> This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done).
Apple (since Lisa/Mac, after Apple II, which had an open architecture) likes appliances and to control the user experience, so the iPad is "more Apple" than Macs are.
Whenever I am waiting at airports, I have to grin at how much stuff people are carrying nowadays: it's not 2, it's 3 full-blown computing devices. First there was the mobile phone (which then just a device to call), then came the laptop,
then the mobile phone became a computer with the iPhone and Android, and finally, the iPad appeared to fill a middle position. You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead. That's because - as stated in the article - there are known limit, or people are worried that they may need all devices for particular use cases or data kept on them.
At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.
I tried working with an iPad (and later iPad Pro) but eventually got back to a Ubuntu Linux laptop (ThinkPad X1 Nano), which at 970 grams is also lighter than my iPad Pro 10".
> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead
I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go. I can't plug my macbook into a car to use maps or play music. I can't use my macbook on the beach to take a picture of my child playing in the surf. I can't really use my phone to type out anything shorter than a quick text.
(Caveat, for the pedants: yes, I could do all those things, but with terrible inconvenience.)
Maybe it's an American thing but I don't think I know a single person who owns or uses an ipad, with the exception of rich parents who use them exclusively to distract children. I certainly don't notice a lot of ipad users in airports or trains.
In US, I hear it's a common "computer for non-tech-savvy people, who you want to set up with once, and have them not bother you for the next couple years" choice.
As for the form factor, I do travel with a tablet. More specifically, a 2-in-1 device, with a stylus. An x86 one, though (specifically, Dell Latitude 5290, which has specs like MS Surface, but was 3x cheaper) - because I've learned from experience that iPads and Android tablets are just large phones without the phone call function, and not suitable for any productive use. Meanwhile, my Dell hosts a touchscreen-optimized Windows 10, which hosts a Linux distro, which hosts the actual OS - Emacs.
(I also learned to love the Ribbon. On a 2-in-1, it's very obvious what Microsoft was going for, and why it's a good design - for touchscreens.)
Android Tablets with Mobile Internet are perfectly fine phones. I've used a LTE Samsung tablet exclusively as my only "Smart" phone for a while, and had a Dual-Sim to share the same Phone number as on my "Dumb"-phone, (Nokia 8110 4G) ...
From 2015-2019, my only mobile device was an Android tablet with no SIM card. At purchase, I signed up for a Google Voice number, and I sort of got by with VoIP service over WiFi wherever I could.
Since then, I've purchased a proper mobile phone, and I transferred my landline home phone over to that SIM card, and it's my main line now. I use my Voice number very rarely.
One of the drawbacks to SIM cards is that you can't really get the phone service mirrored or transferred to a regular computer. Sure, you can "link" the phone if it's nearby, but the service itself stays there.
I've had a number of times where I'd really like to have voice/SMS service on that number available via computer (some people I know are actually creeped out by my having two phone numbers at once), but what can you do.
I haven't traveled since the Before Times anyway, so boarding a plane with devices is the least of my worries.
I’m in the UK. Yesterday I watched an eighty-plus year old woman settle her similarly elderly, physically-impaired husband into his seat on the train then get out her iPad to write an email.
On my journey home in a more crowded train I saw half a dozen iPads just from where I was sitting. They are extremely useful devices for train journeys.
Only Apple iPads as far as I could see, but by no means only the most expensive or newest. Non-Apple tablet devices really are not often seen in the UK (some convertible PCs, the occasional Samsung tablet).
If you spend a lot of time on public transport, an iPad isn't really that much of a luxury item. It's a really pragmatic choice, and at least in the UK an entry-level or recent secondhand iPad is not much more expensive than the cheapest usable alternative.
Most seats on British trains are not at tables, and while many (by no means all, depends on the operator) have a seatback tray table, it is generally not the right shape for all but the smallest laptop, and the proportions are not such that they work well with convertible PCs that use screen-cover keyboards.
We really get crammed into trains.
An iPad is large enough to read a book or emails even if you are stuck without a seat, the on-screen keyboard is practical enough to write reasonable emails or edit small documents on, watch a film on, etc.
So is a very cost effective way to make use of what might be 2+ hours of every working day.
(Train travel is pretty expensive over any distance, too. An entry level iPad is only about ten times the cost of an ad-hoc journey into London from where I am -- and that's only an hour away.)
Sincerely, from someone in the third world who has taken UK public transport. You don't.
I don't say this to disparage your message, but hopefully to give some gratitude for the nice things you do have over there.
I found it most amusing how people would get antsy and annoyed when a train was more than 5 minutes late in the UK. For years of me taking South African trains, if there was any delay worth being mad about, it would've been after 2 hours had passed.
People here don't really get upset about trains being even ten minutes late. That's normal.
And as far as safety is concerned, when every seat is full and there's already very little seat-to-seat distance, the aisle is crammed with people face to back with nothing to hang on to, and the vestibules are all full to the point that people are standing with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard, that is a crammed train. Dangerously so -- indeed, often illegally so.
And this is quite normal, routine and unexceptional at commuter times, and that is not talking about the underground, where it is routine to be packed in to the point that someone's nose is against the window (mine was, yesterday).
I'm sure there are trains elsewhere that are worse. There's nothing I can do about that; it doesn't really change my observation.
(I'm not sure there's a really good point about gratitude here, either, when the people paying for these services where they don't get a seat have to take out substantial loans to afford the annual ticket, whereas you can travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg, with a sleeping car berth, for about 20% more than the amount it costs me to travel an hour into London at off-peak times. But that's a separate point.)
Back in the 80s the trains still had guard's vans. When you've stood in the middle of a crammed, unlit, violently shaking box with nothing for anyone to hang on to, a place in the aisle seems like luxury! On the other hand, the intercity seats were more comfortable in those days, the windows opened and you didn't have to wait for the train to stop before you got off.
Yeah. I went to school on the train and did that a couple of dozen times over seven years. Also remember being horrifyingly crammed into the corridor of a former first class carriage.
> when every seat is full and there's already very little seat-to-seat distance, the aisle is crammed with people face to back with nothing to hang on to, and the vestibules are all full to the point that people are standing with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard, that is a crammed train.
That was the Metra BN line in Chicago when I lived there, at least the rush hour departures at around 5:00pm. I was on a train so full that I could not even fully get into the vestibule, I had to push people in with my body so the door could close behind me. Many times the CTA trains were similarly full.
> with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard
Generally speaking and especially when compared with trams or buses, mainline trains don't really do "hard" braking, though. Though I concede that the jerk of coming to a full stop with the brakes fully applied (during regular braking drivers and/or the train control system will ease off the brakes before stopping) may be somewhat borderline in terms of keeping your stability.
I’m sure you’re totally right, but try getting a cross-country train in the UK on a Sunday when the two trains in front of you have been cancelled. And paying £110 for the privledge. You really do get crammed in.
Also try the Tube in London’s rush hour - more like stuffed in than even crammed in. Full armpit-in-the-face experience.
I've been on one or two London trains during rush hour. Yeah, it's cramped.
I've also hung out of Cape Town trains because that's the only way to get on - all doors forced open by commuters so we can get a few more people to work.
I was in Malaysia in March and there was a big public artwork showing Malaysia’s commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and I thought “Sh*t we need those too!”
I once did a project (not freelance I hasten to add) for a wealthy and shady company based in a very expensive office in a very expensive old money postcode. They are involved in immoral, and probably illegal, activities, some of which received attention from national press. They were the sort of organisation that has disaster comms skills in house. They also had a document that proudly proclaimed how they met every single one of the UN's SDGs. Never understood how they managed to keep a straight face on that topic.
I literally can't remember the last time I took a laptop out on a train or a plane. If it's a short trip, I may get by with just my phone (or phone + Kindle) but for longer trips I like the iPad as a media consumption and note taking device even if, to the OP's point, it's not really a laptop replacement.
That said, I'm going on a few week--mostly recreational--trip in a bit and I'll just take my phone and my iPad. It will be fine for note-taking at the conference I'm attending and I really just want media consumption and a browser on something bigger than my phone for everything else.
An iPad is probably one of my more optional devices but I've gotten almost 10 years out of my current model so it doesn't feel like an unreasonable luxury even if I mostly use it when traveling.
Two hours of commuting in the south east of the UK is as little as thirty miles each way in the overground part alone. Quite a common commute. Far from a ridiculous one, and if you get a seat, not really very uncomfortable.
You can either drive it and do nothing but listen to something relatively simple, or sit in a train and read/work/draw/listen/play games/sleep.
(It’s not my commute; I work from home. But I visit clients sometimes; yesterday involved six hours of train/tube travel. I wouldn’t do that every day but I could do it once a week.)
2 hours each way is indeed not a very sustainable commute. I had a 90 minute one about every other day for a bit over a year and I wouldn't have wanted to do that long-term.
However, 30 miles is significantly under the average US commuting distance. And, unless you live and work near an urban downtown, 30 miles probably doesn't get you to a lot of appropriate professional jobs. I live in an exurb outside a major metro and my (nominal) office is the nearest tech job I could physically commute to and it barely squeezes in under 30 miles.
Should clarify that I say two hours per day above. I don't think I'd spend two hours going thirty miles, or even necessarily choose a job that involved driving thirty miles every day.
But thirty miles in an hour on urban/suburban rail isn't particularly unusual. And this time is time you can use, if you have even a little bit of method about it. I know people who have done all the reading for entire higher education degrees in that period of time.
At any rate, the notion to which you're responding regarding the area of possible commute being 2800 square miles is foolish. You have to go to where the jobs gather, and there are all sorts of complex reasons why they don't distribute evenly across that area that a rational person should not spend time weighing up when they consider whether an iPad might be a useful thing for the train.
In my case, if I made the commute into London on a daily basis, knocking down the distance to this hypothetical US average of 16 miles might save, I think, about a third of the journey time in practice. It would knock off half of the price of a season ticket, which might be useful. But it would add easily 40% to the cost of a house, which is the overriding concern. And even then I'd still buy the iPad for that journey.
But, yes, other numbers seem to be lower (and are generally more likely to quote commute time rather than distance which is probably more relevant for most people).
I used to commute 2-3hrs/day living in LA. It was just normal. Now that I can work from home, it irritates me even more that companies want to force that back on us.
The traffic in LA is insane. I never understand why people live there for it. Or they should live within walking / biking distance of their job. Car traffic is hell on your mental and physical health.
It's non-intended sarcasm. Lot's of people who work in London spend 2 hours (each way) a day travelling through open countryside in order to have both a decent job and somewhere basic to sleep at night.
People who actually live in London tend to be either very rich or unemployed.
> … a seatback tray table, it is generally not the right shape for all but the smallest laptop …
As someone who very much prefers having a physical keyboard, the only workable solution I have found for UK trains is an iPad with the Magic Keyboard, whose cantilever design is relatively shallow, and which provides a firm base for balancing on your legs.
There is no reason this form factor couldn't be achieved with an android tablet, but it feels relatively uncommon. Most keyboard cases I've seen are only really suitable for stable table/desk scenarios.
Same; except I also do south England to Scotland by train … the one thing is the 4/5g reception or Wi-Fi is really no good. Have to download things before (Netflix) or make sure the book you want to read is actually in the book app. Then 7 hour is ok. Notebook as said is too big.
Thanks for expanding on your experience. Not commuting, and coming from a relatively poor small city, when I'm on trains I only ever see people on phones and occassionally laptops for people doing actual work.
We have an 87 year old who is a real fan of her iPad for staying in touch, reading and audio books.
I personally use 3 ipads - I hate to throw stuff away:
1) old 9.7 pro as main device
2) old Air 2 for Zwift (this will sadly retire when updates are no longer available
3) Even older Air for connecting to FlightSim for charts
iPads dominate the "premium" segment worldwide (something like 70-80% market share of tablets from US$300 - US$1000). Below that, it's all versions of Android - Apple doesn't sell non-premium tablets. Above that, Surface has meaningful share, although iPad still plays significantly.
These days my parents based in Asia use the two iPads I gifted them almost exclusively. They watch YouTube videos, Netflix, Facetime the kids and browse the web on them. The only time my dad boots up my old college MacBook is when he has to do important document editing - never more than once every month. To my surprise, he's even using the iPadOS Files app extensively. We're just not the target market.
Canadian here, iPads are really common amongst (uni/college) students as well, from my experience - they make good notetaking/general course work devices. Off the top of my head I think like 40-70% of students in my classes had an iPad.
And as another comment said, iPads are pretty common options here for some people who aren't really power users that essentially want a phone experience, but bigger. I've set up my mom with an iPad + PiHole for home use and she's super happy with it as a video and browsing device that is generally reliable. She does have access to a PC I built as well, but an iPad is much more portable around the house for her (e.g. she needs to follow a recipe while cooking).
I notice it more on airplanes when people want to watch their own movies.
I would also say that about 1/3 of people that work primarily from their laptop, and travel a lot (no easy access to a desktop monitor), will probably have an iPad as a second display as well.
I’m not American and both my mother and my mother in law (both over retirement age) use an iPad as their only large-screen computing device along with an iPhone.
It’s not a “rich parent” thing, it’s a “this device has actual support from the manufacturer for years” thing. Android tablets are still an afterthought with Samsung the only one bravely attempting to bring large screen support to the OS.
I'm a physicist in Germany, my supervisor got iPads with Apple Pencils for the entire group, we find it very useful for note taking especially since we can share screen on zoom to use them like digital whiteboards. When I give tutorials I notice at least a quarter of my students are usually using either iPads, remarkable or a windows convertible with pen support
Almost all of the students in the undergrad engineering courses I teach seem to use them. 10 years ago, I had a Samsung Note tablet that was great for coursework: it made comparatively trivial the then-daunting task of keeping all your coursework organized and having it with you when you needed it. It was great back then, and now they're significantly cheaper with Apple. If the Samsung options were comparably cheap and sporting reading-friendly screen ratios, I would've skipped Apple altogether.
I'm seeing an increase in college students in Japan with iPads and Apple Pencils. And most of the visiting students from other countries have them for sure.
I use an iPad exclusively at home on a couch/in bed. It's really great for low effort media consumption/web browsing, but I couldn't imagine bringing it with me somewhere instead of just taking a laptop. Even for media consumption on a train or airplane, I prefer a laptop because of it being easier to prop up in a cramped space.
Most of my family in Germany have an iPad. In fairness many households I know have one.
Especially for elderly people it’s the perfect computer (as in laptop, desktop) substitute.
I have one that I use for my grad school studies almost exclusively as an e-reader for textbooks and a notepad.
I could similarly just invest in a cheap e-reader device and a physical notepad and it wouldn’t disrupt my studies but I shelled out a little more for a used iPad for the longer than typical device support and because I’m already in the Apple ecosystem.
Mine works great as edoc reader but the pencil doesn't have full mouse functionality and the mechanical switch BT keyboard i need to do non trivial inputs adds a lot of bulk.. so still has a lot of potential.
I had my "single device for everything" experience with the original Galaxy Note. I would plug in a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and use it as a computer (it required a special OTG USB to HDMI adapter). It connected to my car. It had a big enough screen to be a mobile Tv. It was fun for sketching with the included pressure sensitive pencil. I had a game-controller that it could click into, making it into a handheld game machine. And it had a graphics chip that gave it more graphics ability than comparable mobile computing devices of the time. It even had a cool thing where it could emulate and magnetic credit card swipe, making it compatible with credit card readers that didn't yet support tap-to-pay! Truly a miracle device.
Yet for all that, I replaced it with a Moto X just 2 years later, and it's the Moto X that I really miss, with its superior voice control and its preference to remain in my pocket, and the little dimple in its wooden back.
Do-it-all devices tend to not really satisfy in anything. I got a Lenovo Yoga that was meant to be “convertible” between laptop and tablet and I never really did use it anywhere near as much as the technically much less powerful iPad Air I bought after.
I keep old Yoga 13 in a drawer. I think it happened still too early for its time - too heavy as tablet, fans, small screen vs form factor, font hinting quite bad in vertical mode, Windows8 clunky interface, battery...
I think today's Macbook Air M2 with 360deg hinges, touch and some iPad like UI-mode would be a holy grail for the article author.
A 360 MX Macbook with all the benefits of an iPad (run iOS apps, cellular data, both cameras, excellent touch response, maybe even lidar) would absolutely kill iPad sales, but it would also be the best all-in-one device Apple ever made.
Your dream is an interesting thought experiment. Let's reflect on if Apple would provide all these experiences.
0. 360 MX. This is the least likely. I'm sure Apple has been testing flippable hinges for decades at this point, but even if they could make the best one, they need a marketing reason for users. What's the point in a flippable laptop if you can't use everything when it's flipped like Windows?
1. Running iOS apps. macOS with an ARM chip already runs iOS apps, the problem is that most developers are chickenshit and don't allow people to run their apps on macOS. Apple needs to reverse course and remove the ability to deny running on macOS.
2. Cellular data. By this point, Apple would have done it. There's a valid argument that Apple doesn't want to even entertain negotiations with Qualcomm about how much it would cost them to put modems in their laptops, so I believe our last hope is that the modems currently in development by Apple themselves are someday destined for Apple laptops.
3. Excellent touch response. Every Macbook already has the best touch response in any laptop. Their trackpad is best-in-class. I don't know how Apple could even fail at that.
0. You bring up some points I fully agree with. Since we’re talking about Apple who can’t do anything mundane, for the hinge let’s just assume they come up with a new tech (maybe a single pivot point and the keyboard spins freely, or a mechanism that detaches it entirely so it can be snapped in flush on the back, or some other solution I can’t imagine yet)
1. Agreed
2. I can’t imagine this would actually stop them if they decided to cannibalize the iPad and build an MX 360
3. Agreed
4. Personally I would probably never use it, but it’s a notable iPad feature and might as well have them all
I find the Microsoft Surface Pro works in this niche much better than the Yoga devices - they're lighter, smaller and the keyboard cover can be removed entirely for a tablet experience.
That would help but some of what I found annoying was the delay in transitioning between modes and software generally not designed with tablet mode in mind. Not sure if the situation has improved in the last few years on those points.
Not sure if that's changed over time or not but transition speed is more or less the same between the two in my experience. There's some software which does a decent enough job at tablet mode (enough that I don't feel the need for a separate tablet - basically media consumption type activities - ebook readers, Netflix, etc are covered well enough and web browsing works for me) and the surface pro form factor feels much better for things like note taking using the surface pen in my experience (my work laptop is a Yoga, personal laptop is a Surface Pro so I use both regularly). On the negative side, the Surface Pro does make some different compromises - particularly the type cover isn't quite as good as the Yoga laptop keyboard (though of course any laptop keyboard is never that great) and the stand which folds out of the back isn't as good as having a laptop supported by the base if you have it on anything other than a decent desk. But overall I'd say the Surface Pro gets much closer to a true 2 in 1 device.
You can't even turn off the touch screen when in laptop mode, so every time you brush the screen when typing (it happens a lot, the device is tiny) you end up messing up something.
Microsoft, for all its qualities, truly does not care about the finer details.
I used the original Moto X as long as I could. I can't even remember what I got after. I'm now sporting a iPhone mini.
Obviously the market just isn't there for smaller phones, but I actually think the iPhone 3GS had the best form factor of any phone I've used, and it's smaller screen encouraged information density, which I like.
I say I use an iPhone mini now, and it's true, but only because Apple requires you to use an iPhone with their Watch. I've given up on the phone form factor, and use an Apple Watch with an ear bud and cellular, and keep the phone in drawer most of the time. Actually is was the Moto lineup that got me onto that: they had that short-lived earbud that was marketed as requiring zero screen in order to do all your mobile computing (I never got one though).
You might wonder why one wouldn't just use an Android watch that could do all of it without the bullshit Apple tax across multiple devices. It's for similar reasons for why I didn't end up liking the Galaxy Note, even though it still, to this day, feels like a miracle that they could cram so many features AND so much quality into that device, and that it could legitimately perform in all those categories.
The iPhone mini still feels too big, but at least it's mostly usable with one hand, even if it's not comfortable to do something like pull down the control panel shade on the top right corner with your left hand.
I know I'm just a weirdo though. I thought the Windows Phone UI was brilliant, especially the audio design.
Parent's point still stands as in a decent ecosystem you'd get down to at most two.
For instance a phone and a Surface Pro covers 100% of the use cases, there's no gap for a 3rd device. For some this gets down to one device with a Galaxy Fold and DEX.
People might have different preferences and/or be locked in the Apple ecosystem anyway, but we have working products showing things done differently ("think different" was such a good copy)
The iPad is a much better tablet than the Surface. The art and note apps are incomparably better. The ebook reader apps too.
iPad OS is limited, but it's fine for reading, writing and sketching. It's good to do that on a separate device that is not connected to work stuff. I can bring my iPad in the bedroom because it's just a fancy book.
Windows is also far too needy for this sort of device. I returned my Surface after a day because of updates, notifications, tracking and a complete lack of respect for the user. My iPad is such a calm device by comparison.
It comes down what you actually want to do. My time spent on the iPad was defined by what I couldn't do, and it was extremely frustrating, I ended up not doing it instead of go getting the laptop from across the house.
Windows is not refined nor optimized for tablet use by any measure, but it actually does the job, instead of showing a cute and extremely refined middle finger half the time.
The breaking point for me was the reader apps, where I'd have a file and just no way to read it, short of taking 10 min on a desktop to somewhat convert it to what the iPad can handle (see below). Since they're also in a pissing match with Amazon, the reading experience is just subpar. What's the point of a simple and elegant interface if I'm still babysitting what's going in there and have to constantly think about work-arounds that also end up clunky and broken ?
> Art and note apps
Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version. Same for One-note, obsidian etc., there's no lack of them on Windows while it was a fresh market on the iPad.
> ebook reader apps
I think iBooks is the only reader you don't get (is there a web version ? I have no idea).
Granted I buy most of my books on kindle, the in-browser reader works well enough (in the end, I'm full screen turning pages, so makes no difference). I'd argue getting the read the book straight from the page I bought them is pretty great.
I didn't bother with the android subsystem version but it would be an option if there is any limitation on the web part. I also have a bunch of old ebooks and scans from way before there were stores, and of course they were better handled by the windows apps (at some point I was using CloudReader on iOS, and it just disappeared).
> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version
This is what made me sell the Surface. I wanted to replace a paper notebook I bring everywhere. What I got was tiny buttons, menus, and a save dialog every time I wanted to close the app. My drawings were not drawings in a sketchbook, but files I had to manually sort and access on a filesystem.
After spending a whole day installing updates and turning off ads and tracking, I couldn't just unwind and doodle. The Surface constantly reminded me that I was operating a computer, not drawing.
> ebooks
The in-browser reader is not a replacement for an offline book reader. This tablet is offline most of the time.
> obsidian
I want to write and doodle, not edit markdown files. Otherwise I'd have no use for a tablet. This tablet replaces a paper notebook.
I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazines, surf the Web, and watch videos. And for that it’s arguably better than a laptop. At least I find myself using it for those things much more.
Right, but the inability to do serious software development is an arbitrary limit imposed by Apple. The hardware is quite capable, but the vendor has decided that we need to use multiple different devices. It's their platform and they can do what they like with it, but as a customer those artificial limitations rankle.
They’d have to do something more than just throw XCode on it for it to be in any way usable without full on keyboard and mouse, which would cut against what they’re trying to do. So there is some justification beyond just market segmentation.
For the same reason they deliberately made iphone apps look bad -- they want applications designed to work with the device to make it a good experience and not applications designed for something else shoehorned in. I see some real wisdom in this approach considering how poor some of the alternative experiences are. Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?
It does offer support for a keyboard and a mouse but what you're proposing is adding features or programs that would only work (or at least only work well) with a keyboard and a mouse, which would be a pretty big departure from the current design of the device.
I am contesting the idea that it's possible to compromise the design philosophy that had guided it up till now and NOT "take anything from the general experience."
> Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?
For the same reason you carry an "inferior" camera, pda, navigation system, cellphone with very short battery life and undersized movie screen: a smartphone does all that okay-ishly. Or why ultrabooks are vastly more popular than gaming laptops. Convenience and form factor trump "inferior" all the time.
If you have to use the keyboard for certain tasks and so basically must always keep it attached to one it’s now heavier and more awkward than a MacBook Air. So you’re making my point here.
You still hit weird limits. Perhaps the M1 is a better value proposition now, but with the A series transcoding videos was choppy at best, and you'd have to choose to "share" them to VLC every damn time.
Youtube playback would stop everytime another video starts playing somewhere (additional fun when it's just a video ad that actually had no sound in the first place).
SMB file management is still an afterthought, so you end up needing a plex server dealing with all the complexity the iPad can't deal with.
Browsing is the same, outside of the Safari limitation, extensions are few and tab management a pain in general.
For books and magazine it's kinda the same. It works fine for light use. It becomes frustrating if it's something you actually care about.
In the end, I realized I actually care less about visual polish and more about having complete functionalities, at the price of dealing with Windows and managing a computer instead of an appliance.
I believe you but in the end I use it a lot more than my laptop despite its limitations and generally don’t want to try and do the things you’re talking about with it (I’d probably be sitting at my desk with my real computer if I wanted to).
> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version
Speaking of those, does the Pencil still feel somewhat half baked for Apple? The display front panels on iPads aren't "optimized" for pens, like, given rigidity and texturing for front panels. I don't own the iPad kit nor am I a digital artist, but the Pencil as a physical object almost feels like poking acrylic panel with laundry hangars, and most third party feeling among all third party pens. and I didn't understand how they could sell it as a serious thing.
Ironically, whatever the other advantages of the Surface Pro as a tablet, it's so hampered by physical dimensions for reading to make the rest of the question moot. I had a SP3 for 6 years as a primary laptop, but it was not a good offering for reading. Maybe more recent ones have improved the aspect ratio, weight and distribution, and bezels.
For what it’s worth, you can have ishell installed, put the file you want to convert into its drive, download almost any x86 binary to convert it, and you can use it, all from your ipad.
Sure, not the most convenient way, but there is no replacing something like pandoc.
Oftentimes being able to run whatever you want makes it harder to provide a cohesive, consistent experience that’s pleasant to use. Look at X vs. Mac or even Windows to see what I mean. The inconsistency of that experience has imo been a major factor holding back desktop Linux (notably, locked-down Linux-derived environments seem to do fine).
the two aren't mutually exclusive, apple can give the consistent experience and also have an "okay, you're the owner of this device, you make the rules, not Steve Jobs" setting that isn't as beautiful but also doesn't try to boss around the user
Incomparably better? Nebo on Windows is more or less the same as the iOS version, ditto apps like Liquidtext and Noteshelf. Plus there's full fat OneNote and MS Journal which I like.
For art apps, Procreate is very good but it's still kinda limited. Windows has the full Photoshop, CSP, Art Rage etc. experiences.
And with WSA you can just grab the Android versions of Kindle or whatever.
And is really respectful of the user to artificially kneecap a device from doing tasks?
> The iPad is a much better tablet than the Surface
but useless as a computer?
I needed to apply for a visa -It can't even handle that simple task!
Like all I had to do, is collaste togesther a few dozen documents (bank statements, utility bills, etc.), merge all them into PDfs and organise pages cronologically. Couldn't even do that.
whats the point of having a great processor in an iPad if it's all wasted.
This is a deal braker for me, handling official documents is a normal thing normal people have to do every day.
You forget that vast swathes of us are never going to risk buying a Microsoft/Windows device ever again. They blew it too many times with BSOD / updates kicking in during work / viruses / whatever horror this week.
> I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go
That's interesting, for me, any texting (usually via whatsapp or signal) is far, far more convenient on the laptop than on the phone, so far that if I expect a longer response, I'll rather find a place to sit and pull out the laptop than try to type all of it on the phone; and for calling people also videocalls on laptop are more convenient for me than the phone, so again, if it's more than a one-minute conversation, I'll rather put down the phone and call them through the laptop.
Apple people, and people who have shifted away from "texting" to using some other platform (e.g. whatsapp) often shift between computer and phone for this job.
But in the US at least, people outside those groups typically don't. I don't think you can (easily) send SMS from a laptop as though it were your phone.
(Yes, it could be argued that the two groups in the first paragraph are actually ONE group, since Apple "texting" is silently-to-the-user shifted to iMessaging, i.e. another app.)
Those days are over. I’ve been using Intel Unison on my 11th gen desktop for a long time now. Microsoft Phone Link also works but isn’t limited to Intel, it’s inferior but it does the job. Both work with iOS.
More importantly for an airplane, you can't watch Netflix (or most streaming movies) offline on a laptop. Though I've never used a Surface, maybe you can do that with some kind of mobile app that runs on a hybrid thing.
the M1/M2 macs should be able to just run the iOS app. Not sure if it allows storing stuff. Or if netflix lets you run the ios app on a mac (probably not lol)
While the underlying silicon might share similarities I would love to get an idea from where you've seen the ability to arbritrarily run iOS apps on M1/M2.
I did consider an emulator in xcode, but that's not quite what I'm after.
I have an Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo as my main home and travel computer. I am upgrading my Samsung Ultra Note 20 to a Samsung Fold 5. I can work off of my Note now, and leave the Asus laptop at the place I am staying. I spent 6 months in Saudi Arabia working this way. You can run MS 365 and Dex on the phone. I use the Note to annotate photos in the field and to annotate during Zoom calls. I've typed proposals, spreadsheets, and more just on the phone. Because I do CAD, physics sims, and rendering, I can't lose the laptop, but for everything else, I could get away with the phone. I think the Fold 5 will make it even more capable for what I use it for. I still have a 2015 iPad Pro, a 2011 27 in. iMac, but I've left the Apple ecosystem for a while now. Android, Windows, and Linux for me mainly in that order.
I came close to purchasing a fold this year but I find the decision to have a camera bump absolutely bizarre. If they just added a few extra millimetres to the case it would then sit flat on the table rather than rocking about, which means you could then use the pen with it properly as a note taking device. I can understand having camera bumps on phones, but it seems really weird here given that this is meant to be a phone that can also replace your tablet.
Long before mobile smart phones, truckers were using apps like copilot gps on their offline laptop for just this. I used to have it on a laptop for install work I did. In fact, I continued using it in areas with no cell coverage. Another app I used was Microsoft Streets and Trips. In 2006, they added a GPS version that did turn by turn nav.
That said, the point still stands. I did some searching, and Streets and Trips are discontinued. Copilot was bought by Trimble and AFAIK, you can only get the mobile app versions (they still have offline support). I think their truck fleet software will still run on laptops, but are sold as part of a bulk purchase.
I did find MapFactor, which I've never used, as being something that will work on Windows and Linux (via wine) and it provides real-time GPS navigation.
There are still more than a few great turn by turn navigation libraries that run on ruggedized windows tablets. There were two that escape my mind.
Quite often they work completely offline, and also cover more information related to topography and driving routes that may not be traditional roads on existing maps. For example, the path to a location in a farmer's field, etc.
As a programmer with serious mobile experience I fully understand it. But it sound a bit crazy that a powerful and more superior (and open! In both hard and sometimes soft - if with an opensource OS) platform need so _emulate_ an embedded one (mobile, usually at least partially proprietary one) to provide turn-by-turn nav: what appears to be a first-order need of anyone in the modern world.
I used to have a pink netbook that ran Microsoft Streets and Trips that I used together with a Bluetooth GPS. I had a power adapter that plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car and also a line in cable for the stereo. I could play music with Windows Media Player and have turn-by-turn directions work flawlessly. It was particularly good for road trips with a navigator in the passenger's seat as it had a great user interface for managing large numbers of points of interest and making routes that hit multiple points. It was the best satnav I ever had.
I remember the time I was heading south from Syracuse in an area notorious for state police speedtraps when I had pulled alongsides a greyhound and my son had logged into the WiFi on board the bus. The bus driver got pissed at us and got up to 95 mph to shake us. I gave up first but I figured he'd have a lot more to lose from getting a ticket than I would.
The bus driver probably didn't know or care about the wifi, just this car that kept strangely in pace with him. Maybe the driver thought OP was going to intentionally get in an accident for some insurance scam.
If your laptop has 3G (or better) radio, it has also positioning bundled in.
However, although the devices might run on ancient stable standard, but that does not mean, that operating system is not playing silly games there. If you had an app that talked to them via serial port, you could throw it away once Microsoft introduced GNSS subsystem.
You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with
EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop
You're missing a few major scenarios.
- The iPad works as a second monitor for a Mac laptop. Great for creative/tech people.
- If people are traveling for work, they are bringing their work laptop which may have corporate lockdown/spyware software installed. Therefore using their work laptop for entertainment might not be possible or optimal. (Not to be crass, but: watching porn in a hotel room is a pretty common use case)
I'd prefer to travel lighter (and I do when possible) but I don't find iPad+Macbook to be an onerous load for a airplane carry-on bag. Although, a smaller person or somebody with an injury or disability might feel differently.
At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.
> The iPad works as a second monitor for a Mac laptop. Great for creative/tech people.
You need to be logged into the same Apple ID, which is a huge hassle for everybody who has a different Apple ID for personal and work use.
There’s tonnes of Apple features that break because of this. Apple’s view is that there’s a 1:1 correspondence between Apple IDs and people, and everything they do is designed around that fact.
> At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.
I have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, an Android phone, an Apple Watch, an iPad, and AirPods Pro; so I have fairly demanding charging needs.
I have the MagSafe Duo Charger and a Minix Neo P3 to plug into the wall. I have a lightning cable to plug the Duo Charger into the Minix. From there, the Duo Charger can charge both phones, the watch, and the AirPods. I have a USB-C cable I can use to charge the laptop and the iPad from the Neo P3. Obviously I can’t charge absolutely everything simultaneously, but I never need to because most of the batteries last days and I don’t use all the devices simultaneously anyway.
So all of those devices but I just need a wall charger, a Duo and two cables. The “oh no, everything is so complex because Apple refuses to use USB-C” hand wringing is massively overblown. Does it really matter that my iPhone, my AirPods, and my watch don’t have USB-C when all I do to charge them is put them down on a pad when I’m not using them? Sure, my Android phone has a USB-C port, but I charge my iPhone and my Android phone the same way – by putting them down on a pad. What is the EU forcing Apple to add a USB-C port on the iPhone actually achieving for me if I never use the Lightning port on the current models?
> There’s tonnes of Apple features that break because of this. Apple’s view is that there’s a 1:1 correspondence between Apple IDs and people, and everything they do is designed around that fact.
Ugh, yeah. Good point. Never had a company that made me have a separate AppleID so I didn't think of it.
It would, of course, be a non-issue if Apple allowed multiple users on iPad :-/
> The “oh no, everything is so complex because Apple refuses to use USB-C” hand wringing is massively overblown.
Yeah. It exclusively comes from non-Apple owners. They never seem to notice that it's not a big deal for people actually living it.
> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop
But why would you think that?
I don't want to have to pull out my laptop (or even iPad) for phone calls or to check a quick e-mail.
Obviously there are types of real serious work that can only be done on a laptop.
And then I'm bringing the iPad to read books on, which takes up a lot less space than if the books were physical. It's far nicer reading on the iPad than the other devices. It's also far easier to position the way I want on my tray table for a movie.
I have zero complaints. My phone doesn't take space away from anything else, and my laptop+iPad together are slimmer and weigh less than a single laptop did in the pre-Air days. And much less when you consider I no longer bring physical books/magazines.
It's very simple for me. The three devices are rather specialized. The phone always comes with me, so that's a given. The tablet is primarily for content consumption (why use my tiny phone screen for this when my nice 10-inch tablet works perfectly?) and the laptop, well, let's me get work done. Each has a fairly specialized function and each performs that function exceedingly well. Forcing one of the devices to perform a function that another device was designed for just gets frustrating.
And that's my problem with it- if I buy a device and what to do whatever with it, who is the company to specifically stop me from doing that? I'm not asking them to design anything special for me, just allow open access to the device so that the community can build whatever we want
I'm not defending Apple here (I'm not an iPad or iPhone user) but why would you expect a tablet to substitute for a general computing platform? My "tablet" is a Boox Nova Air C that runs full Android on an e-ink screen, but I only use it to read books, sketch, and to hand-write notes. I don't let it connect to any website I have to login to, because I don't trust the software. I don't even have a keyboard for it. Once you're planning to use it for productivity, you have to carry a keyboard. At that point, what's an extra couple inches of screen size to just use a high-performance laptop?
> why would you expect a tablet to substitute for a general computing platform?
it already is one, just with an OS that locks down its ability to function as one
why would you expect the OS to do that when it could also give the user the option to use the general computing platform as a general computing platform?
Apple has never marketed iPad as a general computing platform. (Well, except that weird “what’s a computer” ad.) No version of iPad has ever been able to run any other OS than iOS/iPadOS and the device itself was introduced as a user-friendly alternative to the clunky and ugly “tablet PCs”. When a product reminds you of a different product, or has the same amount of hardware inside as the other product, it doesn’t have to be that other product.
maybe, maybe not, but that doesn't change the fact that it's already a general computing platform, just with an OS that locks down its ability to function as one
so, why would you expect the OS to do that when it could also give the user the option to use the general computing platform as a general computing platform? Just because of marketing? Just because that's what they've always done? Neither are good answers imho
Because a surface does that and so have all tablet pcs since Windows XP times.
> once you are planning to carry a keyboard.
Apple sells you a keyboard cover, Samsung does, Microsoft does. They are ridiculously expensive for what they are (buy a few HHKBs), but seem very popular.
> at that point.
That is the point. After adding all that, you would expect your tablet to do all that. Hardware wise it totally could, but it is not "allowed to" unless you put a linux VM on it or something.
This is a fair point, but Apple addled the iPad with those limitations from its inception. The stated reason back then was that it wasn't powerful enough - which I disagreed with even then. If it had been able to boot Linux or OS X, I would have snapped one up. Now the only real difference is form factor, pricing discrimination, and touch screen (although I still believe that on some level it's a point of embarrassment for Apple that their desktop OS is completely unusable by touch, hence their endless reluctance to bring a touch-enabled Mac laptop to market. However that may be the factor that saves Mac OS from going completely down the consumer road of iOS).
So you're right that these categories of devices and capabilities are completely artificially imposed at this point, but the question is, why have an iPad at all?
You should stop supporting Apple or hoping they would change. Lock-down is their approach to everything. Microsoft is behind but following the same direction. GNU/Linux smartphones and tablets do not restrict what you do and run desktop OSes. Connecting a keyboard turns them in full laptops.
A laptop is a keyboard-oriented device, packing a,lot of computing power. It has the shortest battery life, and requires a desk, or at least a seat, to operate comfortably.
A phone is a handheld device, one which is always on you. It necessarily has a smaller screen, no separate keyboard, and only has a decent battery life because it sleeps most of the time. It can have serious peak performance, but has a hard time sustaining it (ask Ingress players).
An iPad (or another tablet if you feel fancy) is a two-hands device with a good, easy to use touchscreen, and software built around it. It's a natural choice for a graphic artist, for instance. An iPad has a more tolerable onscreen keyboard than a phone. Also its screen is large enough to enjoy movies, etc, so it's a convenient visual media consumption device, more so than a phone. I had laptops with touchscreens; they were fun, but not nearly as handy.
(For the record: I travel with a phone and a Linux laptop.)
So why don’t we have a single clothing item that fits every purpose? We had 10 thousands of years to improve on it, yet we use specialized jacket in winter and a swimsuit in the summer for swimming.
Specialization and generalization are fundamental principles we live by, and both can have value, depending on context.
Less common with individuals but a lot of households in the US have two vehicles that are optimized for different purposes. I did for about 20 years--but finally sold the "fun" two-seater once I stopped commuting.
Having worked in many graphics roles for 20 years, I have never heard of a professional wanting to use an iPad for their work, yet this thread is full of people claiming the iPad is some artist dream tool. It is not even close to true.
Procreate is iPad-only. Nobody uses iPads because they like iPads. They just like that one software. They would much prefer use it on a Wacom or Xenselabs device, though.
I end up travelling with all three but (as a web developer) I could just about pull off travelling with just my iPad.
But I do want to observe that there is really no such thing as a non-technical creative person, and if there were, they would likely have a laptop, because using an iPad to fully replace a specific workflow on a laptop is, as the article suggests, eventually a more complex challenge than using a laptop. If you have one specific creative application to run that means anything it’s likely to need a traditional desktop/laptop OS scenario, because the iPadOS versions are generally still compromised.
The “non-technical person” is an IT industry trope we should retire. Very few such people really exist; people are just “technical” in ways that IT folk don’t recognise. At best it’s a fiction that IT people use to describe those who have the good sense to not care about the minutiae of computers. But in this day and age, no creative person has the opportunity to know nothing about technology.
This is very egalitarian of you, but much like the effort to turn STEM into STEAM you would strip the world of a useful distinction in order to be more inclusive.
When I say someone is technical I mean this: I could give them instructions that include the words "open a terminal/command prompt" and they would both know what I mean and not be completely freaked out at the idea. If they are non-technical, then they may use several different devices quite successfully but have only the faintest idea how they work under the hood.
Every industry has to make this distinction: an auto mechanic needs to know whether they're talking to someone who understands cars or someone who just drives them. A plumber needs to know whether they are talking to someone who understands plumbing or just knows how to flush a toilet. They may have different words to describe this distinction, but it's an important distinction for the language to have and the word we've settled on in IT is "technical".
A "non-technical person" is someone who is not skilled in technology, usually IT, not someone who knows nothing about technology. The fact that there exists nobody who knows nothing about technology is a good clue that the term doesn't mean that, or else it'd be a useless term, as you pointed out
> people are just “technical” in ways that IT folk don’t recognise.
yes, perhaps they can work an abacus, or throw a javelin, or arrange Skittles by color. Those are all technical, but they aren't what IT folks mean when they say technical vs non-technical, and are mostly useless technical skills in that context (e.g. if FAANG was looking for "technical person", they likely do not need help arranging Skittles)
OK so you're making my point for me. "Non-technical" is just an IT trope that we should stop using if we're not talking about employees. And indeed, nobody specified that we were talking about employees, much less FAANG employees.
The bit about the abacus just underscores what I mean. It's derisive. Consider not using the word "non-technical" until you've grasped this.
seems like you've missed the point, if you think I'm making your point for you – your point seems to be pedantic and grounded in your personal opinions. Your feelings about derisiveness just underscore what I mean: the complaint is pure opinion and self-righteous indignation, devoid of substance.
the term "non-technical" is used because it is useful (notwithstanding your personal interpretation of it to mean "knows literally nothing about any technology"), so what term do you suggest we IT professionals use which conveys the same information in an equal or shorter length? Consider providing people an alternative they think is better if you personally don't like the language they're using, vs. just feeling upset and complaining.
Apple has invested a lot of time and effort into making full continuity across their entire computing ecosystem actually work, which allows the user to pick only one device that is the best poised for the task at hand.
The user can switch devices as they please and carry on on another device from where they left off on the previous one. It is seamless.
Of course, the user can also choose to use all of the devices at the same time if that is what they want or it merely suits them.
Microsoft and Linux ecosystems, however, do not have the same level of completeness and continuity and convenience.
Not really. Handoff doesn’t work if my starting device is not on when I begin to switch. My flow is to put my MacBook in sleep mode and then grab my phone. No handover there.
Don't forget people like me who have to travel with my locked-down work laptop as well as my personal laptop. I used to bring my Switch on long trips too but I've honestly stopped because I would take up like 4 bins at the TSA scan and it's awkward. They always tell me to put each piece of electronics in a separate bin. Now it's laptop, laptop, ipad+shoes+belt+phone.
I really should. I only fly 3-4x a year but it's probably still worth it. I'd probably start bringing my kindle too, which only adds to the irony of the top comment.
Personal computers started open, the iPad started as closed. The author is trying to get the twain to meet.
Myself, I've always seen the iPad as a "media consumption device" (despite the amazing Procreate) and never bothered to try to shoehorn it into another role.
My laptop and desktops will remain my primary devices forever I suspect.
> Myself, I've always seen the iPad as a "media consumption device"
I see it that way too, but I also see some confusion in their product line towards "the top". The iPad mini or even a regular iPad makes for a fantastic media consumption device, the only place any other device has those beat is a Kindle for books but that's another conversation. But when it comes to the iPad Pro, I always had a hard time figuring out what Apple's pitch for it was over a Macbook Air. Apple always pitched how portable the iPad Pro was but it's a hard sell when they have the Macbook Air which is smaller. And it's not even a competition in terms of use cases, iPad limits you in some pretty serious ways while the Air (especially with the new M1 processor) can chew through stuff normally reserved for i7's on a desktop. My brother asked me if he should get himself an iPad Pro for work (he's a real-estate agent). I told him outside of the use case of walking around a house and pulling up home plans or something, the Air is kicking the iPad's ass in every single category.
Too bad that USB-C is so poorly designed from a mechanical standpoint. Apple's Lightning connectors are robust, but for some reason the consortium that developed USB-C decided they needed to make it more complicated so that both the male and female connectors are prone to wearing out and getting loose.
Nearly every USB-C connector I've used, on multiple devices of different manufacturers, has eventually encountered problems. Google's connectors are particularly bad. I'm not even doing anything like tripping on the cables.
> And on the male side, Apple dutifully makes up for the claimed robustness of the by making some of the worst cables.
Hahaha
Assuming I know what you are talking about, yes, their cables suck. The plastic/rubber degrades way faster than other cables, turning yellow and eventually splitting open after just a few years.
They each fit a different use case. You don't stop having those use cases just because you're not at home.
You make a tradeoff between the extra weight and the convenience of the right tool for the job. None of those devices are all that heavy. It would be very different if they each weighed ten pounds.
>At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger
Good luck with that... I've a very nice dell laptop a client gave me to access their network. It uses USB-C (90W) for charging. Recently I had another dell laptop shipped to me by another client for the same purpose. This one too uses USB-C charger, but a 130W one.
A 130W charger had a broken plug so I attempted to use the 90W charger to charge the 130W laptop. You knew w what happened? It started charging and in under a minute it detected this as a "wrong" charger. It stopped charging and it would not boot with the 90W charger plugged in.
So if we can't use USB-C to swap chargers between two very similar devices made by the same manufacturer, what hope is there for having a truly "universal" charger? Yes, the 130W laptop couldn't possibly pull 130W from the 90W charger, but why couldn't it throttle, the cpu? Set the built in gpu to the igpu mode (yes it has both a igpu and another nVidia one)? Sad.
As for travelling with devices. I have been travelling with a laptop + cellphone forever. Few years ago I bought a little "convertible" laptop. I think it originally run windows 7. I installed Linux on it (with xfce desktop). It is essentially a tablet with a power of a laptop and detachable keyboard. I expected the keyboard interface to fail very quickly, but it hasn't. This way I have the convenience to browse the Web on a tablet, or plug the keyboard in and do actual work.
>You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop
I don't want to pull out my iPad or laptop when I need to make a call, or while standing in line.
I don't want to do everything on my phone, I appreciate the larger screen of an tablet or laptop.
When I need to be reachable for work I carry a laptop too -- I'm not allowed to do work on my personal device, but even if I could, I wouldn't, that would mean giving my employer far more control over my personal device than I want to (the same reason I wouldn't use my work laptop for personal use)
So which single device do you travel with? I think it's obvious to most people that a phone can't replace a laptop in tons of situations and vice versa.
I'm long way out of tech community talks, but I have been highly interested in ARM powered Windows laptops. They thinner, lighter, last longer on one charge and can be really powerful. Overall, they can be more efficient than the Apple devices, since you only need one. But can someone explain what happened to ARM powered x86 development? Is there some conspiracy behind the scene like how Hydrogen powered vehicle got murdered?
I don't bring my laptop with me on non-business trips. It's a matter of principle.
I have a cheap Android tablet but it never leaves my living room. I don't know what people do with tablets while traveling that they couldn't do with their phone just as easily (at least in a non-professional context). The OP certainly didn't get me any closer to an answer!
I got a foldable phone, which has replaced my tablet. Somewhat ironically though, I bought a lapdock to use my phone's desktop mode. It's actually a pretty neat solution that bridges the mobile-desktop functionality divide. I wrote about my setup here:
As a proud (and happy) owner of an iPhone Mini, there’s quite a lot of things that I can’t do comfortably on a phone. I use an iPad Mini as a travel companion for reading, maps, some games, playing music (longer battery life) and sorting through photos I took on my phone.
Yeah I also travel with a battery pack and, if I'm overseas, a pocket wifi. And my airpods, although lots of people like big headsets too. Apple also thinks their VR rig is great for air travel. So potentially 7-9 devices.
I'm personally not as bothered by the number of devices as much as all the forced redundancy. Like the core devices could have 3 desktop quality processors, 13 microphones, 3 selfie cameras, 2 rear cameras, 2-3 cellular modems, etc.
I'd love a design where the phone is my chip, 5g radio and storage. The camera can be worn as a bodycam (for lifestreaming or personal safety) but also docks to the phone. The phone speakers and mics are a 2nd set of airpods you can cycle in to keep them charged (both sets can be docked at once). The tablet is just a bigger screen with extra battery/storage and the phone docks to that. The watch screen is weaker and monochrome so the battery life is better and it keeps the health functions.
This is why I've been using Windows tablets for a _very_ long while --- since the NCR-3125 (though I would often boot it into PenPoint).
Still quite sad that I couldn't find a "real" replacement for my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 and its transflective display --- the Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was close (but I had to roll it back to 1703 twice, and it lacked a daylight viewable display --- repeat after me, trying to outbright the sun on a battery-powered device is stupid).
When it was time to replace my GB12 I bought Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, which unfortunately is too large for my sling bag, and still doesn't have a daylight viewable display, but it has a stylus (which I have to toggle between modes depending on which program I'm using).
Yeah, this guy really raises the correct issue, but doesn't quite phrase it as I would: "The beauty of the Mac as a platform is that Apple doesn’t have to think of every use case and doesn’t have to build out every single esoteric detail in order to enable new features"
Apple doesn't have to imagine every use case for their portable devices; they just have to let developers address them. But they don't; Apple BLOCKS any use case it doesn't imagine. When Apple enabled real apps, a lot us expected all kinds of cool applications that involved the phone talking to other devices. I wanted to write a time-lapse controller for cameras.
But NOPE. Apple locked down (and continues to lock down) the I/O port on iOS devices. This will no doubt continue when they finally slap a "USB" port on the rest of their mobile products. It's "USB" because yeah it'll physically be a USB-C and charge through it, but no way are developers going to have access to it.
Apple even cripples its Bluetooth. And of course there's the lack of a user-accessible file system, and the attendant lack of drag-&-drop file transfer between iOS and computer. I scoff at the arrival of video-editing apps on the iPad, when there's no good way to get gigabytes upon gigabytes of footage onto or off of these things. Not to mention the laughable clumsiness of trying to manipulate tiny controls on a touchscreen with your finger (and hand) blocking your view of what you're trying to work on.
And by the time you're done junking these gimped tablets up with a keyboard and pointing device, you have all of these limitations plus the cost and bulk of a MacBook Air. I'd argue you have more "bulk," in that you have a loose collection of crap that you have to carry around (and charge) instead of a tidy computer.
What Apple should have done is enable the Pencil to work on the (defectively) giant trackpads on its computers. Its failure to do so is baffling and unfortunate.
I travel a lot for work. For a one day or one night trip I tend to take 3 devices: work laptop, work phone, personal phone. For longer trips I tend to also take personal laptop, e-reader, plus external keyboard, mouse, headset (works better for me than airpods), laptop stand, mouse mat, and streaming stick so I can watch Netflix etc in hotels (tend to use the Amazon Fire sticks these days). Plus assorted chargers.
3 devices? I usually have 4 devices. I bring my Iphone 13 Mini, iPad Mini, Macbook 12-inch and Steamdeck (and before the Switch). The iPad is for content consumption. I can watch 8 hours of TV on it without breaking a sweat about battery life. The laptop is to work and the phone is to communicate. Steamdeck is just for play.
I do try to buy the lightest and smallest version of every device. The steamdeck is honestly the most unwieldly device I carry around. Everything else fits without a problem in my messenger bag.
I did a lot of personal travel with an iPad Mini (plus BT mouse and keyboard) and do just fine with RDP connections to my office and home as needed. In fact, I’m typing this on the second iteration (the 5th Gen one) and hope to get a new one as soon as it’s launched.
There is certainly a lot you can do with an iPad if you have the right apps (I run full-fledged vim, with plugins, inside a-Shell and code Python, Lua, Janet and Guile inside a-Shell or iSH as required). I also dabble in music (plenty of amazingly cheap synth apps), but most people don’t have the patience to try these things out (and Jason Snell’s audio woes are something that runs deeper).
Not to mention smart-watches too, which also do calling and texting.
I feel like at least some of these can be consolidated and the only reason they're not is because of arbitrary limits. I don't see any reason the ipad can't be more open like a laptop as well as operate as a phone (some android tablets can). You could use the watch as your "notifications and reach me asap" device.
But overall I always end up overpacking just because of being afraid of needing something I don't have.
I traveled with a Kindle Fire Tablet (middle device).
I’m loving it. It’s been mainly used for video on this trip. Quick web searches and killing time ready a distant second.
It’s a better size for a plane. I’m lucky in that I always have a gentleman in front of me that can pull 2gs pushing his seat back in a seemingly targeted attempt to snap my laptop screen. Not an issue with the middle device. And it is costs hundreds less than my laptop when the flight attendant spills a coffee on it.
That said, you still need a computer to compute. The mid size device is still for consumption. The article makes the case that it’s getting better, but it isn’t there
I feel like Smartwatches are to phones what tablets are to laptops: a supplementary device that doesn't work as well without the primary computer.
While many people might work entirely from a tablet, or even a Chromebook, you'll run into so many issues that you're better off carrying a laptop to cover all bases. In a pinch, a watch or tablet can pinch-hit for the device they supplement, but using them as a primary device every day gets old really quick.
Foldable iPhone Plus could probably narrow it down to two but I've also seen people go with ipad mini + apple watch + airpods where the duties of the phone split between the iPad/watch.
I bring all three on a bicycle trip. My iPad replaces a book and a notebook, so I pack just as much as before. My laptop is an actual work machine that does a lot more.
I tried to combine both with a Windows tablet, but it was just the worst of both worlds: a slow and needy Windows PC, and a tablet with bad UX, bad apps and poor battery life.
Besides any of its standalone functions, an iPad makes a useful secondary display when traveling with a Mac, plus it serves as pretty large external battery pack for any other devices if needed. I’m not backpacking everything, I usually have a carry on, but it never felt more cumbersome than toting a magazine around.
An iPad + Apple Pencil is amazing for jotting math or CS problems brainstorming, sketching, messing with music ideas, etc. Also great for reading, watching video content on the go, etc.
A laptop is much better at anything typing intensive or coding related.
Today it is not possible to travel without a phone, so the question reduces to whenever to take laptop and/or tablet or not. I mostly prefer to travel with phone only, if I do not anticipate some working tasks to be done.
Well that or one or more of those are work devices. I’m not going to do all my personal stuff on a work-provided machine so I’ll still bring my iPad along.
> At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.
My Macbook's MagSafe charging cable already plugs into a USB-C charger, so I already only need one charger (but two cables) for my (Android) phone and (Apple) laptop. But, of course, the bureaucrats know better than the customers and engineers.
Btw, from what I've read, Apple is contemplating removing the charging ports from their iPhones completely and going with wireless charging only. So much for banning everything but USB-C charging ports..
You ahve it backwards - you Must include a USB-C chsrging port. No-one is banning you from having additional ports, the EC comission aren't cretins. And so Macbook already complies, I only charge mine from USB-C.
"At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger."
The EU is basically the guy that at 5am declares that the sun must soon rise or else. By the time the EU decided on their USB-C dictum, Apple -- a co-inventor and standards participant of USB-C -- had switched their laptops fully to USB-C, their desktops to USB-C, and half their pad line to USB-C, with the rest coming not long after. Most people fully expected the 14 to be USB-C just because it was starting to be silly, and by the 15 it would be ridiculous if they still had lightning.
Apple was already switching. Which is exactly why the EU could go ahead and faced little resistance. The EU deserves zero credit.
And FWIW, the EU in 2010 dictated that all smartphones use micro-USB. Apple provided an adapter as they moved their entire line to lightning, thankfully, as micro-USB was a garbage connector in every way.
Apple moving the iPhone to USB-C was incredibly obvious, even if you ignore the recurring noise about the EU. Again, every single bit of evidence was that Apple was switching their entire product line. Having the iPhone hanging around with the slow, dated lightning connector started to be embarrassing. Apple started bragging about the fast speeds and capabilities of USB-C on iPads, and they're going to use it as an upgrade feature on the 15.
Apple moved their laptops to USB-C in 2015. The iPad started switching in 2018. Thunderbolt 3 & 4, created by Apple and Intel use USB-C.
And yes, the EU dictum before was a voluntary agreement, and Apple provided an adapter and then went from the bad 30-pin to the much better lightning. Which is Apple's resistance to the EU saying "this is it...the eternal connector".
> every single bit of evidence was that Apple was switching their entire product line
2015 was eight years ago. They were actually pretty early to USB-C, setting it up in a couple years, then they waited another couple years without bringing it to iphone, then another, then another.
The evidence was that they were in no rush at all.
And thunderbolt isn't relevant when their phones are still on USB 2.
> Which is Apple's resistance to the EU saying "this is it...the eternal connector".
Not sure why you're downvoted. Apple led the charge on a fully usb-c ecosystem. There are billions of lightening devices out there, so Apple has been transitioning over multiple years. The charger side went usb-c awhile back. Now most users should have usb-c chargers, and likely a few usb-c cables. When the iPhone changes this year or next, it won't be a big deal. People forget when Apple went from the 30-pin to lightening there were a lot of complaints. This though, Apple can point to the EU and say 'they made us', even though they have been headed this way all along.
> The charger side went usb-c awhile back. Now most users should have usb-c chargers, and likely a few usb-c cables.
Given that Apple never included usb-c charger with their iPhone, all Apple had accomplished was creating a bunch of soon to be obsoleted usb-c to lighting cable with this extended timeline
The iPad software has been lagging behind its hardware for so long now.
My iPad and laptop both have an M1; the laptop has more RAM but they are effectively equally capable on paper. And yet, due to a series of entirely artificial restrictions, my iPad is useless for entire categories of applications. That power sits unavailable for me to ever utilise.
I’m sure the iPad Pro can live up to its name if you’re an artist or designer or maybe even something that involves 3D modelling, but outside of that absolutely not.
It’s a terrible shame because I think there really is value in a computer that fills the space between a phone and a “real” computer. Especially given its modularity (though the obscenely high pricing of Apple’s keyboard cases is another problem).
At this point the thing most holding the iPad back is Apple itself. Anything to do with software development is impossible or involves remotely interfacing with a second computer. The things it does support are tedious and frustrating, like file management (Files.app is hopeless) and multitasking (Stage Manager is a convoluted mess).
What the hell was even the point in splitting iPadOS out if it’s just gonna have the exact same limitations as iOS. I got a good deal on a used iPad Pro but when it comes time to upgrade this thing I’ll just go back to the middle of the road model for a nice, but ultimately unnecessary consumption device.
The problem is an organizational cultural problem at Apple itself: they are control freaks obsessed with putting the user first, but as with all extremists they take it too far, trying to obtain some “perfect” user experience, even when that hurts the user’s own interests!
Apple sees developers and third party software as threats to the user, the only safe thing to do is to lock it all down.
Apple also got addicted to App Store money. Letting you install unapproved software means Apple doesn’t get their cut of not only the sale of the software but also the sale of anything through the software. And Apple wants their rent.
Apple is organizationally incapable of building a good iPad OS. The culture prohibits it and the incentives are misaligned.
Same here, they are not even luxury anymore as it was viewed in many parts of the world in the past, my current phone was more expensive than highest iphone at the same time. I can do what the fuck I want with it. Its full fledged computer with tremendous power for most real tasks, and I don't need to hack it to fully use it.
I admire the sheer time and resources poured in perfecting the Apple experience, it has been its trademark since original ipods. But the way they set up relation between customer and provider is so unequal and outright disrespectful, I'll never buy their product.
Don't treat me like an incompetent idiot and we can start talking.
> It’s a terrible shame because I think there really is value in a computer that fills the space between a phone and a “real” computer.
Apple has the technical capability to make a Macbook that is separable. The screen comes off and makes an iPad.
It also has the technical capability to make a bi-modal OS.
OSX with a HW toggle switch that allows OSX/iPadOS modes. The switch could be nearly seamless. The unlimited freedom OSX mode is an overlay FS on the iPadOS mode. Change anything you want, run anything you want and when you flip the switch, the OSX apps are frozen to disk, the overlayfs unmounted, and you still have any iPadOS apps running. Flip it back, and the OSX world resumes as it was.
But you can't have this product, because the marketers at Apple know that you would never buy an iPad again if you had this.
It's been about 10 years since I used my surface pro at uni. The main problems that I remember were
1) top heavy, because all the hardware is on the screen portion, so it's difficult to balance and use it on your lap
2) lack of processing power due to the form factor and thermal limitations
3) lack of touch friendly windows apps that can make it truly useful as a tablet
1 probably can't be helped, but 2 and 3 should definitely be better now especially since Apple silicon and iOS exist, if they choose to make something like this...
This reply comes to you via a Surface Pro on my lap as I lay on a couch. #1 is true but not as bad as it might come across to someone who hasn't used one. If they used a friction hinge range than a true flap this would be largely ameliorated, but I don't know if you can pull it off without ruining the form factor.
#2 is subjective and depends on your use-case. I find that for mine (circuit design, PDF markup, email/web, low-requirements mechanical CAD, casual gaming) it's totally fine.
#3 is very real. I don't use the Surface Pro as a pure tablet almost ever. The only exception is if I'm stuck on a plane and there's no room for the keyboard and all I'm doing is reading.
I really wish the keyboard could talk wirelessly back to the tablet so that I could put the keyboard behind the screen and still type on it every now and then when I'm primarily drawing with the computer.
Not really for 2. I have a MBA and it heats up when I do an OCR of a scanned book. And I don’t want touch friendly app on MacOs, I actually like the dense UI found in IDEs and graphic softwares because, they’re very efficient with the mouse. 13-14 inch is the perfect screen size for me (16 if I wanted to work on the go). But it would be unwieldy as a tablet.
I've got a Microsoft Surface Book (3rd gen), and it works great. It works just how you'd expect in any configuration (laptop, tablet, or with the screen mounted backwards). The stylus has fantastic battery life too; I've only replaced the AAAA (quadruple A) battery once in 3 years. My main complaint is that I got the 15", and a 15" tablet is awkwardly large. In retrospect I probably would have been happier if I had gotten the 13".
I'm in the market for a tablet upgrade because my Galaxy S3 Tab is feeling quite laggy and is years out of support. I was excited to give the iPad Air a shot as I've heard so many good things about about the M1 chip. But the locked down nature of iOS made it impossible to recreate my workflows and seemingly failed to really take advantage of the M1, so I returned the Air and am currently looking into the S9 Tab.
I wrote a 160,000 word book this year on an iPad Air with smart keyboard (I find how the pro keyboard doesn't fold all the way back to allow holding the iPad landscape too big of an annoyance to buy one). I think it's a brilliant device, and while limited, does do some things better than the Mac - annotating PDFs and ebooks with the Pencil being one of them. Also nice to hold a document one is working on in landscape so that it looks like it's on paper, yet remains interactive. Yeah I get it's kind of hamstrung and annoyingly clunky in a way that you'd think apple could resolve, but still think as a device it's pretty remarkable, and still got loads of potential for getting better, somehow.
I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.
One other side benefit is that the iPad somehow seems incongruous - with a laptop out in public you're "working" yet with an iPad you're somehow perceptually not.
Plus, iPad coupled with Library Genesis is awesome. Totally awesome. Yeah I'm a terrible libertarian pirate, but it's just incredible. Better than the libraries I've paid a fortune for as part of my education. Heaps better than the annoying tedium of logging in to various publishers and databases and subscriptions via a library website to then use a locked-down epub in a horrible and further locked down DRM e-reader, every one of which I've ever tried is basically an abomination.
Like all things Apple, iPad is great if you only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for. The moment you start to be beyond that slightly it completely falls apart.
Contrast it to a more general computer running macOS or Windows, which does a poorer job at what iPad does best, but it has a much longer tail where the complexity ramps up linearly, compared to the hockey stick of iOS.
At the same time though, limited tools can lead to creativity. I know we're in the company of coders with complex workflows, but using and understanding a limited tool well to the point where you can max it out can be better than living with a "long tail" of untapped power and productivity. Strange though, how the iPad is ostensibly a much better device given the touchscreen and keyboard (and now pencil) and yet remains somehow less useful than a MacBook. Might also be an issue of perception that the iPad can't do certain things well, when it almost can. From a user standpoint, having a device that really is like an appliance that never blinks or goes wrong is pretty brilliant. Windows has let me down on that front too many times for too many years, and now the only time I use it I live in a web browser 99.9% of the time (in a university library)...
Does it? I find creative solutions very rarely occur when I am actually using a computer rather than sitting back and thinking or going for a walk etc.
Computers seem to be awesome tools for refining ideas yet really bad at facilitating their creation.
There is no shortage of limitations in real life or on a massively powerful desktop computer. People on desktop are not gods. Nor are they unlimited. I don't know what creative solutions you're talking about but unless we're talking about things making art with limited colors and resolutions which is only necessary because that's what the customer has, there is not much point in limiting oneself artificially unless you are truly stuck otherwise or are doing it for its own sake on some sort of metaphysical quest
The limitations removed by a computer is the size of my working memory. Draw a line, type something, or whatever and suddenly it stops competing for space in my head. The idea space I can explore with a computer is so many orders of magnitude larger it’s practically unbound by comparison.
However, by saving those thoughts to a computer suddenly they are more likely to be tweaked than discarded. I’m not bound to include them they just get sticky and slow down my exploration of novel ideas.
A whiteboard lends itself to constantly erasing things rather than meaningless tweaks. Collaborate with a few people and nobody suggests moving a box you just drew on a whiteboard, but on a computer someone will want to move it around. The capacity itself becomes a distraction.
I fail to see how a box's position on a digital whiteboard is considered more up for debate than a box on a real whiteboard. Have you ever used a real whiteboard in a collaborative environment? When you move it, you have to redraw all the lines to and from it. Also, what is your point?
The mechanism of using a general purpose computer is so engaging that people stop to argue about the color of the bike shed instead of attending to the conceptual,world where the problem they are trying to solve lies. People spend their mental energy optimizing trivial things instead of writing the great American novel of our century or creating an infrastructure to allow decentralized, non-advertising based products that bring the benefits of networked communications and less of the harm.
That has not been my experience. But a physical whiteboard doesn't get distributed to millions of people over potentially hundreds of years or more. If it were, then at that point you may as well take the time to get it right. You contribute to bikeshedding when you whine about how the position of the box doesn't matter. Let them put it wherever they want then if it doesn't matter.
In the case of music and recording, often times better and more creative records were made by people having to devise complicated solutions to having technology with huge limitations - a famous example being that Sgt Pepper by the Beatles was made using tape machines that were limited to four tracks. Hence those involved had to think deeply and be inspired to find solutions to “defeat the machine” (in the words of Paul McCartney). Compare this to the state of affairs today where people are virtually “gods” in terms of power - the number of audio tracks, sounds, editing capabilities of someone using Logic is essentially unlimited, and yet music hasn’t responded very much to the technology because now the machine is incredible and powerful to the point where it basically cannot be defeated - almost nobody can even come close to utilising the power and capabilities offered. We haven’t had an explosion of novel forms and a wealth of newness, people just use them to clone what was produced in the past but cheaper and more quickly. The horizon of the canvas of a DAW is really too huge to ever get to the end of, and it’s almost overwhelming for most artists to rise to the challenge of, so they just stick with the limitations and live an easier life. There’s been no great flourishing of 21st century music with the emergence of this power, we’re mostly stuck in forms and genres created in the 20th century.
There’s also an analogous situation in hip-hop with the very limited SP-1200 and MPC 60 samplers. They don’t do much but what they do, they do well, so it’s up to producers to work to that and try to transcend it. Having an unlimited workspace in the computer to replicate the same doesn’t lead to better hip hop.
So you’re right to invoke metaphysics, because the machines have a kind of ontology, same as the mode of life of the artists using them. It doesn’t have to be a metaphysical quest, but there can be better and more interesting ways of creating on limited tools, particularly if you’ve used them for a long time. Some writers such as Jean Baudrillard stuck with typewriters as a writing tool long after the introduction of the desktop computer (he died in 2007) because he found it was simpler and better, less distracting, more focussed on the word and him. You could invoke the same “omfg you could be pasting in hyperlinks and doing referencing and surfing at the same time you’re just doing it for your own sake!” toward someone like that, but actually it’s not for its own sake, he only needs to think and produce text and it’s the perfect tool for that, the computer is only ever pretending to be a typewriter and comes with a load of noise and headache alongside.
Did Beethoven make his best stuff after he went deaf (genuinely curious; I'm inherently Beethskeptical after being Toccata-Fugue-D-minor-pilled)? Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori were technologically well-resourced as far as I can tell. Why did nujabes pioneer lo-fi?
I don't think there's anything fundamentally limiting about the iPad or iPhone computationally. The only limiting factor is the interface. Which if you're trying to cultivate frustration in order to pour it into your album, sure. But mere frustration is better had elsewhere, imo.
I think that staying with the typewriter to write books is entirely different than adopting a curated, sandboxed mobile device as one's medium. Firstly, it was at one point the gold standard for writing. Never the case with touch screens. Secondly, iPhones and iPads are not simpler or less distracting than a typewriter, or even a computer not connected to the internet. playing with the chmod command from 1970 is really not that interesting.
But also I seriously doubt that people will look back on iPhone 5 videos like they do and will do vinyl records, LaserDiscs, or even CDs.
“iPhones and iPads are not simpler or less distracting than a typewriter”
Yeah, my point. Please read my comment before negating it as matter of course.
Beethoven’s ears breaking is a slightly different issue than technological limitations - his technology of ink on paper was still the same. He wasn’t playing each orchestral part one by one when he wrote his symphonies, he just couldn’t hear his main composing instrument any more, but had obviously internalised the skill of hearing it all in his head long before he lost the ability to hear it outside of his head upon playback, sadly.
the beatles and john lennon ripped off a lot of people. the list is not exhaustive.
what are you talking about? Five Deez is credited. The song is even called Latitude! LOLLLL. where's the theft? also, I'm surprised that you couldn't find any actual wholesale theft (it's DEFINITELY there, ahem Aruarian Dance https://www.reddit.com/r/Nujabes/comments/3fagps/the_story_o...) because lo-fi as a genre IS ENTIRELY CONSTRUCTED AROUND SAMPLING OTHER PEOPLE, often uncredited, looping it, and making it sound like vinyl on a tube amp or some shit. What did you think lo-fi was? LOL. it's like vaporwave. not like electronic pop rock or rap. So your argument that theft is what prevents someone from having pioneered a genre built on theft is not just absurd, the exact opposite is true. Theft is what make lo-fi lo-fi.
What is your actual argument? That the songs stolen weren't obscure enough to count as authentic lo-fi stealery? Are you some kind of lo-fi hipster that only listens to tracks with the most obscure samples from the 17th century or something?
To Rococo Rot isn't lo-fi nor is that song. Björk isn't lo-fi either. It's electronic. You're not even in the same genre. So how in the fuck could they have pioneered the genre they've never been part of? Or are you off on some idiotic pedantic technicality that nujabes didn't pioneer the genre, the sounds themselves did. OOOOOHHHH. We're all so impressed.
You probably think it's really insightful to blather on about how pop art is derivative because it's remixing the label from a soup can. Ten thousand IQ.
The background music. The music in the background, not Five Deez (lol) bland rapping. The sample is from Clouds by Gigi Masin, and had already been stolen and reused (better) before Nujabes came along. Nothing to do with lo-fi, more to do with stealing (lazily, and derivatively in Nujabes case. Couldn't even steal as an act of originality).
It’s like you can’t even read or understand the basic logic of sentences. Nujabes pioneered nothing. Stick whatever label you like on his bland music if you need to.
Def Leppard is the polar opposite of lo-fi but you think they're lo-fi artists because they have shitty demo tapes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU2XiEq5eE4 holy shit. this means that everyone pioneered lo-fi. LOL, bro. get it together. this is embarrassing.
The only thing that is embarrassing is the depth of your stupidity.
By all means, strictly delimit a made-up genre (based upon the confusion of internet neckbeards) and fix it by definition to ensure you remain correct - musically and musicologically your lo-fi genre and the artists within are replicating music that is sonically and functionally identical to music made a decade or two earlier. And try telling Pete Rock, The Bomb Squad, JayDee, MF Doom, RZA, almost any actual pioneer producers: “Wait you guys are mistaken, Nujabes was the pioneer of lo-fi hip hop, even though he came out years after you guys.” Try even doing the same with DJ Krush even if you want to remain in Japan. And even worse, you’re defending the honour (for some strange reason) of a producer whose music and beats are beyond lame. Keep enjoying your crappy music.
Who did J Dilla and Pete Rock sample and loop? Who did any of them sample and loop? The fact that you can't answer means that you're in the wrong genre, bro. Where are their chopped vocals?
I would love to hear you tell Daniel Boone that he's not a pioneer because some skeleton turned up. LOL.
You think that Jason Snell, completely sold into the iPad-only lifestyle for many years, who records and edits podcasts on his iPad, is limited by his perception of iPad's ability?
Gotta love the discussions on HN about Apple, it doesn't take long till somebody starts arguing that less is better and you don't actually know what you really want and what's the best for you, on Hacker news
I guess some people like to be managed and set strict boundaries, but that's a far cry from creativity. If creativity happens, as it always does, its despite these hard limits
I’ve used a PowerBook / MacBook since about 2002, and even had one with me at the time when I was writing, but nevertheless found the iPad Air a perfect tool for the task at hand. I needed to read and write and create, and it did that brilliantly. When I needed to get more involved and manage heaps of files and format them into a multi-gigabyte publication, yeah of course I switched to doing that on a MacBook, but it remains that I wasn’t hamstrung in creative terms by carrying an iPad around all day, and indeed, more inspired by being able to use a computer more often and more effectively. Some of the images in my book were also taken with the iPad, which the MacBook couldn’t have done. So yeah, some limitations but some new freedoms.
In this case, the limitation is more on developers of iPad apps than users. It’s making developers more creative but I don’t think it’s making users more creative.
there is nothing creative about swiping on an app to update a feed of algorithmic nonsense, true. which is 99% of what people do on phones in my experience. even tablets.
Yeah but it’s not Apple’s fault the general public are lazy and stupid. I’m a creative and don’t do those things so much - I make records and read philosophy and write whatever book takes my fancy on the same device. It’s not Apple’s fault that when given a handheld supercomputer people use it for instagram - a black mirror reflects the good and bad of the human and that’s where we are. Steve Jobs really did want to make “a bicycle for the mind* and for some of us it is the most amazing one of those, just for the rest it’s too much power and responsibility, so the Californian capitalists at Infinite Loop are going to profit of them anyway.
and it doesn't bother you that you have to delegate your participation in a decentralized network? through which you can only do what they decide to allow
DPoS is worse in terms of resistance to collusion government interference. Which is a problem because the function of blockchains is to secure trillions of dollars.
> only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for
Only if you stipulate that it was never designed to handle text editing, multi-object selection, and a number of other fundamental use cases that apparently no one at Apple bothers to do on their iPads — if they did, they’d either 1. Experiment to find better solutions; or 2. Admit that there is no good touch-based solution for this UX scenario.
looks at beardyman's insane live music setup running a mix of open source and commercial software on a six iPad matrix deck
I would argue that some form factors are better for some use cases, others for other use cases, and we are still figuring out how to best take advantage of each particular form factor.
Despite how popular it seems to be, I think framing it as "it's bad for certain use cases because Apple is evil" is a bit reductionist, and sort of gives up on the power we do have to mold tools to our needs.
Beardyman still uses a laptop running Ableton as the central hub for his rig. It's 5 ipads and a laptop. The iPads are all just controllers.
You can see it in this short explanation video at the very start. And when he goes into the explanation, the very first thing he says is that the iPads control Ableton.
Totally respect this viewpoint. I think the parent comment is about the shame of having a powerful device that could be programmed but is locked down only because the manufacturer thought so: an iPad can do a lot more but isn't allowed to just for it to appear as an appliance.
In your analogy, it's like a truck is clothed as a Camry but it really needn't be.
I guess it's the difference between a geek's and generalist's viewpoints.
Hmm, maybe…? I think there’s a difference in people who are thinking the power and abilities and differences come from the hardware and those who think it’s the software.
Now clearly the hardware is different too. But I think the whole “appliance” thing is software.
Maybe refining the argument to: It’s a Camry with the same horsepower as the truck?
Funny thing I was at the hardware store today looking at modern trucks and was laughing to myself that they seem so much more car-like than when Steve Jobs made that comment. They have pretty interiors with cup holders and infotainment centers. And cars these days have horsepower approaching trucks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why are people trying to use a tool it wasn’t designed for?
Eg the iPad does not have a built in keyboard. Why are people trying to use it to write long form essays/books when it’s designed default keyboard is on display - and then they get upset at Apple.
Unlike most everything else Apple, the degree to which iPads seem to dominate the tablet market is interesting. In general tablets never really caught on, but to the extent that people want tablets, they apparently actually want exactly the use case Apple envisioned.
> I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.
Side note: I wonder if Adobe ever regrets discontinuing Framemaker for Mac given the resurgence of Apple in the intervening years.
I haven't used an iPad keyboard but 160,000 words is about 159,000 more than I could stomach writing on a Macbook keyboard - which is the best laptop keyboard I've tried.
I really don’t see much wrong with it. It’s fabric-y and squidgy and kind of only alright, but at the same time, it works fine and my typing speed on it is about the same as anything else.
Don’t forget that people coded whole programmes on the Sinclair ZX80 and rubber-membrane-keyed ZX Spectrum, which were both abominable, nightmare fuel in fact to those desirous of Cherry keycaps and clicky tactility. The Smart Keyboard is a functional middle ground.
I also wrote the book in Google Docs, and pecked out some of it on my Android smartphone if inspiration struck. The fact that changes instantly sync so seamlessly and unthinkingly between platforms and devices I think is also really brilliant. It’s easy to forget in our quest for computing perfection that ‘good enough’ really is good enough if inspiration strikes. I wrote huge chunks of the book on transport and in public – literally on aeroplanes, trams, sitting on benches outside the library or by the beach. Creating where for the most part people are just consuming or scrolling content in those environments. The iPad and its day-long battery is amazing for this, and I’m not sure that a laptop would have been the same.
I've liked the recent XPS 13 Plus keyboards. I'd put them at least on par with recent Macbooks. Decent travel depth, but still limited as it's an Ultrabook.
If apple did a proper convertible laptop format, which is a hinge and touchscreen away, how many pros would care about the iPad? It would be lighter than the iPad and keyboard combo too.
Same here, that was in 2018 and I was using the Editorial app. Great app for its time BTW. Although, once I got to the publishing part, I found it lacking and switched to my Windows(At the time) now I use PopOS. But that was before Obsidian. I discovered Obsidian on Hackernews BTW. Thanks guys. Obsidian was exactly what I needed as a drop it replacement for the power of the Editorial App on MacOS.
The iPad isn't for multimedia production like podcasting or for connecting niche peripherals to.
But if you just want to write and e-mail and Zoom and read(+annotate) and watch, it's fantastic.
I just use a Bluetooth (Magic) keyboard with mine for writing in coffee shops and it's great. And the Pencil is a godsend for highlighting and annotating PDF's.
Really just an in joke to myself because I have a friend who calls his paddy. I’ve also got a laptop called ‘urgh’ and a MacBook Pro 13 from about 2016 - the first one with the Touch Bar/strip (given as a freebie) that is called ‘shite’ because its still the worst Mac I’ve ever owned. It’s clunky, riddled with latency, and unresponsive to quite an extreme degree, and I think it’s because of some kind of hardware deficiency with the touch strip being introduced. I’d work on Paddy over Shite any day of the week.
When the iPad first came out, people knocked it as "a big iPod touch".
But…maybe that wasn't a bad thing?
I feel like the iPad, despite alllll the efforts to seemingly make it a pro device, is an iPhone, but bigger. It's great for messages, browsing Facebook, and watching video, and that's just fine. Because that serves a lot of people's needs, and trying to add in a bunch more stuff just overloads the touch interface paradigm. (Ugh, the number of times I activated the split screen thing when they first introduced multitasking…)
I think "iPad is a big iPod" worked great, but then they brought out the iPad Pro. That thing was supposed to be for Professionals doing Professional Work Things. After that came the iPad Mini, which is an iPad but smaller (so it's an iPod but bigger but smaller?).
Weirdly enough, I don't think the iPad Pro is more than just the iPad but faster and bigger. There are tons of model-based software restrictions between the different models for what I assume are market segmentation reasons.
Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".
Apple's reveal of their weird multitasking iPad interface was quite humorous to me. It just screams "don't try to do anything professional on here" compared to the existing solutions Samsung have provided for years.
Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple. Dex on an iPad could replace many people's laptops and desktops and compete with Microsoft's Surface series.
The biggest issue with the iPad Pro is macos. It should either run macos, or get a compatibility layer that runs macos programs, but Apple's sitting on this fence for a decade neither pushing the mac to get touch, nor letting the iPad become desktop class.
> Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple
I'd argue Microsoft did, and they're at their 9th iteration of a decently good product. As do Dell, Huawei, ASUS and the other makers shipping windows tablets. They're definitely there on the "Pro" side.
Samsung also pushed some pretty good devices on the Chromebook side, which I'd argue is a more direct competitor to iPad if it comes to elderly or kids in school where you need a more constrained and touch first experience.
I've said this in other places, but the biggest issue with the Surface lineup is that the Go line is ... just garbage performance wise, absolutely unusable in my experience (despite really really wanting to use it, and basically just using it for PDF annotations!). And the Pro line is good! But it has no 11-inch line and (importantly) it costs so much compared to iPads. If you are looking for a high-end tablet with some pen/pencil input, an iPad Pro 11 inch is the cheap option!
It's kind of frustrating, because I think what's happening here is that the Surface Go line makes a lot of money, and a 11-inch-but-fast thing would probably be popular but have less juicy margins.
I see the Surface Go line in the same position as the iPad mini. Some people love it but I think it's heavily polirazing.
On the price, tbh I was only looking at the 13 inch line as that's the standard A4 size, but I get it's not ideal if portability is a priority. At 13 inch a 1000+ price is competitive with the iPad Pro, but for smaller size/prices the Huawei or Dell tablets could be a better value.
> Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".
It is a lot more convenent to carry an iPad with a magic keyboard than to carry a USB-C dock, keyboard and mouse though.
The ipad is the perfect device for old people. You can't mess it up, it's extremely simple to use, has a long life span, etc. The users do not care that they can not host a webserver on it because it prevents their bank account being drained after they click the wrong advert.
That hit close to home because my father’s bank account was indeed drained after clicking the wrong ad on an iPad. But it did require the intermediate step of my father having to call the number in the ad to talk to “bank security”.
Having fewer malware vectors is a big plus but one still needs to exercise caution.
At least that vector brings the scam in to the human understandable space. While silently installed malware stealing your session tokens in the background is completely transparent and beyond the comprehension of most people. "Call bank security and transfer your money to us" is at least detectable by the common person.
there is something inspiring about someone living boomerness to the theoretical maximum. people say young people can't get off their phones but man, boomers can't use anything else but their phones
I remember when iPad came out, and I was younger and cared more for arguing online. This is one of the hills I time and time again chose to die on. The anti-Apple brigade was about at its most insufferable at that point in time. The ‘full Windows running on a tablet’ utopia has to this day neger eventuated to any mainstream degree. iPad as a larger iOS device was and is the right way forward. IPadOS’s inscrutable ‘power user’ features of late are purely a consequence of Apple setting the expectations for a continuous iteration schedule, and Apple as a company being a huge self-serving bureaucracy looking to make work for itself year after year.
Before I begin: I own a first gen Surface Pro and have never purchased an iPad lol.
Now then, I think the problem with the Surface Pro was that it was perfect for that transitional period of time where the iPad made for a very awkward computer. Microsoft gave the Surface Pro USB ports, a slick magnetically attached keyboard, and the OS that let you run practically anything whether or not it made sense to do it on a tablet. Oh and you could draw on it!
The original iPad did NONE OF THAT. However, the current iPad does have a slick magnetic keyboard, a usb-c port, and you can draw on it with the apple pencil. Plus I think there are many more apps developed for iOS than there are for Windows - especially involving tablet use cases.
So I don't think the Surface Pro is really needed anymore. I'm not sure Microsoft is even interested in continuing to make them in the long run (but I may be wrong!)
The other thing - I keep saying this: MS isn't interested in consumers. They just aren't. Their primary interest is selling Office 365, Azure 365, AD hosting, etc to businesses. Windows and almost every other product they make seems to get more love and attention in controlling the users/administering the users/giving sysadmins the keys to control their loyal servants... than anything else... It really shows in the way they produce their products.
Missing from this article: why is he traveling with his iPad at all? He loudly asserts "I’m not leaving my iPad at home" but does not explain why.
From where I'm standing, the iPad is a crappy platform that has no reason to exist. It's a worse Mac. I can maybe see artists using an iPad for the touch screen, but that use case only exists because Apple refuses to give the Mac a touch screen.
At the time of my first daughter's birth, my local government gifted me an ipad mini. Three use cases:
1. I find it extremely useful for one specific thing: chess. I can't effectively play blitz timed games with a mouse, and with a smartphone I get way more off-by-one mistaken taps than with the ipad mini.
2. Almost five years later, my daughter enjoys making animations on it with Scratch Jr.
3. It is a comfy form factor for just plain reading content from the web. When I come across something specific that I'd like to put more than, say, 40 minutes of directed attention to, I sometimes pull up the resource on the ipad and hit the couch. It's a lot easier for me to focus on long form content (especially if it's dense or boring) with the ipad because it isn't my computer. I can't instantly call up other interesting and ongoing tasks with a meticulously programmed hotkey.
Also, touchscreen laptops felt like an upgrade to me until I tried to use one. IMO, the geometry just isn't there. If the screen is close enough to be touched as part of the general workflow, then it's too close for your eyes or else the keyboard itself is too close.
A kindle is excellent to read eBooks, and that's about it.
An iPad (or tablet form factor) is excellent for consuming content on the internet, which includes eBooks amongst movies, reels, articles, blogs, news etc.
I've got a paper white and while the browser on it is decent, and you can email yourself PDF's to view on there - it's still a subpar experience for anything that isn't formatted to display as an eBook on an e-ink display.
Don't get me wrong, I love reading on my kindle and it's far easier on the eyes, but it doesn't do what an iPad does in the same way reading a book on the iPad is more tiresome than on a kindle.
I bought a used iPad 7 for ~$200 the other day, main reason being reading textbooks at a retail store where I work. What I found surprisngly enjoyable is what the parent mentions - reading HN threads, twitter, blogs. Even watching youtube is a different experience. All of those activities just feel easier and more relaxed than they do on my 14” Thinkpad or iPhone 12.
Have you tried reading content on the web on the kindle, as the ones I mention above?
Oh no, I very agree that the Kindle’s experience just subpar. Although I like it for just very this reason, it helps me to distract less, as it’s so bad for anything but reading that book I have in my Kindle at the moment.
I can't speak for him, but I find m iPad incredibly useful. I sign and review documents quickly, tap out emails on the go, watch movies or TV shows, use it as a reference screen if I'm in a rack and need diagrams, manuals etc.
Like most modern computing devices (laptops, phones, smart watches, etc) it has crossover functionality with some devices but not in all cases, and in some it is the superior device for varying reasons.
I can, but just like I can make calls from my laptop, it's not the preferred form factor or operating system to do so.
The iPad is a great bridge between the phone and laptop. It's not for everyone, but it's not a huge extra effort or weight to travel with (slides into the laptop bag I'm taking anyway) and it fits my use case. If I was travelling and I forgot it, it also wouldn't be a huge deal and I would use my laptop.
It's also handy as a second monitor when coding (keep a terminal up on it) or to watch a show while sending emails or doing something else on the laptop. Again, not a big deal if I don't have it, but useful if I do.
It exists for casual, potentially older users, outside of dev/IT profession, to do grocery shopping and simple games on a couch while they watch TV after work.
I've never bought an iPad or found use for the one I was once given as a present, I have seen older people transition from using cheap crappy laptops to iPads with only positive feedback, probably because it's easier for them to use.
It's largely the same UI as their smartphone which they'll be familiar with by now, it's easier to pick up and put down, smaller form factor but not so small that they'd be pinch-zooming frequently as they would on a phone, etc.
Anecdotal but it makes sense. Also marginally easier for a layperson to hold an iPad up and show a partner what they're buying, than a laptop.
Personally, I'm in the industry, and I've been playing with computers for 27 years. I have a phone for reading stuff like this on the go, and a laptop for working on things home or at the office. I have no professional or recreational use for a tablet. I have a laptop and I'm very glad it doesn't have a touchscreen. But I can understand why non-laptop products exist.
Couple of other developers I know have iPads, but they have them in the same way they have an electric toothbrush — they didn't need it, but they bought it anyway. Mostly see them use it for browsing the web or shopping after work. I suppose if your stuff's at the office and you just want to cruise the web, an iPad is lighter than a personal laptop, but I just use my phone /shrug emoji.
Some illustrators I know have iPads but I'm pretty sure they'd survive without them. For actual work they have a proper setup (wacom, magic trackpad), and if you need to sketch something on the fly, pen and paper is still a functional and low-cost solution, as is a phone since you have one already for a dozen other reasons.
Designers don't need an iPad at all, mouse is sufficient.
Currently, I have two iPads: relatively modern mini and the 3rd (first model with retina, iOS 9). Mini collects dust for years, I never use it (yet unwilling to sell). The 3rd one still rocks YouTube in Safari, its basically a TV with batteries. I use it at kitchen, e.g. when I cook.
Both of my iPads never leave my home. I am an avid traveller (before the pandemic) and even then I never took my iPad out of my house.
I do travel with my MacBook Pro (with Linux these days), Kindle and a couple of smartphones (I use both iPhone and Android). I don’t see any need in an iPad at all.
Outside of work I use my iPad. I don’t work on holidays, I pack my iPad. I just prefer it. Why is a preference so hard to accept? Are we going to argue about favourite colours next?
For art of the digital drawing/painting sort, the iPad absolutely dominates the scene now and has for a while, mostly thanks to the Procreate app in combination with the Apple Pencil.
A Mac with a touch screen would be worse than useless for this, because it still wouldn’t be a tablet form factor, and you need that for the right feel.
So while I too would like to have a touch screen on my MacBook, there’s no way I’d ever use it for drawing the way I use my iPad.
This is always on a case-by-case basis. Just because THIS particular person can't work everything on an iPad doesn't mean EVERYONE is the same.
My mother-in-law, for instance, does everything from an iPad. She doesn't own a computer anymore. She does her emails, bills, spreadsheets, printing, reading...etc etc...from her iPad. She has a keyboard she can hook up to it to write long things, and then puts it away when she doesn't need it.
Could I work like this? No. But again, this doesn't mean everyone is like me. It all has to be taken case-by-case. I would suspect that the vast majority of readers to Hacker News can't work like this either, nor could they think of why anyone would want to...so confirmation bias kicks in big time.
This article explains why you can’t travel with only an iPad (and a phone presumably) but doesn’t seem to bother explaining why you can’t just travel with a small laptop and phone.
What does the tablet add that makes it indispensable for travel? Just the media consumption?
I never used a tablet for an extended amount of time so maybe I’m missing something here.
The iPad is great for media consumption while traveling. e.g. playing some games or watching shows, and it's good enough to do some cramped work in a pinch (sales and business management). Also take notes/sketch with the pencil, read a book/article.
Most of the things I would use the iPad for can be done better with a more dedicated, or more versatile, channel. Like a laptop, or a paper notebook, or a paperback book/kindle etc. But the convenience for me of having it all in the one package is enough to make up for that.
I still don’t understand why a laptop wouldn’t work for most of those use cases if you already are carrying one. Sure it’s a bit tedious to use a huge laptop on a plane but a 13” laptop will fit on your lap and in your bag nearly as easily as a 10” tablet.
It’s not about “you can do everything on a laptop”, but more of a convenience thing. My iPad is basically a dedicated TV/Movie screen. On the day of the travel, I go on apps, download a ton of stuff for online viewing and go through it on my flight or train rides. Sure I can do the same on my laptop, but then I have to hassle with the keyboard, battery, bulkiness and etc.
Sounds pretty stupid, but I bought it 5 years ago thinking it was a useless purchase. But it significantly improved my travels.
Tablets are smaller than laptops. It makes a huge difference when traveling and sitting in tight spaces. Further, the iPad is “always on” so it’s very easy to use quickly.
It’s really great for media consumption because of it.
For me I have a 17" laptop and the tablet is convenent in various cases (planes, media consumption, whipping out much quicker than my laptop as it's lighter, smaller and simpler).
I'm also looking for a two in one, a tablet that can be a laptop. The best I've found is a surface, and I think dell has some two in ones too. The surface feels like the right call because it's just light enough to be a powerful tablet, but not so power hungry that it's stationary. I think they've hit the right balance here.
It's a shame this form factor isn't so common, and what would be perfect for a vacation would be a Chromebook. It's browser centric which is 98% of vacation related activities.
I was about to comment something to the same effect.
Like the author, as well as many who have commented, I've long been disappointed in the gap between macOS' support for advanced use cases (which I need), and the iPad's portability (which I like).
I picked up a Surface Go 3. Having an actual desktop OS on a well-built, decently powerful (albeit hot at times) tablet struck the perfect balance for me. Wish I had done it years ago.
I love the Surface tablets! Runs Windows, Linux (WSL), and Android (WSA) so covers almost any use-case I'd need. Stick to the ones with Intel processors for maximum compatibility.
That’s why I like my Surface Go 2: it lets me carry a real OS in a tiny tablet form factor. I take it everywhere and it has been my only travel laptop for a couple of years. I have even done local Rust development while on flights.
If only it wasn’t so frigging slow… it’d be awesome.
Hm, does it? I’ve been tempted to install Linux but I’ve found conflicting information online about how well it’s supported, and the small SSD doesn’t lend itself for dual booting.
Yeah I recently bought an iPad because the surface is either too slow to be usable or like double the price or an iPad
I just wanted a tablet with good software, and the surface is so close to being that but the Go is a disgrace. Even an instore Go 3 barely handles opening Edge. Edge!
My ideal mobile computer would be something like the GPD MicroPC, but with mobile broadband, a camera, and a bit bigger battery. Hell, if it had the ability to do proper phone things, it could legitimately make a decent mobile phone replacement: it doesn't really need to be spectacular. The keyboard is small, but in situations where a laptop dock is a possible answer, it's pretty damn good. In other situations, having a dedicated laptop would be ideal, of course... But I've been experimenting with ditching smartphones and alternative phone options, and I gotta say, the MicroPC really feels like it's as close to the ideal general purpose mobile computer as I've ever gotten, so the desire to have something like it that really could just replace any other mobile device is strong.
Unfortunately though, as of today, we're really no closer. For some insane reason, most computers that can do mobile broadband cannot do calling or SMS, at least not in any obvious way. The PinePhone Pro offers a potential story, giving you effectively Linux but on a touchscreen, but many of the OS options for it do not handle suspend well enough; and the RK3399S is not exactly about to blow anybody's mind with its performance. And of course, with no keyboard, you'll need to dock it to do any kind of "productivity" work.
With how fast flagship phones are, dockable smartphones that can just provide a full desktop OS experience when plugged in should be commonplace, but they're not. Some vendors have shown off different compelling ideas, but nothing is quite fully baked.
As for the iPad... It's still kind of a toy. I like it for drawing, the Apple Pencil is nice, but I struggle strongly to put it in the same class as a general purpose computer.
Also, one last note. I really regret the iPhone. It was a really important device, because it showed off how to design a mobile device with a capacitive touch screen that was actually nice to use. But I wish not everyone would just chase the iPhone, as there is plenty that could be done in the mobile computer space that would be compelling if everything was not a buttonless, thin slab of touch-sensitive glass.
I recently bought a full-size bluetooth keyboard with a slot on it for mounting tablets. It's must easier to type on then any portable mini-keyboard and totally worth it if you are going to write a book or code. I consider those little ipad sized keyboards a total waste of time since I started working on one with a full-size keyboard that's even bigger than a laptop keyboard.
I always work with a full PC keyboard, because scientists came up with it, and marketers came up with a small laptop keyboard. I used to just carry it in my backpack all the time. I just have big fingers :)
I suppose the writer will have to wait a few more years before apple 'reinvents' the touch screen and convinces everyone they invented the touchscreen laptop. Notice how just about every other manufacture has a touch screen offering. The same was true for DVD writers back when apple called it the super drive. Many devices on the market came with DVD writers.
The ipad pro as great as it is, will not replace a Macbook. Sure it can do similar things, but for professionals who only need one app and email for work or for grandmas that don't need much it certainly can be the only device. But it cannot do everything that a laptop can do and that's why most people need both a (tablet and a computer)
The surface pro devices are on their 9th generation. This is what you want if you want to travel with a tablet only experience that you are able to do laptop stuff with. Sure the tablet experience is miserable but tolerable. The only things mac users are missing is IOS/MacOS. Which I admit is a big miss. Let's be honest, the Mac OS is great it's always been the hardware that has been lacking in other areas. But the surface device is a full blown computer that runs a full desktop OS and can virtualize others. If your workflow allows for a windows device,and if you like learning and trying new stuff, you will most likely enjoy your experience. Otherwise you will be as miserable as a die hard windows user who is angry that CTRL+V is CMD+V. If devtools are the only thing keeping you with macOS then you owe it to yourself to checkout WSL[1] and the new windows terminal app[2].
I hope Apple never releases a touch screen MacBook. MacOS is the only operating system that still has UI elements appropriately sized for mouse use. Everything else uses huge buttons to account for touch use-cases.
Have you seen the Ventura system settings update? It kinda looks like iOS.
Edit: I also think the touch screens have gotten more accurate so you'd probably have not that bad of an experience. Using windows with a finger or pen isn't that bad.
I've tried doing iPad-only several times, but I'm a bit of a digital packrat, a highly-organized packrat, though. So I really miss a solid File Manager.
I know Android is much better at this, but the default "Files" app in iOS just sucks -- I feel like I have to bounce between three or four apps just to get something simple done.
Has anyone found a reasonable way to manage files on iOS?
The file manager has gotten better but it is still way behind Finder. Otherwise, pair it with a keyboard and mouse, open codespaces, and you have an excellent travel computer. Just don‘t expect to move files around.
I've been trying to use iPad as a developer tool for over 10 years now and it seems I'm starting to get it right. I have tried a lot of software since the creation of the iPhone 2G, connected hardware, joysticks, keyboards, mice, connected an iPad to a computer back in 2015. I think the iPad is the most successful device for smart people, but the problem is marketing. Apple had the ability to make a single system for all devices from the very beginning, but the market and maximum profit was more important.
I developed the system and development tools. And with the help of which I created an application for HN on the iPad.
I travel with an iPad mini and worked off it regularly using SSH and RDP. The only thing I really miss is a normal CLI environment (I use iSH and a-Shell with great success, but I would love a sandboxed ARM Linux environment).
Yeah, iPad Mini is great. I bought it a year ago and it replaced my iPad Pro 2018 which is too big to take out and hide often. I think iPad Mini is the ideal device for smart people. Only a little bit worse in performance, it can be seen when heated.
I really, really wish that Apple had not let developers opt-out their apps from running on M1/M2 Macbooks.
My use case is a long flight where I want to watch a movie on a screen bigger than my phone. For a while, some of the streaming service iOS apps ran on my MBP. In fact, I subscribed to HBO Max partially because their app worked on my MBP. But since their rebrand to Max, it no longer works.
I sympathize to some extent with their reasoning here, that developers for good reason want to sell separate macOS and iOS apps, and that they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.
But there are plenty of cases where I cannot fathom why the developer has opted out. Like, Genshin Impact won't let you play on macOS, because ???
Same for Minecraft (Bedrock Edition, the one written in C++, not Java). They unchecked this "allow to run on Mac" checkbox the instant it got added.
Mojang (= Microsoft) hates the idea of Minecraft Bedrock running on Mac with a burning passion. If you told me they somehow lobbied Apple to add this option to the App Store specifically because of Minecraft, I would have believed it.
Because this is at least the second time they have had a Mac port of Bedrock basically right in their hands, yet actively decided not to release it (the first one being Education Edition, which also runs on the Bedrock engine and is like 90% the same game – and they offer it for macOS, yet never bothered to release normal Minecraft the same way).
The other port might've cost them probably a few days of work (basically an asset swap, because the engine is done). This version (running on M-chips) they could've gotten for free, yet they killed it too.
Makes sense, so why not only offer this for devs who actually do that? Declare that a Mac version of the app already exists and let Apple check.
> they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.
This comes up every time and it's a legitimate concern, but IMO no way it warrants to completely block users from running compatible software on their computers. Call it "Unsupported Mode", spam me with warnings, prevent me from submitting reviews… but never completely block it. That's the asshole approach.
Many flights do not have reliable internet access that is fast enough to stream video. And I want to watch what I want to watch, not the random selection of stuff I might find on the inflight entertainment. Not to mention that I want to zone out, and not hear a captive airline credit card sales pitch from the flight attendants at 90db in my headphones while they pause the video I'm watching.
So, for all those reasons, I'd prefer to download content prior to the flight and watch it in-flight.
Even if you do have a connection, it's typically expensive and bandwidth limited. Having whatever you want to watch already locally on your device just makes more sense.
Apple stopped any significant innovation on the iPad platform many years ago. It is an also-ran cash cow for them not anything worthy of investment. I say this as someone who was once enthralled with the platform and it is sad. It’s hilarious they throw m2 grade processors in something used to watch Netflix and surf websites.
I always found the 'multitasking' features on iPad OS to be really poor. It suspends things in the background so aggressively that any kind of switching back and forth between Safari tabs (to and from a Github Codespace) is just non-feasible. And the lack of browser dev tools without tethering to a 'real' computer.
Never understand why apple ships their iPads and Macbooks with such little ram by default. Yes I understand profit, but it really limits what these devices can do. The numbers have not really changed much in the last several years...
Limiting the amount of ram goes a long way in reducing power consumption. It takes constant voltage to keep the cells alive, even when the device is locked and seemingly doing nothing.
The iPad really does have great battery life on the other hand.
I may be way off base but I think on iPhones/iPads RAM isn't a concern so much as processes sitting in the background keeping the CPU and radios doing cartwheels indefinitely for little to no reason, as they tend to on desktop operating systems. By throttling or quitting backgrounded apps they've made it much more reasonable to deliver promised numbers on battery life.
Apple wants strict market segmentation. Why would they sell you once device that does everything when they can sell you 2 or 3 devices for specific tasks.
There might even be some logic to that with each device optimized for it's specific best purpose. It also doesn't hurt that it makes them more money.
I think Apple is very much a mega-corp who does everything to create greater profit but I'm not sure they are limiting devices to make sure you buy more. More than likely it's because iPadOS is based on iOS, and thus it's naturally more of a consumption device with all of those locked down hard limits.
IMO they should do a hard turn and make iPadOS it's own thing. Give it the benefits of iOS but with macOS flexibility. Right now, it's essentially a bigger phone.
Lots of RAM uses more battery. Not a huge amount, but battery life is something Apple and its customers weigh more heavily. Same reason for aggressive suspending of background apps.
I'm convinced that the M2 MacBook Air is by far the best portable work device. It's got enough horsepower yet light enough to not break your back over. Previously, I've been carrying the latest 15inch and then 16 inch MacBook Pro since 2012 when I travel.
I have an iPad Pro 12.9 with the magic keyboard as a device that's not purely for work but honestly, it's been collecting dust and I use it perhaps once a week to read news on the couch. It's pretty much a glorified note taker, a way to browse pictures/videos on a bigger screen, and respond to non-serious emails. For what I'm using, I don't think it's worth the $999+ price point.
> I want to do it all on my iPad. I hope that one day I’ll be able to.
But why, though? The author never bothers to justify this. If you acknowledge that your tablet is so anemic that you have to bring your laptop with you, why not save the weight of the tablet and just bring the laptop?
I know Apple has a strong resistance to the two-in-one form factor, but an M-series MacBook Air with detachable screen that seamlessly transitions between macOS and iPadOS is basically my dream device.
I'm amazed the two haven't converged yet. I've no doubt apple have lurking in their labs a "double iPad" with a "screen" and a second screen where the keyboard now lives, running a version of iOS-like MacOS. Would love that device and think it'll emerge eventually.
Yeah does seem like it’ll go that way. Not sure I want to spend the day “goggled in” (as Neal Stephenson would say) - I may already be an old timer and want to use external devices (my first computer had 48kb of memory). But no doubt I’ll be engoggled at some point in the not too distant future. Plus for the time being, there doesn’t seem to be a way of plugging in external peripherals to the Vision, so we’re stuck with the same problem of not being able to reasonably use pro audio interfaces and suchlike, same as the iPad.
I think there’s probably benefits to be had in terms of interface without having a fixed typing keyboard. Logic and Final Cut for example, could be hugely improved by this.
The problem with a convertible MacBook is that you'd have to move the battery to behind the display, at which point you're really just making an iPad that can be attached to a keyboard dock and run macOS.
I think the latter is a plausible evolution of the iPad Pro.
Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct, from the hardware to the software, and that mixing the two is confusing and a bad experience.
I happen to agree with them, but I would love to be able to switch between the two. macOS is powerful, but adding touch to it would actually be terrible.
Switching between those modes and input paradigms, while maintaining some level of context would be a really great experience.
That might have been their philosophy once, but important people who believed that seem to be gone now, because basically every piece of software that gets touched on the Mac now resembles an unloved offspring of their touch platforms.
See examples: Control Center, Share Sheet, Notifications, the entirety of the new System Settings app…
> Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct
They're allowing iPad and iOS apps on the macs, so it doesn't seem so clear cut. Feels more like they don't have a clear incentive to push further when people keep buying both products.
This. Or a Yoga style fold-over in an 11" formfactor.
I picked up an X13s (the ARM one) for travel. It's not perfect -- one thing I like about iOS is that the airline apps are kind of required for IFE, but, my X13s weighs the same as my iPad Pro with a keyboard and can do much more. Trying to use Google Slides or Docs on the iPad is a poor experience.
And in the case of the iPad, try to sell you them individually for each family member...
It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.
The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member.
For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others.
EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
I've heard that the multi user feature for schools is pretty skin deep and that it basically just acts as an auth for apps which store all data remotely. Not at all something you could just drop on regular consumers.
The thing is: I can't even do media consumptions and web browsing on iPad. Browsing the web without uBlock and a few other extensions is a battle I'm not willing to fight. And so many video codecs not supported on iPad makes it unusable for media consumption. And have you tried opening your videos in other apps? Guess what? The file gets copied to the other app, meaning that now you have two versions of the same movie/whatever.
The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much.
I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.
> I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions.
"They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."
Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.
> Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really.
A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood.
ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut
Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it.
(before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
the os isn't the hard part, its the app ecosystem and navigating how do you ensure they all run properly on x86, and not with a huge performance or battery hit. i would be rosetta2 in reverse, and as great as rosetta2 is it has limitations & does come at a cost.
sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.
Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices.
> it would be rosetta2 in reverse
It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.
I think you’re grossly overestimating how many of those apps are actually used regularly. Even if Apple only got 15% of the entire App Store available on x64 it would fulfill the needs of almost all users.
Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.
Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
> The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
It's been a long time since I stopped trying to like Android devices, but quite a few years ago I remember Android phones no longer working as a mass storage device you could drag files onto. That was a widely discussed intentional decision by Google and was one of several things that made me decide that Android's talk about freedom, openness and all that was just marketing. You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?
> You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?
I don't think that ever changed, though the vendor can probably turn it off, since they have the source.
On Linux, it can (depends on what you told the phone to present) photos or storage or such. It appears in Nautilus like any other external drive. I usually use it it move the photos off my phone onto my computer.
As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do.
> made all their software offerings over the last 20
What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection.
The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party.
> they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.
Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now.
> plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device
That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer.
I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
> What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example?
How about starting with iMessage?
Keynote etc. for Linux would be rather nice.
At one point, I joined a local MUG (Mac Users Group), hoping we could find common cause and support each other in a Windows world. Sadly, that was naive of me.
What is this in reference to? I have an iPad and a MacBook. I don't pay a subscription. I usually use Microsoft OneDrive, so I can sync between/to my non apple devices, though I usually just use airdrop.
Are you referring to extra cloud storage?
edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?
I don't understand. There's no iCloud subscription to enable all the cross-device interoperability.
The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.
I mostly use the iPad for reading, ebooks, pdfs, saved web articles, HN, etc.
I initially got the biggest iPad but it was certainly too heavy to hold like a book and read comfortably. I switched to an iPad mini which was perfect for reading everything but PDFs, the problem is I read a lot of PDFs. I currently use an 11” and take the cover off to read with it, I find it to be the right trade off between size and weight for me.
I just traded in my 12in pro for this reason. However, I think a MacBook Air may be a better reading device because it will prop up the display at whatever angle you need it to be for comfortable reading, while remaining ultra portable or easily resting it on your lap or chest (if you like reading lying down).
It doesn’t offer macOS. My whole point is that when I have a keyboard I don’t want to be touching a screen, and I want the power and freedom macOS offers to be able to do productive work. I also want iPadOS for other types of interaction, like reading or watching, or drawing.
iPad with a power connector on the side where the cover attaches, and a macbook the exact size of an iPad with no screen, just a remote desktop on the iPad.
Either data over the charging port, or low throughput over Bluetooth 5 (when is 6 due?)
It's quite disappointing. They have so much potential but Apple do not want to meet it for whatever reason, maybe they do not want people cutting into their MacBook sales. Beautiful UI but poor UX, especially its file management which is nothing short of abysmal.
I travel with an Android tablet now — and while they have their own problems they still are far more functional and flexible than iPads. Want to watch a movie that's not on Netflix or Prime? Just find a torrent and open Flud. You can use it as a FTP server, basically anything you need, an Android tablet is perfect for. My iPad is delegated to note taking now with the pencil.
It's also pretty clear that iPads nowadays are the lowest of Apple's priorities.
I'm fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, but one of the most useful pieces of tech I own is a device that turns my car's touch screen into an unrestricted Android tablet (ironically, using the Apple CarPlay protocol to interface)
I realized early on that the iPad like iPhone is a consumer device. Somewhat better with apps targeting the iPad Pro, but still not general purpose like I want.
Settled on the Surface Go, which was the right call and later upgraded to the Go 3 with Intel Core m3 processor. With heavy cpu/gpu use it gets very warm and throttles down so got a USB peltier cooler that keeps performance 100%
MacBook Air m1 at 800$ blows iPads out of the water. Small, portable, great battery life and flexible enough to get work done without requiring a variety of “pay as you go apps” to put basic functionality back into an iPad.
My dream is some form of MacOS being released on iPad Pro instead of iOS … not going to happen but would absolutely buy one if it happened.
I used to grab my iPad Pro (a 2018 12.9") a lot more. Battery life used to be a factor but these days my M1 MBP probably gets better life. Since I got the Magic Keyboard for the iPad (which is awesome), it's not much lighter than the MBP either. I'd cry a lot less if it got a liquid spill, which would probably only take out the $300 keyboard.
It does pretty much force me to single-task, often either in a document or a terminal (Blink), which can be a real advantage at times. But so often I'll need to swap between a browser, Slack, Trello, a terminal, etc. that I'll end up with background apps getting killed due to memory pressure or the dreaded "respring" where the base UI completely reloads.
So the iPad now mostly makes a good reader (indoors only though), note-taker, and video watcher. It'd be good as a travel monitor if goddamn Sidecar could work more than 24% of the time.
An anecdote: I hadn't taken the iPad seriously. It didn't have the apps I needed to get things done, either in my personal life or work life. Or it didn't have the physical aspects (why stream on a small screen when I have a TV at home?)
As I entered into a more senior work role, I refused to put work email or teams on my phone. No device management or malware on my personal device.
Instead, I found out that my company let me use an iPad with email and teams and the management software didn't infect the whole system making it nearly useless, and I could even take screenshots. It's not perfect but let me have a lighter daily carry.
All that said, I can't develop on an iPad. I think if I could get an MBA for on the go meeting type work and a mac studio for delivery, that would be fine. But then we're right back to: I refuse to have any of that stuff on my personal device.
I just left for a trip today and have a macbook I purchased three days ago along for the ride. Both the spouse and I were uncomfortable with only having ipads - and within 4 hours of landing it's already been the right call.
It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
>A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
There are many, many ways to acquisition that, just because apple won't let you do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Anything that can run linux with the KDE plasma desktop environment will, at very least, feel very familiar to OSX. You might have to seek out some app alternatives if you're doing something specific, but nowadays general desktop computing like you'd do on a laptop is well covered in most distros, and if you're looking for a place to start, Kubuntu is likely your best OOB experience.
Combine that with basically any windows native tablet computer, and you're off to the races. You'll likely have to play with some things to get it how you want it, but the nice thing about linux is you can play with those things.
The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.
I think MS got the closest to sort of addressing it with windows 8, but everyone simply defaulted to the desktop mode rather than the touch mode (didn't help that the windows store was/is incredibly poorly done).
This is why devices like the surface pro or other 2 in 1 devices never really seemed to work out. You are either harming the tablet experience or the keyboard experience.
> The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.
This is really not the case with iPadOS though. It already works quite well with a touchpad and keyboard. The hardware is already there to control a full desktop OS, iPadOS already allows itself to be be controlled as if it’s a desktop OS, and with continuity mode, it’s already possible to control macOS via an iPad.
All of these things already work pretty well, and paint a pretty decent picture of what might be if Apple decided to go further.
Some things just work better on a touchscreen, even when they’re running on macOS. Some things just work better with a mouse and keyboard, even when they’re running on iPadOS.
As long as there’s some way to transition between them, I do really think a best-of-both-worlds option exists, because it’s mostly there already.
> "A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail."
A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.
What are you missing? If only a few tasks you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks. I would assume most things that requires such OS requires an internet connection anyway.
I still primary use a laptop, but that is because I like the form of it. So I have no actual experience trying to survive with only iOS.
> you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks
There are many places in the world where the availability of the internet is so spotty and so poor, that trying to use VNC to get work done would not be possible.
It really is -- my iPad has the same CPU as my Mac, and it highlights just how much iPadOS lets the hardware go to waste. MacOS is better in essentially every possible way -- faster, can run whatever you like, better multitasking.
This is a new development, and only on the most expensive versions. Historically, the iPad has always been running an iPhone-class processor.
I'd bet that Apple is still shipping 5x-10x as many A-series iPads as M-series iPads.
I'd love to be able to run a more capable OS on an M-series iPad, but not if that means all the rest have a worse experience. Maybe Apple needs to release an iPadOS Pro to go along with the M-series chips?
I used to carry a big desktop replacement but now I think different and carry an iPad. I use it as a terminal for a better windows computer than the one I used to lug around.
I use two (2) applications for productivity: Safari to run web applications and the RDP client for everything else.
I think different. Instead of getting an expensive special-purpose keyboard, I have my choice of any compact Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
I'm not waiting for Apple to do anything, although I am waiting for the 40th anniversary of Apple's 1984 Superbowl ad. I'm hoping somebody runs a parody of it, because if you don't control your computer, your computer controls you.
It's pretty reliable except when the power goes out at home or something like that. I use Tailscale to get around the NAT on the router.
My big computer is behind an ADSL connection where the uplink is pretty slow. If I am changing windows it can take a few seconds for the window to update but once the window is up it is reasonably responsive to type into PyCharm. If I spun up a machine in us-east-2 and used it over a gigabit connection it would be very fast.
Recently my 2013 Mac Mini crapped out and the keyboard fascia of my Alienware laptop delaminated so I swapped in the Alienware for the Mac Mini so I don't really have a laptop I want to travel with. I am not sure what I will get to replace it and when; I've got some desire for a laptop for "hacking" such as connecting to a WiFi CAN bus dongle in my car or to go to an electronics club and program my Arduino. I haven't really decided what it's going to be yet.
Have you considered getting a virtual private server from someplace like digital ocean or MS Azure or whatever? You might find that preferable for something to RDP into.
I’ve done it at times. In EC2 I’d probably want something like a M7i.8xlarge which would cost around $0.80 an hour for on demand pricing, which would be a good deal because I’d only actually spin it up when I was using it. (I use to go to hackathons with an Amazon Fire tablet back when Android has mouse support and the iPad didn’t and having a $10 cloud bill is cheap for having the sleekest bit of kit that anybody brings.)
The thing is I do most of my software dev on a “gaming PC” I built myself that has a good graphics card. My RSS reader YOShInOn runs when I am awake and as a web app it is super responsive on my tablet. I just drank a coffee at the gas station and I am tapping this out on my iPad right now. It’s really convenient to use this machine even if I do have a moment sometimes when I’m not sure if the window I picked will open and have to suppress the urge to click again (which could make the window go away!)
I've never understood the attraction of the iPad for travel with any hint of work. Today's modern laptops, whether a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or the typical corporate 14-inch Lenovo, take up so little room and weight that it's hard to imagine giving up a real keyboard simply so you can carry a few extra pair of underwear that, in today's modern fabrics, can be carried in the pocket of a laptop sleeve anyway. Heck, even when my trip combines business and personal, it's no challenge at all to carry two laptops--my own, and the company's, in the same attache.
>> Here I sit at my mother’s dining room table, typing on a MacBook Air. Something has changed in my approach to travel, and I’m trying to understand just what it is…
> I just don't get it.
Here I sit far from any WiFi, doing the same on an iPad Pro with the same "real keyboard" backlit magic keyboard with a smaller but just fine touchpad, a charging cord dock port, an inset hinge taking less room on an airline tray table; and of course the 120hz 2732x2048 264ppi touch screen with 1600nits brightness; connected by eSIM to my 4G and 5G carriers of choice but not really caring because I also have 2TB of local SSD built in.
I guess I have a very different approach to travel.
I don't have to be at my mother's dining room table. I don't have to get my Verizon JetPack (I own the top model fast enough to act as backup uplink for a small office in an emergency, but then I'm carrying two things, not one).
I can shed the keyboard and just read my Kindle, or take notes with feel of paper like my Remarkable 2 thanks to having installed the Paperlike™ screen protector while fresh out of the box.
I can present on a second screen, or drag multiple different app windows to a 6K monitor.
I can use it days in a row without having any idea where a power pack is, fast charge it from any 30W USB-C, and slow charge it from, well, anything. Same port works with most any USB-C dock, and any Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Lying in a hotel bed watching Netflix in HDR with speakers is no way to use a laptop. The iPad 12.9 at arm's length -- no awkward keyboard to weigh you down or cramp your style -- is a larger apparent screen size than a 75" TV, and looks better than most of them too.
All the tools most anyone needs are there. Office suite, Affinity suite, VSCode via blink code (same tool for mosh/ssh), Obsidian notes for personal KB, GoodNotes for handwritten ... even Kagi Orion if I need Firefox and Chrome extensions.
And nobody's offended when you're using it. Nobody says "no laptops please".
Does everything, goes everywhere, all at once.
. . .
> even when my trip combines business and personal, it's no challenge at all to carry two laptops--my own, and the company's, in the same attache
TL;DR: For business or personal, iPad Pro w/ Magic Keyboard is no challenge at all to carry no laptops, in no attache, with no WiFi. And no inspections from TSA.
I like the 12.9” iPad for reading all kinds of documents, and video. I use it most as a “computer” when I remote in to my media server. But I still can do all my work on it when traveling, despite the inconveniences.
Apple has hobbled the iPad and I can only assume the intention is to not cut in to MacBook profits. Thus the iPad is really only useful for content consumption and even then it fails.
This — and the related take from DaringFireball — is getting traction, but it’s presenting as a general case something that is really specific to, well, HN types, or full time bloggers, or similar: that some of the tasks you do are better suited to a Mac than an iPad. The difference is that users like this are the minority.
Most people’s computing life is Office-style docs, emails, browsing, and social media. The iPad is great at doing those things.
If your default mode of computing insists on having a host of windows open that you, after years or decades of experience, can fly through like a hacker god in a movie, then yeah, you may find the experience limiting. That’s when you start wondering if it’s worth the trade offs.
For me personally? Yeah, on short personal trips, I go with the iPad alone. I can do everything I need to do personally with it, and if I need to reach out and do some work tasks, it’s still possible. (Not for nothing, my photo workflow now runs through the iPad first, which further enables no-laptop vacation travel.)
What do I get for making the tradeoff? I carry a far cheaper and lighter device with better battery life, and one which is also better suited to reading or video consumption (IMO) than a full laptop.
Surface tablets exist (they can run Linux but I'd stick with Windows on them). 2-in-1 laptop/tablet hybrids have also existed for a while, sold with Windows and ChromeOS but many of them work fine with standard Linux.
Some models can even become relatively competent Hackintosh, though macOS lacks proper pen drivers of course.
Samsung has Dex, which is a desktop interface for Android tablets (and phones hooked up to a dock). For a while they experimented with offering a full Ubuntu desktop, but I believe they've stopped that experiment.
Honestly, Apple seems to be the only tablet manufacturer that still tries its hardest to push professional users back to laptops. With the virtualisation support in Android 13+, I wonder how long it'll take before someone brings out the first macOS-on-Samsung-Galaxy app; various people have already run Windows 11 as a proof of concept on Pixel devices so who knows how long it'll take.
I don't get why this is still impossible in 2023, with M1 in both macbooks and ipads.
I'm sure at some point someone at apple has built a prototype and did extensive testing, I'd love to know why was that shut down. And whether it was a business related issue, or a tech/UX related issue.
My guess is that Apple wants companies to reinvent their programs to work well on a touchscreen, which has largely been happening. If you could just drop macos on the ipad, we wouldn't have things like Procreate. You'd just get told to install desktop photoshop and connect a mouse and keyboard.
I hope they never do this. Bolting touch into a desktop OS is too much of a compromise for me. It didn't work well in Windows 8 and I don't think it would in macOS.
This is a silly thing to say. macOS is specifically designed for use with a mouse and keyboard. iOS is specifically designed for use with a touch screen.
Adapting either one to work with the other would only make it worse.
MacOS allows me to run any software I want. It has a terminal, and allows me to run scripts. It has a shared file system and offers true multi-tasking.
You can already run some iOS apps in MacOS. I'd like a single computer where I can switch between mobile / pencil usage and desktop keyboard / mouse usage.
That's exactly what I have with a convertible Chromebook. Super Snappy ChromeOS for web browsing. It can run Android apps, or stream them from my phone. Flip it around and it's a BIG tablet. 15.6" 4k screen. Going back into computer mode I can run full blown Linux, very quickly via Crouton or virtualized slightly less quick with official Crostini. Can also do a lot of the terminal stuff directly in the ChromeOS shell. In either Linux environment I can emulate Windows via QEMU/KVM. It's as fast as native in Crouton, again a bit slower in Crostini. Lightweight,long battery life, charges over USB-C will fast charge my phone and interfaces seamlessly with the phone for tethering that doesn't use hotspot data and doing messages notifications, etc.
No... I use an iPad with Magic Keyboard case daily.
It works pretty well for things designed for keyboard and pointing device -- one of my main uses is to remote in to a Windows machine.
The main problems with this setup aren't inherent... while the track pad is quite good, the keyboard is passable at best (needs function keys and for the frequently used keys to stop semi-dying).
Pretty quickly you start to naturally switch between touching the screen, typing on the keyboard or using the trackpad, depending on what you're doing and what software you're using.
Now my wife laughs at me when I'm using a regular MacBook and try to swipe or tap the screen.
Despite all the posts in this thread definitively stating that the iPad is “just for entertainment”, an illustrator ex-colleague of mine creates all her work on an iPad Pro.
She owns a home, and has 2 kids, and as far as I know has no other sources of income other than her illustrations, which are all made on her iPad.
Thank you for pointing that out. And I think that’s exactly what the article says:
> This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done).
The iPad has some really powerful use cases, but only the ones Apple made (like illustration work).
I admit to a feeling of hopelessness discussing this well-worn topic on HN, but in my case I use my own iPad for reading books, annotating PDFs, taking notes, writing mails, watching videos, drawing, surfing the web, watching sport, listening to music, lightweight coding, using as an extra screen and probably other things I’ve forgotten.
The kids have used it to shoot and edit stop-motion movies, and ‘compose’ music.
As I said, at least one person I know keeps three people (including herself) in a home and fed, in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
But apparently this is only what “Apple allow us to do”.
There is no doubt that the iPad can be a very useful device if the available software fits exactly your needs. Here obviously the pen input is the critical enabler. Thus the iPad is very popular for anyone "drawing". But beyond those fields, the usefulness drops rapidly.
This post and the comments here make me think of two things:
1. Digital minimalism can be extended to hardware. Buying the most generalist machines for every possible use case is what leads to having all this clunkiness when you travel. Think deeply on your hardware scenario and optimise for that. You might save some money in the process too. E.g. I moved from a desktop + decent dev laptop to just an M1 MBP and a Steam Deck - primarily for portability and battery resilience during power cuts. I've recently also ditched my mech keyboard for a smaller wireless one I can travel with.
2. I do kind of wish we'd get more desktop devices in a tablet form factor - "Bring your own keyboard" sort of thing. I don't even care about having a touch screen.
After trying the iPad for this, I discovered a 12" Macbook is a real option to consider either as a secondary or mobile laptop. It allowed much quicker on/off usage, and for longer sessions it was really serviceable. The 2017 model in particular is one of interest.
Instant on, a full and normal keyboard. An i7 with 16 gb of ram is still serviceable for cloud type work (or some local). Perfect for travel, planes, cars, trains, hotels. Easy to remote into a Mac Studio if needed too.
The new iPad keyboard is nice, but there's still a lot more disney magical gesturing than a keyboard alone allows. Touch is slower, and the iPad keyboard is slower to type on than a laptop keyboard. The horsepower the iPad has is great, though. An iPad makes a great second monitor off the 12" Macbook, too.
The biggest issue I have with iOS is that it absolutely sucks at multitasking.
If you want to one task (eg. take notes, watch a movie, make a sketch) then it is great. Even the files app is good enough now to quickly find some document when you need it.
But it becomes unusable as soon as you switch between tasks.
On the Mac, I can just move some windows to the side, work on a different task, then go back to what I was doing before. My work is waiting for me right where I left it.
Advanced users can even use spaces for switching between tasks.
On iOS, I need to go to every app that I used and try to return to the previous state, at which point I'm so annoyed that I'm switching back to the Mac.
The concept of this website (sixcolors.com) is bewildering to me. I sincerely hope the authors are being handsomely paid by Apple behind the scenes, otherwise they just spend their lives doing free advertising for a trillion dollar corporation.
He's a long term journalist (was editor in chief at MacWorld) focusing on Apple and is also podcasting on Apple. If you're married to the Apple ecosystem his insight are pretty interesting.
unlike this website, which provides a penumbra of authenticity to a tech funding cartel which regularly runs pump'n'dump schemes against the rest of the world?
Is it though? Seems like (1) they are fans of the products; (2) they want to write about stuff they like; and (3) they figure out that they can make a career out of it.
The proprietor was editor of Macworld and similar publications for a couple decades. It probably sounds crazy to you, but there are and/or were entire print magazines reporting on the Apple ecosystem!
Working as a consultant means I literally have no days off. I also don't like to carry customer laptops with me when hiking somewhere in Patagonia. So my ultra light travel workstation became my Samsung Galaxy S22 phone paired with an Anker USBC hub with HDMI and a Planck by Drop (and a few cables). All I need is a TV which I usually find anywhere I go. With Samsung DEX I have a full desktop experience with functioning keyboard and the phone itself becomes my mouse. From there I can VPN and launch a RDP session to access a development environment. Outlook and Teams work natively in DEX.
So far I've been managing to keep up with work while traveling using a Samsung tab. So far its been going well, granted that I mostly only need MS Office and sometimes a terminal for some code.
Having to buy a FOSS VCS as an add on is kind of proving the point that the iPad’s closed software ecosystem is really holding the fantastic hardware back.
Fair enough, would be nice if there were a system terminal that could install software like desktop. We'll be the first to admit that iOS's shortcomings are what triggered us to start building the apps we do.
It's true iOS software in general has a ways to match desktop capabilities, but desktops also have a bit of a head-start. We do believe iOS can get there, and hopefully exceed it in some ways.
(And in WebForge's case, we not selling just the Git CLI, but a UI and tool integrated into the rest of the IDE, so you're not /just/ paying for access to FOSS software on iPad. And yes, I know VSCode is free on desktops :) )
I tried the iPad only lifestyle with the original iPad Pro - stuck with it for almost a full year. In the end the abysmal text editing and extreme restrictions when multitasking drove me to distraction. Thankfully the M1 MacBooks fixed the battery, size, weight and heat issues of the Intel based laptops.
And yeah, if you have the magic keyboard/trackpad text editing is a lot better - but at that point you might as well just have the full laptop.
I really wanted to use a tablet – either iOS or Android – as a lightweight work device but it was too clumsy and uncomfortable to use. Any time you encounter a new situation, you're not sure you'd be able to solve it within the OS boundaries.
I finally settled on an 8inch "proper laptop": the GPD Pocket 3. Linux works like a charm, real keyboard, and powerful. It even replaced my spec'd out 15" Dell Precision (from 2017) because it's so more fun to use.
These types of articles come out periodically and annoy me quite a bit. iPadOS has been my interface to the digital world for going on 6 years. Here are the things I do exclusively via an iPad Pro:
* administer a dozen HPC clusters
* perform all the digital tasks required of a non-profit board member
* learn/read, communicate, consume media, photo edit and all the other normal life things one does on a computer nowadays
It’s true that I don’t have a podcast. But I think I’m in the majority of computer users there! I’ll also say that I have had to accept some limits or look for workarounds in the past, but the big additions of file downloads, safari compatibility modes and finally stage manager have effectively taken care of those.
But isn’t that the point of the article? The iPad works great for the things you want to do on it because Apple has decided to support those workflows (or you have been able to adjust your own practices to suit the device). But on a Mac (or Windows, or Linux), no-one needs to think ahead for your use case. Someone can just build software that enables it.
Software development is a much less niche area than podcast recording but one that is equally unsupported on the iPad. I doubt many are itching to swap their dev machines for an iPad, but given the hardware it sure would be nice if I could tinker with stuff on the sofa. But no amount of workarounds or developer ingenuity would enable that because Apple has decreed that I cannot run arbitrary code, or run a local server.
Yeah, same. I think at the end of the day, some folks don’t want to work that way. Which is fine.
I do all of my personal business on an iMac. The big gap for me was the shell, which is now not an issue with iSH available. There’s literally nothing I cannot do that I need to do that can’t be done on the iPad.
I’ve been using Remote Desktop to a windows environment in the cloud for a while. It’s been pretty great actually. As long as you have a Bluetooth mouse an IPad makes a great thin client in a pinch.
I know people want MacOs, but it’s a workaround that works.
As a developer/CTO who's use-case when travelling is just being able to take care of emergencies if something present itself I wanted to do away from bringing a laptop in vacation. Since I develop using Docker, my solution is basically an EC2 machine I can fire if needed that has VSCode installed as a server running in a browser with Docker installed in the same machine. Basically a cloud dev environment available in the browser.
It's amazing how it all works well, even the Docker integration inside VSCode. The main thing that doesn't work as well as locally is searching the source code which is very slow. A work-around would be to search your code separately in Github or whatever service you use.
Anyway, with this setup, I can go away with a clear mind that I have a dev machine available even if I only bring my iPad (with keyboard cover).
I trialed a similar set up with code-server for a few weeks, and was shocked at how well it works, provided stable and fast internet access.
Although VSCode is impressive, at the end of the day, I'm an emacser. I went back to: emacs in a terminal over mosh, accessed with Blink Shell on the iPad; or access the same instance over Microsoft Remote Desktop for a desktop experience.
emacs in a Blink terminal over mosh is still my goto; I haven't found a better solution yet. It's surprisingly effective, and being able to access it instantly over the cell network of my iPad Pro is awesome for dealing with emergencies/little changes while I'm traveling.
One serious problem is that only a limited set of PC keyboard keys and key combinations are available in that setup (mapped from the local keyboard). It works in a pinch, using the Windows on-screen keyboard when necessary, but I found it impractical for regular work,
Someone should make a list of analogies of: if X were an iPad you couldn’t do Y.
Perhaps after a few hundred of these we could identify a higher level pattern that would “make sense” instead of being frustrating. I feel like there’s some deep philosophical underpinning or monad-like slip-through-your-fingers constraint that is maddening.
What if Apple released a device that was an M2/M3 MacBook, but the back side of the screen was another screen?
I didn’t used to believe this was likely, but now we have the Vision Pro which has an internal and external screen. A combo laptop/tablet would be incredible, and they use the same chip so why not?
Lenovo did that, put an eink screen on the back of one of their laptops. It was Intel only, and I was looking for a Ryzen 7 or 9.
Asus's Z13 and X13 Flow lines work for me here. I use an X13 Flow with a Ryzen 9 and a 3050Ti. It works amazingly. Fedora and KDE have native touch support.
The iPad only travel dream is a reality now, just not with apple hardware.
Get a Lenovo yoga 7i for $500 (iPad price) and you have a fully capable multi Linux machine (via WSL) which is also a fully featured touchscreen tablet. Uses the same little USB charger as your phone.
Tried using an iPad pro as a workstation. Terrible ergonomics. iPadOS multitasking is a terrible experience. USB-C transfer speeds were bad. Overall very disappointed with the experience. Went back to Macbook Pro after a couple of weeks of pain.
An iPad with (any) Bluetooth keyboard and mouse along with codespaces (or replit, gitpod, et al) works well.
As long as you accept that what you’re using isn’t a full blown computer, it’s absolutely enough. All about managing expectations.
The author isn’t willing to ‘declare the “use iPad to get work done” experiment dead’, but I am. If a blogger and podcaster can’t use the now 13-year-old iPad platform for his work, what hope is there for the rest of us?
I'll was planning trying this out in a couple weeks. Should I bring my macbook with me as well? I don't know how much I'd actually want to code which seems like the biggest reason to bring it with me.
I just tried to go with the only iPad Pro for travel option (I really wanted this to work), but had to return it and go back to my MacBook Air. The iPad is just not as good at many basic productivity workflows. Really basic stuff like switching between google sheets and chrome is just really high friction. It’s an amazing consumption device but I just couldn’t get it to work for me
Galaxy tab S with android is going into the right direction with the desktopextension function but as long as so many buy apple and it's completly unusable they will not adapt in any way.
Sadly I agree in that I've tried to make the iPad a useful enough device to carry around with me but I just gave up and happily gave it away to a less demanding person. Mac or bust!
UTM works much better if you can install the Hypervisor version via TrollStore. Unfortunately you can't do that with M2 iPads since they came with iOS 16.1 from factory and TrollStore only works on iOS 15.0-15.4.1
Luckily I have an M1 iPad Pro with iOS 15.3.1. Managed to install Oracle Database 19c ARM on Oracle Linux Arm 8.8.
If all you need is to carry a computer for emergency work related tasks on vacation, you can do it straight from an iPhone thin client and Bluetooth keyboard. No MacBook or iPad required.
Coworkers were always amazed when we'd be at lunch and I'd pull out my phone and make a code change or fix an issue right there. It's not that hard. Much easier with an external keyboard though.
It isn't perfect, but it's made for a more ergonomic computing experience that replaced my need for a second monitor desk setup and while being a bit large can still use it for tablet experiences of reading papers and watching movies.
When is the FAA going to let me use my laptop during takeoff and landing - that’s the biggest thing ipad has going for it, that’s an hour+ of unproductive time.
Ehh - it’s pretty easy to close a laptop (or put it on the floor) I don’t really care, but not being able to use a laptop, but being able to use an air pad of the same size is a big advantage for that -45min-hour
What' needed is a real computer, with a real OS, in tablet form-factor.
And then maybe a keyboard that can convert it into a laptop (extra battery in the k/b, friction hinges to adjust tablet angle, instead of a stand, which doesn't work on an actual lap), etc.
I basically haven't used an apple product (outside of the ipod) since my powermac circa 2003. I got an iPad pretty much entirely for the pencil and Procreate. Both are wonderful but it's a horrible OS otherwise. I don't think I would ever get an iPhone given how inflexible everything feels in that ecosystem.
I thought I might be able to do some light development work on it.. No chance.
I don't even know why it has so much storage space. The file system is so poorly designed it's a pain in the ass to transfer anything to it.
After around 10 years with the iPad (since the 1st gen) in some form in my hand, I've given up on it entirely this year - selling my last iPad Pro and not picking up a new one. I haven't missed it. Anything I need to do or look at on the go is satisfied by my iPhone (I am still sporting the 13 non-Pro, which is plenty fast for my needs). For everything else, I have my 3 year old Windows laptop which runs great even to this day. For anything beefier, I can wait until I'm home and use my PC. When I built the PC, it matched the 'new' Mac Pro spec-for-spec and I paid a fraction of the price (only 1500 euros!).
Apple missed the boat with the iPad AND with macOS. I use Windows now (Yes, I'm aware of the 'privacy' issues surrounding telemetry, et. al.) and haven't missed the Apple platform one bit. Gaming aside, I haven't lacked for any developer tools when using Visual Studio. For web development, VS Code and WSL2/Docker fit the bill without very many issues.
One of the biggest factor with Apple is the price. While the entry level iPad is competitively priced (550 euros for a 64gb model, or 750 euros for a 256gb model): it's also outdated (running the A14 Bionic SOC). The minute you take a peek at a more current model (iPad Air 64G @ 720 euros or 256G at 920 euros), you are firmly into laptop territory. After all this time, it's still evident that iPad cannot replace a laptop - it is still a companion device. And it's not for lack of hardware. It's because Apple still wants you to buy their laptop and then pair it with an iPad for the "complete" experience. To contrast, my laptop only cost me 900 euros for Ryzen 7 512GB SSD + 16GB RAM. Is it as fast as the M2 chip? Probably not, but you aren't using all that power on the iPad Pro the majority of the time, either.
While the performance of the M2 is impressive - you aren't seeing it the majority of the time.
Another factor I've had to deal with is that Apple insist on their own way of doing things; whether that is better in the end, is still anyone's guess 10 years on. But ever the black sheep: file management; while better these days, is still an issue... lack of certain types of applications, cannot build or install your own applications without a developer ID, and so on. I can't even run emulators on it without a) building it and sideloading it using developer tools (and re-doing the steps every so often to refresh the cert) or b) jailbreaking it.
Anyways, this post went on longer than I anticipated. I know there will be defenders swooping in to proclaim that iPad Pro is the shiznit.
Let's not forget that with a screen, keyboard - my laptop costed me 900 euros 3 years ago. If I were to get an updated version of it, it would cost me 800 euros now. An iPad Pro (512G storage) with M2 and a keyboard to go with it, would cost me 1720 euros. More than _double_. And, for what?
Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”
The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more.
Save yourself some travel weight. Just pack your Mac. You were already packing it anyway.
I think the real world use cases for an iPad are slightly broader, but not by much. My partner uses one to make digital art; it also has a relatively decent camera, some apps for video/audio production (like Final Cut/Logic), it's also better than a phone at being an SSH terminal... But the creative applications end somewhere around right there.
It's an appliance. An appliance with mind-boggingly awesome specs - if it were a computer - but it's just that, an appliance closer in spirit to a microwave than to a PC. Treat it as such, and it will be one of the best appliances you'll ever own; but to expect it to be a computer is to set oneself up to be disappointed.
I'm more than happy with it for what it is, but don't mistake it for what it's not.
A basic iPad as a reasonably priced (~$300-$500) media consumption device is fantastic. The problem is that's not what Apple is selling it as anymore. Look up all their advertising from the last few years and they barely even acknowledge that price point. Instead you will see all the "Pro" models, fancy accessories, M1/M2 chips, LiDAR, terabytes of storage and prices eclipsing that of mid-range MacBooks. Everyone I know who ate up the advertising and bought $1500+ iPads as a primary or secondary productivity device is now regretting it as they either lay unused or are glorified Netflix and Facebook tablets.
Well a 12.9” iPad Pro with the keyboard case gives you basically all the same computing hardware as a 13” MacBook Pro, plus:
Better quality mini-LED display
Better/additional cameras
Touchscreen with pen support
Magnetic charging for the pen
Detachable keyboard
Cellular data option
It’s not really a surprise that the iPad can cost more. Just a shame that the App Store limitations prevent it from being as useful a software platform for many use cases.
Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”
If that were the case, they’d be making much more money from laptops than from iPads, right?
If they were making just as much money from iPads, though, it would make sense to make the iPad as good as possible. Cannibalizing Mac sales wouldn’t be a big deal.
The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning.
They’ve gone back on plenty of things Steve Jobs said (in many cases, Jobs himself was the one who did it).
I don’t think they have a religious objection to making the iPad useful, as you seem to be saying; I think they think they are making it useful, that the current design (including its limitations) is the best compromise.
I was thinking recently that there was something weirdly cryptic and prophetic at the end of that Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs - I haven't looked it up again, but there's some tale along the lines of Steve on his deathbed playing with an interface, like he's seen a vision of the future and having an epiphany. The book tells it as if like he's playing with an Apple TV and a remote control which doesn't make much sense as a deathbed experience...but now I realise he had an Apple Vision prototype and that's what he was looking at/through. I think they must be that many years ahead in their labs, like decadal R&D.
I had the impression that they saw it replacing the computer for ordinary users. That a PC with Windows/macOS was overkill for the average man on the street. In the end phones have done that for a lot of people.
I do not want to do my work on an iPad. I have never understood what the Mac was lacking that the iPad might provide. The essay explains the perfection of the Mac: You can do anything with it. If you are a developer, you can really do anything with it.
For me, the iPad is the optional one (not that I would ever not take it). My MacBook is pretty close to being a perfect device for work. iPad is a perfect device for, well, everything else. Done.
> This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done).
Apple (since Lisa/Mac, after Apple II, which had an open architecture) likes appliances and to control the user experience, so the iPad is "more Apple" than Macs are.
Whenever I am waiting at airports, I have to grin at how much stuff people are carrying nowadays: it's not 2, it's 3 full-blown computing devices. First there was the mobile phone (which then just a device to call), then came the laptop, then the mobile phone became a computer with the iPhone and Android, and finally, the iPad appeared to fill a middle position. You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead. That's because - as stated in the article - there are known limit, or people are worried that they may need all devices for particular use cases or data kept on them.
At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.
I tried working with an iPad (and later iPad Pro) but eventually got back to a Ubuntu Linux laptop (ThinkPad X1 Nano), which at 970 grams is also lighter than my iPad Pro 10".