The iPad is pretty great, and so is the MacBook Air. This creator thought they’d be even better if they were combined to make the ultimate convertible Apple computer.
People love the M4 iPad Pro because it’s super portable and incredibly performant. But there are still times when a Mac makes the most sense for a ton of people.
That’s why it’s great that Apple offers iPads and laptops that do different things for different people. But YouTuber ShuCanTech wanted to see what would happen if the two devices were merged, mixing the best of both worlds.
The result is similar to the Tablet PCs of the turn of the century — a touchscreen display that can be removed, turning into a tablet as it goes.
In this case, the display is actually an iPad Pro running iPadOS.
Attaching an iPad to a MacBook’s keyboard is one thing, but this video goes a step further. While iPadOS is fine, it isn’t macOS. So what if you could run both?
That’s where the magic happens.
“Is it a tablet, is it laptop? No, it’s super-Mac!”
You can watch the full video to get the lowdown on exactly what happened, but you’ll need to speak Chinese to get the best from it. It’s fairly easy to follow along regardless, and it’s still a great watch.
From what we can see, the creator took the display off a M1 MacBook Air and 3D printed a mechanism that would allow an iPad Pro to replace it. So far, so good.
But things get really interesting when they dock the iPad Pro and hit a shortcut to enable “MacBook mode.”
It isn’t clear exactly what that mode does, other than invoke SideCar or similar, but the result is a fully functional macOS experience on the iPad Pro display. The result is impressive — including passthrough Apple Pencil support.
The result is a hybrid machine that runs macOS when it’s a laptop and switches to iPadOS when its display is removed.
The best of both worlds? You bet, and now we’ve seen it, we really need Apple to make it.
