MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

MacBook Neo and How the iPad Could Be

iPads should be radically touch only, and MacBooks should be keyboard-first

The iPad should be radically (though obviously) touch-only. No keyboards. No pointers. No mice. No trackpads. Just your fingers flopping over the screen and mooshing into icons. It should not have any windowed modes. Each app should fill the whole screen and only the whole screen.

iPad apps should be weird as hell, unlike anything you find on a desktop operating system. Using an iPad should feel like a finger ballet. Your hands should be swooping and swiping and the whole OS should feel like skipping across a taut slackline, a bit bouncy and pleasing and physical but also precise and quick and focused. iPadOS shouldn’t be anything like Windows or macOS or Linux, it shouldn’t be iOS made big, it should be only like iPadOS – a singular thing of finger-poking joy.

The Identity Crisis: Trying to be "macOS Lite"

The MacBook Neo is about six years late. Back in 2020, when the iPad Pro’s 4th generation model – the one with trackpad support – was released, many thought: Give me this machine with macOS. Back then, MacBooks were uninspiring, plagued by Intel’s heat and the butterfly keyboard curse. Meanwhile, the iPad Pro was fanless, silent, fast, and had a great screen.

But iPads stank from a software perspective. You couldn’t really do anything “Pro” on them, no matter how much Apple tried to bend the definition. It felt like Apple had bolted a Ferrari engine onto a Honda Super Cub. You could feel that latent power thrumming under the glass, but it was hamstrung by the OS. Workflow paper cuts are everywhere on the iPad. Almost anything that doesn’t involve the Apple Pencil could be done better on a MacBook.

The Rise of Apple Silicon

While Apple didn’t give us the iPad Pro with macOS, they did give us the M1 MacBook Pro in November 2020. macOS rocking Apple Silicon was glorious. For many, this marked the moment from which the iPads went from collecting a little dust to collecting all the dust. iPadOS simply isn’t an environment for most “serious” work, especially with the explosion of LLMs where macOS remains the superior, malleable tool.

Instead of making iPadOS more touch-focused, Apple began to make it more like fake macOS, adding multitasking and windowing that was bizarre at best. Simultaneously, macOS is being squeezed in the opposite direction, becoming more locked down and "iPad-like." This misguided strategy ignores the reality that these two worlds do not want to be melded.

MacBook Neo: The True Portable Pro

The MacBook Neo is an outstanding little machine. It’s cheaper than an iPad with a keyboard and far more capable. It has become what many wished the iPad could be – a compact, light writing machine that stays out of the way, feels fluid, and integrates easily with professional services. Rumors suggest touch screens are coming to MacBooks, but melding these two distinct experiences risks ruining the unique utility of both.