very curious how the latest developments of an M1 processor and 16MB in the new iPad Pro will enable mobile use of Mathematica. All software development on the iPad has been hindered by Apple policies, but now that computational resources are no issue anymore, I hope to see some changes. Would love to hear from the Wolfram Team how they see the future.

Indeed. Actually Mathematica for iPad doesn't even have to handle touch necessarily (even though it would be ideal), given that now iPadOS has mouse and trackpad support. Plus the app doesn't have to be free as in the RaspberryPi (a strategy that Wolfram likely adopted for marketing/education purposes). It's mostly about adopting modern APIs provided by the latest versions of iOS and MacOS, something that Wolfram didn't really invest so much in (just as an example the frontend of Mathematica for the Mac became 64bit just recently). Metal also has to be adopted for general computation (neural nets and also Parallelize functions,etc.) and not just for graphics... So if they keep this pace, I'm not very confident in them adopting Catalyst. Let's push!

I have the largest (12"?) iPad pro with the Apple Keyboard and Touchpad. I'd be happy with a straight port of Mathematica to that, forget about touch... (for the moment ;)

I agree that the pace of adopting new Apple technologies has slowed -- it too far too long, in my opinion, to make the front end Cocoa and 64 bit, and to dump OpenGL in favor of Metal for graphics. The days are long gone where Apple would introduce new technologies only to abandon them, so no company need fear that efforts to adopt the APIs would be wasted.

Also agree that free isn't necessary, or even desired. Student/hobbyist pricing would be fine. (I have had a commercial license since 1989.)

I also understand that Wolfram is a small company, and that they can't do everything. While I like the new stuff in Wolfram Language, I would like it better if Mathematica could make full use of the hardware I run it on. That includes both my MacBook Pro and my iPad -- if given the chance to run a native Mathematica on iPadOS.

I'm not sure this will do the trick, but Sidecar works for me. You need an appropriate computer and iPad, of course.

Once you turn on Sidecar, you can drag the Wolfram Documentation window to the iPad. You can use the computer's keyboard to enter stuff, and interact with the mouse. You can also use the keyboard on the iPad -- an icon on the right (by default) brings it up. I haven't tried all the different ways of interacting.

In most respects, it works just like a second monitor, except you can use Apple Pencil to interact with the iPad directly. The scroll bars appear so you can use the pencil to drag them. all the controls work with the Apple Pencil, so it is really nifty.

Right now, there is no way to execute the shift-enter combination using the Apple Pencil. Since Wolfram already has a mechanism to implement the numeric keypad enter key with the extended keyboard, this could be implemented, I think.

If that were possible, then the combination of Sidecar, the iPad and the Apple Pencil would work an allow the content or window on the iPad to be used without recourse to the Mac.

Based on this experience, I would say that a 'native' Mathematica for iPad would work just fine, using the Apple Pencil and the keyboard, without needing to use the overly large keyboard I see sometimes.

------------------ NOTE -------------

The Wolfram Player has the Documentation center already implemented. The downside is that the examples (for Manipulate[] at least) are implemented as short videos, rather than being live. If that meets your needs, then Wolfram has already provided a free solution.

As a 'passive' reader, this would be sufficient. However, now that I see what can be done with Sidecar and the Apple Pencil, it is really barebones. With Sidecar, I can still copy and paste examples, and do everything I can in Mathematica, and still use the pencil to manipulate stuff without using the computer keyboard.

Thanks, George, for the tip on sidecar. I've been using Wolfram Player to look at the documentation. But, I believe the documentation is not being stored locally. In any case, navigating the documentation is very slow and the openers are not responsive.

If the documentation was stored on the ipad, it would be better for "recreational reading". Interactivity would be nice, but necessary (for my purposes at least).

I think that the main issue is the front-end on the iPad, judging by the versos demos I have seen and the implementation of the reader on the iPad. There is no longer any technical issue I am aware of that would prevent a full implementation of the kernel on the iPad. There is definitely sufficient RAM, which was an issue with early versions of the iPad. There may be sandboxing issues, or commercial issues (providing it in the App store, for example).

The virtual keyboard is nice, but it takes app too much of the screen. Requiring a hardware keyboard would eliminate that problem, but would add expense. The other issue is with the touch-interface, which tends to be orthogonal to the widgets created for mouse manipulation for desktop systems.

I think that the solution would be to completely rethink the interface to be optimal for the iPad, and then worry about 'translating' this into the resulting document when (if?) it is opened on the desktop.

The whole project would be worth doing, if only to justify the expense of using Apple-specific technology, such as Metal and the neural frameworks available with the Apple Silicon chips in the iOS devices and not the desktops. I, for one, would like to see an interface where I could scribble notation or graphs using my finger (or Apple pencil for more refinement) and seeing it transformed into proper mathematical notation and plots. It would be a further step in shortening the line from thought to execution.