As somebody who uses iPad Pro 12.9” as daily driver I don’t necessarily agree with the next steps. iPad still has a long way to go, but right now the most pressing issue at hand is the quality of 3rd party apps (yes, I’m looking at you Slack).
But it’s going to be interesting to watch the differentiation of iPad Pro vs fanless Air M1 (or later).
It is rather clear that iPad is primary a media consumption + light work (email + MS Office + ssh terminal = thin client) machine. With recent additions of Pen functionality it is also an amazing sketch book.
But proper laptop is just in the different league for productivity. I tried using my iPad with external keyboard as the primary computer when my laptop was undergoing repairs and it was bearable, but not more than that.
To answer that and above comments - it is a combination of form-factor and software limitations. Lack of adjustable hinge/base part and excessive OS sandboxing.
It's the software. The hardware of the iPad Pro is actually even better than the Macbook Air, considering the built-in cellular modem, additional camera, touch screen /w pencil support, motion sensors, two more speakers, micro-location, GPS, etc.
The processing power should be behind the Macbook (whether that's significant, I don't know), but the next iteration could close the gap. If it wasn't for iPadOS artificially limiting the use cases, I'd see an iPad Pro with detachable keyboard as superior to a Macbook for the aforementioned reasons.
I use a proper keyboard and mouse with my laptop almost exclusively (the only exception is unplanned work while traveling or content on the go).
In that sense iPad pro form factor would be a strict improvement - it's far better for casual use and I can set up a home server to SSH into for development outside of home, iOS is a deal breaker however - I need to run some tools client side.
> Is it headed toward functional parity with the Mac or will it always be hamstrung by Apple’s strict App Store policies and seemingly inconsistent investment in iPadOS?
I see this converging in two possible ways (aside from killing the iPad):
- Macs will have iOS
- iPads will have macOS
I don't see Apple giving that kind of freedom on the iPad, though.
Another possibility is Apple making some kind of 2-in-1 Macs with touch screen. The paddings they added to all kind of UI elements on macOS seems to point in this direction.
Macs being able to run iOS apps now should give you a hint of the direction where it's going.
I'm convinced a not insignificant number of people high up at Apple see the near future of the Mac as where you go to run multiple iOS apps, at least until iPads start to do that too. I think when the true next gen 14 inch MBP drops next year this will become a lot more obvious.
This is uncomfortable to think about for people who are fans of computers but just look at the profit charts and when you follow modern Apple leadership actions, Macs where they don't get a cut of software and where users do have that freedom are the anomaly and there are some extremely juicy pieces of software that side of the fence which they are currently not profiting from.
From my point of view and the whole Apple culture towards UNIX based platforms since its inception, expect "Macs will have iOS" to be the final outcome.
UNIX support was only a side-effect of NeXT's acquisition (BeOS wasn't a UNIX based OS), and a question of survival to get the geeks to rescue the company.
Besides A/UX, Apple was never serious about that market and now they are printing money, so if it doesn't need to be a proper UNIX clone, then any OS will do, including an evolution of iOS.
"Adopt a landscape-first mindset. Rotate the Apple logo on the back and move the iPad’s front-facing camera on the side beneath the Apple Pencil charger to better reflect how most people actually use their iPad Pros."
No. No. Keep the camera in portrait mode. Or add another camera (I would love the option of selecting portrait or landscape camera).
It seems like the best approach would be to put it in one of the corners. Then you could hold it in portrait or landscape without covering it with your hands.
I use my iPad for work as a collaboration device - it works great for audio and video meetings. In fact, as I type this on PC my iPad is sitting next to the monitor. All of that is most definitely "getting work done" to me.
I also find it useful if there is something I want to research or a document to read to go and sit away from my desk - I much prefer an iPad to a laptop for that kind of thing.
Indeed, I find the combination of a full sized PC and an iPad to be preferable to a laptop - which is neither as powerful and ergonomic as a full sized PC or as portable as a iPad.
edit: In fact I do have a work laptop, but I left it in the office in March and have never been back... I don't miss it!
> to charge outrageous prices for their keyboards (175€-331€ in Germany)
Those damn iPad keyboards are the thing I understand the least about anything Apple sells, pricing-wise. I accept that Apple charges higher than average prices for stuff, sometimes to an almost offensive degree.
But why is the regular keyboard case so expensive? It's a regular keyboard that's attached to a bit of plastic and fabric. Yet it's more expensive than the Apple Pencil, more expensive than the HomePod Mini, I mean christ if you're buying the entry-level iPad the keyboard adds 48% to the cost! Ridiculous.
I use my iPad complementary to my Macbook. Reading documents and taking notes with the pencil mostly. Scribbling down thoughts and concepts that sync over Onenote to my other devices.
I have no desire to use it as a Laptop replacement and am not sure why people would want that. I can acknowledge that some people use an iPad as their sole device to work which I think is fine for many, but Software Engineers have such complex usecases it's hard to make a device like the iPad be perfect for them without compromising it's main user base.
I've simultaneously watched a Netflix show in picture-in-picture, while I had AWS console open in a browser and a terminal (Blink)in split-screen and debugged a production issue with the Apple keyboard.
After the problem was managed, I just moved my Netflix show to fullscreen, flipped the keyboard back and kept enjoying my day.
It's so much better than lugging around a 15-16" monster with you.
Yes, you can't run 42 simultaneous virtual machines with databases and a kubernetes cluster on it. But most of us don't really need to - we just want to because it's cooler and it's what we've gotten used to.
>It's so much better than lugging around a 15-16" monster with you.
Exactly, but not everyone works on a remote machine. I would love to work on an iPad but can’t because Apple thinks those kind of apps don’t belong on an iPad. There’s no actual technical reason why I can’t compile code on an iPad. Imagine not being able to put groceries in a Porsche because the manufacturer doesn’t like the look of it.
Then the iPad isn't for you. Over the years it has picked up a bunch of new capabilities and fits a wider range of tasks, but it's definitely not a general computing device.
Like the Porsche 911 is a great car, but it can't fit a family of four. That doesn't mean it's a crappy car, it's just not for me.
The Porsche not fitting a family of four is a technical restriction. The iPad not running arbitrary software (within the bounds of the sandbox) are a political restriction.
Software developers are essential for a healthy eco system. Without them, there are no applications which utilize the device. Yes, there is a lot of software development for the iPad, but it is always limited because you have to write applications on a completely different system than you are targetting for. And it is limited by what applications you are allowed to write.
But even graver are the consequences for first time computer users. When I grew up, I learned computing with machines which would have at least a basic when delivered. I had the ability to do programming and understand what a "computer" is. Children, which today grow up with iPads are actively prevented of having that great learning experience. The Apple ad "What is a computer?" on the one side is brilliant marketing, on the other side is outright scary.
Yes, so what? There is a programming tutorial app for the iPad. That is nice. But that isn't to be mistaken for a programming environment, where you can develop to your hearts desire.
Can I develop freely full screen applications with the Swift playground? Can I share the results with my friends?
Yeah I’m no artist but I bought an iPad primarily as a reader + a notebook + a drawing device and it does those things really well. There’s a lot of criticism from devs but we just aren’t the target market for this device. The market seems to be university students, artists & creatives, a whole host of professions like architects/engineers/tradespeople who take it out in the field, and people looking to consume media.
For me, my criticism of the iPad and MacBook is now I have roughly the same hardware twice for different purposes.
My iPad Pro (12.9in) does iPad stuff great, and my 13 inch MacBook Air does MacBook stuff great.
But they both have roughly the same processor, power and form factor (once a keyboard is added). The only meaningful differences are that the iPad can undock from the keyboard, the iPad supports Pencil and the OS is different.
OSX running on iPad with the same processor as the Air would actually be great, considering the magic keyboard is so good.
If I could instantly change between OS's I wouldn't need to lug around both devices. Better still, if the OS could be designed to support both modes in an integrated way, it would knock everything else out of the water even more.
Apple will probably never do that. They are probably painfully aware than iPad Pro and Macbook Air feature set and use cases overlap but as long as they keep each of them sufficiently different,they can sell you a laptop and a tablet.
Why would they cannibalize their own products while they face no competition in the tablet market?
> Why would they cannibalize their own products while they face no competition in the tablet market?
Because if you have a better product that nobody can compete with you can raise your margin and solidify/expand your market position.
You are describing a strategy that normally leads to long term market loss - "Why should we stream movies to the TV? That would only be cannibalising our excellent DVD rental business".
> You are describing a strategy that normally leads to long term market loss
That's not the same thing. Your example is leaving aside an entire new market to protect an existing one. That would be shortsighted.
Here however there is no new market which Apple is missing. Pushing the iPad, a revenue leader in the high-end tablet segment, towards the Macbook Air, a revenue leader in the high-end ultraportable segment, would only make them compete. Unless you need to prevent a competitor from making inroad in one of these markets, that's just losing revenue.
As long as the iPad Pro seems to be a suffisent answer to the Surface line, Apple really has little reason to go further.
> Your example is leaving aside an entire new market to protect an existing one.
The new market is the combined tablet/laptop market, and you are leaving it aside to protect your existing separate tablet/laptop businesses with an inferior product to maintain sales.
Businesses can either protect their existing products that are "good enough", or they can be consumer-centric and keep pushing forwards to create the best products. The second strategy will usually beat the first in the long term.
It's not really the same hardware. It's similar hardware but with significant variations in power budget, RAM and disk size, connectivity, and so on.
This matters because the iPad electronics have to fit behind the screen, while the MacBook electronics live under the keyboard.
To make a PadMac the entire Mac electronics would have to fit behind a thicker unclippable screen, and the keyboard would have to be slimmed down to compensate.
Or perhaps the screen would be accessible over WiFi or even Bluetooth - but that would also affect the power budget and would have other issues. (Is a removable screen as useful as an iPad? Mostly, no.)
Building reliable clip/unclip connections would be an interesting problem.
It could probably be done, and I would be surprised if it hasn't already been tried.
But it's certainly not a trivial engineering challenge, especially given power and cost constraints.
The hardware already exists - it's the iPad Pro 12.9 inch with a Magic Keyboard.
There is very little difference in hardware:
* RAM - 6GB (iPad) vs 8GB base (MacBook Air), although memory chips are tiny and Android phones have 12gb, so I do not see there being a significant limit here.
* Processor - Approximately the same (M1 is basically the A14).
* Connectivity - Both have WiFi only as base, iPad offers 4G.
* Disk size - 128 GB base with options up to 1TB (iPad) vs 256 gb Base with options up to 1 TB (MacBook Air)
* Battery - 10,000 mAh (iPad Pro), and I cannot find the battery of the latest Mac Air but previous models have had 5,500 mah.
So we aren't talking huge differences in spec. In fact it seems that the iPad can fit more in - probably because it doesn't need to include a keyboard which undoubtedly is responsible for a lot of the thickness.
> Building reliable clip/unclip connections would be an interesting problem.
Apple has already solved this for iPad - the Magic Keyboard is brilliant (although not cheap!). Additionally an iPad + Magic Keyboard is actually somewhat thicker than a Macbook pro, which highlights why the Macbook Air is probably thicker than the base iPad (rather than spec).
>Apple has already solved this for iPad - the Magic Keyboard is brilliant (although not cheap!).
It really doesn't work for my use case; admittedly my model is probably older. But when I use a laptop, especially when traveling, I grab it and move it around the room, work on my lap, etc. Unless a removable keyboard and screen are attached in a way that is virtually indistinguishable from a laptop, I'm not really interested.
> It really doesn't work for my use case; admittedly my model is probably older.
That might be one of the older 'smart keyboards' which didn't really work unless you were on a flat table, and the keys weren't brilliant
The new magic keyboard is much more self-supporting like a laptop - the only thing that makes it unsuitable sometimes is that it's quite top heavy, despite the base itself being pretty heavy to act as a counterweight.
The design of the new iPad has a "floating" arm just to try and move the centre of gravity forward from the base, as a traditional laptop hinge won't really work with the weight on top.
It sounds like it's better but I probably still wouldn't like it. I definitely know people who are more tolerant than I am about not just being able to grab a laptop and immediately use it in just about any position. In most circumstances, I'm happy enough to carry both when traveling.
Fair enough, the one thing it requires is that the base is kept on a reasonably flat incline (ie it’s fine on your lap if you are sitting, but not if you are reclining on a sofa with your knees up).
Each to their own. It works better for me personally, because usually if I’m in a position where the keyboard isn’t suitable, it’s better to rip the iPad out of the keyboard and use it as a tablet. It’s held on with magnets so it’s pretty satisfying to rip it off anyway
I don’t know if it’s most people, but it’s probably a lot of people on Hacker News.
A friend reminded me only a very small percentage of people in the world are programmers. It’s easy to forget that when almost everyone I work with daily is a programmer. The iPad is amazing in many ways, some of which are not meaningful or visible to people immersed in software development.
Maybe it's because I did a bit of embedded development (a long time ago mind you) - but I've never felt the urge to develop software on every device I own. Developing software for devices - absolutely, but on every device - definitely not.
And, while converged/all-in-one devices are attractive, they're rarely without compromises. Sure, an iPhone pulls in a lot of function from what used to be standalone devices and those functions are usually good enough for many people, possibly screen size trade-offs notwithstanding.
But from my (and only my) perspective, computers are relatively cheap enough that I don't mind having a number of them optimized for different tasks--one of which is an iPad for mostly consumption mostly for when I'm traveling.
iPads are killer for audio and drawing. Had a full Android devotee flip over to iOS just because the iPad slapped around the Android tablet initially bought both in terms of performance as well as apps.
I like to have one in the studio as well, as an oscilloscope, sequencer, to control my mix while not in front of the computer, as a software synthesizer and on and on and on.
Apple should really converge the ipad and macbook. Having something like a surface book where there's a laptop/desktop experience with a thin, light, detachable touchscreen and full desktop software would be really nice.
They’re two different worlds though. The world of precision input devices (keyboard/mouse) and relative openness (to running/developing software) and then the world of imprecise fat-finger touch input and the walled-garden landgrab.
So far not even Apple has figured out how to make genuinely complex/feature-rich UIs (think Photoshop, XCode, Maya) work on a touchscreen device. Their best solution so far seems to be adding a keyboard and pointing device in the form of the Pencil.
"Move the iPad’s front-facing camera on the side beneath the Apple Pencil charger to better reflect how most people actually use their iPad Pros" - this! Face ID on iPad is really convenient, except the way I usually hold my iPad (landscape, with the pencil at the top) means that the front camera is more-often-than-not blocked when I want to unlock it. I rarely use it portrait so it seems a strange decision.
Interesting post, I too have been wondering how the Macbook and iPad (Pro, especially) will co-exist in future. It seems inevitable that touch will come to the Macbook in some form in the next few years, and with the M1 it sounds like Apple are able to make thin, light laptops that don't run hot or burn through battery, removing a few of the key differentiators between the iPad and laptops.
I do really like using the iPad for consumption and for some creation (music making, photo editing), but for any "serious" work I still find it frustrating at best (editing documents etc.), impossible at worst (development). The hardware is very capable, but the question is how they develop iPadOS to support these use cases without treading too much on the Macs toes - or will the two ultimately merge?
I disagree with the premise. Now that laptops have the same performance and battery life, iPad is freed from having to be the laptop and can continue to develop its productive capability in the areas where focused touch and stylus work either outperform or result in different creative expression.
That's a very interesting take on it actually. The iPad does excel, for me, in the areas where it offers a unique approach (as well as a consumption/browsing device).
Music making is a great example, there's a whole unique ecosystem and way of working which has developed on iPad which doesn't really exist anywhere else.
It's still somewhat tricky to see how e.g. a touch-screen Macbook which can run iPad apps, and an iPad Pro, differentiate themselves a few years down the line though I think.
There are some great points in the comments here. Regardless of where mac and iPad end up, one thing is clear to me: Apple needs to add touchscreens to the macbook line if they want that line to live on with the next generation. I didn't always think this way, so hear me out.
One of my kids has an expensive macbook. They don't use it because they have a cheap chromebook provided by their school that is underpowered and has poor battery life -- but it has a touchscreen! That seems like a terrible trade off to me, but kids these days expect every screen to be a touchscreen and when it comes time for them to buy their own laptop, they will buy the one that has a touchscreen.
I have a ThinkPad with a touchscreen and an i7, I am really considering to switch to a MacBook with a M1 but the lack of touchscreen is a problem. I really like the touchscreen when I use it. The MacBook pro touchbar is a joke compared to a touchscreen.
Slightly off-topic, but I've not seen the kind of commenting system shown at the bottom of the article before. You are invited to write up a response elsewhere on the web including a link to the article, and then post your URL in. It's a bit like a manual-pingback. It seems a good idea in principle, but would anyone actually bother?
The iPad works fine as it is. And I think the base ipad and/or the ipad air are perfectly and totally fine for the kind of work that most people would do there (reading, annotating, some video watching). iPad Pros were useful once (when the basic ipad was a bit underpowered or had a worse screen, or no pencil support), but now their existence doesn't seem so necessary to me (of course, it's the usual Pro thing: maybe a lot of people don't feel the need for a Mac Pro, and yet some people scream they TOTALLY want such a thing).
I think the iPad and the iPad Air are here to stay. I couldn't swear about the iPad Pro. I'd really like to hear from iPad Pro power-users - what's something that you can only get in a Pro?
For me at this point, it's just the screen size. Personally I think once you get used to the 12.9", any other size feels too small, especially if you are doing anything creative like photo editing or music making.
Right now diff between Air vs Pro is limited. For me the only noticeable thing is ProMotion (120Hz). Can't say 2 GB of additional RAM is seen somewhere as big differentiator.
Screen size is the largest differentiator between the Pro and standard iPads.
I got a first gen iPad Pro (back in 2015!) and it's still running smoothly to this day. It runs the latest iPadOS. Meanwhile, my co-workers and family iPads have all failed, broken, or become obsolete several times since then.
My partner has a job which involves reading lots of documents, taking notes and then reading/sending emails. The iPad Pro is more comfortable than the rest of the range for split screen mode. The notes can all be written with the pencil and then the iPad can be easily attached to a keyboard for when you need to send long emails.
> Introduce Gatekeeper and app notarization for iOS. The process of side-loading apps should not be as simple as downloading them from the App Store. Bury it in Settings, make it slightly convoluted, whatever: just have an officially-sanctioned way of doing it.
> Ruthlessly purge the App Store Guidelines of anything that prevents the iPad from serving as a development machine. Every kind of development from web to games should be possible on an iPad. And speaking of games—emulators should be allowed, too.
No.
I am uncertain and unclear why a single company should have a monopoly on what we can and can't install on a general-purpose computational device. When the iPhone was first launched, it was launched into a world where carriers controlled what could be installed on phones due to a combination of contracts and the difficulty of developing for the environment. The "computers" in the early smartphones were, essentially, embedded systems with a rudimentary operating system on top. You couldn't do much of anything with them, so most people didn't try.
Until Apple came along and brought OS X to the iPhone, that was the original promise. iOS was OS X on a phone, with all the great "APIs" and features that it indicated. However, Jobs wanted to keep it locked down with web apps being the only way out. AT&T were pleased with that arrangement and gave them a good deal.
iPhone was a hit, and Apple had a crisis. They wanted to open up the phone to devs. Jobs said no. Jobs kept saying no until the App Store was created as a sort of compromise. In hindsight, this compromise ended up being a spigot of "free" cash, giving Apple the ability to control 30% of all revenue flowing through 1 Billion installed devices. If the average owner spends only $10/yr, Apple makes $3Bn per year, essentially for "free" on top of the generous profit margins of their devices and services.
Smartphones have grown up since then. Moore's law has turned embedded machines into full-fledged computers, with the ability to rival desktops. And yet we're still stuck in this paradigm. Why?
Why should we accept this as the way it should be?
It hurts people like Becky and me. For smaller, indie businesses, 15% to 30% of your revenue going to a cut on a platform with little-to-no-oversight and extensive content restrictions means that several things are already off the table, and small businesses have to sell a third more to make the same amount.
It hurts the users. An adult can't download and enjoy age-appropriate games on their phone because Apple says so.
If they live in an oppressive regime, they can't use their phone for dissent because Apple lets their oppressors say so.
Programmers and artists can't use their tools the way they want on computers they have bought and owned because Apple says so.
Consumers with an artistic streak can't customize their phones because Apple says so.
iOS users get a degraded experience for common apps because Apple says so.
Apple jealously gatekeeps features, making several iOS apps either one or two updates behind their Android counterparts, or lacking in feature parity.
Why should we - the users, creators, developers, and artists - pay a tax to a company that is acting against our interest and is locking up a computer we've bought with our hard-earned money? Why should we live in a world where Becky has to give 30% of her income to Apple as tithe? And I have to live with what little Apple allows into the store?
Why should my creativity be limited by some corporate jockey sitting in Cupertino?
So, No.
We need to dream bigger. We need to set these computers free.
Developers freedom always seems to boil down to messing with me. HP wants to install some drivers for its USB 3 hub, what could go wrong? Some game wants to install DRM protection what could go wrong? Chrome wants to turn on webcam support, what could go wrong?
There is no responsibility in the software world, and that’s totally fine, Linux is nice! But even as a developer... I don’t trust us nor our incitements. If Apple wants to be a cop that’s fine by me, the results speak for themselves.
No Whatsapp you can’t have my contacts, go away! ;)
Developers freedom doesn't automatically mean full "root" access to the device for any app. That indeed is something, I wouldn't like. Applications are sandboxed, and Apple should just defend those sandboxes. So Whatsapp cannot access your contacts unless the system allows it to, after asking the user. An App cannot just install printer drivers either.
But inside that guarded sandbox, Apps should be basically free to do. Apple shouldn't be able to ban an App because they don't want to have a development environment in it.
Yeah, but then the developers start to require that the users give access, and when the users are fragmented they are weak. A good example of this is WeChat that will require that the users give the contacts on Android but will not require it in iOS because Apple didn’t allow those shenanigans.
I would prefer if smartphones and tablets would finally make the push to become desktop/laptop replacements. Microsoft tried it with the Windows Phone. Samsung and Huawei still have desktop modes in their phones.
Google kinda explored the idea in some developer settings but the Pixel phones don't even support HDMI out via USB-C.
Just like the Nintendo Switch allows us to play video games on the go and on the big screen with one device, I want to finally have a smartphone / tablet which makes a laptop obsolete.
Just plug it into a dock and start using a monitor, mouse and keyboard. It appears, that apples performance boost makes it more feasible than ever now.
that's a really neat and plausible idea. i could imagine a case where the mbp essentially becomes a glorified shell for the iphone to dock into, and provides a large battery, keypad, speakers, and a screen without any of the core computer innards.
It makes sense in theory, but it's always going to be a lot less performance than having a device specifically designed for what you need. M1 is great because it fulfils that specific need.
unless you could somehow leverage distributed computing. for instance, the shell "laptop" has a couple cores that can seamlessly modularly enhance the capabilities of the phone. I don't believe such a functionality exists as of yet.
I think if anything is becoming clear from apple’s new direction it’s that putting everything on the same chip is a lot faster! I guess one thing you could do is have a chip that’s potentially faster in the phone and have better cooling in the laptop but even that seems kinda pointless with the air having no fan anyway.
I can’t see apple doing this ever, it’s just too messy for them!
This is a product category that kind of exists. There are companies like https://nexdock.com making these "lapdocks" that work with phones, but also with things like Raspberry Pis. And then there are dozens of Chinese clones on AliExpress.
I'm personally using DeX (Samsung's desktop mode) on daily basis. It is a bit clunky, but better than owning, maintaining, and carrying a second big device. The "real computer" on my desk has only work stuff on it, and all my open source development etc. happens in DeX, mainly via the Termux app.
>Just like the Nintendo Switch allows us to play video games on the go and on the big screen with one device, I want to finally have a smartphone / tablet which makes a laptop obsolete.
Considering how underpowered the Switch is when compared to consoles that came out years before it, I'm not really sold on this idea. If you want to get a full experience in any game that requires performance, you're not really getting it on the Switch. There's even some Switch exclusive games that have pretty significant performance issues, like the Xenoblades remaster that might dip down to 540p even when docked. Really, the only thing that the Switch replaced was the Nintendo 3DS.
As with computers in general, it depends on the use case. The Switch is definitively underpowered compared to other consoles or a gaming PC. The competition offers a better at-home experience in AAA games.
But for many indie games and first party titles, I enjoy the flexibility. I don't have to sync data. I can take it to friends and plug it into their dock.
A hybrid desktop smartphone / tablet with the correct ecosystem will offer a worse performance than pure desktop systems. But for most users, it will probably be good enough to browse the web, edit photos and play some games.
>Nintendo has survived this long by not focusing on console wars for AAA titles.
Nintendo has a shorter history in consumer electronics than Sony and considering how badly the Wii U went down, I'm not sure if "surviving this long" means the same as Nintendo knows what they are doing. If you compare the sales projections and actual sales of the Wii U, it's pretty clear that they didn't understand the market at all.
Oven if they allow development tools, I think they will still only allow Safari/Webkit for some reasons which will make the iPad not the best platform to develop on for many developers.
I think Apple was right in that sense that just throwing MacOS onto the iPad would have been the right thing. Especially back then, MacOS would have been a very bad fit UI-wise, Big Sur makes a few steps towards the iPad now.
But that doesn't mean that people shouldn't get more flexibility in using the iPad.
I couldn't agree more with this article. I have been an iPad owner since I got the very first iPad on the day it was released and I am owning a 13" iPad Pro for 4 years now. I have always considered the iPad as an extremels faszinating hardware experience. But its actual use always seems to be constrained by the software.
Indeed, it was always rumored how powerful the processor of the iPad must be, as little things are slow on that machine. But it wasn't widely acknowledged, as very few big software packages are running on the iPad. Count the percentage of software on the Mac which doesn't sell via the App Store and one might get an estimate, what the iPad is missing out. Partially, this has fiscal reasons, avoiding the revenue share with Apple,
but a lot has to do with the App Store restrictions.
There are far too many applications which are restricted or outrightly banned by the app store. When I started computing, a computer would come with an implementation of basic. You could immediately start programming on that computer. In my case it was the C64, for others MS Basic on DOS. Not even that exists on the iPad. There are a very few IDEs, which constantly have to avoid being too useful to prevent being banned. To big the danger for Apple seems, if you manage to write an useful App on the iPad without going through the App Store.
Imagine a full featured Python or just Basic, which allows you to write programs with full screen graphics als full user interaction on the iPad. Imagine, if someone ported Squeak as an iPad app. It could perfectly run the whole environment inside the App, this would be a great experience. Imagine running a Lisp machine as an App.
On the technical side, the iPad needs more memory. If it is meant as a "Pro" machine, it should have 8Gb of RAM, optionally 16. But most importantly, a limited form of swap should be introduced. Limiting the active memory of a single app to the available system memory makes sense, but the more complex an application becomes, the less it is acceptable to kill the process just because the user switches to another App. Even on the fastest machine, restoring the state might not be possible fast enough. This can eliminate a wide range of application. Instead, deactivated applications should be swapped out. So the swap would just allow them to run without interruptions.
There is already a thriving ecosystem of very powerful development apps on iOS.
Pythonista is a full copy of Python 2.7 and 3.x, with an IDE, links to the GUI APIs and even a basic visual GUI designer for the iPad and iPhone. You can sync your scripts source code with Macs and other iOS devices through iCloud.
There are several others for different languages, but I think these are the most mature. Some of these have even been used to publish apps on the App Store, by dropping the code into a Python or Lua app container project in XCode. You can also integrate them with Git from iOS using an App called Working Copy.
> 4. Ruthlessly purge the App Store Guidelines of anything that prevents the iPad from serving as a development machine. Every kind of development from web to games should be possible on an iPad. And speaking of games—emulators should be allowed, too.
#4 is fundamentally incompatible with the walled garden and becoming a dev device under your full control, and makes the author seem a little bit in fantasy land.
The whole point of iPad and iPhone's controls are to prevent unsupervised, uncontrolled usage of the device. Apple is going to let you have unrestricted access to the cell phone chip and radio?
iPads are for artists, designers, some creative professionals.
Macs are for developers and hackers. It's pick one or the other. I for one hope that the Macs don't go further in the direction of iPads at least, and take away yet more control. I doubt they will let iPads go in the direction of Macs.
No, it isn't fundamentally incompatible. It is a prefect reasonal requirement for an App Store app to be checked for security and sticking to the sandbox. Which by the way the operation system should enforce. An App should only be able to see the filesystem which belongs to its sandbox and shared forlders. Equally, any direct access to the hardware should be prohibited by the OS, and usually Unix systems are pretty good about that.
The App Store review should only check whether an App is a security risk, perform any malware functionality behind the back of the user. But the review shouldn't cover what kind of App Apple likes. A fully sandboxes IDE should be possible. A local shell should be possible, when limited to the applications sandbox.
> You think Apple is going to let you have unrestricted access to the cell phone chip and radio?
I mean, why not? At least why not to the level it's already possible on other kinds of machines? I can stick an LTE modem into my laptop and the world hasn't ended yet.
#4 is fundamentally incompatible with the walled garden and becoming a dev device under your full control, and makes the author seem a little bit in fantasy land.
The whole point of iPad and iPhone's controls are to prevent unsupervised, uncontrolled usage of the device. Apple is going to let you have unrestricted access to the cell phone chip and radio?
I thought this for a long time. Then recently I heard another argument here on HN: the purpose of these draconian anti-development rules is to prevent bait-and-switch apps from existing. That is, apps that behave one way under App Store review and then completely change behaviour after normal users purchase them. Think: Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal type stuff.
I'm just waiting for their competitors to catch up and take advantage of the ecosystem shift - Microsoft already had their ARM SoC tablet (I think with Qualcomm) so they will eventually move to 5nm - nobody really wanted to release ARM versions for that because Microsoft has way less pull with app devs - but if they can deliver M1 level performance in a generation and most of the software is ARM ready - I won't care that there's a M2 MacBook out there - because it's still not going to be the form factor I prefer for my mobile device and it still won't run MacOS on iPad Pro.
The iPad is fine. Don't be upset because you fell for Apple's "what's a computer" marketing. It's not meant to be a proper work device, you can't do much real work outside of email and word processing.
Every tattoo artist I've seen uses an iPad to sketch out their designs. It's a very good tool for an artist.
Most people are using iPads as media consumption, which is what they're very good for. Long battery life, high quality display, it's great.
The iPad Pro is just a better iPad. It never became any better at doing anything just because it was really powerful. It's still just locked to iPad OS.
The writer of this article wants a touch screen Mac. The iPad Pro will likely pivot to being this now that the M1 chips exist. Either that or Apple will keep it around and just make a touch screen Mac. But either way, the iPad will always be an iPad. If you want work done, get a real computer!
I picked up a 12.9 Pro early last year to try and find new ways of working, not just trying to reproduce the laptop experience on an iPad, which seems to be one stream of effort from many people. And it worked, it was an incredibly collaborative device that could be passed around, drawn on, and used effectively in group settings.
It enables things that are simply not possible on a laptop, and as the platform matures, that will hopefully become more obvious. One standout app for me is Concepts.app, allows me to draw and diagram and demo all in one go. It helped improve team and client relationships straight away. Admittedly, this method of working has vanished completely with remote, but I hope to get back to on-site and face-to-face working next year sometime.
There's something I really want from my iPad: support for custom keyboard layouts for attached keyboards. Mine is currently unsupported, so as soon as I need to type something I need to put it away and use another device, even if the iPad would be totally up to the job otherwise. Say, replying to emails or writing some sort of rough draft.
I work as management consultant and the iPad+Apple Pencil+OneNote combination has been a game changer for my workflow. No need to have tons of paper notebooks to take notes during meetings (and then misplace 2 months into the project), no need to print powerpoint or pdf presentations or documents to make comments for the rest of the team. The OneNote app works really well and syncs perfectly with my windows 10 laptop (and my macbook pro for personal use). I haven't found another compelling use for it (I wouldn't use it to make powerpoint presentations, nor excel spreadsheets; i could use it for text documents in MS Word, but the full keyboard of a laptop and far superior trackpads make this a non-starter). For emails, the phone is good enough if i need to reply on the go. All this to say that how fitting an instrument is to your work depends on the kind of work you do. From what I have seen, graphic designers and artists have embraced the iPad. Do software developers really crave a touch-first instrument that is barely more portable than a MBP 13"?
> Do software developers really crave a touch-first instrument that is barely more portable than a MBP 13"?
I don't know about the need for touch-first, but I can certainly see where the blog post is coming from.
It's not so much about what the iPad can do, it's more about what it cannot do and that there's no technical reason for its limitations.
It's kind of pointless to have two separate device classes when there's no technical difference between them anymore. Before the release of the M1 laptop and Mac Mini it could have been argued that the more traditional machines were more powerful and expandable.
But there's literally no difference between the hardware of a Macbook, Mac Mini, and iPad Pro apart from peripherals (e.g. screen, keyboard, touchpad). Why would a developer even need two devices when the laptop runs the same hardware and is only missing things (modem, touch screen, sensors, cameras)?
> But there's literally no difference between the hardware of a Macbook, Mac Mini, and iPad Pro apart from peripherals (e.g. screen, keyboard, touchpad).
screen, keyboard, trackpad, touch screen ports, are A LOT of what defines the hardware. It is clearly not only chipset and RAM.
> Why would a developer even need two devices when the laptop runs the same hardware and is only missing things (modem, touch screen, sensors, cameras)?
Maybe they don't need two devices in the first place. Isn't a MBP a very capable, portable, software development device? If the issue is that moving around with a MBP13 and an iPadPro with keyboard is cumbersome / heavy, then maybe the MBP plus the cheapest iPad with no keyboard would be more bearable and cover most of the use cases? Maybe the MPB and the iPhone can cover enough use cases.
I think my point is that the reasoning around iPadpro and MBP should not be that they are in principle equally powerful, so they should allow me to do the same things equally well, rather than the two have distinctive hardware features (form, keyboard, ports...) that make one better suited than the other for specific tasks. Whether I value these specific tasks enough to buy both, depends on my personal needs (and cash reserves)
> Isn't a MBP a very capable, portable, software development device?
It's the other way around: isn't the iPad Pro an even more capable and portable software development device? That's my whole point, especially since now you could develop iPad (non-pro) software seamlessly on the device without the need for testing on external hardware (since it already has all the bits and bobs contrary to the MBP).
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadBut it’s going to be interesting to watch the differentiation of iPad Pro vs fanless Air M1 (or later).
But proper laptop is just in the different league for productivity. I tried using my iPad with external keyboard as the primary computer when my laptop was undergoing repairs and it was bearable, but not more than that.
The processing power should be behind the Macbook (whether that's significant, I don't know), but the next iteration could close the gap. If it wasn't for iPadOS artificially limiting the use cases, I'd see an iPad Pro with detachable keyboard as superior to a Macbook for the aforementioned reasons.
In that sense iPad pro form factor would be a strict improvement - it's far better for casual use and I can set up a home server to SSH into for development outside of home, iOS is a deal breaker however - I need to run some tools client side.
I see this converging in two possible ways (aside from killing the iPad):
- Macs will have iOS
- iPads will have macOS
I don't see Apple giving that kind of freedom on the iPad, though.
Another possibility is Apple making some kind of 2-in-1 Macs with touch screen. The paddings they added to all kind of UI elements on macOS seems to point in this direction.
I'm convinced a not insignificant number of people high up at Apple see the near future of the Mac as where you go to run multiple iOS apps, at least until iPads start to do that too. I think when the true next gen 14 inch MBP drops next year this will become a lot more obvious.
This is uncomfortable to think about for people who are fans of computers but just look at the profit charts and when you follow modern Apple leadership actions, Macs where they don't get a cut of software and where users do have that freedom are the anomaly and there are some extremely juicy pieces of software that side of the fence which they are currently not profiting from.
UNIX support was only a side-effect of NeXT's acquisition (BeOS wasn't a UNIX based OS), and a question of survival to get the geeks to rescue the company.
Besides A/UX, Apple was never serious about that market and now they are printing money, so if it doesn't need to be a proper UNIX clone, then any OS will do, including an evolution of iOS.
No. No. Keep the camera in portrait mode. Or add another camera (I would love the option of selecting portrait or landscape camera).
What about camera location as a configuration option at time of purchse?
The iPad, and iPhone for that matter, are already available in a variety of sizes, another hardware configuration doesn't seem implausible.
And did you see that video from that person who put the headphone jack back in?
Edit to add reference: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/7/16267418/sc...
Apple's decisions to
- block certain types of apps (development) and
- to charge outrageous prices for their keyboards (175€-331€ in Germany)
appear to be the biggest issues.
I also find it useful if there is something I want to research or a document to read to go and sit away from my desk - I much prefer an iPad to a laptop for that kind of thing.
Indeed, I find the combination of a full sized PC and an iPad to be preferable to a laptop - which is neither as powerful and ergonomic as a full sized PC or as portable as a iPad.
edit: In fact I do have a work laptop, but I left it in the office in March and have never been back... I don't miss it!
Those damn iPad keyboards are the thing I understand the least about anything Apple sells, pricing-wise. I accept that Apple charges higher than average prices for stuff, sometimes to an almost offensive degree.
But why is the regular keyboard case so expensive? It's a regular keyboard that's attached to a bit of plastic and fabric. Yet it's more expensive than the Apple Pencil, more expensive than the HomePod Mini, I mean christ if you're buying the entry-level iPad the keyboard adds 48% to the cost! Ridiculous.
After the problem was managed, I just moved my Netflix show to fullscreen, flipped the keyboard back and kept enjoying my day.
It's so much better than lugging around a 15-16" monster with you.
Yes, you can't run 42 simultaneous virtual machines with databases and a kubernetes cluster on it. But most of us don't really need to - we just want to because it's cooler and it's what we've gotten used to.
Exactly, but not everyone works on a remote machine. I would love to work on an iPad but can’t because Apple thinks those kind of apps don’t belong on an iPad. There’s no actual technical reason why I can’t compile code on an iPad. Imagine not being able to put groceries in a Porsche because the manufacturer doesn’t like the look of it.
Like the Porsche 911 is a great car, but it can't fit a family of four. That doesn't mean it's a crappy car, it's just not for me.
I'm kind of astonished realizing that most people think "Apple has struggled to craft a cohesive, compelling narrative for the iPad".
But even graver are the consequences for first time computer users. When I grew up, I learned computing with machines which would have at least a basic when delivered. I had the ability to do programming and understand what a "computer" is. Children, which today grow up with iPads are actively prevented of having that great learning experience. The Apple ad "What is a computer?" on the one side is brilliant marketing, on the other side is outright scary.
Can I develop freely full screen applications with the Swift playground? Can I share the results with my friends?
Edit: a person with no specified gender
My iPad Pro (12.9in) does iPad stuff great, and my 13 inch MacBook Air does MacBook stuff great.
But they both have roughly the same processor, power and form factor (once a keyboard is added). The only meaningful differences are that the iPad can undock from the keyboard, the iPad supports Pencil and the OS is different.
OSX running on iPad with the same processor as the Air would actually be great, considering the magic keyboard is so good.
If I could instantly change between OS's I wouldn't need to lug around both devices. Better still, if the OS could be designed to support both modes in an integrated way, it would knock everything else out of the water even more.
Why would they cannibalize their own products while they face no competition in the tablet market?
Because if you have a better product that nobody can compete with you can raise your margin and solidify/expand your market position.
You are describing a strategy that normally leads to long term market loss - "Why should we stream movies to the TV? That would only be cannibalising our excellent DVD rental business".
That's not the same thing. Your example is leaving aside an entire new market to protect an existing one. That would be shortsighted.
Here however there is no new market which Apple is missing. Pushing the iPad, a revenue leader in the high-end tablet segment, towards the Macbook Air, a revenue leader in the high-end ultraportable segment, would only make them compete. Unless you need to prevent a competitor from making inroad in one of these markets, that's just losing revenue.
As long as the iPad Pro seems to be a suffisent answer to the Surface line, Apple really has little reason to go further.
The new market is the combined tablet/laptop market, and you are leaving it aside to protect your existing separate tablet/laptop businesses with an inferior product to maintain sales.
Businesses can either protect their existing products that are "good enough", or they can be consumer-centric and keep pushing forwards to create the best products. The second strategy will usually beat the first in the long term.
This matters because the iPad electronics have to fit behind the screen, while the MacBook electronics live under the keyboard.
To make a PadMac the entire Mac electronics would have to fit behind a thicker unclippable screen, and the keyboard would have to be slimmed down to compensate.
Or perhaps the screen would be accessible over WiFi or even Bluetooth - but that would also affect the power budget and would have other issues. (Is a removable screen as useful as an iPad? Mostly, no.)
Building reliable clip/unclip connections would be an interesting problem.
It could probably be done, and I would be surprised if it hasn't already been tried.
But it's certainly not a trivial engineering challenge, especially given power and cost constraints.
There is very little difference in hardware:
* RAM - 6GB (iPad) vs 8GB base (MacBook Air), although memory chips are tiny and Android phones have 12gb, so I do not see there being a significant limit here.
* Processor - Approximately the same (M1 is basically the A14).
* Connectivity - Both have WiFi only as base, iPad offers 4G.
* Disk size - 128 GB base with options up to 1TB (iPad) vs 256 gb Base with options up to 1 TB (MacBook Air)
* Battery - 10,000 mAh (iPad Pro), and I cannot find the battery of the latest Mac Air but previous models have had 5,500 mah.
So we aren't talking huge differences in spec. In fact it seems that the iPad can fit more in - probably because it doesn't need to include a keyboard which undoubtedly is responsible for a lot of the thickness.
> Building reliable clip/unclip connections would be an interesting problem.
Apple has already solved this for iPad - the Magic Keyboard is brilliant (although not cheap!). Additionally an iPad + Magic Keyboard is actually somewhat thicker than a Macbook pro, which highlights why the Macbook Air is probably thicker than the base iPad (rather than spec).
It really doesn't work for my use case; admittedly my model is probably older. But when I use a laptop, especially when traveling, I grab it and move it around the room, work on my lap, etc. Unless a removable keyboard and screen are attached in a way that is virtually indistinguishable from a laptop, I'm not really interested.
That might be one of the older 'smart keyboards' which didn't really work unless you were on a flat table, and the keys weren't brilliant
The new magic keyboard is much more self-supporting like a laptop - the only thing that makes it unsuitable sometimes is that it's quite top heavy, despite the base itself being pretty heavy to act as a counterweight.
The design of the new iPad has a "floating" arm just to try and move the centre of gravity forward from the base, as a traditional laptop hinge won't really work with the weight on top.
Each to their own. It works better for me personally, because usually if I’m in a position where the keyboard isn’t suitable, it’s better to rip the iPad out of the keyboard and use it as a tablet. It’s held on with magnets so it’s pretty satisfying to rip it off anyway
A friend reminded me only a very small percentage of people in the world are programmers. It’s easy to forget that when almost everyone I work with daily is a programmer. The iPad is amazing in many ways, some of which are not meaningful or visible to people immersed in software development.
But from my (and only my) perspective, computers are relatively cheap enough that I don't mind having a number of them optimized for different tasks--one of which is an iPad for mostly consumption mostly for when I'm traveling.
I like to have one in the studio as well, as an oscilloscope, sequencer, to control my mix while not in front of the computer, as a software synthesizer and on and on and on.
No thanks, let’s keep media consumption a primary thing on iPad and keep laptops as professional machines.
So far not even Apple has figured out how to make genuinely complex/feature-rich UIs (think Photoshop, XCode, Maya) work on a touchscreen device. Their best solution so far seems to be adding a keyboard and pointing device in the form of the Pencil.
Interesting post, I too have been wondering how the Macbook and iPad (Pro, especially) will co-exist in future. It seems inevitable that touch will come to the Macbook in some form in the next few years, and with the M1 it sounds like Apple are able to make thin, light laptops that don't run hot or burn through battery, removing a few of the key differentiators between the iPad and laptops.
I do really like using the iPad for consumption and for some creation (music making, photo editing), but for any "serious" work I still find it frustrating at best (editing documents etc.), impossible at worst (development). The hardware is very capable, but the question is how they develop iPadOS to support these use cases without treading too much on the Macs toes - or will the two ultimately merge?
Music making is a great example, there's a whole unique ecosystem and way of working which has developed on iPad which doesn't really exist anywhere else.
It's still somewhat tricky to see how e.g. a touch-screen Macbook which can run iPad apps, and an iPad Pro, differentiate themselves a few years down the line though I think.
One of my kids has an expensive macbook. They don't use it because they have a cheap chromebook provided by their school that is underpowered and has poor battery life -- but it has a touchscreen! That seems like a terrible trade off to me, but kids these days expect every screen to be a touchscreen and when it comes time for them to buy their own laptop, they will buy the one that has a touchscreen.
I think the iPad and the iPad Air are here to stay. I couldn't swear about the iPad Pro. I'd really like to hear from iPad Pro power-users - what's something that you can only get in a Pro?
For me at this point, it's just the screen size. Personally I think once you get used to the 12.9", any other size feels too small, especially if you are doing anything creative like photo editing or music making.
So it goes down to 12.9" screen size option.
I got a first gen iPad Pro (back in 2015!) and it's still running smoothly to this day. It runs the latest iPadOS. Meanwhile, my co-workers and family iPads have all failed, broken, or become obsolete several times since then.
I use the iPad Pro daily for:
- Evening reading
- Reading on flights
- Laptop replacement while travelling
- Recreational writing with bluetooth keyboard
- Recreational doodling with Apple Pencil
- Light productivity tasks like email, etc.
- General browsing
I'm an iPad Pro 2nd gen owner myself, and I love the device. But I bought it 2nd hand and I could have picked an Air instead with no regrets.
> my co-workers and family iPads have all failed, broken, or become obsolete several times since then.
I suppose they were older devices, though, weren't they? the latest ipadOS seems to support most (all?) ipads from 2014 onwards.
My partner has a job which involves reading lots of documents, taking notes and then reading/sending emails. The iPad Pro is more comfortable than the rest of the range for split screen mode. The notes can all be written with the pencil and then the iPad can be easily attached to a keyboard for when you need to send long emails.
Where is the USB port?
> Ruthlessly purge the App Store Guidelines of anything that prevents the iPad from serving as a development machine. Every kind of development from web to games should be possible on an iPad. And speaking of games—emulators should be allowed, too.
No.
I am uncertain and unclear why a single company should have a monopoly on what we can and can't install on a general-purpose computational device. When the iPhone was first launched, it was launched into a world where carriers controlled what could be installed on phones due to a combination of contracts and the difficulty of developing for the environment. The "computers" in the early smartphones were, essentially, embedded systems with a rudimentary operating system on top. You couldn't do much of anything with them, so most people didn't try.
Until Apple came along and brought OS X to the iPhone, that was the original promise. iOS was OS X on a phone, with all the great "APIs" and features that it indicated. However, Jobs wanted to keep it locked down with web apps being the only way out. AT&T were pleased with that arrangement and gave them a good deal.
iPhone was a hit, and Apple had a crisis. They wanted to open up the phone to devs. Jobs said no. Jobs kept saying no until the App Store was created as a sort of compromise. In hindsight, this compromise ended up being a spigot of "free" cash, giving Apple the ability to control 30% of all revenue flowing through 1 Billion installed devices. If the average owner spends only $10/yr, Apple makes $3Bn per year, essentially for "free" on top of the generous profit margins of their devices and services.
Smartphones have grown up since then. Moore's law has turned embedded machines into full-fledged computers, with the ability to rival desktops. And yet we're still stuck in this paradigm. Why?
Why should we accept this as the way it should be?
It hurts people like Becky and me. For smaller, indie businesses, 15% to 30% of your revenue going to a cut on a platform with little-to-no-oversight and extensive content restrictions means that several things are already off the table, and small businesses have to sell a third more to make the same amount.
It hurts the users. An adult can't download and enjoy age-appropriate games on their phone because Apple says so.
If they live in an oppressive regime, they can't use their phone for dissent because Apple lets their oppressors say so.
Programmers and artists can't use their tools the way they want on computers they have bought and owned because Apple says so.
Consumers with an artistic streak can't customize their phones because Apple says so.
iOS users get a degraded experience for common apps because Apple says so.
Apple jealously gatekeeps features, making several iOS apps either one or two updates behind their Android counterparts, or lacking in feature parity.
Why should we - the users, creators, developers, and artists - pay a tax to a company that is acting against our interest and is locking up a computer we've bought with our hard-earned money? Why should we live in a world where Becky has to give 30% of her income to Apple as tithe? And I have to live with what little Apple allows into the store?
Why should my creativity be limited by some corporate jockey sitting in Cupertino?
So, No.
We need to dream bigger. We need to set these computers free.
There is no responsibility in the software world, and that’s totally fine, Linux is nice! But even as a developer... I don’t trust us nor our incitements. If Apple wants to be a cop that’s fine by me, the results speak for themselves.
No Whatsapp you can’t have my contacts, go away! ;)
But inside that guarded sandbox, Apps should be basically free to do. Apple shouldn't be able to ban an App because they don't want to have a development environment in it.
Your first battle should be the games consoles.
iPhones and iPads are iPhones and iPads and people who buy them want iPhones and iPads.
For “general purpose computing” nobody is preventing anybody from buying PCs or Androids.
Google kinda explored the idea in some developer settings but the Pixel phones don't even support HDMI out via USB-C.
Just like the Nintendo Switch allows us to play video games on the go and on the big screen with one device, I want to finally have a smartphone / tablet which makes a laptop obsolete.
Just plug it into a dock and start using a monitor, mouse and keyboard. It appears, that apples performance boost makes it more feasible than ever now.
I can’t see apple doing this ever, it’s just too messy for them!
I'm personally using DeX (Samsung's desktop mode) on daily basis. It is a bit clunky, but better than owning, maintaining, and carrying a second big device. The "real computer" on my desk has only work stuff on it, and all my open source development etc. happens in DeX, mainly via the Termux app.
Considering how underpowered the Switch is when compared to consoles that came out years before it, I'm not really sold on this idea. If you want to get a full experience in any game that requires performance, you're not really getting it on the Switch. There's even some Switch exclusive games that have pretty significant performance issues, like the Xenoblades remaster that might dip down to 540p even when docked. Really, the only thing that the Switch replaced was the Nintendo 3DS.
But for many indie games and first party titles, I enjoy the flexibility. I don't have to sync data. I can take it to friends and plug it into their dock.
A hybrid desktop smartphone / tablet with the correct ecosystem will offer a worse performance than pure desktop systems. But for most users, it will probably be good enough to browse the web, edit photos and play some games.
Nintendo has survived this long by not focusing on console wars for AAA titles.
Nintendo has a shorter history in consumer electronics than Sony and considering how badly the Wii U went down, I'm not sure if "surviving this long" means the same as Nintendo knows what they are doing. If you compare the sales projections and actual sales of the Wii U, it's pretty clear that they didn't understand the market at all.
I guess one or other product failure can be excused, however I would bet you are an unhappy Wii U owner.
I was hoping that Xcode 12 would finally be the version that runs on iPad, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
They can bury it by using iTunes or something to flash the image and 99.99% of people who don't need it will use it only as a MID device.
Indeed, it was always rumored how powerful the processor of the iPad must be, as little things are slow on that machine. But it wasn't widely acknowledged, as very few big software packages are running on the iPad. Count the percentage of software on the Mac which doesn't sell via the App Store and one might get an estimate, what the iPad is missing out. Partially, this has fiscal reasons, avoiding the revenue share with Apple, but a lot has to do with the App Store restrictions.
There are far too many applications which are restricted or outrightly banned by the app store. When I started computing, a computer would come with an implementation of basic. You could immediately start programming on that computer. In my case it was the C64, for others MS Basic on DOS. Not even that exists on the iPad. There are a very few IDEs, which constantly have to avoid being too useful to prevent being banned. To big the danger for Apple seems, if you manage to write an useful App on the iPad without going through the App Store.
Imagine a full featured Python or just Basic, which allows you to write programs with full screen graphics als full user interaction on the iPad. Imagine, if someone ported Squeak as an iPad app. It could perfectly run the whole environment inside the App, this would be a great experience. Imagine running a Lisp machine as an App.
On the technical side, the iPad needs more memory. If it is meant as a "Pro" machine, it should have 8Gb of RAM, optionally 16. But most importantly, a limited form of swap should be introduced. Limiting the active memory of a single app to the available system memory makes sense, but the more complex an application becomes, the less it is acceptable to kill the process just because the user switches to another App. Even on the fastest machine, restoring the state might not be possible fast enough. This can eliminate a wide range of application. Instead, deactivated applications should be swapped out. So the swap would just allow them to run without interruptions.
Pythonista is a full copy of Python 2.7 and 3.x, with an IDE, links to the GUI APIs and even a basic visual GUI designer for the iPad and iPhone. You can sync your scripts source code with Macs and other iOS devices through iCloud.
http://omz-software.com/pythonista/
Pyto is another Python app for the iPad, it's not as mature but is 100% open source on Github.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pyto-python-3/id1436650069
Codea is an IDE for Lua with extensive integration with the iPad native APIs and fantastic graphics capabilities.
https://codea.io/
There are several others for different languages, but I think these are the most mature. Some of these have even been used to publish apps on the App Store, by dropping the code into a Python or Lua app container project in XCode. You can also integrate them with Git from iOS using an App called Working Copy.
#4 is fundamentally incompatible with the walled garden and becoming a dev device under your full control, and makes the author seem a little bit in fantasy land.
The whole point of iPad and iPhone's controls are to prevent unsupervised, uncontrolled usage of the device. Apple is going to let you have unrestricted access to the cell phone chip and radio?
iPads are for artists, designers, some creative professionals. Macs are for developers and hackers. It's pick one or the other. I for one hope that the Macs don't go further in the direction of iPads at least, and take away yet more control. I doubt they will let iPads go in the direction of Macs.
I mean, why not? At least why not to the level it's already possible on other kinds of machines? I can stick an LTE modem into my laptop and the world hasn't ended yet.
The whole point of iPad and iPhone's controls are to prevent unsupervised, uncontrolled usage of the device. Apple is going to let you have unrestricted access to the cell phone chip and radio?
I thought this for a long time. Then recently I heard another argument here on HN: the purpose of these draconian anti-development rules is to prevent bait-and-switch apps from existing. That is, apps that behave one way under App Store review and then completely change behaviour after normal users purchase them. Think: Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal type stuff.
Every tattoo artist I've seen uses an iPad to sketch out their designs. It's a very good tool for an artist.
Most people are using iPads as media consumption, which is what they're very good for. Long battery life, high quality display, it's great.
The iPad Pro is just a better iPad. It never became any better at doing anything just because it was really powerful. It's still just locked to iPad OS.
The writer of this article wants a touch screen Mac. The iPad Pro will likely pivot to being this now that the M1 chips exist. Either that or Apple will keep it around and just make a touch screen Mac. But either way, the iPad will always be an iPad. If you want work done, get a real computer!
It enables things that are simply not possible on a laptop, and as the platform matures, that will hopefully become more obvious. One standout app for me is Concepts.app, allows me to draw and diagram and demo all in one go. It helped improve team and client relationships straight away. Admittedly, this method of working has vanished completely with remote, but I hope to get back to on-site and face-to-face working next year sometime.
I don't know about the need for touch-first, but I can certainly see where the blog post is coming from.
It's not so much about what the iPad can do, it's more about what it cannot do and that there's no technical reason for its limitations.
It's kind of pointless to have two separate device classes when there's no technical difference between them anymore. Before the release of the M1 laptop and Mac Mini it could have been argued that the more traditional machines were more powerful and expandable.
But there's literally no difference between the hardware of a Macbook, Mac Mini, and iPad Pro apart from peripherals (e.g. screen, keyboard, touchpad). Why would a developer even need two devices when the laptop runs the same hardware and is only missing things (modem, touch screen, sensors, cameras)?
screen, keyboard, trackpad, touch screen ports, are A LOT of what defines the hardware. It is clearly not only chipset and RAM.
> Why would a developer even need two devices when the laptop runs the same hardware and is only missing things (modem, touch screen, sensors, cameras)?
Maybe they don't need two devices in the first place. Isn't a MBP a very capable, portable, software development device? If the issue is that moving around with a MBP13 and an iPadPro with keyboard is cumbersome / heavy, then maybe the MBP plus the cheapest iPad with no keyboard would be more bearable and cover most of the use cases? Maybe the MPB and the iPhone can cover enough use cases.
I think my point is that the reasoning around iPadpro and MBP should not be that they are in principle equally powerful, so they should allow me to do the same things equally well, rather than the two have distinctive hardware features (form, keyboard, ports...) that make one better suited than the other for specific tasks. Whether I value these specific tasks enough to buy both, depends on my personal needs (and cash reserves)
It's the other way around: isn't the iPad Pro an even more capable and portable software development device? That's my whole point, especially since now you could develop iPad (non-pro) software seamlessly on the device without the need for testing on external hardware (since it already has all the bits and bobs contrary to the MBP).