> Recent iterations of iOS are getting closer to being able to replace a Mac for a class of tablet-owning users who don't need desktop software, but the ecosystems are pretty well separated for most.
Yeah, apple could solve that instantly.
Sadly, they decided to play a cash cow strategy of milking existing users instead for trying to grow market share.
Apple is so frustrating. Amazing hardware but then they complete shit the bead with the software side of things and act actively hostile against their own users.
It's a product decision.
Apple decided when the iPhone first came out to redo the whole UI stack to be touch-first. There are hardenings for security and battery preservation, but that's arguably the biggest difference between iOS and macOS.
Windows and Linux have tried to retrofit their ecosystems to also work on touchscreens. It hasn't gone well. Too many apps assume a mouse-equivalent pointing system.
Adaptive design has fared best on the web, but it's still not settled. See, for instance, the back-and-forth around density defaults for web apps like Gmail. Some people really like their pointer-friendly dense UIs with hover buttons, and that makes them really hard to use on a touchscreen.
Perhaps ironically, Apple is also in the best position to bridge the gap. Since they own the UI stack that renders most apps on Apple devices, they could do something clever like say "a button is 32px tall if there's a trackpad and 56px tall otherwise." Rules like that could produce an app that truly adapts to the user's primary modality.
The other systems have too many UI frameworks for that to work. Apple could only pull it off because ~everyone uses their component set (I think it's called UIKit). They also have a reputation of declaring the future and making the ecosystem catch up (going all the way back to adopting USB exclusively on the first iMac).
There are no new native apps, only Electron or similar.
This is only sort of sarcasm.
> Windows and Linux have tried to retrofit their ecosystems to also work on touchscreens. It hasn't gone well.
Concerning Windows, you're right. Concerning GNU/Linux you aren't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085
That post is 6 years old, and yet Linux still sucks by default on a touchscreen.
I installed NixOS on a handheld nearly 2 years ago and tried a whole bunch of touch-oriented options (including tiny ones like Maui). The closest I got to good enough was running the mobile fork of GNOME, using someone on GitHub's custom flake to pull it in at HEAD. I'm very happy that Valve has released SteamOS for other devices so I can offload that tinkering.
Steam is very usable on a touchscreen, but the KDE desktop mode hasn't impressed me.
I think the Steam Deck’s touch screen is also one of its worst features.
I will type a message or an email on a phone (Android or iOS) but I loathe even typing my username into the Steam Deck via touch.
I'm writing this from Librem 5 phone running PureOS with Phosh DE. It's convenient and pretty in my opinion. Also it runs desktop Firefox with all plugins you want.
You must use the plasma-mobile stuff, not the plasma desktop.
Mobile wasn't packaged for NixOS.
I am curious why/if Valve hasn't used it for SteamOS's desktop mode though.
Package it yourself then!
I don't really know, but I don't think the use outside of steam is an important use case to them, possibly they don't want to make things too easy, or maybe it wasn't packaged for arch either when they created the base image.
I know for a fact that many university students are using iPad OS instead of macOS now, especially for less typing-intensive stuff like chemistry. You might be surprised how much of college runs in the browser now.