Apple says no plans to merge Mac and iPad

There are some who believe that Apple would eventually merge the iPad and Mac. And for these people, the strongest evidence of this came earlier this week when Apple outfitted its latest iPad Pros with an M1 chip – the same chip that Apple uses it in its newest 24-inch iMac.

Yup, Apple's latest iMac and iPad Pro are now powered by the same processor.

However, Apple executives Greg Joswiak (Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing) and John Ternus (Senior Vice President Hardware Engineering) vehemently denies this.

In an interview with the Independent, Joswiak said that they are just focused on creating the best products in their respective categories. He said:

There's two conflicting stories people like to tell about the ‌iPad‌ and Mac.

"On the one hand, people say that they are in conflict with each other. That somebody has to decide whether they want a Mac, or they want an iPad. Or people say that we’re merging them into one: that there’s really this grand conspiracy we have, to eliminate the two categories and make them one. And the reality is neither is true. We’re quite proud of the fact that we work really, really hard to create the best products in their respective category."

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Ternus concurs and said:

"But we’re just going to keep making them better. And we’re not going to get all caught up in, you know, theories around merging or anything like that. We don’t think about well, we’re going to limit what this device can do because we don’t want to step on the toes of this [other] one or anything like that. We’re pushing to make the best Mac we can make; we’re pushing to make the best iPad we can make. And people choose. A lot of people have run both. And they have workflows that span both – some people, for a particular task, prefer one versus the other."

The two also talked about the rationale for fitting the M1 processor in the iPad Pro and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro's mini-LED display.