They probably saw the debacle that was Windows 8 and thought merging a desktop and touch OS is a decade-long gradual task, if that is even the final intention.
Unlike MS that went with the Big Bang in your face approach that was oh-so successful.
At this point, there's two fundamentally different types of computing that will likely never be mergeable in a satisfactory way.
We now have 'content consumption platforms' and 'content creation platforms'.
While attempts have been made to try and enable some creation on locked-down touchscreen devices, you're never going to want to try and operate a fully-featured version of Photoshop, Maya, Visual Studio, etc on them. And if you've got a serious workstation with multiple large monitors and precision input devices, you don't want to have dumbed-down touch-centric apps forced upon you Win8-style.
The bleak future that seems likely is that the 'content creation platforms' become ever more niche and far more costly. Barriers to entry for content creators are raised significantly as mainstream computing is mostly limited to locked-down content consumption platforms. And Linux is only an option for as long as non-locked-down hardware is available for sensible prices.
Kinda weird to exclude Procreate, Affinity, Final Cut, Logic, etc. from your definition of content creation. The trend has clearly been more professional and creative apps year over year and ever more capable devices to run them on. I mean, you're right that nobody wants to use Photoshop on the iPad, but that's because there are better options.
Honestly, the biggest barrier to creativity is thinking you need a specific concept of a "serious workstation" to do it. Plenty of people are using $2k+ desktops just to play video games.
In these cases, it still seems that tablet-based tools are very much 'secondary tools', more of a sketchpad to fiddle with ideas while on the move, rather than 'production tools'.
Then there's the whole dealing with lots of files and version control side of things, essential for working as part of a team. Think about creating (and previewing, and finally uploading) a very simple web page, just HTML and a couple of images, entirely on an iPad. While it's probably quite possible these days, I suspect the workflow would be abysmal compared to a 'proper computer' where the file system isn't hidden from you and where you're not constantly switching between full-screen apps.
And that's before you start dealing with anything with significant numbers of files in deep directory structures, or doing more technical image creation (e.g. dealing with alpha channels). And of course, before testing your webpage on all the major browsers. Hmm...
There are so many artists who exclusively work on their iPad. It does seem cumbersome for a whole studio to use iPads, but they can be a powerhouse for an individual
But nobody is using iPads as a sole production tool. It's part of the production tooling but it's not exactly an essential part or a part that can't get rid of or replace easily, unlike a "real" computer.
It's rather disingenuous to pretend that an iPad can be sufficient. At its price tag it is still a rather extremely expensive accessory and people pretending otherwise are just full of it. There are enough reviews/testimonies saying as much (even from the diehard fans) for it to be an obvious fact.
> At this point, there's two fundamentally different types of computing that will likely never be mergeable in a satisfactory way.
This is a completely artificial creation by Apple and Google to extract more money from you. Nothing technical prevents one from using a full OS on a phone today.
On the other hand, a $4000 mid-game Macbook doesn’t have a touchscreen and that’s a heresy. Granted, you can get the one with the emoji bar, but why interact using touch on a bar when you could touch the screen directly?
Maybe the end game for Apple isn’t the full convergence, but just having a touch screen on the Mac.
Why would you want greasy finger marks on your Macbook screen?
Not much point having a touchscreen on a Macbook (or any laptop really), unless the hardware has a 'tablet mode' with a detachable or fold-away keyboard.
Mouse and keyboard is still a better interface for A LOT of work. I have yet to find a workflow for any of my professional work that would be faster or easier if you gave me a touchscreen.
There are plenty of laptops that do have touchscreens, and it has always felt more like a gimmick than a useful hardware interface.
> Barriers to entry for content creators are raised significantly as mainstream computing is mostly limited to locked-down content consumption platforms. And Linux is only an option for as long as non-locked-down hardware is available for sensible prices.
Respectfully, I disagree partially. It has never been easier or more affordable to get into creating content. You can create cinema grade video with used cameras that sell for a few hundred dollars. You can create pixar level animation on open source software, and a pretty cheap computer. A computer that can edit a 4k video costs less than the latest iPhone. There are people that create plenty of content with just a phone. Simply put it is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to create content than it was less than two decades ago, which is why we are seeing so much content getting made. I used to work for a newspaper and it used to be a lot harder and more expensive to produce audio visual media.
My strong feeling is that the problem of content being locked into platforms has precious little to do with consumption oriented hardware, and more to do with the platforms. Embrace -> extinguish -> exlcusivity -> enshittify seems to be the model behind basically anything that hosts user content these days.
People have complained about why Logic Pro / Final Cut wasn't ported to the iPad Pro line. The obvious answer is that making workflows done properly take time.
You're right about the reason but wrong about the timeline: Jobs saw Windows XP Tablet Edition and built a skunkworks at Apple to engineer a tablet that did not require a stylus. This was purely to spite a friend[0] of his that worked at Microsoft and was very bullish on XP tablets.
Apple then later took the tablet demo technology, wrapped it up in a very stripped-down OS X with a different window server and UI library, and called it iPhone OS. Apple was very clear from the beginning that Fingers Can't Use Mouse Software, Damn It, and that the whole ocean needed to be boiled to support the new user interface paradigm[1]. They even have very specific UI rules specifically to ensure a finger never meets a desktop UI widget, including things like iPad Sidecar just not forwarding touch events at all and only supporting connected keyboards, mice, and the Apple Pencil.
Microsoft's philosophy has always been the complete opposite. Windows XP through 7 had tablet support that amounted to just some affordances for stylus users layered on top of a mouse-only UI. Windows 8 was the first time they took tablets seriously, but instead of just shipping a separate tablet OS or making Windows Phone bigger, they turned it into a parasite that ate the Windows desktop from the inside-out.
This causes awkwardness. For example, window management. Desktops have traditionally been implemented as a shared data structure - a tree of controls - that every app on the desktop can manipulate. Tablets don't support this: your app gets one[2] display surface to present their whole UI inside of[3], and that surface is typically either full-screen or half-screen. Microsoft solved this incongruity by shoving the entire Desktop inside of another app that could be properly split-screened against the new, better-behaved tablet apps.
If Apple were to decide "ok let's support Mac apps on iPad", it'd have to be done in exactly the same way Windows 8 did it, with a special Desktop app that contained all the Mac apps in a penalty box. This is so that they didn't have to add support for all sorts of incongruous, touch-hostile UI like floating toolbars, floating pop-ups, global menus, five different ways of dragging-and-dropping tabs, and that weird drawer thing you're not supposed to use anymore, to iPadOS. There really isn't a way to gradually do this, either. You can gradually add feature parity with macOS (which they should), but you can't gradually find ways to make desktop UI designed by third-parties work on a tablet. You either put it in a penalty box, or you put all the well-behaved tablet apps in their own penalty boxes, like Windows 10.
Microsoft solved Windows 8's problems by going back to the Windows XP/Vista/7 approach of just shipping a desktop for fingers. Tablet Mode tries to hide this, but it's fundamentally just window management automation, and it has to handle all the craziness of desktop. If a desktop app decides it wants a floating toolbar or a window that can't be resized[4], Tablet Mode has to honor that request. In fact, Tablet Mode needs a lot of heuristics to tell what floating windows pair with which apps. So it's a lot more awkward for tablet users in exchange for desktop users having a usable desktop again.
[0] Given what I've heard about Jobs I don't think Jobs was psychologically capable of having friends, but I'll use the word out of convenience.
[1] Though the Safari team was way better at building compatibility with existing websites, so much so that this is the one platform that doesn't have a deep mobile/desktop split.
[2] This was later extended to multiple windows per app, of course.
[3] This is also why popovers and context menus never extend outside their containing window on tablets. Hell, also on websites. Even when you have multiwindow, there's no API surface for "I want to have a control floating on top of my window that is positioned over here and has this width and height".
[4] Which, BTW, is why the iPad has no default calculator app. Before Stage Manager there was no way to have a window the size of a pocket calculator.
Clip Studio is one Mac app port I’ve seen that was literally the desktop version moved to the iPad. It uniquely has the top menu bar and everything. They might have made an exception because you’re intended to use the pencil and not your fingers.
Honestly, using a stylus isn't that bad. I've had to support floor traders for many years and they all still use a Windows-based tablet + a stylus to get around. Heck, even Palm devices were a pleasure to use. Not sure why Steve was so hell bent against them, it probably had to do with his beef with Sculley/Newton.
Even with the advantage of time, I don't think Microsoft would have been able to do it. They can't even get their own UI situated, much less adaptive. Windows 10/11 is this odd mishmash of old and new, without a consistent language across it. They can't unify what isn't even cohesive in the first place.
Unlike MS that went with the Big Bang in your face approach that was oh-so successful.