macOS on iPad Pro M2? Dodgy rumour claims Apple may finally relent on touchscreen Mac

How long have people been going on about a touchscreen Mac? And how long has Apple been avoiding it by trying to make iPadOS a de facto touchscreen Mac that suits everyone? Quite a while, right?

So it’s somewhat surprising to see rumours claiming Apple plans to actually make macOS available on the newly-announced iPad Pro M2 tablet. Sounds unlikely, right?

According to the leaker Majin Bu’s sources (via Apple Insider), Apple is working on a scaled back (“smaller” to use the leaker’s word) version of macOS 14 (due next year) for the M2 iPad Pro.

According to this rather spurious rumour, Apple is planning to make the UI icons 25% larger, to make it more usable on touchscreens. To further confuse matters, the apps for this device would be iPad-optimised rather than macOS desktop versions.

As unlikely as this seems, the iPad Pro M2 runs off the same Apple Silicon as the MacBook Pro M2 and the MacBook Air M2, so this absolutely wouldn’t be a stretch for Apple to achieve.

Availability of desktop-class apps on the iPad Pro would be handy for some of the more intense photo, video and audio editing apps. Perhaps in a situation where it was easy to switch between the operating systems for different purposes? That mightn’t be a bad idea.

Anyway, the sources say the software is codenamed Mendocino and Apple plans to release it as macOS 14 in 2023. We’d be massively surprised if this actually came to fruition. Apple has spent years convincing everyone that macOS and iPadOS are practically interchangeable. You can choose whichever device you wish and achieve the same goals, Apple would have us believe.

However it’s pretty indisputable that Mac users who need apps like Final Cut Pro aren’t buying an iPad Pro – regardless of the power parity – to do their editing. Could Apple be really plotting a solution?