This, aside from sideloading, would make me actually consider an iPhone.

This would be great. I really hate the direction smartphones have went

We have power in our pockets that would make mincemeat of older PCs, and yet we barely use it.

Apple has the best use case for it, pretty much all of their software is for ARM anyway, and they have full control over their hardware and software. But of course we can’t cannibalise Mac sales, can we?

Google could do it too. What they should have been doing was drifting more towards the mainline Linux kernel with each Android update, and bringing ChromeOS closer to it too. But nah, Google seems content just doing what they’re doing now. They’ll only do it if Apple does it first.

Microsoft bailed on phones long ago, but given how much they keep bloating windows I’m unsure they’d give mobile/PC convergence the proper showcase it deserves either.

Multiple Linux distributions are currently putting groundwork in place for mobile/PC convergence, but it’s slow-moving and there aren’t really any “real” Linux phones out there to run them on anyway.

So many things like this in computing boil my piss. We could have it so much better.

Would be nice. iPad is not a wholly terrible experience to run docked, but it still leaves a lot to be desired compared to a desktop OS.

There’s no way they’ll “lose control of iOS” though. Worst case scenario, they make some concessions like allowing third-party stores, but then just follow Google’s lead and make it as unappealing as possible to sideload apps or install other app stores (and still have their own defaults that can’t be removed).

They aren’t restricting iPads to iPadOS because of the App Store, but because they want to sell Macs to those who want to use macOS, ideally in addition to an iPad. I don’t see it happening.

Apple’s been moving toward unifying their OSes for over a decade now. They’re playing the long game. They probably still have another decade (or two) to go.

Apple’s stance now is clear: developers need to make universal apps if they want them to run on both platforms, using tools and frameworks that are common to both. It’s much easier to make an iPad app run well on a Mac than vice-versa. I use some Mac apps that were ported from iPad, and the experience ranges from “okay” to “perfect”, depending on how much care the devs put into it. This is obviously the future of Mac software development, but it would require rewriting many apps almost from scratch. Apple’s not going to pull that rug out from under us anytime soon.

The next natural step would be to allow iPads to use the “desktop” UI of universal apps when connected to a keyboard and mouse. But I don’t think we’ll ever see iPads running arbitrary Mac apps. When I think of the Mac-only apps I use, I just don’t see how they’d run on iPad. How am I gonna run BBEdit on an iPad when there are hundreds of menu items, and a ton of UI elements that are like 8 pixels square? Never mind the lack of a real file system.

Microsoft tried this with Windows 8. It went poorly. The experience of using desktop apps with a touch screen sucks, and trying to make desktop UIs touchscreen-friendly across the board just handicapped desktop users. Apple has a better strategy here. They’re slowly molding the software ecosystem to make this Not Suck.

Agreed. There’s genocide, crimes against children, and editors who place metaphors in headlines.

May all guilty parties burn in hell.

(3) is by far the most important, but I can’t see how it will get attention from legislators or regulators.

Also, even if it happens, how could we ensure that service providers (say a bank) don’t start enforcing hardware based attestation?

We’d either need non-attested devices to be common enough for them not to bother blocking them (we are here now), or explicitly protect the right to software freedom. Maybe as part of a more general right-to-repair?