Now the iPad Will Get Alternate App Stores, Too

The EU has told Apple to open up the iPad to alternative app stores and browser engines, just like the iPhone. Arguably, these rule changes make way more sense for the iPad than the iPhone, no matter where you live.

When the EU forced Apple to open up iOS to alternative app stores and to allow non-Safari browsers onto the device, many of us assumed that this meant the iPad as well as the iPhone, but no. Apple took this to mean iOS only, not iPadOS, the exact kind of persnickety faux distinction that has characterized Apple's bad-faith responses to Europe's laws. Now, that has changed. This week, the European Commission made it explicit: the iPad has to get all the same fixes as the iPhone.

"I believe the iPad, with its larger screen and more powerful capabilities compared to the iPhone, stands to benefit immensely from this increased flexibility. This could address a longstanding critique of the iPad ecosystem—that it does not fully utilize its hardware capabilities due to software limitations," mobile software developer Cache Merrill told Lifewire via email.

Just a Big iPhone

Ever since the beginning, critics have described the iPad as a big iPhone, and this is both its strength and its weakness. It inherits the iPhone's powerful hardware, rock-solid reliability and longevity, and a whole host of mobile-first apps. But it is also hamstrung by Apple imposing the same restrictions on the tablet as it does the phone.

The iPad uses the same M-series Apple Silicon chips as the Mac, but it doesn't even have a proper, reliable file browser, and when Apple finally started letting us run apps together in multiple windows, it did it with Stage Manager, which is still so janky that it's best avoided.

Worse, the promise of the iPad has been stunted by the App Store. Because App Store policies and its review processes are so fickle, and the rules so arbitrarily applied, no software company is going to sink years of development time and money into an app that Apple might reject at the outset, or at any time in the future. The App Store review process is supposed to keep bad actors and malware out of the store, but it does not. What it does do is give Apple absolute control over who can make software for its platforms.

That's about to change and hopefully will become the default in all regions, not just the EU.

Gatekeeper

The European Commission now considers the iPad as a "gatekeeper," according to a statement issued on Monday. This means that Apple will have to open it up to alternative app stores and browser engines, just like it has with the iPhone.

iPadOS only became a separate entity in 2019, nine years after the iPad's launch in 2010. Until then, it ran the same iPhone OS, which became iOS. Under the hood, it's still all the same evolution of OS X as Apple deploys across the Mac, the iPhone, the Apple TV, and even the Studio Display.

"iPadOS is clearly more of a marketing distinction than a technical one. It’s iOS under the hood, so I doubt it’ll be much trouble for Apple to apply its DMA compliance features from iOS to iPadOS," writes unofficial Apple spokesperson John Gruber on his personal blog.

Opening up the iPad to third-party stores could transform it. Without the constant worry about Apple's mercurial App Store policies, big software companies could invest in deeper apps. Ableton could make a version of its Live software, for example. And virtualization companies like Parallels could let you install Windows or Linux on your touch computer.

And if that happens, maybe Apple would be forced into making macOS available on the iPad. And why not? They use the same chips, the iPad already comes in more-or-less the same 13-inch screen size as the MacBook, and if you've ever tried to use the Mac with a touch screen, it's not nearly as bad as Apple makes out.

Apple is hurting itself with all this lock-in. If the iPad was allowed to be as free and open as the Mac, it could become the most compelling touch computer in the world. But Apple cannot see beyond its 15-30% cut of every sale made on the platform, which has led to this absurd situation where the iPad's amazing hardware continues to be hampered by backward software.

But not for much longer.