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The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. It'd be a nice thing to have on your coffee table, where anyone in t

The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. It'd be a nice thing to have on your coffee table, where anyone in the household can pick it up and be logged into all of their stuff. Windows XP had this feature. Chromebooks have this feature. It's inexcusable that such an expensive gadget can only have one user.

girvo 7mo ago
The funny thing is that my Apple TV has profiles! Surely the iPad can too.
shwetanshu21 7mo ago
If you are married to Apple Ecosystem then yeah but Samsung Tablets have this feature. Plus better S-OLED screens for content consumption.
AdamN 7mo ago
Interestingly Apple TV now has this - which I find kind of annoying since it asks every time I turn on the tv. Agree though that profiles should be there.
KoolKat23 7mo ago
I mean Android tablets have this feature.
veidr 7mo ago
You can thank short-sighted, busy, unprincipled-asshole parents (like me and my wife) for this. Would I buy each of my 3 kids an iPad every 2-3 years[1] if they had this capability? Hell fuck no. I'd let them use my iPad, which I myself don't even use that much. But as soon as my kids started texting weird shit to business contacts, or accidentally declining meeting invites because they were playing ROBLOX and the notification was annoying — there was no choice. They'd already experienced the iPad, and I'm too busy to do the super-dad job of weaning them off screens in favor of paper books. Plus, iPads are actually really cool for kids, in a lot of ways. But the lack of multi-user on iPad is unforgivable user-betrayal. It feels a lot like the gas station charging $25 for a 2L bottle of water right after the earthquake. Might not be illegal, but... fuck you. The iPad is a great product but it leaves me with a burning napalm hatred for Apple in my heart, just the same as when I try to cancel a US newspaper subscription. Fuck you. [1]: because, while admirably durable, kids do just wear them out and break them
plussed_reader 7mo ago
The profiles work fine in Apple Classroom mode. Just a question of SSD space for the active profile(s) and a cloud source that can be used to swap them around if the SSD saturates.
janaagaard 7mo ago
> The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. I am crossing my fingers that that Apple's rumored Home Hub will change this.
Rebles 7mo ago
I went to setup my iPad, and it had an option to add multiple icloud accounts! I don't know if this is equivolent to user profiles, or just munge all of icloud data like notes, contacts, calendar, apps all together
lreeves 7mo ago
Could not agree more, it's wild my AppleTVs now ask for which profile is using it but the iPad still hasn't gotten this.
- moolcool 7mo ago
  Profiles don't work well on Apple TVs at all though. You choose a profile on the device, and then you still have to choose a profile whenever you launch any given streaming app as well. I don't know what changing profiles on an Apple TV actually does.
  - hvjackson 7mo ago
    Apps can hook into the Apple TV user profiles if they want, but many don't.
    - moolcool 7mo ago
      As a developer myself, I respect and understand that it's not their fault that profiles are useless As a consumer, I don't care whose fault it is that profiles are useless.
    - lurking_swe 7mo ago
      the developer needs to write code to detect the current profile. Most app’s don’t do this, and they explicitly ask a 2nd time. Not apple’s fault. There are some apps that get this right. Infuse recently added support for this.
      - moolcool 7mo ago
        It's not the end user's problem whose fault it is.
        astafrig 7mo ago
        as an end user it is my problem when trying to complain in the right place
btucker 7mo ago
I am convinced they’ve done research that says they would sell a meaningfully smaller number of units if they added this feature. Sigh…
- zer0zzz 7mo ago
  Obviously. I’m considering buying one of these when we already have one in the family for exactly that reason.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  iPad is around 10% of Apple’s revenue. How many parents are going to give their kids their $1500 iPad Pro instead of just buying them a $300 low end iPad?
zer0zzz 7mo ago
I really agree with this. Right now I have a folder on my wife’s iPad Air 13 with Claude, brave, and other nerdy apps. This is totally a workaround for not having profiles/multi login.
SOLAR_FIELDS 7mo ago
Apple has historically never been good at multiple users at the same machine. Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it. IMO incentives are not aligned here, they want everyone purchasing their own iPad, so i suspect that their strategy is to not invest too much into profile management as it risks cannibalizing their hardware sales.
- JadeNB 7mo ago
  > Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it. What problems do you see with multiple users on macOS? I don't use it intensively, but I've never noticed issues.
  - dubya 7mo ago
    Non-admins getting prompts for system and app upgrades is mildly annoying. The bigger one in a family setting is the clunky sharing. There's no good way to share a photo library or music library between users. The Unix version of making a folder shared by a group doesn't usually work for Apple apps.
  - kccqzy 7mo ago
    Switching users while changing displays often results in an incorrect resolution. That’s such a basic thing: different users have different preferences for their displays and keyboards attached to the displays. Yet this doesn’t work reliably, as if during some moments the login window just doesn’t want to adjust resolutions.
  - silentOpen 7mo ago
    As a very simple example, airdrop to macOS with multiple logged in users will frequently pop up the confirmation notification in the user account that is not active.
    - zadikian 7mo ago
      Facetime too. I shared a laptop with my wife for like 2 years, so it was an ok experience, but we noticed those little things.
tomaskafka 7mo ago
Tim Cook's fear of people not buying a full set of Apple devices for each person is the driving force behind not just the lack of multiuser support, but also the overall nerfing of iPadOS. For the past 5+ years it's been, "This will be the year of real work on the iPad," but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.
- sinnsro 7mo ago
  Bean Counter Tim is going to drive Apple into the ground before he does anything useful. Just look at the current state of the ecosystem when it comes to UI/UX and software stability.
- alwillis 7mo ago
  > trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook. This clearly isn’t the case—the iPad Pro got the M4 processor in May 2024; the Mac didn’t get the M4 until October. So for a few months, Apple’s most powerful chip was only available for the iPad Pro. And while the M5 MacBook Pro and the M5 iPad Pro were announced together in October 2025, none of the other Mac models have been updated to the M5. It’s possible more M5 Macs will be announced this week; we’ll see. I don’t think it matters to Apple whether you spend $1,000+ for an iPad or for a MacBook.
  - cachius 7mo ago
    > iPads powerful enough to skip a MacBook This is about software
- alwillis 7mo ago
  The huge advantage for some people: you can get a cellular data connection for an iPad. If you need internet connectivity on the road regardless if Wi-Fi is available, only the iPad has that option. Yes, you can use a Mac laptop with your phone acting as a hotspot but unless you have unlimited data, that gets expensive real fast. Now that Apple makes their own cellular modems, it should be feasible to add them to MacBooks in the near future.
giobox 7mo ago
I find this especially galling on the high-price configs, which essentially cost the same as well specified MacBooks. I am in the situation right now where I have 4 iPads in my home which could easily be replaced by 1 to 2 with support for multiple user accounts. Apple have built much of the software infrastructure to support multiple users on iPadOS, the feature exists for education market customers etc: > https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv... I also suspect someone at Apple has run the numbers on device sales and has decided the status quo where an iPad is a 1:1 device and makes more money for the company is preferable. I was pretty surprised when the AppleTV of all things got multiple-user account login support before the iPad did!
piyuv 7mo ago
I hate this so much that I strongly considered creating a family Apple ID. Nowadays I’m just considering leaving Apple ecosystem altogether. Hopefully soon.
- amelius 7mo ago
  This is the only logical conclusion. If a company is hostile against its users, then walk away and don't look back.
informal007 7mo ago
Apple is a closed ecosystem, multiple users feature is a opposite of that. For example, it's hard to manage app store purchased Apps if it's easy to switch users in iPad. It's hard to manage iCloud sync when switching, it's also related with privacy.
- intrasight 7mo ago
  I would not be surprised if Apple fully commit to the one person per portable device scenario for privacy and CSAM laws. It would solve the age verification challenge by tying a device to a person. Since they can, I think they might.
tsycho 7mo ago
I agree that this would be an awesome feature, and it would also significantly enhance iPads' value for me. That said, having worked on account/identity systems at another FAANG, I think that the commenters saying that Apple is holding this back purely to sell more iPads are underestimating the complexity of this feature. This is not a feature that you just bolt on to the top. It will require a significant ground up rewrite of iOS' fundamentals if you want to support account switching without a full shut down of the device (and even with that, there are complications with shared storage). There are likely tons of singletons across the iOS codebase for the "current account", and switching between users will easily lead to bugs where the new account shares/accesses state from the previous account.....and these "violations" are much harder to detect via static analysis than you might naively imagine. UPDATE: I wasn't aware that Apple already supported a bunch of this via MDM. My only point was that if they didn't already build this into the foundational layer of the OS, then this is a very difficult feature to add later. If they already have this, then I don't have any defense left for them.
- dmd 7mo ago
  How does your assertion hold up give they've already written this code and it's used every day by millions of people? You just have to turn it on with a MDM profile. It's just consumers they don't let use it.
  - giobox 7mo ago
    "Shared iPad" in Apple marketing speak: https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv... And yes, it's existed for years now. That ordinary consumers can't have it is a business choice, not a technical limitation.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- bubblewand 7mo ago
  I’m guessing the main (technical) hang-up is that it messes really badly with one of the most distinctive things about iPads vs other devices, which is extremely low time-to-interactive from any sleep state. Device been sitting on your desk untouched for three weeks? Pick it up and it’s ready to go almost before you are, and still with a useful amount of battery left (offer void for cellular models).
modeless 7mo ago
Android has this feature, even on phones where it barely makes sense
nthdesign 7mo ago
I agree 100%. When I purchased my Steam Deck, I was actually surprised that it was so easy to switch between Steam profiles. Last year, my wife and I tried Apple Vision Pro. While we aren't the target audience for a $3,500 headset, we might be tempted at $1,200. But not if each of us needs to buy our own.
- hoherd 7mo ago
  I was also going to point out how awesome the Steam Deck multi-user experience is: 1. Turn on Steam Deck 2. Open Steam on your phone 3. Scan QR code 4. Choose whether or not to stay signed in on the Steam Deck It is such a great UX that makes using the hardware very easy for any random Steam user who picks it up. I'm sure the security angle would be something a lot of people would bring up, but if iPad had this feature, they could make great use of Apple's Data Protection Classes[1] to ensure that all per-user data is encrypted when that specific user is not logged in and actively using the device. 1. https://support.apple.com/guide/security/data-protection-classes-secb010e978a/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/data-protection-cla...
progforlyfe 7mo ago
wow, had no idea. that's honestly hilarious!
thewebguyd 7mo ago
The stupid thing is that iPad does have this feature natively, but you need to use an MDM (or apple configurator profile) to access it. I'm still of the opinion that there's a market, albeit a small one, for a "consumer" MDM product for use cases like this, better parental controls, etc. but almost all are for business and come with some kind of minimum device purchase like 30+ devices.
- Aerbil313 7mo ago
  https://techlockdown.com https://techlockdown.com is the better parental controls (even capable of self-control) that uses Apple MDM. (not affiliated, just a user)
- jonny_eh 7mo ago
  Apple wouldn't approve a consumer focused MDM provider.
  - astrange 7mo ago
    Apple doesn't approve MDM providers in the first place.
    - yreg 7mo ago
      You need to get an MDM Vendor certificate from Apple.
    - TingPing 7mo ago
      I’m not familiar with this but interested in trying it. From what I see they do and you need a certificate from them from a Enterprise Developer Account?
    - jonny_eh 7mo ago
      They can, and have, revoked certificates for arbitrary reasons.
- wffurr 7mo ago
  I found a thread on macpowerusers.com that recommended Jamf or Zoho that both have a free tier for Apple MDM. https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/mdm-for-family-home/39714/8 https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/mdm-for-family-home/39714/8 I'm kind of curious to try it out on my kids' iPads to make them interchangeable.
nine_k 7mo ago
An iPad is a great art production device. It's great for drawing / painting using Apple Pencil and software like ProCreate. It's good for doing music. It may be a fine media consumption device (browsing, reading, watching); it's a bit heavy but has a large battery. I don't see any other serious applications for a home user, such that would play the iPad-specific strengths.
asdff 7mo ago
You pick up the ipad off the coffee table, then what? This is the issue with the ipad since it has been released. What is the value proposition? Bigger iphone? Clumsier macbook? I guess it sells somehow or else tim cook would have shitcanned it already.
- benhurmarcel 7mo ago
  I mainly use it to read HN
- moolcool 7mo ago
  My library gives free Libby and PressReader, so it would let me read The New Yorker more comfortably than I can on my laptop of phone.
  - EvanAnderson 7mo ago
    Same use case here. Wife sits on the couch and reads magazines from the public library on the iPad. She enjoys the form factor.
  - asdff 7mo ago
    To each their own. To me it would be more annoying to read something on an ipad vs laptop because I'd have to hold the ipad up or prop it up somehow.
- Aaargh20318 7mo ago
  I use my 13” iPad Pro M4 almost as much as my MacBook Pro. I’m typing this on it right now. It is by far more comfortable for consuming any kind of media than a laptop. If I’m researching something and I need to read any significant amount of text I’m going to grab my iPad and find a comfortable spot instead of sitting at my desk. Even though I have 2 big monitors. I also have a Magic Keyboard that I can simply pop on if I need to write any significant amount, like this, and pop it off again for pure consumption. It’s an amazing device for watching video (the tandem OLED looks incredible) and I often use the pencil to sketch out ideas.
bsdetector 7mo ago
Wouldn't just good screen sharing solve your coffee table problem? Just have the coffee table iPad be a display for your own iPad. You could even have a virtual iPad on your mac that you show on the coffee one if you don't have your own. MacOS has 'high-performance' screen sharing using hardware encoder/decoder now. Windows has had this for years and it's so fast it's like actually using the remote computer. It's not like old-school VNC, the only real functional drawback is that you can't leave wifi range.
- moolcool 7mo ago
  The point is that I only want one iPad.
baxuz 7mo ago
Absolutely the same thing here. It's why we went with a Galaxy tab, even though the iPad would have been a better fit (sheet music + MIDI)
etempleton 7mo ago
I think the iPad could be a full desktop replacement if they rebuilt the OS as a branch from Mac OS vs as a branch of iOS and allowed for automatic switching based on what it is docked to. That would not be a small task and would fundamentally change the product, but it would be interesting especially for the iPad Pro. When in portable mode it functions as an iPad, but plug into a keyboard folio an it switches to a laptop; plug into a monitor and have it switch to desktop. Plug into a certain mag safe 3 charger in the kitchen and it switches to tvOS; unplug and it is right back to an iPad. I think this kind of user controllable context switching would be really compelling for an iPad, but it would be a complete reengineering an I am not sure the incentive is there.
- PythagoRascal 7mo ago
  I'm interested in the opposite direction too. If the iPad could do real phone calls and sms, I would ditch mobile phones. In the process I'd hope to reduce some screen time. I could live with Pod+Pad+Watch, but I doubt they'd ever make that happen :(
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    Why not just use Google Voice with your iPad?
teekert 7mo ago
Same here. Ours is just a streaming device. Because nobody can really own it. I won't put my password manager on it when the kids can use it, and without that it's near useless. It has my Signal profile so I can transfer stuff (and passwords) to the device but I already feel bad about that. My wife won't put Teams on it because it would bother others and conflict with all other MS accounts. The kids laptops have accounts for all 4 of us. We switch in apps (ie in netflix). This whole "one person one device" just makes the iPad a shallow consumption device and keeps the laptops for work (and also often for streaming because of this. Btw they are all 2nd hand business laptops running Linux; for the Kids Gnome is very iPad/ChromeOS like and familiar). It would be so much more useful a device, and maybe we'd even then start buying more, if we could just switch user profiles. Oh, because it's just a consumption device when we "needed" another one, we got a Xiaomi. Who cares about al the niceties of the iPad anyway when all it does is show video.
- NetMageSCW 7mo ago
  So you have one laptop per user?
  - teekert 7mo ago
    Yes, for minecrafting together ;) I see where you are going but they are older laptops bought for cheap. But they do an incredible amount of work. And can be (and are) more easily shared because of the different accounts. I.e., my work laptop is upstairs, I use the laptop my daughter usually grabs and log in to find all my stuff (inc password manager). I think I'd use our iPad more if it had profiles. And my laptop less. For my partner we're consider an iPad over a laptop atm. And then again it would be nice if the kids could also use it. But as-is it would be a single person device.
waterproof 7mo ago
How would you handle user switching? Would users have to go through a password screen to use anything?
- zamadatix 7mo ago
  The way Apple TV allows doing it is fine but the iPad could probably make things even easier since it has Face ID authentication as an option too. The bigger limitation is that most apps don't tie into the profile well yet, but it has not also been around long in a just a niche product as well.
  - tomaskafka 7mo ago
    Window with Hello cameras can basically do this today.
- pixelesque 7mo ago
  Fingerprint?
- moolcool 7mo ago
  TouchID. I’d I tap, I get to see my stuff. If my wife does, her profile comes up.
Zambyte 7mo ago
It's inexcusable that customers must beg the vendor for features, especially such trivial ones. It's your device. They shouldn't have any ability to stop you from adding it yourself, or paying someone to add it for you.
matthewfcarlson 7mo ago
It's doubly frustrating as iPads do support multiple profiles! Just education MDM managed iPad only. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...
- k12sosse 7mo ago
  From what I hear it works okay at best. You basically want to allocate a subset of iPads to a subset of users. You can't just throw 30 ipads onto a cart and let all 30 students randomly pick them, or you'll be evicting profiles unnecessarily. Would do fine in a small household. You reserve space based on # of profiles you want to cache.
hedgehog 7mo ago
It was rumored to be in the original prototypes and cut before launch. I don't know why. They also have very restrictive device limits per account / family and installing apps across accounts is a huge pain. I've mostly given up on solving that problem.
dainiusse 7mo ago
I an afraid the same will happen with iPhone foldable. No, it doesn't need to have multiuser support, but how does Tim make you still want an iPad? And macOS - through limitations.
dzhiurgis 7mo ago
Definitely needed, but also, personally I don't have a need for yet another screen in my life. My iPad is powered like once every two weeks, only when kids beg the shit out of me. I don't particularly enjoy it using it over macbook either. Perhaps OK as your main device if you don't need a laptop I guess.
rock_artist 7mo ago
Let’s see how the cheap rumored MacBook will do. It’ll have user profiles
Teever 7mo ago
I hope that the EU can legislate this kind of functionality into iOS devices.
martin-adams 7mo ago
This is actually one of those things I think the EU should consider regulating. It then means kids can have proper parental controls as they often get introduced to things by being handed a parents phone every now and then.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
projektfu 7mo ago
I was recently given an iPad Mini and I thought, great, I'll just set up a few profiles for the users around the office. What? Sometimes the culture shock from Android is just too much. You expect things to be there that simply are not.
bullen 7mo ago
For me it would need vanilla linux or atleast MacOS.
bravoetch 7mo ago
I have two iPad minis, but they're so unfriendly to use they exist only to display home assistant dasboards. It's overkill, but only because I thought they would be good for other things when I bought them.
- rconti 7mo ago
  The mini is the only iPad I'm interested in. I finally bought one after years of dragging my heels waiting for multi-user support. Still, I don't use it much. Mostly I'm not a tablet person, but also, the UX is just so bad. It's total abandonware and it shows. The keyboard often covers more than half the screen. The side drawer on maps will cover the "you are here pin" that's in the middle of the screen. And so on. They just don't even try.
j2bax 7mo ago
It's insane to me that Apple TV has this feature and iPad still doesn't.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  The Apple TV doesn’t have to worry about user data.
insane_dreamer 7mo ago
my youngest uses our iPad. My wife and I have iPhones and MacBooks and never see the need to use an iPad (I much prefer keyboard input, I like to read paper books and I don't play games; I prefer watching movies on the laptop too). Our teen has a phone, does everything on there, and wouldn't use the iPad either, + laptop for school and some entertainment.
neya 7mo ago
It's not just that. The "Pro" nomenclature is useless if you work in software. It can't run anything despite all that power. The OS is basically crippled. For a few years, I used to run the GitHub cloud environment to work on software, but the latency would just make it insufferable. Any other alternatives, you would need to pay (replit, for example). It's also quite heavy and bulky, so often times I would have to choose between carrying it or my Macbook Pro. And over time, I realized the MBP still was irreplaceable. I switched back to my MBP and physical books after lying to myself reading book on an iPad Pro was somehow better for nearly 3 years. Sold it off at a loss, but feels better without the useless paper weight in my bag. There's nothing Apple can tell me to make me buy another iPad ever in my lifetime...unless it runs OS X (non-crippled).
wraptile 7mo ago
It's by design. Even Vision Pro - a 4k usd device - doesn't have user profiles because Apple wants to milk every last penny out of their users.
herval 7mo ago
Same for the Vision Pro. Locking down a $3k media consumption device to a single user is such a greedy move, it's unbelieavable
rconti 7mo ago
They finally added user profiles to tvOS. So there's hope. Maybe.
winterbloom 7mo ago
how does this work from a security standpoint? per user encryption?

girvo 7mo ago

The funny thing is that my Apple TV has profiles! Surely the iPad can too.

shwetanshu21 7mo ago

If you are married to Apple Ecosystem then yeah but Samsung Tablets have this feature. Plus better S-OLED screens for content consumption.

AdamN 7mo ago

Interestingly Apple TV now has this - which I find kind of annoying since it asks every time I turn on the tv. Agree though that profiles should be there.

KoolKat23 7mo ago

I mean Android tablets have this feature.

veidr 7mo ago

You can thank short-sighted, busy, unprincipled-asshole parents (like me and my wife) for this. Would I buy each of my 3 kids an iPad every 2-3 years[1] if they had this capability? Hell fuck no. I'd let them use my iPad, which I myself don't even use that much. But as soon as my kids started texting weird shit to business contacts, or accidentally declining meeting invites because they were playing ROBLOX and the notification was annoying — there was no choice. They'd already experienced the iPad, and I'm too busy to do the super-dad job of weaning them off screens in favor of paper books. Plus, iPads are actually really cool for kids, in a lot of ways. But the lack of multi-user on iPad is unforgivable user-betrayal. It feels a lot like the gas station charging $25 for a 2L bottle of water right after the earthquake. Might not be illegal, but... fuck you. The iPad is a great product but it leaves me with a burning napalm hatred for Apple in my heart, just the same as when I try to cancel a US newspaper subscription. Fuck you. [1]: because, while admirably durable, kids do just wear them out and break them

plussed_reader 7mo ago

The profiles work fine in Apple Classroom mode. Just a question of SSD space for the active profile(s) and a cloud source that can be used to swap them around if the SSD saturates.

janaagaard 7mo ago

> The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. I am crossing my fingers that that Apple's rumored Home Hub will change this.

Rebles 7mo ago

I went to setup my iPad, and it had an option to add multiple icloud accounts! I don't know if this is equivolent to user profiles, or just munge all of icloud data like notes, contacts, calendar, apps all together

lreeves 7mo ago

Could not agree more, it's wild my AppleTVs now ask for which profile is using it but the iPad still hasn't gotten this.

moolcool 7mo ago
Profiles don't work well on Apple TVs at all though. You choose a profile on the device, and then you still have to choose a profile whenever you launch any given streaming app as well. I don't know what changing profiles on an Apple TV actually does.
- hvjackson 7mo ago
  Apps can hook into the Apple TV user profiles if they want, but many don't.
  - moolcool 7mo ago
    As a developer myself, I respect and understand that it's not their fault that profiles are useless As a consumer, I don't care whose fault it is that profiles are useless.
  - lurking_swe 7mo ago
    the developer needs to write code to detect the current profile. Most app’s don’t do this, and they explicitly ask a 2nd time. Not apple’s fault. There are some apps that get this right. Infuse recently added support for this.
    - moolcool 7mo ago
      It's not the end user's problem whose fault it is.
      - astafrig 7mo ago
        as an end user it is my problem when trying to complain in the right place

btucker 7mo ago

I am convinced they’ve done research that says they would sell a meaningfully smaller number of units if they added this feature. Sigh…

zer0zzz 7mo ago
Obviously. I’m considering buying one of these when we already have one in the family for exactly that reason.
raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
iPad is around 10% of Apple’s revenue. How many parents are going to give their kids their $1500 iPad Pro instead of just buying them a $300 low end iPad?

zer0zzz 7mo ago

I really agree with this. Right now I have a folder on my wife’s iPad Air 13 with Claude, brave, and other nerdy apps. This is totally a workaround for not having profiles/multi login.

SOLAR_FIELDS 7mo ago

Apple has historically never been good at multiple users at the same machine. Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it. IMO incentives are not aligned here, they want everyone purchasing their own iPad, so i suspect that their strategy is to not invest too much into profile management as it risks cannibalizing their hardware sales.

JadeNB 7mo ago
> Even MacOS is still pretty bad at it. What problems do you see with multiple users on macOS? I don't use it intensively, but I've never noticed issues.
- dubya 7mo ago
  Non-admins getting prompts for system and app upgrades is mildly annoying. The bigger one in a family setting is the clunky sharing. There's no good way to share a photo library or music library between users. The Unix version of making a folder shared by a group doesn't usually work for Apple apps.
- kccqzy 7mo ago
  Switching users while changing displays often results in an incorrect resolution. That’s such a basic thing: different users have different preferences for their displays and keyboards attached to the displays. Yet this doesn’t work reliably, as if during some moments the login window just doesn’t want to adjust resolutions.
- silentOpen 7mo ago
  As a very simple example, airdrop to macOS with multiple logged in users will frequently pop up the confirmation notification in the user account that is not active.
  - zadikian 7mo ago
    Facetime too. I shared a laptop with my wife for like 2 years, so it was an ok experience, but we noticed those little things.

tomaskafka 7mo ago

Tim Cook's fear of people not buying a full set of Apple devices for each person is the driving force behind not just the lack of multiuser support, but also the overall nerfing of iPadOS. For the past 5+ years it's been, "This will be the year of real work on the iPad," but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.

sinnsro 7mo ago
Bean Counter Tim is going to drive Apple into the ground before he does anything useful. Just look at the current state of the ecosystem when it comes to UI/UX and software stability.
alwillis 7mo ago
> trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook. This clearly isn’t the case—the iPad Pro got the M4 processor in May 2024; the Mac didn’t get the M4 until October. So for a few months, Apple’s most powerful chip was only available for the iPad Pro. And while the M5 MacBook Pro and the M5 iPad Pro were announced together in October 2025, none of the other Mac models have been updated to the M5. It’s possible more M5 Macs will be announced this week; we’ll see. I don’t think it matters to Apple whether you spend $1,000+ for an iPad or for a MacBook.
- cachius 7mo ago
  > iPads powerful enough to skip a MacBook This is about software
alwillis 7mo ago
The huge advantage for some people: you can get a cellular data connection for an iPad. If you need internet connectivity on the road regardless if Wi-Fi is available, only the iPad has that option. Yes, you can use a Mac laptop with your phone acting as a hotspot but unless you have unlimited data, that gets expensive real fast. Now that Apple makes their own cellular modems, it should be feasible to add them to MacBooks in the near future.

giobox 7mo ago

I find this especially galling on the high-price configs, which essentially cost the same as well specified MacBooks. I am in the situation right now where I have 4 iPads in my home which could easily be replaced by 1 to 2 with support for multiple user accounts. Apple have built much of the software infrastructure to support multiple users on iPadOS, the feature exists for education market customers etc: > https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv... I also suspect someone at Apple has run the numbers on device sales and has decided the status quo where an iPad is a 1:1 device and makes more money for the company is preferable. I was pretty surprised when the AppleTV of all things got multiple-user account login support before the iPad did!

piyuv 7mo ago

I hate this so much that I strongly considered creating a family Apple ID. Nowadays I’m just considering leaving Apple ecosystem altogether. Hopefully soon.

amelius 7mo ago
This is the only logical conclusion. If a company is hostile against its users, then walk away and don't look back.

informal007 7mo ago

Apple is a closed ecosystem, multiple users feature is a opposite of that. For example, it's hard to manage app store purchased Apps if it's easy to switch users in iPad. It's hard to manage iCloud sync when switching, it's also related with privacy.

intrasight 7mo ago
I would not be surprised if Apple fully commit to the one person per portable device scenario for privacy and CSAM laws. It would solve the age verification challenge by tying a device to a person. Since they can, I think they might.

tsycho 7mo ago

I agree that this would be an awesome feature, and it would also significantly enhance iPads' value for me. That said, having worked on account/identity systems at another FAANG, I think that the commenters saying that Apple is holding this back purely to sell more iPads are underestimating the complexity of this feature. This is not a feature that you just bolt on to the top. It will require a significant ground up rewrite of iOS' fundamentals if you want to support account switching without a full shut down of the device (and even with that, there are complications with shared storage). There are likely tons of singletons across the iOS codebase for the "current account", and switching between users will easily lead to bugs where the new account shares/accesses state from the previous account.....and these "violations" are much harder to detect via static analysis than you might naively imagine. UPDATE: I wasn't aware that Apple already supported a bunch of this via MDM. My only point was that if they didn't already build this into the foundational layer of the OS, then this is a very difficult feature to add later. If they already have this, then I don't have any defense left for them.

dmd 7mo ago
How does your assertion hold up give they've already written this code and it's used every day by millions of people? You just have to turn it on with a MDM profile. It's just consumers they don't let use it.
- giobox 7mo ago
  "Shared iPad" in Apple marketing speak: https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv... And yes, it's existed for years now. That ordinary consumers can't have it is a business choice, not a technical limitation.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
bubblewand 7mo ago
I’m guessing the main (technical) hang-up is that it messes really badly with one of the most distinctive things about iPads vs other devices, which is extremely low time-to-interactive from any sleep state. Device been sitting on your desk untouched for three weeks? Pick it up and it’s ready to go almost before you are, and still with a useful amount of battery left (offer void for cellular models).

modeless 7mo ago

Android has this feature, even on phones where it barely makes sense

nthdesign 7mo ago

I agree 100%. When I purchased my Steam Deck, I was actually surprised that it was so easy to switch between Steam profiles. Last year, my wife and I tried Apple Vision Pro. While we aren't the target audience for a $3,500 headset, we might be tempted at $1,200. But not if each of us needs to buy our own.

hoherd 7mo ago
I was also going to point out how awesome the Steam Deck multi-user experience is: 1. Turn on Steam Deck 2. Open Steam on your phone 3. Scan QR code 4. Choose whether or not to stay signed in on the Steam Deck It is such a great UX that makes using the hardware very easy for any random Steam user who picks it up. I'm sure the security angle would be something a lot of people would bring up, but if iPad had this feature, they could make great use of Apple's Data Protection Classes[1] to ensure that all per-user data is encrypted when that specific user is not logged in and actively using the device. 1. https://support.apple.com/guide/security/data-protection-classes-secb010e978a/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/data-protection-cla...

progforlyfe 7mo ago

wow, had no idea. that's honestly hilarious!

thewebguyd 7mo ago

The stupid thing is that iPad does have this feature natively, but you need to use an MDM (or apple configurator profile) to access it. I'm still of the opinion that there's a market, albeit a small one, for a "consumer" MDM product for use cases like this, better parental controls, etc. but almost all are for business and come with some kind of minimum device purchase like 30+ devices.

Aerbil313 7mo ago
https://techlockdown.com https://techlockdown.com is the better parental controls (even capable of self-control) that uses Apple MDM. (not affiliated, just a user)
jonny_eh 7mo ago
Apple wouldn't approve a consumer focused MDM provider.
- astrange 7mo ago
  Apple doesn't approve MDM providers in the first place.
  - yreg 7mo ago
    You need to get an MDM Vendor certificate from Apple.
  - TingPing 7mo ago
    I’m not familiar with this but interested in trying it. From what I see they do and you need a certificate from them from a Enterprise Developer Account?
  - jonny_eh 7mo ago
    They can, and have, revoked certificates for arbitrary reasons.
wffurr 7mo ago
I found a thread on macpowerusers.com that recommended Jamf or Zoho that both have a free tier for Apple MDM. https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/mdm-for-family-home/39714/8 https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/mdm-for-family-home/39714/8 I'm kind of curious to try it out on my kids' iPads to make them interchangeable.

nine_k 7mo ago

An iPad is a great art production device. It's great for drawing / painting using Apple Pencil and software like ProCreate. It's good for doing music. It may be a fine media consumption device (browsing, reading, watching); it's a bit heavy but has a large battery. I don't see any other serious applications for a home user, such that would play the iPad-specific strengths.

asdff 7mo ago

You pick up the ipad off the coffee table, then what? This is the issue with the ipad since it has been released. What is the value proposition? Bigger iphone? Clumsier macbook? I guess it sells somehow or else tim cook would have shitcanned it already.

benhurmarcel 7mo ago
I mainly use it to read HN
moolcool 7mo ago
My library gives free Libby and PressReader, so it would let me read The New Yorker more comfortably than I can on my laptop of phone.
- EvanAnderson 7mo ago
  Same use case here. Wife sits on the couch and reads magazines from the public library on the iPad. She enjoys the form factor.
- asdff 7mo ago
  To each their own. To me it would be more annoying to read something on an ipad vs laptop because I'd have to hold the ipad up or prop it up somehow.
Aaargh20318 7mo ago
I use my 13” iPad Pro M4 almost as much as my MacBook Pro. I’m typing this on it right now. It is by far more comfortable for consuming any kind of media than a laptop. If I’m researching something and I need to read any significant amount of text I’m going to grab my iPad and find a comfortable spot instead of sitting at my desk. Even though I have 2 big monitors. I also have a Magic Keyboard that I can simply pop on if I need to write any significant amount, like this, and pop it off again for pure consumption. It’s an amazing device for watching video (the tandem OLED looks incredible) and I often use the pencil to sketch out ideas.

bsdetector 7mo ago

Wouldn't just good screen sharing solve your coffee table problem? Just have the coffee table iPad be a display for your own iPad. You could even have a virtual iPad on your mac that you show on the coffee one if you don't have your own. MacOS has 'high-performance' screen sharing using hardware encoder/decoder now. Windows has had this for years and it's so fast it's like actually using the remote computer. It's not like old-school VNC, the only real functional drawback is that you can't leave wifi range.

moolcool 7mo ago
The point is that I only want one iPad.

baxuz 7mo ago

Absolutely the same thing here. It's why we went with a Galaxy tab, even though the iPad would have been a better fit (sheet music + MIDI)

etempleton 7mo ago

I think the iPad could be a full desktop replacement if they rebuilt the OS as a branch from Mac OS vs as a branch of iOS and allowed for automatic switching based on what it is docked to. That would not be a small task and would fundamentally change the product, but it would be interesting especially for the iPad Pro. When in portable mode it functions as an iPad, but plug into a keyboard folio an it switches to a laptop; plug into a monitor and have it switch to desktop. Plug into a certain mag safe 3 charger in the kitchen and it switches to tvOS; unplug and it is right back to an iPad. I think this kind of user controllable context switching would be really compelling for an iPad, but it would be a complete reengineering an I am not sure the incentive is there.

PythagoRascal 7mo ago
I'm interested in the opposite direction too. If the iPad could do real phone calls and sms, I would ditch mobile phones. In the process I'd hope to reduce some screen time. I could live with Pod+Pad+Watch, but I doubt they'd ever make that happen :(
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  Why not just use Google Voice with your iPad?

teekert 7mo ago

Same here. Ours is just a streaming device. Because nobody can really own it. I won't put my password manager on it when the kids can use it, and without that it's near useless. It has my Signal profile so I can transfer stuff (and passwords) to the device but I already feel bad about that. My wife won't put Teams on it because it would bother others and conflict with all other MS accounts. The kids laptops have accounts for all 4 of us. We switch in apps (ie in netflix). This whole "one person one device" just makes the iPad a shallow consumption device and keeps the laptops for work (and also often for streaming because of this. Btw they are all 2nd hand business laptops running Linux; for the Kids Gnome is very iPad/ChromeOS like and familiar). It would be so much more useful a device, and maybe we'd even then start buying more, if we could just switch user profiles. Oh, because it's just a consumption device when we "needed" another one, we got a Xiaomi. Who cares about al the niceties of the iPad anyway when all it does is show video.

NetMageSCW 7mo ago
So you have one laptop per user?
- teekert 7mo ago
  Yes, for minecrafting together ;) I see where you are going but they are older laptops bought for cheap. But they do an incredible amount of work. And can be (and are) more easily shared because of the different accounts. I.e., my work laptop is upstairs, I use the laptop my daughter usually grabs and log in to find all my stuff (inc password manager). I think I'd use our iPad more if it had profiles. And my laptop less. For my partner we're consider an iPad over a laptop atm. And then again it would be nice if the kids could also use it. But as-is it would be a single person device.

waterproof 7mo ago

How would you handle user switching? Would users have to go through a password screen to use anything?

zamadatix 7mo ago
The way Apple TV allows doing it is fine but the iPad could probably make things even easier since it has Face ID authentication as an option too. The bigger limitation is that most apps don't tie into the profile well yet, but it has not also been around long in a just a niche product as well.
- tomaskafka 7mo ago
  Window with Hello cameras can basically do this today.
pixelesque 7mo ago
Fingerprint?
moolcool 7mo ago
TouchID. I’d I tap, I get to see my stuff. If my wife does, her profile comes up.

Zambyte 7mo ago

It's inexcusable that customers must beg the vendor for features, especially such trivial ones. It's your device. They shouldn't have any ability to stop you from adding it yourself, or paying someone to add it for you.

matthewfcarlson 7mo ago

It's doubly frustrating as iPads do support multiple profiles! Just education MDM managed iPad only. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...

k12sosse 7mo ago
From what I hear it works okay at best. You basically want to allocate a subset of iPads to a subset of users. You can't just throw 30 ipads onto a cart and let all 30 students randomly pick them, or you'll be evicting profiles unnecessarily. Would do fine in a small household. You reserve space based on # of profiles you want to cache.

hedgehog 7mo ago

It was rumored to be in the original prototypes and cut before launch. I don't know why. They also have very restrictive device limits per account / family and installing apps across accounts is a huge pain. I've mostly given up on solving that problem.

dainiusse 7mo ago

I an afraid the same will happen with iPhone foldable. No, it doesn't need to have multiuser support, but how does Tim make you still want an iPad? And macOS - through limitations.

dzhiurgis 7mo ago

Definitely needed, but also, personally I don't have a need for yet another screen in my life. My iPad is powered like once every two weeks, only when kids beg the shit out of me. I don't particularly enjoy it using it over macbook either. Perhaps OK as your main device if you don't need a laptop I guess.

rock_artist 7mo ago

Let’s see how the cheap rumored MacBook will do. It’ll have user profiles

Teever 7mo ago

I hope that the EU can legislate this kind of functionality into iOS devices.

martin-adams 7mo ago

This is actually one of those things I think the EU should consider regulating. It then means kids can have proper parental controls as they often get introduced to things by being handed a parents phone every now and then.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

projektfu 7mo ago

I was recently given an iPad Mini and I thought, great, I'll just set up a few profiles for the users around the office. What? Sometimes the culture shock from Android is just too much. You expect things to be there that simply are not.

bullen 7mo ago

For me it would need vanilla linux or atleast MacOS.

bravoetch 7mo ago

I have two iPad minis, but they're so unfriendly to use they exist only to display home assistant dasboards. It's overkill, but only because I thought they would be good for other things when I bought them.

rconti 7mo ago
The mini is the only iPad I'm interested in. I finally bought one after years of dragging my heels waiting for multi-user support. Still, I don't use it much. Mostly I'm not a tablet person, but also, the UX is just so bad. It's total abandonware and it shows. The keyboard often covers more than half the screen. The side drawer on maps will cover the "you are here pin" that's in the middle of the screen. And so on. They just don't even try.

j2bax 7mo ago

It's insane to me that Apple TV has this feature and iPad still doesn't.

raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
The Apple TV doesn’t have to worry about user data.

insane_dreamer 7mo ago

my youngest uses our iPad. My wife and I have iPhones and MacBooks and never see the need to use an iPad (I much prefer keyboard input, I like to read paper books and I don't play games; I prefer watching movies on the laptop too). Our teen has a phone, does everything on there, and wouldn't use the iPad either, + laptop for school and some entertainment.

neya 7mo ago

It's not just that. The "Pro" nomenclature is useless if you work in software. It can't run anything despite all that power. The OS is basically crippled. For a few years, I used to run the GitHub cloud environment to work on software, but the latency would just make it insufferable. Any other alternatives, you would need to pay (replit, for example). It's also quite heavy and bulky, so often times I would have to choose between carrying it or my Macbook Pro. And over time, I realized the MBP still was irreplaceable. I switched back to my MBP and physical books after lying to myself reading book on an iPad Pro was somehow better for nearly 3 years. Sold it off at a loss, but feels better without the useless paper weight in my bag. There's nothing Apple can tell me to make me buy another iPad ever in my lifetime...unless it runs OS X (non-crippled).

wraptile 7mo ago

It's by design. Even Vision Pro - a 4k usd device - doesn't have user profiles because Apple wants to milk every last penny out of their users.

herval 7mo ago

Same for the Vision Pro. Locking down a $3k media consumption device to a single user is such a greedy move, it's unbelieavable

rconti 7mo ago

They finally added user profiles to tvOS. So there's hope. Maybe.

winterbloom 7mo ago

how does this work from a security standpoint? per user encryption?