
Yes to everything - wyclif
http://morrick.me/archives/8840
======
klodolph
This is fine. We’re waiting for some new computing paradigm to come in and
revolutionize the way we use tablets, but these new computing paradigms and
their killer apps don’t come often.

The killer app for smartphones was having a web browser in your pocket. Super
damn useful. Maybe tablets just don’t have a killer app on the horizon, and
that’s fine? Like how hard drives for 5.25″ bays got replaced by 3.5″ drives,
and now SSDs. It completely upturned the industry, but as a consumer I just
don’t care. An SSD is just _nicer_ than a 3.5″ HDD for general use and that’s
enough for it to take over.

The iPad gets a few years of life as a pure tablet computer, and it has a
whole ecosystem of apps designed around that. Now it gets an optional keyboard
+ mouse, and it will start getting apps built around that paradigm—but you
can’t ignore the fact that the keyboard is optional. If the iPad had appeared
with a keyboard + mouse from day one, half the apps would never have worked
without a keyboard or mouse because they would be simple ports of desktop apps
running full-screen.

What I get out of this is a decent, comfortable device which is easier to use
than a smartphone and more convenient to carry around than a laptop. A
reasonable niche doesn’t have to be a revolution. Half the apps I have on my
iPad are half-baked ports from iOS. I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of
half-baked desktop ports join them.

~~~
seph-reed
> Maybe tablets just don’t have a killer app on the horizon, and that’s fine?

I just want to hear peoples ideas for killer tablet apps.

What do ya'll think would be _the_ killer app? Feel free to get sci-fi with
it.

EDIT: thinking about it more, I also want to include peripherals in this
question. Maybe it's not so much an issue of apps as functionality.

~~~
tunesmith
I still want the thing that was supposed to happen a while ago. The phone that
is the tablet that is the desktop. You just plug it in to the appropriate form
factor, but the computing device is the same.

~~~
cwyers
Why do you want this, though? File syncing is a largely solved problem, and
the difference between a "laptop-shaped thing that you can dock your phone
with" and "a fully functional laptop" is like $20-$40, at least to be on par
with the speed of a phone powering a laptop shell? Why not just spend a little
extra and have a full computer?

~~~
pedalpete
There are a few reasons I want this outside of file syncing.

1) It somewhat feels like it could be less wasteful. It may only be on the
appearance level, but I end up with a new phone about every 2 years, a new
computer about every 3, a new monitor...much less often. If my phone was a
smart client for these other input devices, I feel like I would be upgrading
my phone about the same, but wouldn't be upgrading a laptop as often.

2) It "feels" like the same device. Though I have file sharing, I don't have
desktop sharing. The file I stuck on my desktop on my laptop isn't in the same
space on my phone. It feels like they are synced, rather than just being my
workspace.

3) I have to duplicate my apps on each device, and that is not always
possible, so I end up with a comparable app, or having to switch devices. This
is becoming less common, but still, do I need to have multiple versions of the
same software on each different device and different OS?

4) Notifications everywhere. When I'm being summoned on multiple messaging
apps, I'm getting notifications on at least 3 devices! Yes, I could turn
notifications off, but obviously, I need some notifications. If I had only one
device, acting as the smart hub to other input devices, in theory, it would
know which device I'm active on, and just ring that.

At the same time, we work a bunch with graphics, so I don't think I'm getting
decent developer capable graphics card in a mobile device anytime soon, but I
think other users could move to this sort of paradigm fairly easily.

------
gumby
This is really a very good point. The iPad still has a hard time looking for
its killer app. And the pull to make the iPad more capable is, at its heart,
“Why both an iPad and a laptop? My phone absorbed so many of the devices I
used to carry; why can’t the iPad do the same?”

When it’s not trying to be all things to all people, Apple has a good story:
there’s a single computing surface that spans the edge and the cloud, and
whichever device you pick up should give you a window into it, though not
always the same window.

So I can read web pages and send mail from my phone, but in many contexts my
laptop is superior. The iPad is great somewhere in between but doesn’t leave
the house. What the iPad _did_ let me do was switch back to a smaller phone.

Another way to look at that last issue: the phone is hyper mobile. I _can_
open an excel spreadsheet on it, in a pinch, and even edit it if it’s
incredibly necessary. But never would I use it as my primary spreadsheet
interface. And that’s OK. Likewise it’s a pain to pull out my laptop to look
something up when I’m standing up someplace outside my office. That’s OK too.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
iPad has lots of good fits, appwise. Just that none of them are very big
markets.

They're ubiquitous anywhere a programmable display is needed. In tractor cabs;
in recreational aircraft; in warehouses.

~~~
rubber_duck
iOS is very locked down and the hardware is not very modable - why would you
chose iPad for custom controller use case ?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
For interface to custom controllers, and back-end databases. Because they
solve the software distribution problem; because they have a standard user
interface; because they have rich tool support; because you can find
developers by the dozens.

~~~
rubber_duck
I don't really see this - in my experience Apple makes the distribution
process more difficult (but I've never published an internal app through App
Store) and iOS developers charge more than Android/JS frontend devs and are
harder to find (at least in my local market)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Vs custom embedded solution developers? Apple developers are orders of
magnitude easier to find, in any universe.

~~~
rubber_duck
Who is comparing this to custom embedded solutions ? Android and Windows
tablets are dropin substitutes in this scenario that are cheaper and more
flexible.

------
marcusestes
I've used a 12.9" iPad Pro as a laptop replacement since its release in 2018
and I'm happy about the particular series of yesses that have led to this
latest OS release.

I've developed a number of workflows that would never work on a Macbook. For
instance, I take handwritten notes with the device in my lap during a meeting,
convert them to text, and add them to either project management software, or
Roam (plug: [https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/)).

The pencil is a total joy. I've taken up drawing and painting again and the
more laptop-like the iPad becomes, the less I miss my old Macbook Air. In
hindsight, it's the laptop form factor that makes less sense. When I need a
full OS for some tasks, I use a desktop computer with commodity PC components.

------
imglorp
"From a visual standpoint, there might be very little difference between a
feature that is not visible and a feature that is out of the way.
Conceptually, this is a big deal instead. A feature that is not visible and
your only way to find it is by reading about it somewhere, or seeing a video
tutorial, is something undiscoverable and poorly executed."

Apple has been doing this since the first Mac. Make things simple and pretty
on the surface for the happy path, but overly simple, so that there's a bunch
of secrets to get actual tasks done.

For example: They knew all about the Star and Smalltalk and friends, which had
a consistent use of three mouse buttons for actions, cut and paste, whatever.
Apple instead insisted on the false simplicity of a one button mouse, which
doomed future users to a maze of difficult to remember modifier-click finger
Twister instead.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Make things simple and pretty on the surface for the happy path, but overly
> simple, so that there's a bunch of secrets to get actual tasks done.

I don't feel like this is true. One thing I'm consistently impressed by in the
original MacOS is how well the chosen abstractions map to the actual way
things are. There are some exceptions, like the trash can and its famous
relationship with removable media, but on the whole it works a lot better than
what we have today.

~~~
dhimes
I found this true of the mouse on a Mac. Which one? I don't know- it was my
cousin's. I don't remember the details but I was looking for a context menu to
do some normal context-menu-y stuff like adjust the size of a picture or
something- or maybe save a picture in a browser. I couldn't for the life of me
figure it out (and I cut my teeth on a Mac+, had all the Inside Macintosh
books, fooled around with assembly language programming, and so on). Then my
hand accidentally brushed the mouse. Turned out, to get the context menu, you
had to brush the mouse.

There's a similar "swipe a surface that doesn't look like an active surface"
trip on the apple TV remote as well.

I may be old-fashioned, but those are very unintuitive in my estimation and I
consider them poor design. The look good in pictures, though.

I love, however, my iphone 11. There's somehow more of a conceptual root to
all of it- to the point that after I had it for two weeks and someone asked me
if I missed the home button I really couldn't remember what all the home
button did. I do have to fool around with it to get a screen shot, but it was
the same with the home button. Could never remember the order of operations.

It does feel sometimes like it's "design first- hack the UI" though with Apple
and it leads to a few annoyances.

~~~
majormajor
> I found this true of the mouse on a Mac. Which one? I don't know- it was my
> cousin's. I don't remember the details but I was looking for a context menu
> to do some normal context-menu-y stuff like adjust the size of a picture or
> something- or maybe save a picture in a browser. I couldn't for the life of
> me figure it out (and I cut my teeth on a Mac+, had all the Inside Macintosh
> books, fooled around with assembly language programming, and so on). Then my
> hand accidentally brushed the mouse. Turned out, to get the context menu,
> you had to brush the mouse.

This feels like some user-specific customization.

The ctrl-click context-menu right-click-substitute has been around since 1997
(Mac OS 8), and various Apple input devices have had different sort of "right
click shortcuts" since then (at least after 2007 or so? it took a while) but I
don't know of a tap-to-right-click default. "Click the right side of the
apparently-buttonless-mouse" and "two finger click" are the most well-known.
None of these are intuitive - the context menu stuff was a power user thing in
the Mac world in the late 90s), but fairly unchanging.

~~~
dhimes
Maybe I was tapping and not brushing.

------
bsharitt
I don't have an iPad Pro, but instead the current gen iPad with keyboard
cover, pencil and a bluetooth mouse. There's a lot to like about the iPad as a
day to day computing device(web browsing, email, light word processing, etc)
and it's even to the point where I use is as the main adjutant to my desktop
in place of my laptop for most casual tasks. For non-casual work loads, most
of my issues are less due to the iPad itself(especially with mouse support
being official) and more to do with the app ecosystem needing to catch up, but
part of the problem with the app ecosystem with the iPad as a laptop
replacement is on Apple's shoulders. I don't expect do be able to do much
development work an an iPad anytime soon without using the iPad a just a dumb
terminal back to my desktop(which I do occasionally).

------
Ididntdothis
I would object to the sentence “ The Surface knows what it is”. From my
experience it’s still a regular windows laptop with a bolted on touch
interface causing neither regular Windows nor touch to work that well. I think
both Apple and Microsoft are in a weird spot where they don’t know where they
really want to go so they are trying to cover all bases in a half assed way.
One of the strengths that made Apple as big as it is now was the willingness
to say “no”.

~~~
abakker
I've had 2 surface pros. I find them to be incredibly unreliable. They unpair
from the lower half and drop peripherals, and the stupid trackpad! Its just
awful. It is just so mediocre.

~~~
Ididntdothis
We have quite a few Pros and the keyboard is also pretty unreliable. For
testing I used a Surface Book and every time I detach/attach the tablet part
the screen resolution, monitor arrangement and USB devices get whacked up. Now
I am very reluctant to undock it at all.

~~~
abakker
My surfacebook also has a terrible screen resolution. 3000x2000. I don’t know
why, but windows can’t seem to handle interface scaling at all, and a lot of
the apps I used failed to be usable on that super high res monitor. I wanted
it to work, but just couldn’t deal with it.

------
igammarays
The iPad is a postmodern device - it's about the device itself and the process
of doing things on it rather than a productive means to an end. The iPad is
the end itself.

------
rubber_duck
I like the idea of iPad pro - I have a top spec macbook pro from 2018 and
while this model is particularly bad I've came to terms that processing power
in laptop form factor is always going to cost more and provide less than a
desktop machine.

So ideally I would have a medium power device with high portability and 4G
built in and I could remote in to the big iron PC for the heavy lifting. But
iOS is just too limited for this.

Maybe Microsoft can push out a good surface with Windows in the next
iteration.

------
wffurr
I want to really like the iPad Pro + keyboard and touchpad as a replacement
for a Macbook Air. Fanless, huge screen to device ratio, great battery life.

If it just only had developer tools in iOS Safari or better yet allowed
alternate browser engines, I could do just about everything on one.

------
tomerbd
The company was led by a great __visioner __in the past. He needed great
__executioners __alongside to complement him at management. Now that he is
gone the company is led by the executioners who are doing what they are superb
at - execution.

------
gfiorav
I think most of the comments on this are secretely fueled by the idea that the
mac is going away. I used to fret until I switched to Windows. Now I don't
really care. I think Apple doesn't care for you guys either. As soon as XCode
is ported to the iPad, it's a goodbye to all the rest of devs in the world. I
just hope you're prepared for that.

Life after the mac is not that bad. I miss some nice stuff, but the esentials
are there.

~~~
screye
It takes a long time on windows to find the right 3rd party software
combination to make for a painfree and seamless workflow. But, once it is
done, Windows feels like a very complete OS.

A lot of window's problems seem very solvable on the surface. Some have been
solved well by aforementioned 3rd party applications, but I still find myself
pulling hairs when some others seem so easy to solve, yet no one has solved
them.

I sometimes wish I was a Windows app developer with a lot of time on my hands,
and no need for money. There are so many little things that once fixed, would
drastically improve the UX...with so little effort.

It's like how reddit is a 100x better with RES, which is built by 1 guy. But a
company worth $2 billion can't offer the same features natively.

~~~
gfiorav
Yeah, I just use WSL and all I use is in-terminal software (including code-
editing) so I'm not too worried about the "host" OS. I'm sure WSL2 will solve
most other issues.

