People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones
21 comments
·November 17, 2025LeoPanthera
I have an 11" iPad and the screen still feels too small to use windowed apps. It gets very cramped very quickly.
I can't imagine trying to do that on an iPhone. Surely it's useless.
What this does do is reveal the fiction that "iPadOS" and "iOS" are separate. Clearly not.
Someone
> What this does do is reveal the fiction that "iPadOS" and "iOS" are separate. Clearly not.
Technically, I don’t think anybody ever claimed they were 100% distinct. Apple, for instance, says (https://developer.apple.com/ipados/get-started/): “Powered by the iOS SDK, your iPadOS apps”, and they’ve touted the ability to build apps that ru on both iPhone and iPad.
marketing-wise, they clearly are separate, in the same sense as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_platform: “A car platform is a shared set of common design, engineering, and production efforts, as well as major components, over a number of outwardly distinct models and even types of cars, often from different, but somewhat related, marques.”
The only difference is that here, Apple apparently ships all or major parts of the special parts for the iPad on iOS, too. Maybe they also do that vice versa? Can you enable the calculator app on iPad with this method?
tombert
I did an awful lot with my GPD Win 2, which was running vanilla desktop Ubuntu. The tiny display did require a bit of getting used to, but it was a lot of fun to have a tiny little thing that could fit in my pocket that I could write code while on the train.
Screen isn't much bigger than an iPhone Pro Max, if at all, but I was able to adapt to the desktop GUIs without much trouble.
rock_artist
It might not be super practical on the device display. But with external display and keyboard/mouse this becomes much more usable.
650REDHAIR
Honestly a dex competitor would really help keep me in the Apple ecosystem.
rado
Yes, on 13" it's just about right
Razengan
> I can't imagine trying to do that on an iPhone. Surely it's useless.
When there's a will you'll be glad there's a way.
People used to make do with "tiny" screens throughout the 1980s and 1990s: Bigger displays sure but smaller resolutions Han the iPhone. Doom came out in 320x200 ffs
When traveling I've had to do all sorts of tricks to use various services while away from home. Like my bank app which set an OTP to email or SMS, but if you swiped out of the app to go check the message, it would generate a new OTP when you switched back to the bank app. So I had to check my mail/messages on the minuscule Apple Watch screen. And that was the only time I ever used email on the Watch but I was infinitely glad that it had that option.
sroussey
The Medusa stuff is new and yeah, it’s in iOS as it’s the basis for the foldable.
tekacs
This is kinda wonderful to see - a peek into a world where we get to see the 'other side' of what would have been possible had Apple not locked our devices down beyond belief.
Jailbreak stores have never felt like a particularly strong illustration of what's possible due to their tiny user market - I'd love to see what developers would do if even for a period we could use these devices to anything remotely like their potential.
frfl
There was a comment few weeks ago - I forget the topic, maybe it was the new M-series release or something - that was talking about how freaking fast these things are. And the comment was pointing out how locked down everything is and most of that power is pretty useless - I mean sure on device "AI" and faster apps...OK I guess. I'm not the target demographic for these things anyway, so my opinions are whatever.
But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.
I have an M1, which is like N-times faster than the laptop I write this on. Yet it collects dust because I'd rather continue to use this old dinosaur laptop because that M1 macbook is a locked down, very fast, shiny Ferrari, but I just want a Honda Civic I can do whatever I want with.
LeoPanthera
> But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.
Could you elaborate? What specifically would you do? Because I'm finding it hard to imagine what I'd do with an "open" iPhone that I can't do now, but it's extremely easy to imagine all the horrific security risks that would emerge in what today is most people's primary computing device, storing data about literally their entire lives.
frfl
My usage of "handheld" was vague. I meant any portable device (laptops, but also including phones/tablets).
If you're finding it hard to imagine what you can do with a device that _does not_ restrict what you can do with it, then you're likely fine in the Apple ecosystem, that's fair and okay. Some people aren't, you'll just have to take my word for it, I don't wanna write an essay here and you're probably not interesting in reading all that.
Security risk is a common one that comes up. Google used that to justify locking down sideloading recently. Let me take the risk. I bought this device, I should be allowed to make adult decisions right? I'm not downloading stuff off Limewire or a shady website. I'm downloading stuff off of Linux distro repos or F-Droid.
There's a lot more to be said about all this. Including the amount of e-waste created because a device is too old to be supported by manufacturers, yet people run decade(s) old laptops/desktops using free OSs because they can.
Just my 1AM rambling thoughts. Hope some of it makes some sense.
akho
Have real ad blocking in the browser.
(which would mitigate a lot of security risks by itself. I also note that people seem to do fine with desktop OSes, despite their outdated security models)
Also, a working foss ecosystem.
prmoustache
From what I understand iPhones support external displays out of thebox, so you could use one as your main computer and do any productive stuff like development, video/3d/photos editing, anything really you can do on a computer with the liberty to install open source tools, develop/open drivers for anything connected to usb or bt, etc.
tartoran
I'd remove all the fluff that I'm not interested in.
asadm
Looking at the video, I can see why this was locked down. I wouldn't hand my mother that kind of complex UI.
crooked-v
What's really missing here is the mode where you plug the iPhone into a monitor, connect keyboard and mouse, and suddenly it's a functional desktop-lite in the same way that a basic iPad now is.
bossyTeacher
Apple will probably say that it locked down the features because they could brick the phones
carstenhag
On Android you can use split screen apps. Either some apps are broken (including some I was part of writing...) or it's really annoying to put in text when both apps are open. It's really just useless almost alway
isoprophlex
They locked it down because this way, it offers a superior experience to their revenue streams
This is not exactly something that any old schlub will be doing.
I don’t find many of these features useful on my iPad (to be fair, my Mini is my daily iPad), let alone, my iPhone. I can’t see myself doing all that work, for features I don’t want to use.