this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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An iPad Air costs the same but comes with a much better M4 processor. The main difference is a less crap operating system in macOS.
Sure, but a tablet isn't a laptop.
You can’t really use an iPad as a laptop. The hardware exists and should work, but the software is awful.
It’s often several seconds to switch to Safari on my iPad Pro with M series chip. We’ve had app switching in computers for 40 years. Why can’t iPad do it?
So form factor, not hardware internals should be the deciding factor in cost?
To a degree, yeah.
The laptop form factor is engineered with lid and palmrest assemblies, if you’re going to compare the two then you’ll want to add a nice keyboard to that iPad. Apple’s is $270.
Typical Apple tax, completely unrelated to the few dollars a keyboard costs to make for real.
You’re not entirely wrong, in that the Apple Tax is real.
Nonetheless, the quality of the Magic Keyboard is substantially higher than that of a keyboard you can get for “few dollars”
Ultimately, your assertion was:
An iPad Air with a keyboard that matches the form factor and build quality of a MacBook Neo does not actually cost the same, it costs an additional $270.
The MacBook doesn't have a touchscreen. It cancels the keyboard cost out.
They don't even put touch ID on the entry model.
Ok but if you want to do actual work on it then these things absolutely do not cancel each other out because you have to spend $270 on a keyboard/trackpad regardless, and now have to use a clunky touchscreen on your 13 inch tablet half the time.
Yes, the M4 is much faster and it is probably only stupid product segmentation keeping it on the iPad. But the reality is, iOS/iPadOS puts OS-level limits on how much you can even take advantage of that hardware even if there is an iOS app for the thing you want to do
TLDR: If you really want a MacBook just get a refurbished M1/M2 MacBook and call it a day, bonus points for putting Asahi on it
That's Apple tax, not manufacturing cost. MacBook replacement keyboards sell for 10 dollars on Aliexpress.
I'm comparing hardware to hardware, not artificial Apple software restrictions.
That's great but hardware doesn't exist in a vacuum. With an ecosystem as locked-down as an iPad's you can't just ignore the software. It's not like you'll ever be able to uninstall it because it's intentionally locked down, unlike a macbook which allows installing apps and even modifying the bootloader to boot into a different OS.
Edit: Forgot to mention the fact even for people that might not care about that, iOS will automatically kill any app that uses more than a certain amount of RAM (I think it was 4GB? I don't remember the exact number) so in a lot of scenarios you can't even take advantage of the hardware in an iPad because of the locked down software
Better specs sure, but I would sooner cut my wrists than to try to work on an iOS device
In addition to being more locked down, you'd also have to figure out/purchase peripherals like the keyboard and mouse yourself, right?
It’s an iPhone 16 with a MacBook shell
Except for them to be directly comparable you’d also have to get a keyboard cover for the iPad, making it more expensive than the MacBook, and it’d still have one fewer USB port and no audio jack.
One has a keyboard (cheap components), the other has a touchscreen. The cost cancel each other out.