The fundamental nature of macOS enabled these new use cases without Apple needing to do anything at all. Not everyone is interested in this kind of cutting-edge software, and that is fine. But if you are someone who is interested in what the frontier of software is doing today, you can get all of it on the Mac right now.

Source: A blown up iPhone, not the next Mac

At its core, this is about tradeoffs. Apple seems to believe that the simplicity of iPad OS (and iOS) is possible ONLY at the expense of the flexibility and access provided by Mac OS.

I am a huge fan of Mac OS. However, let’s also be clear that even Mac OS has its limits when it comes to extensibility. It’s the most open of Apple’s operating systems and we appreciate the trade-offs chosen by an Apple of yore.

However, even Mac OS pales in comparison to the true extensibility of the Linux ecosystem. And as much as we might not choose its tradeoffs for daily-computing, it’s that spectrum where you have Linux on one end and iOS on the other where computing lives today.

The question remains - what is needed for malleable personal software, the one that allows you to customize it for yourself will fall. It seems like that’s likely only possible in the Mac OS side of the spectrum today.

The kind of customization that we are talking about today - where we want to build our own version / feature of something - is still only done by a tiny few. The majority of the world is not going to write their own software, no matter how easy it becomes.

Much like most of the world doesn’t write their own blog posts, make their own videos, cook their own food etc.

Put another way, I can see why Apple chooses to keep these two separate and as much as I might also want an iPad that is far more flexible that what’s possible today - I think I agree with Matt that maybe it’s time to club those two together and then wait for another layer of flexibility that fits the need of those users.

And (patiently) wait for those gorgeous tandem OLEDs to make their way down to the Macs at some point.

Until then, I continue to choose the Mac and a Linux machine (when flexibility matters even more) as it allows me to do what I want.