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The iPad Pro Manifesto (2024 Edition)

Another year, another series of incredibly-overpowered new iPads Pro, another round of '…shame the software sucks, though' reviews. But 'sucks' means different things to different people, and it's been a while since I put together an iPad manifesto so I thought I'd delineate where I think iPadOS is dropping the ball or needs improvement specifically from a core OS/developer perspective.

In its most basic implementation, an Apple-provided 'Classic Environment' of sorts that allows you run the current version of macOS, as an app, with the full performance of the CPU and GPU, would go a long way to addressing the shortcomings of iPadOS. Which is why today you can very quickly stumble upon apps that don't quite resize correctly, or have important parts of the UI covered by the virtual keyboard, or toolbars floating in strange places. If, say, Procreate wanted to expose a plugin API for third-party apps to provide brushes or special effects, for example, it shouldn't have to wait for Apple to come along and invent that Extension Point first.

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