Arbitrary is doing a lot of work. With MacOS you can use an iPad as a touchscreen external monitor. Try it and you’ll learn that it’s not a touchscreen OS. It’s not as simple as “not letting you”.

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bigfishrunning 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe it doesn't have a touchscreen interface, but i take issue with it being a touchscreen OS. I suspect most people who would want to run MacOS on an ipad would attach the appropriate user interface devices.

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hyperhello 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Like a keyboard and trackpad, yes, and the battery would be in the base, and…

	▲	bigfishrunning an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		or...plug into usb and use the ipad battery. the ipad already has a battery. Just don't limit what software you could load, that's all that's being asked here.
	▲	throawayonthe 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		uhuh except ipad keyboards with trackpads are an existing accessory

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microtonal an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

They could have a lean version of the macOS desktop on every iPhone where it would switch to the macOS desktop once you plug it into a display. Include iWork on both sides with shared storage and you could switch between the phone interface and macOS.

I mean Samsung DeX has done something similar, but Apple could make a much more powerful version, since they have a real fully-developed desktop and they have apps for both platforms that use a single code base.

They will, of course, never do this, because it would result in losing Mac sales. Though I think less than one would initially think, because a laptop is much handier on the go than carrying a separate display, keyboard, and mouse and the lapdocks or whatever they are called have much worse displays and keyboards.