The venerable Federico Viticci has done it again! He has eloquently captured the iPad’s simplistic beauty…
The iPadOS UI, particularly in tablet mode, feels nicer than any other tablet I’ve tried to date.
…while simultaneously lamenting its low productivity ceiling.
The problem is that an iPad, at least for people like me, isn’t supposed to be a companion to work that happens somewhere else. It is the work.
Along the way, Viticci doesn’t pull any punches with his fundamental dislike of Apple’s Stage Manager.
I fundamentally dislike Stage Manager
There’s more.
I feel this every time Stage Manager doesn’t let me place windows where I want on an external display; every time I can’t place more than four windows in a workspace…
And finally…
The more I explore other platforms, the more I believe that iPadOS looks and feels nicer, but it’s also getting in the way of me being able to get my work done. Maybe this has been true for a while and Stage Manager was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
In Federico’s mind, Stage Manager is the poster child for iPadOS’s low productivity ceiling when compared to other platforms. Not only do I agree, his words stoked a very strong reckon I’ve been feeling with regards to the tension between information density and touch friendliness.
Before the Apple community was waxing poetic about art in software, we were all in a tizzy about Mark Gurman’s report that Apple was exploring Macs with touchscreens. Some might see a touchscreen MacBook as the device Federico and others have been wanting for over a decade — a great tablet that doesn’t sacrifice productivity. While I’ve been on the “Macs should have touchscreens” train since 2018, I don’t think they can solve the problems found on the iPad.
What makes a great tablet first and foremost is touch friendliness. The iPad is extremely touch friendly. The Apple Pencil exists and is great, but you don’t need one to use iPadOS. An app that had buttons or other controls small enough to require a stylus would feel broken to any iPad user. Compare this to the other major tablet platform, Windows. Windows does not make for a great tablet OS in large part because it isn’t entirely touch friendly. PC makers include a stylus, not just out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they have to. Windows apps new and old are littered with controls that require input roughly the size of a mouse pointer because Windows itself was built for a mouse.
The Mac was also built for a mouse, and while I would argue macOS is more usable than Windows, there is no getting around the fact that controls optimized for pointers are inherently unfriendly to touch input. It’s foolishly optimistic to think that Microsoft or even Apple can make pointer interfaces as touch friendly as iPadOS without also destroying the very thing that makes them more productive than iPadOS — information density. Smaller controls means these platforms can disclose more information and interactivity to their users at once. That’s why a bunch of windows on even an 11″ MacBook Air feels natural while only four windows on a “large” 13″ iPad feels ungainly.
Conversely, it’s impossible to make iPadOS more information dense without sacrificing the very thing that makes it the best tablet OS — touch friendliness. iPad users want more information on screen because that will help them be more productive, but the only way to present more information in iPadOS without sacrificing touch friendliness is a larger display. Not only is a larger display not portable, iPadOS’s support for larger displays still sucks. There’s nothing Apple can do about large displays not being portable, but better support for larger displays? That’s a problem Apple can solve.
Given macOS can’t be made touch friendly without sacrificing information density and iPadOS can’t add information density without sacrificing touch friendliness, here’s what I think Apple should do:
- Don’t try to make macOS touch friendly. Add touch and pencil support, but leave macOS’s interface unchanged.
- Shitcan Stage Manager on iPad screens. It was a stupid idea to begin with.
- Make iPadOS windowing awesome whenever an iPad Pro is connected to a large screen.
- Release a “Studio Display Touch” that works with both iPads Pro and Macs, and can be ergonomically adjusted for touch and Apple Pencil input.
- Bump the specs on iPads Pro to their Mac equivalent. Don’t artificially restrict how many apps can be open on a large display.
- Leave non-Pro iPads as just tablets.
If someone walks into an Apple Store wondering what to buy, they would have three great options given the above. If they want a portable device for maximum productivity, they could buy a MacBook. If they want a portable, touch friendly device. They could buy a non-Pro iPad. If they want a portable, touch friendly device that can also do more given a large screen, they could buy an iPad Pro.
What you don’t want is that same person being presented with a MacBook and an iPad that each have distinct terrible experiences that separately fail to solve the impossible task of being simultaneously touch friendly and maximally productive while still being portable.