BTW; I often wonder about the level of cross posting /membership among the various tech sites. I only regularly post here, but I swear I recognize at least some of the members here posts on other sites.
Not due to the names but writing style. eg. I’m infamous among those that know me for my parentheticals and asides as in eg 
Lol, as if textbook companies would use Kindle as a platform. You can buy timed licenses to only open the book in their proprietary mess of an app or website. Ebook Implementation Service – EdTech Solutions
We’re 1 to 1 iPads at my school. The method books I used with my strings kids at school have a free practice app that comes with digital versions of the books, play along tracks, and metronome/tuner functionality. This FREE app was rejected by the school’s IT department because it’s so bad. They said the kids get frustrated too easily and will just blame any little difficulty on the device itself, creating endless support headaches. They wouldn’t put it on the iPads.
There’s not even a webapp option, so if we had Surfaces, there wouldn’t even be an app to request.
Textbook companies will be the last of the last of the last to let go of greed enough to have any semblance of convenient digital access. And it’ll take at least a generation to take off to get faculty that are comfortable working with such a product. Teachers were finally forced into the deep end with pandemic remote learning, but not all were able to adapt.
Meanwhile, I’m over here with my PFD curriculum in shared onenote notebooks. The other moms in our co-op were fascinated by our tablet set up since printing costs is a huge discussion among families who use these kinds of curriculum. But once upon a time I blogged about all of this, and I love that I’m finally able to see it play out in real life, at least for my family. I should do the math on how long it would take an entry level iPad or cheap samsung S tablet to break even over printing. Having a full color PDF student workbook printed and bound is not cheap.
Side tangent, have you done similar studies of the user adoption of iPadOS multitasking features?
Apple has tweaked this in nearly every recent OS iteration (and users seem to be fine with it), so UX additions like this shouldn’t trigger the “revolt of the desktop” that iOS users seem to fear:
It’s very nice and intuitive…AND functional. 
@Marty no real data in our customer base either way. That’s likely due to our customer base not using any iPad as a primary device, at least in significant numbers, but as a secondary system. And with our own custom devices, the iPad primarily serves as a data retrieval and quick view/analysis tool.
That being said, my daughter’s college study intends to delve in to that this summer. Related to that they already have strong data to support that the longer you are a primary user of an OS, the more the affinity and difficulties in switching. For instance brain scans show similarities to handedness in long term users of any OS when they try to use an alternative. In other words when a right handed person tries to perform common tasks left handed.
OTOH, back to your original question my daughter has embraced the changes to IOS and uses her Pro 12.9 as her primary system. She also has a MacBook Air, but only uses it in a handful of situations where multi monitor support is beneficial.
I honestly don’t know what went wrong with Microsoft’s attempts to lure developers, but it’s something they’ve failed at numerous times now.
For books though, in all honesty… buy a digital copy and then yarrrr yourself a copy that you can use anywhere.
We really are an extremely small minority…
I know many of you are not fans of Rene Ritchie, the ultimate Apple fanboy, but he is an extremely knowledgeable insider. Perhaps as close to the current Apple team as Walt Mossberg was to Steve Jobs. In a recent video podcast entitled “Why the iPad is Broken” he hammered home my opening comment, and why I will never see a truly “Pro” iPad Pro, much less a dual boot iPadOS/MacOS iPad Pro. Just watch from 4:30-7:00…
Yes, if you watch the whole video it comes across as an apologist for Apple for NOT making the iPad Pro “pro enough” but it is also underscores my issues. The SP8 IS Windows Pro in an iPad Pro 12.9-size shell, but sucks as a tablet, while the iPad Pro 12.9 IS NOT MacOS, but excels as a tablet. Which use case is more important, or more correctly put, are we doomed to a two computing device life…
BUT, at the end he DOES come around to my view - just let iPad Pro dual boot into MacOS or iPadOS as NEEDED by the pro user…
As I’ve said numerous times - give me that dual boot option and I won’t care what the cost is of getting an iPad Pro 11 with 16gb/2tb/5g and ditching everything else…
Interesting, and he makes a few valid points. I think perhaps all of us here, due to wishful thinking more than anything are underestimating just how difficult making a device that’s both a great tablet and great laptop truly is.
I’m traveling this week to meet with some customers and wanted to go as minimalist as I could, so I only brought my Pro 8 and my S22 Ultra with me. And getting stuck in a couple of different airports yesterday, once again underlined for me how third rate the Windows tablet experience is compared to an iPad.
Almost everything that tablets excel at such as e-reading, casual web browsing or video watching, is just a bit clunkier and awkward on the Pro 8. Things like not automatically snapping to full screen with video, or far too small or hard to hit properly control buttons in video playback or ridiculously small touch targets on many web pages, and so on.
Don’t misunderstand, the Pro 8 with Windows. 11 is IMHO the best Windows tablet device to date, but sadly that seems to be a low bar to clear at this point.
And I could 100% make a similar diatribe against all of the failings of the iPad/IOS for work based productivity tasks.
Thus the gulf between the two being my point.
I haven’t completely given up hope but it still seems a very distant future at best 
Yes and yes; and to continue beating the dead horse, dual booting iPadOS and MacOS on an iPad Pro, IF AND ONLY IF you have a keyboard and mouse attached, is the best foreseeable solution. As Rene says “cut the Gordian knot.” Especially if you are willing to carry the 12.9" iPad Pro, with almost no difference in screens between it and the SP8…
I’m not sure dual booting is the panacea either, simply because the vast majority can’t/won’t do it (unlike us die hards). They want it “to just work” and dual boot is the antithesis of that IMHO.
Yes us here could make great use of it, but for the tiny minority that we represent , it’s likely not worth it for Apple and possibly MS too.
And purely anecdotal, but I’m always surprised at the relatively few number of people who have made regular use of bootcamp, versus more often than not, use it to run a specific app(s) such as MS Publisher or Access or Intuits small business apps. Even there, to underline my point about how multilayered the difficulties are, most of the business boot camp users I know do things like have a Logitech or MS mouse specifically for when they use Windows because they don’t like Apple’s mouse or trackpad in Windows, though they love it in MacOS
I don’t see it as a “panacea” but it would be THE SOLUTION for the tech nerds driving the debate about a truly “PRO” iPad Pro. I don’t think the majority on either side will likely use it; but how much development time will it cost Apple to make it a dual boot option only with a common access to your data? It’s like still having Terminal in MacOS - how many veteran MacOS users even know it exists, much less use it? As for your second point, this is not crossing unrelated platforms…and most people I know HATE the existing mouse/trackpad support in iPadOS anyway…
And to beat the topic to death (because besides tangents, that’s what we like to do here ) The computing world is vastly different now than when Apple brought BootCamp to the Macs originally.
Back then, especially in business settings, buying a Mac was a somewhat risky proposition and I know of multiple instances where the ok to purchase a Mac was backed up by, “well we can still use it as a PC, albeit an expensive one…”
Far more than most would think, to hear Apple engineers tell it. Not to mention the zillion vulnerabilities you open a device to by allowing it to boot anything other than your trusted OS.
How is MacOS NOT a trusted OS in this scenario?
I’ll whack the horse one more time - this is a separate platform issue, not crossing the streams between Apple and Microsoft. If Apple doesn’t have the faith they profess (that MacOS is “safer” than Windows) then there is an even more fundamental problem in play. In fact I could see this as the ultimate “steal” of market from the Windows 2-in-1 crowd - learn a little MacOS and you can have a REAL 2-in-1 experience…
I know this one first hand. 30 days of MacOS and last night I had to pull a few more files off my SP8 and I was repeatedly hitting Alt-C instead of Ctrl-C having becoming accustomed to the MBP14 keyboard.
This is likely what we end up with, but it still leads to developers having to create “Pro but less than MacOS” apps for the iPad, which defeats the purpose of running full MacOS on an iPad Pro. When I need full Word, Excel, or Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, I need the real thing, not some version that has been scaled down to run on iPad OS 16/17/18… The reason I say it that way is because it will be THREE MORE iterations before Apple and their developers get there - dual boot gets me there the next day. Then I choose whether or not to dual boot as needed; not waiting on Apple for the future delivery.
BUT, I realize this leaves me head on against the Apple self-interest in making me buy BOTH an iPad Pro and MacBook for when I need “the real thing.” Maybe tack on an extra $1000 for the privilege of dual booting and both me and Timmy are satisfied…
Ok, I’m curious (and I know I’ve posted this a couple times now), but couldn’t this rift be solved by simple additions to the multitasking UI?
In addition, with a more robust file and multi-display management, would that satisfy most of your hybrid laptop/tablet needs?
@marty not ignoring that even though you are persistent in bringing it up 
but at this point it’s all hypothetical and thus for me not something I can expend considerable time on.
If/when Apple actually implements that, and I get some real world data on how it’s actually working, I’ll have more to say.
and @dstrauss yes, specifically in Apple’s case, both OS’s are trusted, but that still doesn’t take in to account that aside from the processor, RAM and SSD, the M1 Mac and the M1 iPad still have very different hardware
So whichever way I turn, I’d have too have an iPad to drag along behind the MBP14 or SP8??? :vb-surrender: 
BTW: I know I often come across as "Mr. no, not going to happen " here. And that’s 100% job related as most of my job consists of looking at laundry lists of what customer’s want or think we can make our custom devices do, and having to level set them on what is actually practical/possible…
But isn’t this whole discussion about a “Pro mode” hypothetical? I’m just curious in your guys’ view, what UX features are lacking specifically, that couldn’t be resolved by extending the tablet UI.
I feel like the discussion always jumps towards dual-booting, without enough consideration on improving the existing iPadOS interface.
I’m in 100% agreement with you that improving the OS is the best long term solution, and some of those look promising, but again, actually implementing them effectively and getting customer acceptance of them are a huge hill to climb.
As I’ve brought up before, ask any MS employee about Windows 8, which is almost universally described as one of MS biggest misses
@Marty to more directly address your question though with one specific thing that many cite…
Number one would be a more robust file management system on the order of Finder on the Mac. But even that’s challenging , as one of the core principles underlying IOS is that users shouldn’t have to know/care about what app was used to create something.
And the very idea of a “pro mode” is antithetical in many eyes to what IOS specifically is supposed to be, eg. easy and accessible
