There’s a toggle button to allow the iPad versions of their apps to run on visionOS. It would take one person less than four minutes to allow it. Is it an amazing experience on Vision Pro? No, but it would be a good one at least.

Imagine if the same complaints were leveled at people every time Samsung put out a new watch, phone, or tablet. Some of these are just cell radio variations, but come on.

Some variation of this rumor has floated around for years now. Every year we get people saying Apple’s going to change the band design and make old bands incompatible with new watches.

Will it happen at some point? Sure. Do I think it’ll be this next year? No. A magnetic connection seems like the exact kind of thing Apple would want to do if it were practical, but for a device that is used in the range of activities the watch is, it’s not.

Most manufacturers don’t license the instruction set, only the Cortex core designs. Those licensing fees are actually lower than the instruction set.

So… for every 10 million devices Apple sells, ARM makes $3m? Last year Apple sold 232.2 million iPhones, 60.4 million iPads, and I can’t find a statistic for Mac sales in 2022 only 7 million in a particular quarter, so maybe 21-30 million. We’ll say 30.

That’s ~320 million devices at 30¢ each (and doesn’t include AirPods, Apple TVs, Watches, HomePods, or any other ARM based device Apple sells). That’s $96m dollars for the license to an instruction set Apple helped create, used for chips Apple designed, and that Apple pays to have fabricated.

Nearly $100m a year on three product lines that don’t use ARM Holdings’ cores, or require ARM’s involvement in engineering or manufacturing, only the instruction set seems fair to me.

I’ve used both, and the Magic Keyboard is the better laptop replacement by far. I couldn’t go without the trackpad at this point. I use my iPad as an iPad all the time, but I also use it as a thin client to remote into my Mac. I did this sometimes before the Magic Keyboard existed, and it was handy, and I could be somewhat productive, but it’s a thousand times better with the trackpad.

That’s exactly what they’re doing right now. They’ve not made an indefinite commitment to it, but it’s the second free year for a device enter its second year.

If you’re interested, the company they partnered with was Motif, and they have apps for iOS and macOS. Same quality and very intuitive layout editing.

Most security systems.

Things like thisor this.

There are more, but there are plenty of lightning based accessories and peripherals that people may not be ready to drop for the time being.

It’s not to adapt cables, it’s to adapt accessories.