Anyone have a theory why Apple hasn't done this yet? They release an 'iBook' which is basically a wired or even wireless lapdock for your iPhone running OSX in a partition. Seems like that would decimate the entire Windows, laptop, even desktop market in short order.

Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consumer PCs.

There isn't much demand for using phone as computer. If you are at home or work, you can buy a desktop computers for cheap. If you are traveling, you need to find a monitor and keyboard. You could carry small monitor and wireless keyboard, but then you are carrying as much as laptop. People who need to work on the road get a laptop. People who need to send email get iPad and keyboard.

Good example of the economics is that Macbook Neo or iPad Air are cheaper than new iPhone.

iPhone should export display, but more for showing videos or presentations. My Pixel 10 has USB-C display and I haven't used it, but I have computers for all purposes.

Apple should spend more effort making the iPad usable for work. It would be good candidate for USB-C display, but with iPadOS.

I think Apple is just really careful about how they segment their product line for each use case, and would never go for a "jack of all trades" solution like this.

Why would Apple want to sell a lapdock when they could instead sell you the same thing + a redundant SOC (aka, a MacBook) and then high-margin cloud services to sync all of your data between your two differently-shaped computers?

It would decimate their own business.

Because people like TFA pay them not to. It doesn't matter how much you hope Apple changes course - you vote with your wallet.

Why would it decimate the Windows market? From my experience, there's a strong correlation between iPhone and Mac usage.

Looking at the stats, the Win:Mac ratio is 4:1 but Android:iPhone only 2:1 so it might hurt Windows. But if iPhone users are more likely to use Mac or don't use computers much already, then expanding iPhone capabilities would cannibalize Apple business.

I think there are a number of reasons why Apple specifically hasn't done this. In addition to what others have already mentioned (demand, segmentation, profitability, etc), another factor would probably be difficulty with the overall design.

Part of why Apple's products are often praised for their design is that they do a few things really well and focus on those things, instead of trying to do absolutely everything. Consider the iPod, the iPhone, Apple TV, etc -- they're all pretty focused on doing certain things and Apple's really polished the experience. The Mac desktops and laptops kind of stretch this by allowing more things, but they still largely try to focus the user into certain workflows, via the plethora of apps that come standard with macOS and the vendor lock-in that they push.

Making a phone that can also be a full computer goes against these design principles. Apple's closed the gap a bit in recent years by making macOS and iOS a bit more similar than they used to be, but they're still pretty different. If you're on a M1/2/3/4/etc processor laptop and you've tried using an iOS-specific app (not ones that's designed for both phone and desktop) on it, you'll see some of those differences (interfaces tuned for touch are weird with a mouse, things are sized wrong for desktop, file restrictions can be weird, keyboard input can be lacking, etc etc etc), and it's not enjoyable. Going the other direction, the first thing that pops into my head is: how in the world would the mac desktop be represented on iOS? I'm someone who keeps a lot of files on his desktop, grouped in different sections of the screen for different reasons, and I have no idea how that would be represented on a relatively tiny phone screen (at least in a way that didn't destroy my intentional groups). There are other aspects of macOS that would prove tricky to have analogs on a phone screen, too, but this reply is already getting so long that very few will read it...

Now that's not to say that it's impossible. In fact it probably isn't. But there would be compromises (and those compromises would be on top of the compromises already present in iOS/macOS). To do it well, it'd be a much bigger project than most people realize. It's not just changing a few options and letting us use our phone that way. It'd be more akin to designing the first iPhone. Note that it's not just Apple who hasn't done this yet. Literally _no one_ has done it well yet. I truly hope one day Apple (or someone else, even) does it well, since that'll be a glorious day. But it'd be a huge project, so I'm not holding my breath.

That would also seriously hurt the sales of Macs. Even more so now that the Neo exists.

Money.

The general public thinks phones and computers are fundamentally different. Heck, I remember arguing this point even on HN back when smart phones were first coming out and being generally on the losing side as people got very excited about "app stores" and such. I see no practical path to getting to the point that enough of us realize that there is simply no reason for our phones to be locked down the way they are that the companies are forced to undo it, especially with our elites pushing with all they are worth to lock things down harder.

The companies take that confusion to the bank.

There have been numerous attempts at making phone/laptop crossovers, where you can plug your phone into a dock and get a computer, or slide your phone into a laptop case, etc. Some of them are even still around, but they're all definitely second-class citizens. There's a variety of problems that I think they've had in the market, not least of which is the fact that the average person still sees "phones" and "computers" as fundamentally different so the product makes no sense to them, but another issue that I think has held them back is that the product inevitably work by porting the limitations of the phone into the computer, rather than porting the freedom of the computer into the phone.

In the USB-C era, there is no excuse for every phone not having a mode where you can plug it into any ol' USB-C hub/dock and be able to get a desktop environment, even down to the "middle-of-the-line" phones. It would require in most cases no extra hardware. They just don't.

Other than UI and other surface differences, the fundamental distinction between a Mac and an iDevice is... what it is.

A Mac is a real computer. I can run any code I want on it. I have root.

An iDevice is like a game console. I can only run App Store apps (without jumping through a lot of hoops). I do not have root (without again jumping through many hoops or ugly hacks).

If Apple wanted to unify the platform they have two choices. The first is to abandon the "real computer" market entirely. The second is to make iDevices real computers by unlocking them.

I suspect they'd rather keep two platforms.

Under the hood they both share a lot of code, so it's not two totally distinct platforms. It's more like two sets of defaults and two "skins."

The form factor is a major difference.

HNers are significantly more technical than the median consumer and are used to text and keyboard interfaces - a large portion of humanity isn't. You see this with Foundation Models as well - most have started to shift away from only concentrating on text to TTS and STT usecases.

Also, DeX style monitor screen share with a Bluetooth keyboard has been supported since iOS 15.

Additionally, a major portion of Apple's desktop revenue is coming from poweruser and specialist demand - IT departments bulk purchasing developer laptops, designers having their entire design workflow within the MacOS environment, and video editors heavily dependent on MacOS.

Furthermore, arguments about how Apple has an incentive not to cannibalize revenue are dumb, given how open Apple is to cannibalizing revenue where PMF exists (eg. the iPad Pro versus lower tier MacBooks or the MacBook Neo versus lower tier iPads).