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Apple Silicon is Coming for iPad | Will Apple Silicon MacBooks Make the iPad Obsolete?

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Apple silicon Macs are coming by the end of the year, and my iPad is scared. It’s possible that what an Apple silicon MacBook offers will be more compelling on the couch or when mobile, reducing the appeal of my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard.

Why I love the iPad Pro

My 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard gives me what I need 95% of the time. It’s my go-to couch and quick-trip device. As a touch-first tablet, it doubles as a 2-in-1: remove it from the keyboard to play a game, surf the web or flick through Twitter, and when I need to work on a video script or my real day job, snap it on the keyboard with a trackpad to remote into corporate servers and workstations or crank out emails. The A12X is almost two years old and still blows away similarly priced laptops: its single-core performance is the same as my new mid-range 2020 iMac, in a compact package that rarely gets warm and has no fan.

When I still need a full Mac or PC

  • Safari on iPadOS 14 is described as a “full desktop browser,” but that’s not exactly accurate: it displays pages in desktop mode by default, but underneath it’s a mobile browser, so some pages don’t work correctly (some government sites or forms not updated for modern devices; Google Docs has improved, but sites with maps don’t let you zoom with mouse and keyboard).
  • Thumbnails: I started with Canva and have moved to Photoshop, which now has an iPad app, but not all tools are ported and things work differently, so my muscle memory pushes me to the iMac to knock them out faster.
  • Multicam editing: I love editing on the iPad with LumaFusion, fast and intuitive for jump cuts, but some videos are shot with multiple cameras, and splicing them (jumping from camera A to camera B with the keyboard) needs a desktop editor like Final Cut Pro X or Premiere Pro.
  • Screen real estate: whether editing video or remoted into a work server, I sometimes need more space. An iPad connected to an external display just mirrors it, rather than extending.

Why my iPad should be scared

When Apple announced Apple silicon Macs, it talked about the power of a desktop with the power consumption of a laptop. The 2018 iPad Pro matches my mid-range iMac in single-core. Put the same A12X in a bigger body with better thermal capacity, and I’m sure performance would be even better, and Apple won’t use an A12X: Luke Miani’s video on A14X predictions breaks down the history of Apple’s A and AX chips and estimates the A14X could be faster than the i9 in the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro and just shy of the i9 iMac. Apple could have much bigger chips with more cores, more thermal room and maybe multiple chips (“a guy can dream”).

  • Thermals: the current MacBook Air, with an i5 or i7, can get uncomfortably hot doing basic things, and Apple Arcade games or Minecraft are drowned out by loud fans. An A14X-type processor could give killer performance without a fan.
  • Battery: iPads have promised about 10 hours since the first generation; MacBooks get Apple’s “all day battery life,” which in practice is 4 to 6 hours. With low power needs and a bigger chassis, I could see 12 to 18 hours.
  • Graphics: I’m not a gamer, but Apple showed the A12X running Final Cut Pro with graphics-intensive changes on the fly, and many iPad and iPhone games are very good, so graphics performance should be above average. There are even rumors of Apple developing its own discrete graphics cards.
  • Touch: one advantage of the iPad over the Mac is a touch screen. Apple has argued against touch screens on the Mac for 10 years, but times are changing: many Windows laptops have touchscreens and kids are growing up touch-first, so I think Apple is looking at adding them. Touch isn’t good for everything, but sometimes it’s simpler to reach up and swipe. Evidence: the macOS Big Sur demos, whose Control Center has horizontal sliders that look built for touch. Add Apple Pencil support and “hmmm.” It’s almost inevitable; the question is when.
  • Cellular: I think the last thing coming to the Mac with Apple silicon is cellular connectivity: finally buying a Mac, putting a SIM in it and having internet anywhere, anytime. I use my iPad’s cellular data all the time: it’s always on, I don’t have to find and connect to Wi-Fi, I think it’s more secure than any public Wi-Fi, and I don’t have to agree to terms or restrictions like on hotel Wi-Fi.

Verdict

A Mac that runs all the desktop software you need without restrictions, plus the iPad’s performance, low heat, battery life, touch screen and cellular connectivity, is an almost no-compromise portable computing experience. You may not be able to remove the screen from the keyboard, but that’s a limited use for me. If half of this is accurate, my iPad should be shaking in its boots, because I’m not sure I can resist such a full-featured device. If you love the iPad for what it is and want to make it a little more like a laptop, see my video on that.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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