This blog post is more a statement on the sorry state of the Mac than it is a reflection of iOS's improvements. I don't mean that as a wise-crack, though I'm sure it sounds like one. On the Mac, sandboxing limits what a user can comfortably do, while the UI is increasingly ugly and inconsistent. Meanwhile developers focus on iOS, since that's where the big numbers are. Sigh.
With the push for Universal / SwiftUI apps coming I imagine we will see a lot more apps on the mac, if developers are easily able to port and test the waters they might improve the experience for macOS.
I agree, but I worry they'll be a lot more bad apps :( Apps that are hermetically sealed off in a little rectangle, apps that make you click-and-hold to bring up hamburger menus, apps that are missing Menubar commands, apps with GUIs that are framed oddly, apps that only save documents to "the cloud", apps that nag you to "sign up" to their service, etc.
I liked Mac apps, especially when they followed the HIG. Too many iOS apps reinvent the wheel.
> I liked Mac apps, especially when they followed the HIG
Me too, I think there is a niche group of people who will always prefer native (in the UI sense) apps on Mac, there is a small market catering to those people so I hope that doesn't disappear completely.
If you've avoided sandboxing issues with currently-shipping software, you're lucky. I run into them all the time. Nearly every aspect of the Mac requires priv's now, so the issues are hard to sum up. Some of the common ones are: editors that need to access sibling folders of a project, which they can't do without presenting a dialog, and editors requiring permissions to, for example, listen to keyboard events, which also requires a dialog. "Well, a dialog box isn't onerous!" I hear you say. The thing is, when an operation fails, half the time an app doesn't recover properly, and the action you wanted to finish is just cancelled. That puts a mental tax on the user, because he or she has to figure out if the action was aborted or not, or if the app needs be quit and relaunched to recover. This isn't one app I'm talking about, either. For me, this is a common occurrence. Maybe I'm unlucky.
Then there are sandboxing issues that ended or hobbled previously-shipping software. Backup utilities, software that customized system software, security tools, etc. That's not as apparent, because all we see are the blog-posts of their sad developers.
To be fair, sandboxing is probably the best way to keep a machine secure. It does make my Mac less enjoyable to use, though.
> If you've avoided sandboxing issues with currently-shipping software
I have a set of tools I use, and once I granted them access I was done. I haven't seen a permission box in months. It did highlight what the tools wanted to access which is a good thing. See all the shadiness coming to light with the new clipboard highlight feature in iOS14.
> Then there are sandboxing issues that ended or hobbled previously-shipping software.
Unfortunately this is the cost of progress, particularly around security. And, while some tools can't work, many are that the developer does not want to make them work.
That works fine for most apps. But if you need to work with documents in varied locations, you have to grant access repeatedly. In recent memory this caused me headaches with a LaTeX editor that used links "../" to media outside the document files I was editing.
> many are that the developer does not want to make them work.
I don't know, friend, I can't read their minds :)
> the cost of progress
I imagine that's largely true. I was more productive without it, but it's a bit academic since the option did not yet exist to lock the machine down back then. If it had, would I have chosen to sandbox myself? Mmm, probably.
> On the Mac, sandboxing limits what a user can comfortably do,
I do development work all day on a mac. What is sandboxing preventing me from doing?
> while the UI is increasingly ugly and inconsistent.
As a long time Apple user I agree, particularly with the early Catalyst apps. But, in some ways macOS is a victim of its own success here. Apple users have become so accustomed to pixel perfect UI consistency that even the smallest deviation is noticed. It does look like Catalyst is much improved in Big Sur, and the new Messages app seems to show off a best in class Catalyst app.
> Meanwhile developers focus on iOS, since that's where the big numbers are.
And ARM macs are getting ready to get access to the entire universe of iOS apps. IMO, macs are about to enter another golden era.
It's the little things like (mentioned by the author) not having an email client where you can easily copy-paste addresses or format text that keep me moving back to a MacBook. It's frustrating that these types of issues could possibly be fixed by using a different (usually paid) app, so the easier solution is just to hop back to macOS.
Lots of good points but this one jumped out to me as a larger issue with the iOS ecosystem:
- In-app browsers are hell. This ruins the delightful "open in Safari quickly" experience I outlined above. I also can never figure out what the scope of my cookies and tokens are, which is very frustrating.
iPad is unusable for true productivity until Karabiner can run on it. So amazed how few people still use it though. Like it seems no one at Apple uses it at any capacity as it's broken again with new version of OS.
I just program my keyboard to emit the key events that I want, rather than relying on OS-level hacks to do it.
On some level, keyboards should just expose the results of the key matrix scan to the OS, and let them add things like layers, macros, matrix position -> character map, etc... but no OS supports keyboards like this, so you just have to do it on the keyboard.
I plug in my qmk-based keyboard to my iPad Pro and it does exactly what I want. It is a shame that you can't reflash the keyboard from iPadOS, though.
Ugh, I wish they would. Such an essential tool. I even used it to remap mouse scrolling to the keyboard, as I hate scroll wheels, ergonomically.
In case you missed it, Apple added a very limited ability to remap hardware keyboards in ios 13.4. It is far from karabiner, but it at least lets you use windows keyboards on an ipad now: you can remap the command key.
Why are you surprised it's broken? Every major OS upgrade changes things and improves security, so the developers need to see the changes and the needed fixes. The Beta has only been out 4 days, even if everyone at Apple used it, they're not going to push the fix for an unreleased/unannounced product, if they contribute to the project.
I'm surprised that it's such a powerful and game changing tool and yet none of the devs at Apple use it at any capacity. As from the things I read/saw, devs are using the new versions of OS before even the betas get released to test run them.
I see what you mean. My point is more to the fact that none of the Apple devs seem to have woken up to how useful it is to remap the keyboard to a high degree.
I might be wrong of course and there are Apple devs for whom moving to a new OS and losing Karabiner will be an ok loss.
So Karabiner to me is in the same category. It removes literally all frictions I have in interfacing with my computer. I can activate ANY app I use on my mac in less than 1 second (two key taps). On iPad that would require multiple gestures unless the apps were not recently used.
Have you used Karabiner hyper keys?
You might misunderstand just how powerful it is. For example I have all keys on my keyboard be custom hyper keys. That means I have around 30 modifier keys with 30+ keys mapped to each modifier with access of < 1 second away from me.
And it's not just Karabiner that iPad lacks. Alfred, Keyboard Maestro are two other essential tools. I am trying to bring one to iOS so hope that part will be solved.
> That means I have around 30 modifier keys with 30+ keys mapped to each
But to me that sounds like my worst nightmare. I really hate having to learn keyboard shortcuts. I'd much rather use touch and gestures and things. I don't really need to switch apps in less than one second - that's not the bottleneck in my workflow - usually thinking is.
Having a config like yours would make me despair. I don't like to configure anything - I just use the defaults and get on with my work.
> And it's not just Karabiner that iPad lacks. Alfred, Keyboard Maestro are two other essential tools.
They are demonstrably not essential, since people can get things done without them.
> App creators will be quite motivated to support Magic Keyboard and improve interactions via shortcuts
I'm skeptical about just how many users will adopt an iPad as their primary productivity device. Of course, there are a huge number of iPads in the world, but how many of those are iPad Pros compatible with the magic keyboard? And how many of those users are 'power users' looking to improve their experience using shortcuts?
I still feel the device has been quite niche and expensive, and therefore adoption has been proportionally low. I don't expect companies to feel the need to support iPad until Apple makes an inexpensive 'iPad Pro' type device, there simply is too much fragmentation in the product line at the moment.
Considering that Apple just this week anounced to essentially consolidate iOS and MacOS (moving MacOS devices to ARM and adding capability to run iOS apps) in a near future the boundraries between iPad Pro and MacBook will diminish and work on a hybrid will be the norm. (Windows 8 was just a few years early, missed the proper mobile device and had too many compromises)
Opening my iPad anywhere and having LTE internet feels
absolutely God-damn magical. It feels like I'm living
inside the Matrix. I'm constantly plugged in.
I smiled at this. Non-apple laptops have had a sim slot for years. On ThinkPads, there has been a sim slot on most models for at least ten years. On my dell Latitude 7390 (13") i have one too.
I mean... This is why Apple users are often joked upon: Apple comes ten years late to the party and users joy and spam the web as if it brought the greatest innovation since hot water.
Millions of people have a Thinkpad at work. Tech or non tech companies use them every day. Maybe they are not the users themselves but they are exposed to the technology on a daily basis regardless.
I say that as a software dev in the business for over a decade. Couldn’t it be that the ThinkPad crowd is a smaller bubble? At least the ones with a SIM card.
The iPad and iPad Pro advertise “up to 10 hours of battery life”. Many laptops advertise, and get, more than this. (As an example, my Surface Book can just get 12h on light usage, and when it was new I could get 14h if I was a little bit careful. They advertised it as up to 12h. As it stands, I tend to prefer performance to battery life, so I leave it on the better or best performance power profiles, often using it fairly heavily, e.g. compiling Rust code, and so I tend to get only 5–8h. If thrashing it truly as hard as I can, recording high-quality video so that CPU and dGPU are both working at close to 100% the whole time, I can drain the battery in around 3h.)
Macbooks don't have cellular modems. iPads have had them for a long time since they are derived from the mobile iOS. Not that anyone should really even care about this - phone tethering works perfectly fine for almost anyone unless you are too lazy to connect to your phone's wifi.
Drains battery. I can easily work all day on a T480 with LTE, I doubt that a Macbook could last that long while simultainously charging an Iphone (drains very quickly when I use it as a hotspot)
Last time I saw an air card in a laptop, you had to turn it off whenever you sleeped the computer to save battery life (because it would die in your bag) and the connection took a long time to boot. That was in 2011 or so though, is it better today?
How exactly Apple comes ten years late to the party, when the first iPad had mobile connectivity ten years ago? Did Toshiba, or Lenovo had tablets with cellular connection 20 years ago?
Maybe Apple came out with iPhone ten years too late as well: not that's a great reason to make fun of Apple users, for sure.
The difference, and I am not an Apple fanperson, is that Apple makes it as easy to buy an iPad with a SIM card in it as it is to buy a phone with a SIM card in it. Lenovo does not. In practice, the equivalence is only theoretical. I can buy an LTE iPad at Walmart at 2am on Tuesday (or at least I could prepandemic). Wireless in a ThinkPad is much less straightforward.
Bruh. You can buy literally any ThinkPad (choose your size, choose your spec) then get a ThinkPad-compatible LTE/whatever compatible card off eBay for 50$ or less.
Try doing that (adding/replacing hardware) on an iPad.
It is incredibly hard to buy laptops with LTE. Either they're not even stocked in stores or they have to be shipped direct, sometimes depending on the vagaries of the countries and providers involved.
Source: 11 years at Vodafone doing mobile broadband for enterprises in a previous lifetime. It was MUCH easier with PCMCIA cards, let me tell you...
It’s just like the whole “no wireless less space than the Nomad, lame” comment. Geeks don’t get it.
But the iPad has had a cellular option since 2010.
My iPad has a 30 day stand by time. When it is in stand by, it still gets notifications, it’s instant on, I can granular control which apps can use cellular data.
It has 10+ hours battery life, it’s light, no fan and faster than most laptops.
iSH is indeed very impressive. Given Apple’s Unix chops and their evident desire to see more “pros” adopt the iPad, I’d be surprised if we’re more than a year or two from iPadOS with a Terminal app.
I will jump on it if we see Xcode for ipad, being able to build apps and seemless use sensors and the touch screen while testing would be a massive productivity win for some of the apps I work on.
It's great that he's donating to Hack Club, but it seems an odd choice of hardware when he's specifically calls out the poor support for development as one of the drawbacks.
Good overview. Having used an ipad for a while though, I think I am indeed faster on a mac for a lot of tasks. Particularly admin stuff that involves switching between several apps. Eg email, browser, task manager, messaging app, etc
Anything involving moving files is much faster on mac too.
I use a mix of both now. I prefer the ipad for anything editing related, the apple pencil is much nicer to use. Also prefer it for the limited vector work I do.
One hope I have is that Apple improves the external monitor experience. With the new mouse support and hardware keyboard customizability, there are a lot more possibilities to run ipados on a larger screen. Except the ipad is stuck in a small 4:3 window on the larger screen.
One thing I really like on ipad is the shortcuts app. It’s incredibly flexible and simple for automation. Also the time tracker Timery.
If we went back to 1984..maybe even earlier, the iPad is probably the quintessential idea that Steve Jobs would have had for what a "computer" should be. It is a device that's pretty much invisible to the user in that all of functionality is software based (ignoring, of course, input devices like keyboards, etc).
The iPad (and iOS by extension) was built to have single purpose apps that work better than monolithic apps that do multiple functions. The problem was/is, getting the communication between those apps working seamlessly, which is getting better with dual screen, etc.
Today, I'm willing to bet that 90% of computer users could easily use an iPad and be happy and productive with it. This is why, in the last couple of years, development focus seemed to be iOS, iPad related.
Of course, Big Sur changes things a bit. Watching the keynote, the feeling I walked away with was 'refined.' macOS, iOS and iPad OS all got more refined and inline with each other in this release so users can jump between devices more seamlessly. I think we'll see progress move towards the Mac side of things a little bit quicker in the next few years because of the move to Apple Silicon.
And before anyone replies, yes, there are things you need a Mac for that can't be done on an iPad...yet. I do development work, so I certainly couldn't live 100% on an iPad. I'm not advocating on the Mac going away, in fact, I think Apple Silicon is going to breath new life into it.
> single purpose apps that work better than monolithic apps that do multiple functions
I would argue that iphone apps are monolithic and do multiple functions. For example Booking, Airbnb and Uber all have messenger, mapping, reservation system, calendar and scheduling function...
Why I have to use dozen different messaging system? Or several maps, each with different search and overlays. I want single experience, consistent across all apps. It should respect my usability settings, theme and other tweaks.
I am in the same place. My iPad Pro is my favorite portable computer of all time. It's super light, the battery lasts forever, and there is very little surface for customization. It has a terminal, it has a browser, so there is nothing to do on it except the work that I want to do. There are very few "utilities" and nothing that needs to be customized and sync'd across to other machines. (I also use it as a piece of scratch paper -- the pencil is great for sketches, collecting measurements before I put them in CAD, solving equations... basically anything that you'd use a sheet of paper for, without having to kill any trees.)
I would really like a proper local development environment, though. SSHing somewhere is fine... but leaves so much power on the table. It is also insane to me that Safari still can't expose the 120Hz display to Javascript.
I hope to never own another laptop. All I want is a dumb terminal, and the iPad is the best I've found.
Funny that the author wrote this on Notion, an app famous for being a bit slow and clunky on the iPad - just a primitive web wrapper. Regarding the author's wish for better "productivity tools", I get it. Making a good tablet touch interface is really, really hard. One example of a really good app that takes full advantage of the touch interface without sacrificing any of the core functionality and speed of a mouse/keyboard setup is OmniOutliner Pro for iPad. I've long since used outliners like WorkFlowy/Roam/Dynalist, but the iPad experience is uninspiring. OmniOutliner (and Documents by Readdle) absolutely convinced me that the iPad can be a game-changing tool - OmniOutliner is probably the only "serious work" app which I actually prefer on my iPad over my MacBook because of the higher productivity, not just because of the sleeker looks.
The iPad has become good enough that I've sold my Macbook. I still do coding and other activities that require a lot of screen real estate on my iMac Pro, but I use the iPad Pro exclusively on the road. I've found that gives me the best of both worlds - the full power and size of a desktop (as opposed to the compromises of a laptop), and the full portability and touchability of an iPad (as opposed to the compromises of a powerful laptop).
> After using it, I've become so excited about its possibilities that I donated 15 combos of iPad + Magic Keyboard + Pencil to Hack Club to distributed to Black teens and other disadvantaged folks in America.
Am I the only one who thinks that the author is showing off here.
For the price of 15 iPad setups he could have bought 100 second hand Thinkpads in great condition and his donation would have much bigger impact.
For a non-American the idea of buying and donating Apple products is the same as the idea of buying the latest $200 Addidas fashion sneakers to barefoot kids in Africa.
I don't even understand how it could be showing off, it's just stupid.
While I have been using MacBooks as my personal and work computers for the majority of the past 10 years, I used to work exclusively on Thinkpads, and used two generations of them as my personal computers. Both of them still work and I expect them to keep working thanks to their almost unlimited repairability. While I still prefer macOS over any other operating system, I think young people with lots of spare time on their hands could benefit a lot from spending a few years working on Linux, to pick up command-line skills and general computing awareness that is useful on any platform.
You’re being downvoted but this is probably more true than most people here want to admit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Thinkpadhead myself - I have “a few.” But time and again my 11 year old’s iPad “just works” while I’m hacking on my Linux and the rest of my family comes to me with various Windows problems.
As the extended family’s bonafide IT admin, I looooong for the day when business apps are so effective on iOS that I can retire everyone’s W10 machine!
I love my Thinkpads. And only one of them is new (I bought the AMD version and I love it). I should have clarified that I was speaking more about the non-tech's perspective on something that "just works" versus something that needs regular tweaking, restarts, updates that halt all other operations for some time, and all the other joys of living with a Microsoft OS that we've learned to live with.
ThinkPads are the one thing that would survive. Our 2010 iPad still works (barely), but no longer receives updates. My 2006, 2008 ThinkPads of course still receive updates and are obviously much more productive.
The author didn't specify whether the donated iPads had LTE connectivity but did say that they very much enjoyed LTE on theirs. This is an edge for the iPad I think? Not sure how the cell plans would be worked out but having an always on, semi reliable connection could be a big positive here.
My 200 Euro Thinkpad has a slot for a SIM card, which I use for 3G connectivity. I'm sure a newer one would have LTE, or I might even be able to replace the card in my Thinkpad to get LTE. Also, having internet on a laptop while on the go is fucking awesome (without the fiddlyness of turning on a hotspot).
I agree the author is showing off. That’s the premise of every working-on-iPad article out there. Just cmd+f for “magical”, “amazing”, and “delight.” It’s all the same breathless descriptions of sending emails and annotating PDFs.
That said, nearly everyone who makes a donation could’ve done something “better” and made a bigger impact with their money.
I’m willing to roast the author for writing a boring article but not for their donation.
> Am I the only one who thinks that the author is showing off here.
It is a little unusual to criticize someone who donated to the needy, just to say the donor was showing off and to point out what they could have donated instead to make a much bigger impact.
Let’s say you donated 100 Thinkpads (you should), but then you were criticized for showing off when you could have donated 5,000 meals to children who lost access to free school breakfast/lunches due to covid school closures. It’s a real issue, but you should pick and choose your battles (probably just like I should).
Well it's the same battle - it's about giving the kids access to information and an opportunity to learn coding. You can't compare that to free meals(which is of course important, but as you said it's a different battle).
There is a factor to consider: Having an awesome setup, is something underprivileged kids also need. To show off, yes, but also because it gives them the feeling of not being ten social classes below. Once you break that feeling, they are able to reach much higher.
Imagine you are going to a new company. The company is doing all their development work on a remote server (e.g. Visual Studio Codespaces) accessed by browser. What would you think when they give you a 5 year old, second-hand, ugly ThinkPad to you as a developer earning your $100k-$200k (or whatever a dev in California earns nowadays). The company would do the right thing, but the typical developer would be insulted. You would ask where your MacBook/Carbon X1/whatever is.
I am also not a fan of people showing off. But the act itself is still good.
Man, I've been struggling to integrate my iPad Pro into the rest of my life since I bought it in 2016. I've given up. There were too many things I still needed my Thinkpad with Linux for and it was impossible to properly integrate the iPad into my existing workflows to use practically as a supplemental device. I've bought a Galaxy Tab instead, because Android at least gives me the freedom to (for example) sync folders between the devices without any input from me.
It's particularly frustrating because I love the iPad. Like, it's one of the few devices I really, really, really enjoy in so many ways and I just wish it was better than it actually is. It's maybe the only device I own that I really do love. The Tab is a poor substitute and I really hate using it, but at least it fits with the rest of my tools in a sane way and gives me the freedom to customize it according to my needs.
Also, Notion. Another tool that I love the idea of, but hate the implementation. There are too many restrictions on the data model that make it frustratingly unlike any normal relational database and frustrating to use, and makes me wish somebody would just make a lightweight relational database with a friendly, practical wiki-like UI for building a knowledge base.
This makes me terribly sad to hear. I also want to integrate an iPad into my workflow, but it just doesn’t work. Everyone of my customers are HIGHLY dependent on MS Office products, to the point that every step of the job occurs on some MS product -
PowerPoint meetings on Teams, about Word and Excel docs stored on the SharePoint site.
I’m encouraged by MS’s recent moves into Linux / open source, but my gut tells me we’re a long way from properly functioning MS apps on iPad.
Take a look into the Surface. The interface isn't always 100% touch optimized, but I'll take that vs being locked into mobile apps. I've been really enjoying WSL, I have my Linux terminal without having to deal with Linux GUI. I ran desktop Linux for 10 years, but I just want my computer to work and not spend all my time playing sysadmin.
This is personal opinion, but I compared the Surface to the iPad pro and to me the iPad felt much more like a toy than a serious tool for getting work done.
My problem with Surface is the lack of apps that properly support a stylus. I don't like OneNote for a number of reasons and there are no decent alternatives. Also, from the stories I've heard, QC on Surface Pros is abysmal, as is support from MS.
I will agree on the lack of other apps (MS whiteboard is a joke), but I happen to really like OneNote. I will say, at least from my experience support is good. My power supply had a failed main cap and was arcing badly when plugged in. MS support shipped me a new one, and asked I ship the old one back when I received the new one.
I hate to say it, as I used to be part of the Slashdot anti M$ brigade, but they made a solid piece of hardware. The only thing I can fault it for is lack of a trackpoint; I spent too many years getting used to my fingers not leaving the home row to move the mouse.
This article is bi-polar, which summarizes my feelings on the topic as well.
I'm in the same boat as the author and have been trying (slowly) to move towards using an iPad full time. Compared to a couple years ago the apps and UX have improved significantly, however, (for me) using the iPad still feels more like a very specialized tool, compared to the more general utility of a Macbook.
I realize that for general productivity the iPad works best with a keyboard attached, a mouse, external storage. Adding more hardware. But then you have a MacBook in disguise ...
I'm guessing we'll never get a Macbook with touch screen and Apple Pencil support? But it does seem like the iPad has been slowly optimizing itself to fill that role.
One main feature of the iPad that was not mentioned, is its instant-on capability. It is something that has not been replicated successfully in any intel-inside device (pc or mac), despite the serious efforts there from intel, OEMs and OS developers. I don’t know what the reason is, but when I click the power button on my iPad, I get back instantly to whatever I was doing. No lag, no loading, no lost app state, no staring at a black screen. Once I am done, it instantly and reliably sleeps.
- LTE has been a standard feature in business laptops for decades and feels less "magical" and more like work.
- Faceid vs windows hello vs bluetooth tokens vs ... . Maybe neat, but not particularly distinct.
- Clipboard sharing. Yeah, kdeconnect is neat and apple's copy is as well.
- Apple pencil. Windows convertibles with pen have been around since windows XP and usually used pretty good pens by Wacom. The difference is that the software is more "fun", e.g. apple notes makes more use of tilt, animations etc.
- The magic keyboard is still a keyboard and start at $300. For that price one could get much better mechanical keyboards and this even makes the HHKB seem reasonably priced.
- Blink and iSH to me seem to say that the ipad is not good enough and you hence have to connect to something better.
That said, I can see that all the animations make working on an ipad feel more "fun" and the form factor and display are indeed nice.
LTE has been a standard feature in business laptops for decades and feels less "magical" and more like work.
LTE hasn’t existed for “decades”. The iPad had a cellular option since day 1 and stayed current with cellular standards.
Apple pencil. Windows convertibles with pen have been around since windows XP and usually used pretty good pens by Wacom. The difference is that the software is more "fun", e.g. apple notes makes more use of tilt, animations etc.
Pens on Windows were and still are a horrible experience.
I’ve used the 12.9 pro for three years now. A (very) small business owner and part time teacher. iPad OS is becoming more and more of a joy to use. Some thoughts:
1. Dock behaviour is a little annoying since iPhone X was released. I hate that dragging up triggers app exposé when four fingers works just fine.
2. Apple needs to kill this whole notion of syncing media libraries. I have only ever hated it.
3. If Apple wants to get serious with iPad Pro then they need to put Logic and Final Cut on it. Full versions.
4. I really hope to live and see the day when Blender is on it.
5. iPads are such exceedingly wonderful tools for self education. A large part is due to online learning in general becoming wonderful but PDF reader split view with something like good notes and using the pencil is such a joy.
6. I feel like gaming is in a sad state on iPads. I really hope that having PlayStation and Xbox gamepads working on them opens up the platform. It’s a kick in the teeth to have a portable machine which is just about as good as an Xbox one not having games to match it’s potential.
7. It’s been ten years and so many people still don’t get it. iPads are in a weird spot between power users who need more for their professional work (like CGI, developers, working with ridiculous size PS files) who understandably see them as toys and on the other side are most people who don’t use their computers for work, art, study, whatever just Facebook and Netflix. These guys would be better off with an iPad instead of a laptop but they find them too expensive anyways.
I am in the same space for my personal computing needs. But it took a while to get there.
I bought iPad Pro at the end of 2017 after reading various blog posts of programmers using their iPad for programming. I loved the form factor and snappiness of apps but it was pain to do real programming on it. Yes, I was using Blink shell to login to remote VPS but debugging JavaScript was tedious. I was having buyer's remorse but I kept it because I enjoyed drawing and reading on it.
However, after 2 years or so, this iPad has become my default device for my personal projects. What is crazy that iPad has changed the type of projects I start at home.
Before I was mostly focused on building webapps build using Laravel and Vuejs/Reactjs. Now most of my personal projects are command-line only such as using python/data science, algo trading. I am working on a command-line based CRM.
Going forward, I might still keep personal desktop or laptop but not upgrade as often as I used to. (unless iPad changes for worse).
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI liked Mac apps, especially when they followed the HIG. Too many iOS apps reinvent the wheel.
Me too, I think there is a niche group of people who will always prefer native (in the UI sense) apps on Mac, there is a small market catering to those people so I hope that doesn't disappear completely.
Then there are sandboxing issues that ended or hobbled previously-shipping software. Backup utilities, software that customized system software, security tools, etc. That's not as apparent, because all we see are the blog-posts of their sad developers.
To be fair, sandboxing is probably the best way to keep a machine secure. It does make my Mac less enjoyable to use, though.
I have a set of tools I use, and once I granted them access I was done. I haven't seen a permission box in months. It did highlight what the tools wanted to access which is a good thing. See all the shadiness coming to light with the new clipboard highlight feature in iOS14.
> Then there are sandboxing issues that ended or hobbled previously-shipping software.
Unfortunately this is the cost of progress, particularly around security. And, while some tools can't work, many are that the developer does not want to make them work.
I do development work all day on a mac. What is sandboxing preventing me from doing?
> while the UI is increasingly ugly and inconsistent.
As a long time Apple user I agree, particularly with the early Catalyst apps. But, in some ways macOS is a victim of its own success here. Apple users have become so accustomed to pixel perfect UI consistency that even the smallest deviation is noticed. It does look like Catalyst is much improved in Big Sur, and the new Messages app seems to show off a best in class Catalyst app.
> Meanwhile developers focus on iOS, since that's where the big numbers are.
And ARM macs are getting ready to get access to the entire universe of iOS apps. IMO, macs are about to enter another golden era.
- In-app browsers are hell. This ruins the delightful "open in Safari quickly" experience I outlined above. I also can never figure out what the scope of my cookies and tokens are, which is very frustrating.
https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/issues/2331
On some level, keyboards should just expose the results of the key matrix scan to the OS, and let them add things like layers, macros, matrix position -> character map, etc... but no OS supports keyboards like this, so you just have to do it on the keyboard.
I plug in my qmk-based keyboard to my iPad Pro and it does exactly what I want. It is a shame that you can't reflash the keyboard from iPadOS, though.
In case you missed it, Apple added a very limited ability to remap hardware keyboards in ios 13.4. It is far from karabiner, but it at least lets you use windows keyboards on an ipad now: you can remap the command key.
I might be wrong of course and there are Apple devs for whom moving to a new OS and losing Karabiner will be an ok loss.
Why do you think it'd be impossible to be productive without this one random app you use?
I wrote a blog post the other day on my iPad. I was truly productive.
> I only care about reducing friction, and Vim's editing language is very good at that.
From https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/hg37kq/question_how_mu...
So Karabiner to me is in the same category. It removes literally all frictions I have in interfacing with my computer. I can activate ANY app I use on my mac in less than 1 second (two key taps). On iPad that would require multiple gestures unless the apps were not recently used.
Have you used Karabiner hyper keys?
You might misunderstand just how powerful it is. For example I have all keys on my keyboard be custom hyper keys. That means I have around 30 modifier keys with 30+ keys mapped to each modifier with access of < 1 second away from me.
And it's not just Karabiner that iPad lacks. Alfred, Keyboard Maestro are two other essential tools. I am trying to bring one to iOS so hope that part will be solved.
Here is my config, it might bring more light to what I mean: https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/dotfiles/blob/master/karab...
> That means I have around 30 modifier keys with 30+ keys mapped to each
But to me that sounds like my worst nightmare. I really hate having to learn keyboard shortcuts. I'd much rather use touch and gestures and things. I don't really need to switch apps in less than one second - that's not the bottleneck in my workflow - usually thinking is.
Having a config like yours would make me despair. I don't like to configure anything - I just use the defaults and get on with my work.
> And it's not just Karabiner that iPad lacks. Alfred, Keyboard Maestro are two other essential tools.
They are demonstrably not essential, since people can get things done without them.
I'm skeptical about just how many users will adopt an iPad as their primary productivity device. Of course, there are a huge number of iPads in the world, but how many of those are iPad Pros compatible with the magic keyboard? And how many of those users are 'power users' looking to improve their experience using shortcuts?
I still feel the device has been quite niche and expensive, and therefore adoption has been proportionally low. I don't expect companies to feel the need to support iPad until Apple makes an inexpensive 'iPad Pro' type device, there simply is too much fragmentation in the product line at the moment.
https://www.logitech.com/en-ca/product/combo-touch.html
I mean... This is why Apple users are often joked upon: Apple comes ten years late to the party and users joy and spam the web as if it brought the greatest innovation since hot water.
That sound of joy is the feature coming into mainstream tech.
There's always a huge world outside of one's bubble.
https://www.imore.com/yup-ipad-air-still-gets-24-hours-batte...
I doubt the newer iPads would perform worse.
Maybe Apple came out with iPhone ten years too late as well: not that's a great reason to make fun of Apple users, for sure.
Try doing that (adding/replacing hardware) on an iPad.
Source: 11 years at Vodafone doing mobile broadband for enterprises in a previous lifetime. It was MUCH easier with PCMCIA cards, let me tell you...
But the iPad has had a cellular option since 2010.
My iPad has a 30 day stand by time. When it is in stand by, it still gets notifications, it’s instant on, I can granular control which apps can use cellular data.
It has 10+ hours battery life, it’s light, no fan and faster than most laptops.
It’s the totality of the experience.
Anything involving moving files is much faster on mac too.
I use a mix of both now. I prefer the ipad for anything editing related, the apple pencil is much nicer to use. Also prefer it for the limited vector work I do.
One hope I have is that Apple improves the external monitor experience. With the new mouse support and hardware keyboard customizability, there are a lot more possibilities to run ipados on a larger screen. Except the ipad is stuck in a small 4:3 window on the larger screen.
One thing I really like on ipad is the shortcuts app. It’s incredibly flexible and simple for automation. Also the time tracker Timery.
The iPad (and iOS by extension) was built to have single purpose apps that work better than monolithic apps that do multiple functions. The problem was/is, getting the communication between those apps working seamlessly, which is getting better with dual screen, etc.
Today, I'm willing to bet that 90% of computer users could easily use an iPad and be happy and productive with it. This is why, in the last couple of years, development focus seemed to be iOS, iPad related.
Of course, Big Sur changes things a bit. Watching the keynote, the feeling I walked away with was 'refined.' macOS, iOS and iPad OS all got more refined and inline with each other in this release so users can jump between devices more seamlessly. I think we'll see progress move towards the Mac side of things a little bit quicker in the next few years because of the move to Apple Silicon.
And before anyone replies, yes, there are things you need a Mac for that can't be done on an iPad...yet. I do development work, so I certainly couldn't live 100% on an iPad. I'm not advocating on the Mac going away, in fact, I think Apple Silicon is going to breath new life into it.
I would argue that iphone apps are monolithic and do multiple functions. For example Booking, Airbnb and Uber all have messenger, mapping, reservation system, calendar and scheduling function...
Why I have to use dozen different messaging system? Or several maps, each with different search and overlays. I want single experience, consistent across all apps. It should respect my usability settings, theme and other tweaks.
Also Facebook split Messenger off.
And then I try to select some text on my iPhone. Also no clipboard manger.
I sometimes wonder if anyone who works at Apple ever tries to select text on an iPhone.
I would really like a proper local development environment, though. SSHing somewhere is fine... but leaves so much power on the table. It is also insane to me that Safari still can't expose the 120Hz display to Javascript.
I hope to never own another laptop. All I want is a dumb terminal, and the iPad is the best I've found.
https://blink.sh/
The iPad has become good enough that I've sold my Macbook. I still do coding and other activities that require a lot of screen real estate on my iMac Pro, but I use the iPad Pro exclusively on the road. I've found that gives me the best of both worlds - the full power and size of a desktop (as opposed to the compromises of a laptop), and the full portability and touchability of an iPad (as opposed to the compromises of a powerful laptop).
The buttery speed, lack of a howling fan, and the simplicity of apps is like a “zen mode” operating system.
It has been TEN YEARS since iPad came out and we still have nothing remotely useful.
Am I the only one who thinks that the author is showing off here.
For the price of 15 iPad setups he could have bought 100 second hand Thinkpads in great condition and his donation would have much bigger impact.
But then how would the 'disadvantaged folks' get locked into the closed-off and pricey Apple ecosystem?
I don't even understand how it could be showing off, it's just stupid.
Thinkpads would be trashed after 3 years
As the extended family’s bonafide IT admin, I looooong for the day when business apps are so effective on iOS that I can retire everyone’s W10 machine!
I keep trying to buy her a new one but she doesn’t want it, it still works fine.
Thinkpads can really last these days.
That said, nearly everyone who makes a donation could’ve done something “better” and made a bigger impact with their money.
I’m willing to roast the author for writing a boring article but not for their donation.
It is a little unusual to criticize someone who donated to the needy, just to say the donor was showing off and to point out what they could have donated instead to make a much bigger impact.
Let’s say you donated 100 Thinkpads (you should), but then you were criticized for showing off when you could have donated 5,000 meals to children who lost access to free school breakfast/lunches due to covid school closures. It’s a real issue, but you should pick and choose your battles (probably just like I should).
Well it's the same battle - it's about giving the kids access to information and an opportunity to learn coding. You can't compare that to free meals(which is of course important, but as you said it's a different battle).
Imagine you are going to a new company. The company is doing all their development work on a remote server (e.g. Visual Studio Codespaces) accessed by browser. What would you think when they give you a 5 year old, second-hand, ugly ThinkPad to you as a developer earning your $100k-$200k (or whatever a dev in California earns nowadays). The company would do the right thing, but the typical developer would be insulted. You would ask where your MacBook/Carbon X1/whatever is.
I am also not a fan of people showing off. But the act itself is still good.
It's particularly frustrating because I love the iPad. Like, it's one of the few devices I really, really, really enjoy in so many ways and I just wish it was better than it actually is. It's maybe the only device I own that I really do love. The Tab is a poor substitute and I really hate using it, but at least it fits with the rest of my tools in a sane way and gives me the freedom to customize it according to my needs.
Also, Notion. Another tool that I love the idea of, but hate the implementation. There are too many restrictions on the data model that make it frustratingly unlike any normal relational database and frustrating to use, and makes me wish somebody would just make a lightweight relational database with a friendly, practical wiki-like UI for building a knowledge base.
PowerPoint meetings on Teams, about Word and Excel docs stored on the SharePoint site.
I’m encouraged by MS’s recent moves into Linux / open source, but my gut tells me we’re a long way from properly functioning MS apps on iPad.
This is personal opinion, but I compared the Surface to the iPad pro and to me the iPad felt much more like a toy than a serious tool for getting work done.
I hate to say it, as I used to be part of the Slashdot anti M$ brigade, but they made a solid piece of hardware. The only thing I can fault it for is lack of a trackpoint; I spent too many years getting used to my fingers not leaving the home row to move the mouse.
Huh?? Does the author not know that 1P can also autocomplete with Face ID?
I'm in the same boat as the author and have been trying (slowly) to move towards using an iPad full time. Compared to a couple years ago the apps and UX have improved significantly, however, (for me) using the iPad still feels more like a very specialized tool, compared to the more general utility of a Macbook.
I realize that for general productivity the iPad works best with a keyboard attached, a mouse, external storage. Adding more hardware. But then you have a MacBook in disguise ...
I'm guessing we'll never get a Macbook with touch screen and Apple Pencil support? But it does seem like the iPad has been slowly optimizing itself to fill that role.
- LTE has been a standard feature in business laptops for decades and feels less "magical" and more like work.
- Faceid vs windows hello vs bluetooth tokens vs ... . Maybe neat, but not particularly distinct.
- Clipboard sharing. Yeah, kdeconnect is neat and apple's copy is as well.
- Apple pencil. Windows convertibles with pen have been around since windows XP and usually used pretty good pens by Wacom. The difference is that the software is more "fun", e.g. apple notes makes more use of tilt, animations etc.
- The magic keyboard is still a keyboard and start at $300. For that price one could get much better mechanical keyboards and this even makes the HHKB seem reasonably priced.
- Blink and iSH to me seem to say that the ipad is not good enough and you hence have to connect to something better.
That said, I can see that all the animations make working on an ipad feel more "fun" and the form factor and display are indeed nice.
LTE hasn’t existed for “decades”. The iPad had a cellular option since day 1 and stayed current with cellular standards.
Apple pencil. Windows convertibles with pen have been around since windows XP and usually used pretty good pens by Wacom. The difference is that the software is more "fun", e.g. apple notes makes more use of tilt, animations etc.
Pens on Windows were and still are a horrible experience.
1. Dock behaviour is a little annoying since iPhone X was released. I hate that dragging up triggers app exposé when four fingers works just fine.
2. Apple needs to kill this whole notion of syncing media libraries. I have only ever hated it.
3. If Apple wants to get serious with iPad Pro then they need to put Logic and Final Cut on it. Full versions.
4. I really hope to live and see the day when Blender is on it.
5. iPads are such exceedingly wonderful tools for self education. A large part is due to online learning in general becoming wonderful but PDF reader split view with something like good notes and using the pencil is such a joy.
6. I feel like gaming is in a sad state on iPads. I really hope that having PlayStation and Xbox gamepads working on them opens up the platform. It’s a kick in the teeth to have a portable machine which is just about as good as an Xbox one not having games to match it’s potential.
7. It’s been ten years and so many people still don’t get it. iPads are in a weird spot between power users who need more for their professional work (like CGI, developers, working with ridiculous size PS files) who understandably see them as toys and on the other side are most people who don’t use their computers for work, art, study, whatever just Facebook and Netflix. These guys would be better off with an iPad instead of a laptop but they find them too expensive anyways.
Why not just use a MacBook? Why use iPad?
I bought iPad Pro at the end of 2017 after reading various blog posts of programmers using their iPad for programming. I loved the form factor and snappiness of apps but it was pain to do real programming on it. Yes, I was using Blink shell to login to remote VPS but debugging JavaScript was tedious. I was having buyer's remorse but I kept it because I enjoyed drawing and reading on it.
However, after 2 years or so, this iPad has become my default device for my personal projects. What is crazy that iPad has changed the type of projects I start at home.
Before I was mostly focused on building webapps build using Laravel and Vuejs/Reactjs. Now most of my personal projects are command-line only such as using python/data science, algo trading. I am working on a command-line based CRM.
Going forward, I might still keep personal desktop or laptop but not upgrade as often as I used to. (unless iPad changes for worse).