Last year, when the arrival of Apple Silicon on Mac was announced, the community brought back the debate on the similarities between the iPad Pro and Macs. Today, there are many who they want to be able to have a touchscreen Mac, and it is this sector that Apple wants to reach with the iPad Pro, but it is still a little far from it.
It’s no longer a question of power in ARM chips, as it’s something they’ve shown more than enough with the arrival of the M1. It’s more about the operating system, the iPadOS and its shortcomings. MacOS and iPadOS are getting closer
When Apple announced a few years ago that it had no plans to merge iOS and macOS, many gave up hope that we might one day see these differences resolved. However, the community did not give up. To the point that they have already managed to boot macOS Catalina on an iPad Pro.
Obviously this it is far from what is really wanted, which is a level of integration that lets you start Mac apps with the convenience of an iPad. However, the fact that it was possible to do something like this, allows us to understand that, perhaps, there are more possibilities to see their programs than you think. In the end, if you can start your operating system, even if it is virtualized, why not your programs.
However, what they taught also shows that it is not for users to do so. As you can see in the video shared by MacRumors of the hacker named Yevgen Yakovliev, macOS takes a long time to boot into an x86 emulator, which was used in this case. Up to 20 minutes, although he managed to optimize the start between 5 and 7 minutes.
For this reason, it is not a viable alternative, as it is impossible to use anything in these kind of conditions. But first, this is indeed an important step. We’ll see if Apple gets a head start and converges platforms before something like this works fast enough.