The Verge wonders why Apple won’t let the iPad run macOS. They come to the expected answer: Apple wants to retain the 30% cut they take from apps on the App Store.

Don’t despair that macOS will never come to the Mac. Be worried when iPadOS comes to Mac.

An iPad with Magic Keyboard is laptop-shaped. Why can’t you run Xcode on it and develop apps?

I suspect iPadOS isn’t ready. Its file management causes too many headaches for professionals. I don’t know if or when they’re going to fix this. It’s possible Apple has backed itself into a corner, where the sandboxing it enforces on its apps prohibits the kind of file flexibility that pros need. Multitasking is another problem that Stage Manager arguably solves, though I haven’t heard a lot of praise.

The goal is clear: make the iPad the future of computing. Once you can develop apps on it you don’t need the Mac anymore. Swift Playgrounds exists, but it’s positioned as a learning tool.

I don’t think Apple is going to develop the iPad until it cannibalizes macOS. They’ve found a comfy niche, selling less iPads than they’d like but more profitably than any other tablet maker. And they know the uproar from macOS developers would be significant, at least today. But years in the future, after many more iPadOS updates? Maybe it could take over for the Mac.

Then Apple can take thirty percent, forever.