Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi recently sat down with MacStories‘ Federico Vittici where they conducted an in-depth discussion about the iPad and the changes coming in this fall’s iPadOS 26 release.
During the discussion, Federighi used an interesting “spork” analogy to explain why Apple has long resisted merging iPadOS and macOS. He said that Apple’s aim is not to displace the Mac, and each device has a different purpose.
Someone said, “If a spoon’s great, a fork’s great, then let’s combine them into a single utensil, right?” It turns out it’s not a good spoon and it’s not a good fork. It’s a bad idea. And so we don’t want to build sporks”.
Federighi went on to say that while the iPad can be “inspired” by Mac elements, he does not believe that the iPad should run macOS. Federighi said that figuring out multitasking on the iPad has been a years long task that’s required some experimentation.
“Figuring out what the right multitasking experience is for this device, and in all the ways that make it unique, has been something that I think deserved careful exploration”, Federighi begins, after telling me that he’s “on an iPad every day, all the time”.
Apple has followed a long path toward more Mac-like multitasking features, indicating that Apple feared that bringing Mac capabilities to iPad would place an artificial limit on what developers might do on the iPad.
“If iPad had had a menu bar from the beginning, like Mac did, app developers would naturally say, “Well, I think a lot of my functionality probably is only accessible via menu bar, right?”, Federighi says. “Those affordances provide the set of constraints under which developers operate and dictate, to some degree, the nature of what gets created. And with iPad, by creating an environment that had very simplicity at its core, it meant the entire app ecosystem had all kinds of incredible design work done by so many developers to preserve the simplicity of that experience”, he continues.
Federighi says it has taken time for Apple to learn how people use their iPads. Some want a simple, single-window, iPhone0like experience, while others have needs that go beyond the standard tablet interface. “We came to the point of saying, ‘Let’s recognize that audience,'” Federighi said. “I think we’ve been on a journey of finding the right interface for iPad, along with our users,” he said. “And I think it actually has been important that it’s been considered a journey.”
Vittici’s full interview with Federighi is well worth an in-depth read, and can be found at MacStories.
