Using iPads as laptops? I scoffed at the idea. An iPad is an iPad, why bother trying to turn it into a laptop? It already has a virtual keyboard, plus they have the MacBook Air line which is their most affordable entry to macOS. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Until I tried it for myself… yesterday.
So I have a base model iPad Air 3rd gen, (with a 10.5-inch display and 64gb of storage) and tried pairing it with a wireless keyboard and mouse. It worked, and the moment I started typing away and moving the cursor across the screen, I was pleasantly surprised. I’m actually using my iPad as a MacBook(-ish), and even used it to type out this blog post.
Remote Control
The next step was to test if I could use this for work. I’m a 3d visualizer, and I use 3dsmax as my main software, so I need Windows. The only way to use it is through remote controlling my main desktop PC via Anydesk or Teamviewer.
And it does work flawlessly. However, there were a few obstacles that I couldn’t bypass.
Since 3dsmax is a desktop software, its UI is meant for a large monitor. The 10.5-inch display is way too small to navigate around it. I had to manually pinch to zoom to see which UI elements am I selecting, and more often than not, I had to squint my eyes and move closer to the display. It was so annoying to navigate this way.
I use the middle mouse button a ton in 3dsmax, mainly for panning and orbiting the viewport. Unfortunately, I found out that iPadOS doesn’t support middle mouse button clicks. It only supports left, right, and scrolling with the wheel. So instead of panning or orbiting, I’m zooming in and out. At least zooming works.
So in the end, I gave up using 3dsmax with the iPad. But photo editing is doable. Softwares like Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo 2 have native iPad apps, so that isn’t a problem. I hear Sketchup is available for iPads, so that would be another alternative for 3dsmax.
MacOS on iPads?
I still don’t understand why Apple won’t put macOS into their iPads. Or at least on their iPad Pros. Since they “basically” look like laptops with mouse and keyboard connectivity, so I don’t see why not. Apple probably doesn’t want to affect their MacBook sales, but still, it is not a bad idea.
Here’s a suggestion for Apple. Merge the iPad Pro and MacBook Air together. Since they both could run the latest Apple Silicon, no fans, has passive cooling, and lightweight. Have iPadOS be its main OS, but when it attaches to the Magic Keyboard, it switches to macOS (or a lite version of it). And call it an iBook Air or MacPad or something.
Then again, it may not be a Good Idea
Then again, that would be weird. We have seen a similar problem with the Microsoft Surface Pro. It’s a tablet that you could use as a laptop. Or a light PC that can be used as a tablet? So is using iPads as laptops. I can run apps like SketchUp, but it’s not quite as powerful as the desktop version. Where does the iPad begin and the MacBook ends? And if someday we could use it for heavier tasks, what are MacBooks for?