Apple M1 in iPad now... How close are we to the grand conjunction?

The Lounge General Discussion
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its economics, having two separate product lines suits Apple very well.
why would they potentially throw the Macbook Air line under the bus, by allowing macOS apps to run on an iPad ? - just not gonna happen.

basically, Apples focus is for you to have multiple apple products that ‘seamlessly’ work together - hence things like hand-off, browser history sync.

thats not to say we aren’t seeing some ‘experimentation’ with Apple in this area.
ability to run iOS apps on the Mac is trying to invigorate the App Store for desktop sales.

Sidecar is interesting, as it potentially could push touch support to the desktop, but again, Apple does not seem that keen on this idea either.

in fairness, Ive got touch support on my windows laptop, and whilst it was kind of fun intially - I never really use it. even with Bitwig, which explicity supports touch - I find the trackpad easier/quicker to use.

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When they build an truly professional ipad with ports, i’ll maybe be interested again.

As it is, my original iPad Air will play virtually any music app, so at the moment it seems pointless upgrading just to get an M1 chip. Headphones plug in too with no additional extras accessories.

No doubt that M1 chip is going to be used as leverage to upgrade now though, but for music making it’s a terrible platform anyway imo just through lack of ports, but could be great by virtue of it’s appstore.

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But mice and trackpads work

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lol

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The new M1 iPad will have a thunderbolt 4 port, which means that you can have a lot of data/power throughput through a single USB-c connector through a good thunderbolt dock. Many fast ports. Imagine Apple allowing hardware manufacturers to start writing proprietary drivers for, let’s say, thunderbolt or any other interfaces. Overbridge could happen then.

Even as it is, my iPad pro 2018 runs very well on all USB-c hubs and works with any class compliant audio and MIDI hardware. Not many hosts are stable to this day, but AUM has not let me down yet. Combined with a nice hardware sequencer/controller, an iPad Pro is very capable in deed, especially for the current asking price of apps.

But, it could be so much more now. That’s why folks are on the hype train. I’ll hang out at the station for now, as am in the camp thinking this years models are only for future backwards compatibility.

[Edit] We have to wait for someone to get their hands on one and tear it open. If apple left the hardware x86 translation layer in the M1 on the iPad, it will be a big pointer that things will change sooner. Otherwise it will be later.

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Slightly off topic, but for my understanding…
Do all apps for MacOS have to be adapted/rewritten to the new M1 chip?
And if so, will my MBPro from 2016 be obsolete, when all manufacturers adapted there software to M1 architecture?

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what hardware translation layer? … there is none!
the translation to run x86 code is Rosetta2, and is entirely software.
… and no, thats never going to get ported to iOS.

yes and no…

so intel apps currently will run on an M1 on macOS, as they are ‘converted’ via Rosetta 2 (the users does not seem this)
however, apps can also now be compiled natively to arm aka apple silicon/m1

these can currently be shipped as universal binaries, meaning they can contain code for both intel macs and apple silicon macs.

to understand the future, you have to understand how Apple views these things.
Apple is ‘migrating’ users and its eco system to Apple Silicon.
so this is a transition phase… that will end !

so for now…

developers are expected to be porting their applications so they will run natively on both m1/intel as universal binaries.
but users can run legacy (intel) applications under Rosetta 2.

this will be the case for a while.

at some point in the future (perhaps 5 years, after the full apple line up as been moved)
Apple will first withdraw support for Rosetta 2, as all apps should then be universal binaries.

then slightly further down the line,
Apple will withdraw support for intel entirely, this means its tools (xcode) wont compile intel anymore, and universal binary containing intel will cease to exsit.

how do we know all this?
simply Apple has been through this cycle twice before. first powerpc to intel, then with Intel from 32 bit to 64bit.

unlike Microsoft, Apple drops ‘out-dated’ technology after a transition phase.
this is why you’ll hear at every apple dev conference, numbers about transition e.g. how many users have migrated to apple silicon, how many native apps there are on the app store.

we never quite know the timing… I think apple watch to see where their user base is, and also how much ‘pain’ it is to continue to support the old tech.

as I say a well trodden path, and Apple users are familar with it, and many are pretty quick to make the transition.

note: of course plans and technology change, and past doesnt always predict future - so this is just the most likely events… timescales, details might vary.

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Great response thank you @thetechnobear
I was expecting something like this to happen

Now, I will have to see if the monome community will update their drivers
for monome grid and arc …

We will see what the future will bring…

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Yeah… just want to add what I survived both apple chip transitions of the past and can say they both were very smooth and seamless, stretched into long years, without too much worries and troubles with good support from developers and apple itself.

And both times I upgraded not immediately but somewhere in the middle of it, to let things become a little bit more settled. I’m sure all be good.

About conjunction- not sure it will happen soon, probably with some shy steps we will see it one day but I don’t expect it to happen next weekend.

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Most developers for Macs will already be doing this - I’ve ported all my stuff already.

I think a large amount of this dev work really started in earnest in December , when we all could get our hands on ‘production’ Mac mini M1.

I think many of us wanted to be ready for the ‘big’ milestone which is the release of the m1x ( or whatever it is) MBP/iMac - this is when we will a pretty large % of Mac users shift.

Those have are ‘expected’ to be released at the WWDC in June

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Amazing, I was sure there was a part of a chip that helped with Rosetta in the M1. Well, then no luck with that. Best we can hope for is logic for iOS in the near future.