad and Mac, and “became” either depending on how and when one uses it.

At least as an idea, it is simple enough. Picture carrying around an iPad that worked just like an iPad most of time: full-screen apps, touch activated, and mostly used for content consumption.

But connect it to a larger screen, keyboard and mouse, and that device now functions like a Mac with all the productivity gains from that familiar traditional user interface.

It would in essence be Apple’s take on a Microsoft Surface, the once derided but now reasonably popular hybrid device from the maker of Windows. But much like Apple’s other iterations of Microsoft’s initial ideas — the tablet computer being the most obvious example — the point would be to make a once clunky device not just more elegant, but vastly more approachable.

At least one benefit is how much better it would be than what now exists. Apple has tried desperately to make the iPad more productive by adding multi-tasking features and power. Yet, none of it has worked, exactly. The iPad still cannot replace a laptop for most, and recent attempts at adding multi-tasking were deemed a failure by even committed fans. Meanwhile, the Mac is doing well, but with a generational shift looming, Apple cannot rest on its laurels forever.

Is the answer then not another series of half-steps but instead a device that combines the best of both approaches, a touch tablet and a fully fledged computer when needed?

It helps that the technical underpinnings are already there. Higher-end iPads already run the same chips as the latest Macs, so power is not an issue. MacOS and iPadOS are built atop the same basic systems and apps are comparatively easily transferred between them. What’s more, iPads already instantly adapt from touch to a cursor and keyboard when they are connected to physical devices like Apple’s Magic Keyboard.

One shouldn’t understate the complexity of such an undertaking. How a device like that might transition from having a project open in iPad mode to when it “becomes a Mac” is complicated, and will likely require the kind of brilliant technology and user experience know-how Apple is famous for.

Steve Jobs once said “if you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.” An iPad that could also become a Mac would undoubtedly undercut sales of Apple laptops at first.

But it’s worth keeping two contradictory images in mind when thinking about the future of computing. The first is a child poking a screen with a finger expecting it to react because that is all they’ve ever known. The other is a seasoned worker trying to get something done on an iPad, and failing.

For now, Apple’s answer to those problems has been two separate devices: an iPad for the child and a Mac for the professional. But as time goes on, it’s going to get harder to make the case for the distinction when, instead of half measures that give us the worst of Mac and iPad in each, what people will increasingly want is most obvious and simply better — that is, the best of both in one.

Navneet Alang is a Toronto-based freelance contributing technology columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @navalang

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