Joe Rossignol for MacRumors noting that the M1 iPad Pro is indeed over the touted-by-Apple “50% faster than the previous model” threshold, also:
The benchmark results reveal that the M1 iPad Pro has virtually identical performance as the M1 Macs released last fall. The M1 MacBook Air, for example, has average single-core and multi-core scores of 1,701 and 7,378, respectively. Impressively, this means the M1 iPad Pro is faster than a maxed-out 16-inch MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor, which has average single-core and multi-core scores of 1,091 and 6,845 respectively.
This also shouldn’t be surprising — it’s the same chip (which itself was surprising) for both Macs and iPads — but it does drive home a key point/idea. A lot of people, myself very much included, love the form-factor of the iPad. I would love to carry around a 1-pound machine as my main computing device.¹ And while I’m 99-ish percent there with the iPad Pro, there are still times when running macOS would be and is beneficial.
Apple has said over and over and over again that they’re not going to merge the two OSes. Fine. Then just give us the ability to boot macOS on the iPad. This should not only be possible with these new chips and the work done to port macOS to the M1, it should be pretty straightforward and easy!²
Imagine: you power on the iPad, you’re given an option to boot into macOS or iPad OS. macOS requires a mouse and keyboard (until perhaps it gets a touch layer too, one day), whereas iPad OS does not (but can use those too). Two great operating systems. One device. The iPad Pro.
¹ In the meantime, I would accept a new M1 12-inch MacBook as a hold over.
² Though you have to wonder if one hold up wouldn’t be how macOS would handle the presence of a cellular connection. This is brought up again and again as a reason why MacBooks don’t come with LTE/5G modems — battery life and data usage of macOS which isn’t optimized to be more “mobile” in that way. But enough people tether these days that I’m sure Apple could figure out how to square this circle. Maybe the next version of macOS, due to be unveiled in just a few short weeks, will hold a clue…
