Wasn’t Jobs still alive at that point in time?
It was a non-starter then.
The thing is, the Mac OS works fine w/ a stylus — I’m using a Wacom One on my MacBook as I type this, and if Rosetta née Calligrapher were still around, I’d’ve written it out using the stylus.
I agree that a straight port would probably be bad. But I don’t really like MacOs anyway, so I’m not going to like it as a port to a smaller screen.
What I envision is more of a 2 part OS that is similar to what Windows 8.1 was trying, but even more separate. iPadOS while not docked/no mouse detected and MacOS Mobile or whatever they can make to still work for smaller ish screens when a mouse/dock is detected. Because, while I agree with @dstrauss that iPadOS actually does have more compromises than they’re willing to admit, it’s still much better than trying to reconfigure MacOS for touch in general. It would be nice if the thing that joins the 2 OSes together in this case is the file system, that is more like Finder and less like iPadOS’s joke of a file system. Being able to access the same files from a mobile version of an app, and a desktop version of an app on the same device would be amazing.
At the same time, back when Netbooks first came out and were all the rage, they were even smaller than the 11" IPP and ran a version of Windows that barely had touch as a thought. I doubt MacOS would need that many tweaks to get it to the point of useable in that form factor.
I agree with you that at the time Modbooks were compromises that people were willing to make for the benefit they got. We now have much better technology and a lot of gained experience in a lot of these fields. Apple has gained a lot of experience in their Apple Pencil with IPPs, and have had plenty of time to view the many ways Windows has attempted integration. At any time, they could make the hybrid OS I mentioned above, with touch and pen enabled power, claim they invented it and it’s the most unique offering of all time, and people would clamor for it.
And honestly, for me anyway, it wouldn’t even eat into their sales of Macbooks. I will still use a Macbook Pro for my work, or perhaps a Mac Mini at this point, and would use the MacPad where I use my IPP currently, for art and personal use. It would be great just to have a full file system on it and it not have the weird issues i have with my art files and OneDrive, for instance.
It’s not a MacPad by any stretch of the imagination, but apparently MacOS fits nicely on a 12.9" iPad Pro…
One more thought (that’s a lie): the more I think about this, the more I realize MacOS in a window would be better than dual booting as I’ve always demanded. That way I get FaceTime, iMessage, News+ AND Office!
Interesting. I didn’t think you could get Sidecar and Universal Control to work together like that.
“… I can move everything from my Mac Mini down to my iPad screen and turn my iPad into a portable touch and stylus-enabled Mac.”
No, not really. You can only use touch where Apple allows touch, such as pinch-zooming in a drawing area. You won’t be using your finger for UI elements.
“I’m not sure if this is a bug, or it is intended, but the folks at MacRumors do point out that both can be used at the same time.”
Since he has to make many attempts to enable them both at the same time to get it to stick I’m guessing it’s an oversight by Apple. But hopefully they perfect it rather than disable it in the future.
So it’s almost a MacPad if you’re within wireless range of your Mac, which might be good enough for some people. I know I’m pretty happy with simply being able to use Rebelle 5 on my iPad Pro 12.9 via Sidecar. Makes for an excellent pen display for that art application.
So this is in essence how I would be onboard. If Apple could find a way to relatively seamlessly switch between desktop Mac OS mode and IOS tablet mode I would respond with “Apple take my money right now”
In other words MacOs with what I believe would be a few minor tweaks to the UI such as a finer grained control of the display control “looks like” scaling would be fine on an 11 inch iPad with the magic keyboard attached.
Then,when I remove the magic keyboard, and/or start up the device in tablet mode I get the IOS interface. And I think it would be even acceptable if it takes a few seconds to in essence “redraw” the environment with each switch and ideally also have a way manually toggle between the two as well.
But the big qualifier to all of the above is that it allows me to use the same apps in either environment and not require any intervention by the user for document/data compatibility.
And that last strikes me as quite an ambitious undertaking, but if anyone is capable of pulling it off, it’s Apple and perhaps based on the rumors of touchscreen macs coming (though the rumors we hear is that it will come on a redesigned desktop iMac first) that may be what Apple has planned.
And in the favor of that possible outcome, especially since the unification of chip architectures across both iPad and Mac, Apple has been rapidly unifying frameworks and libraries across both platforms, most recently with for instance with Stage Manager having identical core display architecture.
BTW, I sometimes perhaps come off a bit strongly when arguing/discussing topics like this, so even when I don’t explicitly say it, it always has the qualifiers of IMHO and or what I want specifically.
And as my engineers know, I love to be proven wrong or change my opinion when presented with a solid fact based counterpoint. And one of the things I like about this board is that I get that, and hopefully return it as well when discussing topics like these. 
The thing is, I think the iPad interface only really needs to kick in when touch is involved (but it’s been a long while since I used an iPad) — things which I remember working quite well:
A stylus (and the odd touch/fingernail flick) worked well to control a Newton — Apple should revisit that UI research.
I think that’s workable but the devil would be in the details. In other words, not so much in most parts of core MacOS, but in almost all of the major third party apps, the content is iIMHO borderline too crowded or dense to be navigated by touch and is even iffy by pen.
But in your scenario, Apple already has tech that could be deployed to facilitate this which is LIDAR which could be used to switch the UI to “tablet/touch mode” as the users finger/pen nears the display.
Of course the caveat there is that LIDAR is currently deployed on the rear but not front camera.
I am 100% with you on this. I think the evidence possibly supports that Apple is moving in this direction, but there have been many cases when evidence has been misinterpreted, so we’ll see. This is one area where Apple’s tight control over the apps in their ecosystem might be a pretty large benefit for them.
I will say though, the more I think about this, and where Apple is in the process, the more I realize the actual implementation is a long ways off. I think I’ll be sticking to a 2 device solution for at least a few more years.
You are a great example for both…and your opinions are very much appreciated, despite my stubbornness…
Want to guess five (more years)…
Here’s an interesting video of a guy who installed MacOS (Intel version) on a Surface Pro 7 - my point is touch works very well on a MacOS device - see 3:20. it does have a lot of other limitations.
Yes, this is a one-off but I still don’t buy the “MacOS doesn’t work with touch” explanations from Apple.
Not just Apple. A lot of the pundits and random forum commenters who consider themselves experts as well.
I suspected this would be the result if someone could put macOS on a 2-in-1. After all, combining LunaDisplay with the Astropad app on my Mac mini + iPad Pro allows macOS to work perfectly fine with touch on the iPad. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work with a Windows device too if you could get macOS on one.
Not that someone who is fundamentally against the idea can’t come up with some reason why it shouldn’t be done. Like security issues, updates, “it will take more work for MacOS ARM”, or whatever. 
Missing the point that if it works this well as-is with an amateur install it shouldn’t be any problem for the rest of it to be done by a company as huge as Apple, with some of the best software and hardware engineers on the planet.
Edit: actually, I have never seen anything from Apple saying that it couldn’t be done. Just that it shouldn’t be. Gorilla arms and all that. And of course that objection is out the window if they really are coming out with a touch MacBook in a year or two.
It’s “gorilla arms” until that touch MacBook is released, then it is
“INCREDIBLE, AMAZING, GROUNDBREAKING, FOREVER CHANGED, FOR THE FIRST TIME, TOUCH DONE RIGHT!”
So I’m still on the fence on this topic. On the one hand I agree with the sentiments that if anyone can pull this off, it should be Apple.
OTOH , I think that many are significantly underestimating how much work that is needed to make Mac OS and most 3rd party apps truly tablet friendly especially finger friendly which as near as I can tell is still a primary prerequisite from everything that Apple communicates to us.
I have no doubt that some of us here could make it work in a straight port, but again we are a self-selecting minority, whereas Apple’s own standards would seemingly require a higher standard that there is no way that a straight port would hit for mainstream users.
PS: One other footnote to this, is that on the supply chain side of things, the growing consensus is that if/when Apple does a true touch capable Mac, it will appear first as a new iMac type device, more akin to MS surface desktop devices though possibly smaller than the Surface Studio 2+
I’m curious, when/if they introduce this product, what do you think Apple will do differently than MS in terms of UI and presentation?
When Windows 8 launched, I thought it was the most intuitive thing in the world. You swipe through your apps which are large squares, and select one. Edge swipes correspond to OS gestures, just like on your phone, which are similar learned interfaces on iOS or Android.
The internet apparently disagreed.
(Admittedly, the traditional desktop being converted to an ‘app’ was jarring, but MS quickly added a setting for the UI to launch into desktop mode by default. So let’s assume for the sake of argument, MS did an onboarding tutorial for traditional Windows users that smoothed this over, as they obviously should have.)
How would you imagine Apple would approach the MacOS home screen? Like LaunchPad, or just the default Mac desktop? How would Apple market it, so the mainstream user immediately feels it’s ‘frictionless’ and totally better than before?
That’s an interesting observation, because even the Apple sycophant Leo Laporte still rocks the original Surface Studio and I can understand - that adjustable screen and drawing surface is impressive. But how in the world are they going to slot that in when you between the M2 Pro Mac Mini and M2 Max Mac Studio? I guess true creatives won’t pass up the opportunity to touch/draw on an Apple canvas.
So this is most definitely speculative but I think the answer to how Apple is going bring touch/pen support to MacOS lies in stage manager.
In our customer base, while the reaction to Stage Manager on the iPad Pros was somewhat mixed, regardless even the skeptics saw it as a step forward for productivity on the iPad, but the reaction on MacOS was mostly puzzlement. In other words, “why do we need this?”
But if you look at it from a touch/pen perspective it seems to make much more sense than finder et. al. The windows themselves are much more amenable to being moved around and navigated within than finder was/is.
One other anecdotal observation is that since the advent of Stage Manager on MacOS in the Apple led demos I’ve seen to customers, they lead/startup them with Stage Manager first and only switch to finder for specific tasks primarily, mundane file management and system operations.
And again FWIW some of the Apple reps, off the record admit that the files app on IOS still has a considerable ways to go to even approach the functionality of finder, but OTOH they also point out that since its advent, how much and how rapidly Apple has iterated on it.
TLDR, my guess is that touch/pen if it appears on a Mac will look more like the iPad than the current desktop paradigm of MacOS.
And yes there is definitely acknowledgement that MS tried to move too far, too fast for their user base with Windows 8, regardless of its merits or lack thereof.
My two cents…
As you yourself have stated Apple rarely misses the opportunity to sell yet another device and/or expand the device portfolio.
In other words, I think they may see a studio like device as a “new device category” that will supplement/expand not replace existing Apple devices customers already have and/or create a new entry point for some consumers.
Oh great, now I’ll HAVE TO HAVE an iMac Studio, MacBook Pro, AND iPad - what in the world was I thinking - why have two Apple devices when I can have THREE!
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3 if you count the Apple Watch too.