What’s on your iPad that you don’t already have a backup of?
But for the reason I stated above, in the absence of effective antitrust action Apple will never open up iPadOS, and because of that, the OS will continue to be arbitrarily limited, the iPad will remain a console for running apps bought through the App Store, iCloud will continue to be the only cloud service with first class citizenship on the platform, etc.
A lot of people like @HobbyCollector would like a touch enabled tablet that’s as capable as a MacBook Air (which btw uses the same processors and doesn’t have a fan either) when it comes to full file system access and the ability to run software that isn’t funneled through the App Store, even if others don’t.
Of course even if that happened some people would still need powerful laptops (and desktops) with fans. And some people will just want a laptop and don’t care about tablet functionality. That’s beside the point.
I understand that you love your iPad, and I don’t think anyone is trying to take that away from you or say you should use a Mac (or Windows convertible or whatever) instead.
But it has its limitations, and tech people are going to keep talking about them even if those limitations don’t bother you, just as they’ll keep talking about the limitations of every device and OS.
Tech people just enjoy talking and debating about that stuff (“The IPad is limited…”/“No, it’s just its own thing with its own benefits…”) over and over again, even when it’s all been said before. We’re doing it right now. 
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Oh, don’t get me wrong, lol, I love discussing it!
Agreed on Apple will never open up iPadOS to other stores unless forced to. I can see why that bothers other users but at least they know that’s a limitation going into it.
I think my concern with the notion of Apple putting time/energy into enabling macOS on the iPad is does that draw time/energy/attention away from further development of iPadOS?
- If it has no impact on Apple’s further development of iPadOS, then I don’t care.
- If it’s something that draws from the macOS team, I don’t really care.
I have no idea how Apple is organized internally in terms of development of the platforms. I don’t want the iPad or iPadOS progress to be hindered or diverted.
All that said, as I wrote in my linked post, I really don’t see Apple turning resources to this when they’ve got a solution right now in VisionOS that could be ported to the iPad to allow for native Mac screen sharing. Apple is probably aware that anyone wanting this kind of macOS on iPad feature is likely to have both devices and it would make sense from Apple’s perspective to just do it that way. It seems like the sort of solution Apple would go for. Easier than creating an maintaining a touch version of macOS, allows Mac users to interact with their Mac just as they would on VisionOS. I think this is a likely feature for iPadOS 18.
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Not sure if this was directed to me or someone else. If to me, I’ll just say that I don’t use iCloud back-up. I use iCloud for document storage for all the apps that have that option.
It’s the local files that where I store active Affinity suite files that I occasionally have to manually drag and drop to backup to iCloud. That works pretty well for me.
And some of them just paid $3500 for a pair of “iPad goggles”.
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You would probably either have to carry both devices with you or deal with latency and other issues common to remote desktop access to another computer. Running a Mac remotely just isn’t the same as working directly on the installed OS.
The feature in the Vision Pro seems akin to Sidecar on an iPad, though it takes it a step further by letting you use the VP’s gestures and virtual keyboard.
I’d like to see a pair of comfortable glasses at a reasonable price that only do one thing: give you a set of large virtual monitors to use with your laptop anywhere you go.
This is basically what I do with OneDrive. OneDrive pushes all my files to the cloud, my MBP downloads it all, and the backs it up. I’ll never not have a Mac and that’s one of the reasons.
I agree with you I don’t see Apple ever changing that.
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Apple would be wrong. iCloud is not a backup and I don’t think anyone in this forum (yourself included, admittedly) sees iCloud as a true backup. It’s a synching service that has some cloud redundancy.
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Nothing is on my iPad that I don’t have a backup of…because of my MBP pulling everything down, running Time Machine, running CCC, and uploading to Backblaze.
Yeah, I use the iCloud documents as a synching service. But Apple does offer/encourage iCloud device backup as well. It even has that little Time Machine like icon.
Obviously that’s not nearly as useful or convenient as Time Machine with accessible incremental backups and document versions.
That said some Apple apps (iWork apps) do have versioning built in and accessible. And some third party apps offer it as well, for example, iA Writer.
Maybe I’m mistaken but I don’t think iCloud backup makes another copy of everything on your iPad. For instance, photos it just assumes iCloud Photo Library has you covered. Same for iCloud drive right?
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That depends on what you call “a backup.” If you don’t count iCloud (for a number of reasons that have been rehashed to death on this forum), the answer is “potentially quite a bit.”
But even with iCloud, I think a better question would be, “what’s on your iPad that you think is backed up that isn’t?”
A bunch of software has locally-stored data that doesn’t seem to come back with a restore.
- I know this is a ridiculous example, but I know people that have lost progress in games after a restore from a same-day backup.
- I had audio and video in VLC that I’d uploaded to it, and it didn’t come back after a full restore. It doesn’t matter if I theoretically have a copy elsewhere - what if I don’t? What if somebody else gave it to me?
- I’ve had podcast episodes in Overcast that weren’t downloadable anymore, but were still unlistened. Sometimes this can be just a few days old, depending on the podcast. It’s assumed that data doesn’t need to be backed up, so after restoring it was just gone.
- Passwords aren’t stored in backups unless they’re encrypted - which can’t be done from iOS.
That’s stuff that, on any other computer, would be in a backup.
Basically, there are a lot of decisions made about what needs to be backed up, and there’s (a) no way to configure it otherwise in the default software, and (b) no way to use different software.
It’s not great.
Yeah, that’s my understanding as well. It backs up the data that is stored on the local storage of the device, does not duplicate the data that is already in iCloud.
Right.
Apple states: “Between syncing and backing up, all of your data is kept safe in the cloud.”
Sync is not a backup
I plug my iOS devices periodically into my Mac and take a backup so their data gets backed up when my Mac gets backed up.
Time Capsule and Time Machine have been too unreliable for me over the years. I do not rely on Time Machine to back up my Mac, although I do use it as a first line of defense against data loss.
For my Mac, I rely on my second and third lines of defense: Carbon Copy Cloner backups to a rotating set of external spinning disk drives and offsite backups to the Arq Premium service.
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…except third-party apps that Apple doesn’t understand, where the data doesn’t sync or get backed up. 
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I do that too. Iirc, an iPhone backup to your Mac’s local storage is more complete than a backup to iCloud.
Part of the divide comes from a persisting belief that any Apple product besides the Mac and iPad is a novelty or an experiment. So the iPad is still talked about as if it still needs to justify its existence. On one hand, that’s frustrating because the iPad would be a huge electronics company if spun out of Apple; its sales and huge user base should speak for itself. On the other hand, Apple’s behavior towards iPad is a bit skeptical, given the ongoing design experiments in iPadOS and the organizational structure that sublimates the leadership of individual products.
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I’m an amateur astronomer, and my astronomy club has a ‘dark sky’ observing site in the NJ Pine Barrens. Compared to the suburban Philadelphia skies where most of the members reside, the skies at the site are considerably darker. But light pollution still limits what can be seen. On a good night one can make out the milky way. But for those of us who have been to a true dark sky site, such as in the American southwest, we long for the day when light pollution is a thing of the past, and our local ‘dark sky’ site can reach its true potential.
And that is how I (let me stress I) feel about the iPad. I have and regularly use two iPads. But I long for the day when iPadOS doesn’t limit the hardware, and I can do most if not all of the things that I do on my ‘real’ computer.
Another analogy. I was recently in Madagascar. And I marveled at the ingenuity of the things that were transported on bicycles (multiple mattresses! livestock!), but that doesn’t make bicycles the equivalent of trucks. It is wonderful that people have found ways to do things on iPads. If an iPad is what one prefers to use, and there are ways to do things on the iPad the meets one’s needs, then that’s a good thing.
But the iPad does not meet the way I work. And given the hardware specs I know that it could. So the argument “accept it for what it is and can do and you’ll be happy” doesn’t ring true for me. And seems no different (or less valid) than the ‘Mac pundits’ criticisms.
Of course, YMMV.
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It’s all theoretical unless Apple decides to change the operating system to meet your needs in the future, which it may never do. I liked desktop Linux as an OS, but it didn’t and still doesn’t run all the software I need and want to run. It certainly could from a technical standpoint, but until it actually does (or Apple takes macOS in a direction I don’t want to live with) I won’t be using it as my main productivity OS.