According to BayStreet Research, the expected expansion of iPad mouse support could signal that Apple wants to take its gaming capabilities beyond Apple Arcade.
Alison DeNisco Rayome for CNET:
Apple brought mouse support to iPadOS only for accessibility purposes this fall, but the company may be planning to add full mouse support in the near future to make the iPad a productivity and gaming platform, according to Cliff Maldonado, principal analyst and founder of BayStreet Research, a firm that researches smartphone, tablet and smartwatch markets.
“The iPad is becoming a PC,” Maldonado said. “It’s a game-changer … To me, it’s Apple executing a vision of ‘we want the iPad to be as good and as powerful as the MacBook.'”
Apple could have a PC gaming play with the iPad with the mouse and the chips prowess they have, the way they’re moving these things forward. It could be Apple’s first foray into hard-core gaming. — Cliff Maldonado, BayStreet Research analyst
Should it come to fruition, full mouse support would also turn the iPad into a productivity platform, potentially allowing users to fully replace their laptop with the tablet and its keyboard and mouse accessories.
MacDailyNews Take: The quest by some to turn iPad into a MacBook is quixotic. Just buy a MacBook if that’s what you want.
We find that there are many older users longing to make iPad work like a laptop, because that’s what they know.
Take a look at a twelve-year-old who’s only really ever used an iPad for personal computing. It’s an eyeopener. It’s like looking into the future.
The answer isn’t to try to make the iPad into a MacBook. The answer is to provide all the tools possible in iOS for developers to make robust apps that can take advantage of the multi-touch paradigm. — MacDailyNews, May 16, 2017
Does it make more sense to be smearing your fingers around on your notebook’s screen or on a spacious trackpad (built-in or on your desk) that’s designed specifically and solely to be touched? Apple thinks things through much more than do other companies. The iPhone’s and iPad’s screens have to be touched; that’s all they has available. A MacBook’s screen doesn’t not have to be touched in order to offer Multi-Touch. There is a better way: Apple’s way. And, no Gorilla Arm, either.
The only computers using Multi-Touch properly, using device-appropriate Multi-Touch input areas are Macintosh personal computers from Apple that run OS X (and Linux and can even slum it with Windows, if need be) and iOS even more personal computers (EMPCs), namely: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and iPad mini.
Note that none of this bars a “MacPad” from production. Any iOS-based iPad would become a high quality display (possibly still “touchable,” but likely not due to the reasoning stated above) when docked into a “MacBook” (running OS X, and providing keyboard, trackpad, processor, etcetera). Such a convertible device would negate having to carry both an iPad (car) and a MacBook (truck) around. They’d be one thing, but able to be separated into two, each providing the best capabilities of their respective form factors. — MacDailyNews, May 4, 2013
To us longtime Apple watchers, Cupertino seems to be saying, “Multi-Touch on the screen only when trackpads are not part of the device.” – MacDailyNews, November 19, 2008