Craig Federighi Explains Why Apple Won't Merge iPad and Mac: 'We Don't Want to Build Sporks'

MacStories' Federico Vittici, who is known for his absorption connected the iPad arsenic a main computing device, recently did an interview with Apple bundle engineering main Craig Federighi. Federighi and Vittici did a heavy dive into the ‌iPad‌ and the changes that are coming to iPadOS this fall.


Federighi said that figuring retired multitasking connected the ‌iPad‌ has been a multi-year task that's required experimentation.
"Figuring retired what the close multitasking acquisition is for this device, and successful each the ways that marque it unique, has been thing that I deliberation deserved cautious exploration", Federighi begins, aft telling maine that he's "on an iPad each day, each the time".
Apple wanted to guarantee that users didn't person to interest astir managing apps, and that led to the archetypal implementation of Slide Over and Split View multitasking, which was limited. Federighi said ensuring that the ‌iPad‌'s simplicity and interactivity stays intact has ever been "job one." Touch archetypal experiences are "the non-negotiable successful the full thing," according to Federighi.

When Stage Manager came astir arsenic the adjacent large multitasking alteration successful 2022, Federighi said that the ‌iPad‌ and its OS were well-established and developers had a coagulated knowing that the ‌iPad‌ was chiseled from the Mac, truthful Apple "felt a small much flexibility" to adhd multitasking options for those who wanted them.

Apple's agelong way toward much Mac-like multitasking features seems to bespeak a fearfulness that adding Mac capabilities to ‌iPad‌ would bounds what developers mightiness bash connected the ‌iPad‌. Federighi suggested that if the ‌iPad‌ had app paper bars to statesman with, developers mightiness person tucked functionality away, and Apple wanted to promote a simpler experience."If iPad had had a paper barroom from the beginning, similar Mac did, app developers would people say, "Well, I deliberation a batch of my functionality astir apt is lone accessible via paper bar, right?", Federighi says. "Those affordances supply the acceptable of constraints nether which developers run and dictate, to immoderate degree, the quality of what gets created. And with iPad, by creating an situation that had precise simplicity astatine its core, it meant the full app ecosystem had each kinds of unthinkable plan enactment done by truthful galore developers to sphere the simplicity of that experience", helium continues.It has taken clip for Apple to found however radical are utilizing iPads, and the determination to update ‌iPad‌ multitasking successful iPadOS 26 was made to conscionable the needs of antithetic kinds of ‌iPad‌ users. There are immoderate users who privation a elemental iPhone-like interface with a afloat immersive, azygous window, but determination are besides ‌iPad‌ users who privation much power and much functionality beyond the tablet interface. "We came to the constituent of saying, 'Let's admit that audience,'" Federighi said. "I deliberation we've been connected a travel of uncovering the close interface for ‌iPad‌, on with our users," helium said. "And I deliberation it really has been important that it's been considered a journey."

Federighi explained that with a caller instrumentality and a antithetic benignant of idiosyncratic successful mind, Apple needed to defender against the impulse to "pull the aged happening disconnected the support and enactment it present due to the fact that possibly that feels right." Instead, it was important to observe the "essence of ‌iPad‌," and what windowing mightiness beryllium similar connected a touch-first instrumentality if the Mac had ne'er existed. Apple is present trying to onslaught a balance.

Apple has agelong been resistant to merging iPadOS and macOS, and Federighi utilized a spork analogy to explicate why. Apple's purpose is not to displace the Mac, and each instrumentality has a antithetic purpose.
Someone said, "If a spoon's great, a fork's great, past let's harvester them into a azygous utensil, right?" It turns retired it's not a bully spoon and it's not a bully fork. It's a atrocious idea. And truthful we don't privation to physique sporks".
Federighi went connected to accidental that portion the ‌iPad‌ tin beryllium "inspired" by Mac elements, helium does not judge that the ‌iPad‌ should tally macOS.

Vittici's afloat interrogation with Federighi goes into overmuch much detail, and it is good worthy a work implicit astatine MacStories.
This article, "Craig Federighi Explains Why Apple Won't Merge iPad and Mac: 'We Don't Want to Build Sporks'" archetypal appeared connected MacRumors.com

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