>What I didn't anticipate is that it would be mostly useless. I don't have much use for a second smaller screen. I prefer to have only the task I'm focusing on in front of me. The Mac OS spaces are already designed for secondary things.
Well, millions of people do use two screen setups, so perhaps this is more about you?
>Note-taking/drawing with the Pencil is good, but is it better than a $2 pen and notepad? Not really. Sure, I can draw something to explain a concept while I'm on a Zoom call with the team, but I've only used this feature twice.
Well, others like the ability to sync and search those. And there are millions of graphic designers, illustrators, and digital painting amateurs, so...
>VS reality:
Depends on your skill, no?
>In bed, it won't replace the Kindle for melatonin, eye strain, etc.
The "blue light bad" is a myth. Also, that the e-ink/Kindle display is more like real paper is a fact. That it is "better for the eyes" than a backlit screen is not supported by any real scientific results. It's just marketing. A photon is a photon. Just reduce the brightness.
>It's really frustrating knowing the iPad has all the necessary hardware for powerful work (M2 processor) but the software heavily limits it. MacOS running on this thing would be game-changer.
Maybe you just want a small laptop? You don't care for the pencil/drawing, you don't like it as a sidecar display, you don't have a use it for reading/viewing in bed, and for dev work you'd add a keyboard anyway.
So, what you really need is a 12" Macbook to be made again.
I don't think it can be more obvious that this is an opinion piece. Which means that this is all too evidently about the author and iPad Pro and how they didn't get along.
> Note-taking/drawing with the Pencil is good, but is it better than a $2 pen and notepad? Not really.
Sure, if you use it exactly like a paper notepad it's not going to bring much value. You buy an iPad Pro if you want the 120Hz screen and/or pencil hover feature, which artists are quite fond of.
Or just get a cheap Wacom tablet with USB for $50 or less and you can take notes on the laptop directly.
> I hate everything about iPadOS
Does this person ever look at reviews before spending almost $2000 on a new device? What iPad OS can and can't do isn't a secret. Though I agree it would be a game-changer to get full desktop Mac OS on that thing.
Forget reviews, the iPad has been out for 13 years and the capabilities haven’t changed much since then. You’d have to have lived under a rock to not know what it can and can’t do. Did they have an android phone?
Before I gave in and just bought the iPad I bought one of those two-in-one laptops that you can use like a tablet thinking, well, this is even better, I can use this for both. Of course in reality it was awkward to use as a tablet and Windows isn’t that suited for it so I never actually did that and didn’t use it as much as I planned. The iPad I use all the time. I’m sure that’s part of the reason they don’t try to get Mac OS on the iPad (though yeah, not cannibalizing sales is also welcome).
Paper also doesn't have undo, layers, precise control over colors and brush sizes, zoom, file sync, etc. Features that are evidently more important to countless professionals than a <10ms difference in perceptible latency.
I bought one about 3 months ago and I agree with some of the authors points, but, none of his conclusions.
If you walk into it thinking it's a desktop/laptop replacement, you're going to walk out unhappy.
I do agree that I'd much be able to run a youtube clone app like STube with sponsorblock integrated, but, it's hardly a deal-breaker. I'm paying for youtube premium already (very reasonably priced IMO) so I avoid all native youtube ads already. It hardly makes watching youtube "terrible"
I also agree I'd rather use Brave with extensions, but, Adblock and Safari work fine.
I have played around a bit with using the device in a content-creation role, but, I haven't found a workflow that I like at this point. My programming style is very tightly looped and I need to be able to compile my code and run/test locally. I thought perhaps there was a path for programming on the iPad and there still might be but I haven't fully explored it yet, at this point I don't spend much time directly programming. The one major point I agree with the author there is that having 3-4 $40 apps which could theoretically solve this problem without any trial or anything, it's hard to invest the time and money to try each. Termius is great though, fully worth the cost.
The Youtube/Safari issue I was fully aware of before I bought the device since I know my iPhone can't do these things either.
Regarding the note taking and drawing skills I fully agree with the other commenter here. This is entirely skill based and the iPad and apple pencil are fully capable. I am not artistic but I sat my mother down with the iPad and Pixelmator and the iPad Pro and she (an amazing artist in other mediums who never did any digital art before) was within an hour drawing things which fully exceeded the examples from apple marketing. I still can't do stick figures.
Ultimately as a power communication tool, it works very well and it was, for me, fully worth the price. I've had iPads since the original iPad and they generally last a long time for me (much longer than iPhones or laptops).
Regarding SponsorBlock, one of the channels I started watching about a year ago I'd never seen their sponsored segments before.
I had SponsorBlock temporarily off (because some channels get crazily over blocked -- How Ridiculous comes to mind) and realized that their sponsored segments were these short little skits comprised of the couple doing funny voices and wearing minimalist but funny costumes and generally hilarious. Still shilling products but if you have to see some ads that's exactly what you want and I'd missed it because of SponsorBlock!
M2 iPad Pro in Lockdown mode has strong security protections. MiniLED display (dark blacks) on the 12.9 is good for video.
The #1 missing capability is a hypervisor for running Linux VMs, e.g. for web development and other services. M2 already supports nested virt. Until then, a sidekick Linux SBC is needed. The local Neural Engine is also underutilized, hopefully Apple will announce new use cases at WWDC next month. The Photos app will use it to detect duplicate photos with different resolutions.
Yattee for iPad/iPhone is available in the app store for YouTube with blocks, it uses the Invidious API, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yattee. StopTheMadness iOS Safari browser plugin can rewrite URLs on the fly, e.g convert YouTube to Invidious, or Reddit to old.reddit.
DevonThink to Go has a fantastic web scraper and local search engine for offline read-it-later, and WebDAV for cloud-free local sync. The Lire RSS reader supports full caching of articles, even if not provided by the RSS feed, for offline reading, https://lireapp.com. GoodReader offers a traditional file system UX and remote sync, with optional in-app encryption.
iOS Shortcuts can be used for local app automation, or send URLs to a Linux SBC via SSH for additional processing.
Codebook is a subscription-free iOS/macOS password manager with 20-year (PalmPilot) heritage, sync without cloud, TOTP support.
2Do is a mature, subscription-free iPhone/iPad task/project management app with CalDAV for cloud-free local sync.
Can't say I disagree. I've had an iPad Pro since the new form-factor came out (2018 I think?). Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful device but it's just not that useful.
On the road its ok as a lifeline device, but no more useful than an iPhone.
In bed, it's awkward and needs constant holding to watch something.
To be honest, the BEST thing I've found it useful for is cooking... It's small, relatively risk-free of getting water in it. And the backlight stays on perpetually when you're mid-recipe.
Beyond that, Safari mobile SUCKS. Not having extensions is excruciating.
It's the device I want to love, but it's sat on the shelf 98% of its life. Which is why I haven't updated it. And it's such a shame. I even bought a keyboard case for it, which is again basically pointless.
> Safari mobile SUCKS. Not having extensions is excruciating.
Safari does have extensions. The problem is that they’re nowhere near Chrome’s in quantity, but userscripts and shortcuts are also available without limits.
I have always been a fan of mega-tablets even though they’ve been poorly supported and buggy (maybe I’m a sadist). Like, I started with the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro (which was awesome but also… buggy as hell)… switched to iPad Pro (which has largely been awesome).
I know it’s a ridiculous thing for the price, but I just love consuming content with it - browsing the internet, watching YouTube videos, reading books (Libby, Google Play Books), hand-writing notes (Evernote), occasional drawing (Adobe Fresco), etc… there’s nothing like it. Well, there is… normal 10-11” tablets can do all of that… just a little smaller… the Surface is also good for this, but it’s heavier. Light laptops are fine but are awkward, have way worse battery life, and are still much heavier.
I personally never use my phone when I’m in the house - I always carry around my iPad Pro. I love it for traveling - it’s insane for plane rides (offline YouTube, podcasts, tons of storage for offline books, etc). Obviously, all that stuff a phone or normal sized tablet can do.
I’ll say, I’ve replaced the screens of these mega tabs probably like 6 times it feels like (I always had apple care or insurance replace it, though). My current one has a crack in the screen that makes it annoying to type on, but I’m limping along - it still works for most stuff. That and the price are the only downside. I don’t know if I’ll be able to justify buying another one when I give up on this one… but probably will.
Not discounting the authors experience, as it mirrors mine to a large degree, but he overlooks the people for whom it is good enough. I think about my mother and my uncle. My uncle just wants a way to read the news, weather, or sports scores or maybe watch a second ball game on that while he watches another on the TV. For my mom, it's perfect as a frequent traveller.
On the other end, my daughter is on her way to being a professional artist of some kind. She has done many illustrated novels of her own creation. It's absolutely the perfect device for her needs.
While mine does collect more dust than it should, like others in this thread I've found it very handy for sheet music and recipes. I like to use it as a small TV when I'm cooking too. It's handy for lots of odd tasks.
> I hate everything about iPadOS: the fact that we can't have a normal browser with normal extensions, that none of my muscle memory shortcuts work, that none of the actually good software for my work is on the store, stage manager, etc.
I'm convinced that the original plan behind putting an M-processor into an iPad was to allow running macOS applications via virtualization.
There's no point otherwise, "serious computing" was the M1's whole brand, the whole point behind calling it that was signifying that it wasn't some limited iPhone chip. Otherwise they could've just kept calling it A14.
Aren't the M processors in iPads binned down versions from MacBooks where a GPU core didn't make it or something? Seems smart as far as utilizing their TSMC contracts goes. I upgraded my A15x to M2 just to future proof the thing for the next 7 years
> Note-taking/drawing with the Pencil is good, but is it better than a $2 pen and notepad? Not really.
Creating notes is not easy and needs practice. Yes, a pencil and notepad is better. But without the ability and skill to create structured notes and illustrations, it will also be frustrating to work with these if they're on paper.
I cannot justify the cost of the Pros also. I have an M2 Pro MacBook Pro for day to day work and an iPad Air M1 for on the go Comms/media and it's just as good as the Pro at a fraction of the cost I think.
For iPad Pro, "Pro" does not include professional software engineers. It's great for photo editing, video editing, etc.
Note-taking is really two different things. For notes you want to save long-term, it's a lot better than paper. For ephemeral notes, paper is better. It's extremely popular with students.
The browser is not a desktop-class browser despite what Apple says.
The basic 9th gen iPad, or the M1 iPad Air, is good enough for most people.
And for that matter, which professionals are benefiting from the PlayStation 4 Pro? OK, I’m being a bit silly with this example, but I interpret “Pro” to just be the “super” or “S” version of a product, not one specifically intended for professionals.
Yes. For some products, "Pro" is a marketing term. I'd say for iPads and MacBooks the extra features of the Pro version are used often used for work-related purposes.
But the PlayStation Pro, AirPods Pro, etc - it's just the top tier version of the product.
It has a couple of killer use cases like drawing, watching videos, reading comics, sheet music, etc, but it's terribly overpriced and the hardware is seriously wasted.
After the honeymoon phase I only used it for watching YouTube in bed at night which was a terrible habit. So I got a Kindle and gave it away to a family member after months of not using it.
If it could run macOS apps now that would be a game changer.
On the other hand, as a live-performing musician, the combination of a 12.3" iPad with Forscore (to replace sheet music) has zero competition. Nothing else comes remotely close.
This is an under-appreciated use case for the iPad Pro. I’m a collaborative pianist who relies exclusively on the large format iPad and forScore when practicing, rehearsing and on stage.
(forScore is excellent, although the latest version occasionally fails to display the next page after a page turn. It’s a bug that’s rare but is widely discussed. It happened to me accompanying a violinist at a competition last week. Pressed the Bluetooth pedal, and.., nothing. Only my markings, the score wouldn’t render. But that’s a discussion for a different day.)
I have both an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro. For development and many other tasks I prefer the MacBook Pro.
For some tasks I prefer the iPad Pro. But there are things I don't like about the iPad (some because of its particular software/hardware and some because of the device class). So I would agree with some of the points.
I find text editing on the iPad screen to be difficult. The screen also gets dirty and needs to be cleaned. The keyboard is bulky. I'd like a few more interfaces on the hardware - otherwise I have to use a dongle/dock or wireless interfaces. Using more than one app for tasks is still difficult, due to the lack of software integration. Generally the software integration is incredibly weak. For me the iPadOS is a bit too locked, not sure if I wanted to run Linux on it in a VM, but I would like to see visual programming languages compiling down to the instruction set. I'd like to see programming on the device, but in a tablet-optimized way - but I admit that the majority of the user base is not doing programming and that's where the larger market is. It lacks stuff which the iPhone has, like being a native platform for health data.
What I like: the screen, the portability, the speed, the connectivity (included 5g), the precision, the responsiveness, ...
I think this will depend on personal circumstances. But I have a linux laptop and a downside of that is terrible speaker/mic/bluetooth support and also terrible support from Skype/Zoom and others.
I bought the iPad just for that. As a device to video-call other people. At a previous job, I used to videocall almost daily. So it kind of paid for itself.
> that the ipad 10th gen doesn't support pencil 2 is an insult
> accessibility:
set large accessibility font sizes, doesn't apply to app icons or the toolbar. the clock and app names are so tiny. its an insult to people with poor vision.
> environment:
gives you a usb cable shorter than your index finger and which doesnt connect to your previous charger forcing you to spend more and waste more.
I was surprised by how frequently I use my iPad Air. Its limitations are real, and sometimes frustrating. But it’s still a device that’s just easy to reach for and use a lot through the day. Whenever I’m ready to upgrade I’m shelling out for the Pro.
I do agree that it’s not suitable for serious productivity work (and that that is kind of disappointing when the hardware is the same as a MacBook) but for videos and reading and Web browsing it’s hard to beat.
> ... it’s not suitable for serious productivity work ... but for videos and reading and Web browsing it’s hard to beat
That’s my position, too.
I’ve been using iPads since the first generation, and in the early years I tried a couple of times to make them my main tool for writing, e-mail, and other work requiring a keyboard or the manipulation of files. That became frustrating very quickly, and I soon went back to my computer.
But now I do almost all of my reading and video watching on my iPad Pro, and I love it for that. It’s also great for handwritten work—scribbling notes on PDFs, drawing pictures, etc.
I agree with this sentiment, The ipad Pro is an infuriating device. the OS is incredibly limiting, arbitrarily crippled and has UI decisions that seem to defy any kind of internal consistency.
The fact that the "thunderbolt" port seems to arbitrarily reject usb drives that work on my phone (s23 ultra) and steam deck, that I am treated like a child in a safety helmet when using my own device, that browsers are all just shitty reskins of safari, that windowing system which seems like the fisher price toy version of a real computer...
all of this is even more infurating because some of my most productive artistic work has been done on an ipad pro, as a 3d artist I have enormous chunks of my workflow that I accomplish on Nomad Sculpt, and Cozy Blanket (modelling and retopology) I take notes on Concepts, and I really enjoy the fantastic screen and pen responsiveness... I just wish this device wouldnt occupy such disparate corners of the quality histogram. as it is, I upgraded from a 2018 pro to a 2021 1TB / 16GB of ram because I regularly sculpt models in the tens of millions of polygons on this device. I just wish I wasnt treated like some interloper when I was ready to actually do work on it.
Sounds like OP wanted a laptop. He has one. And his example showing that his notes are boring looking as compared to the notes shown in Apple's video, is such a defeatist attitude.
The OP makes points I recognise - the iPad is constrained in its potential. There are however some positives I came to appreciate after using the iPad Pro 11-inch for some years now as main computer.
You'll find them here, with screenshots / illustrations: https://twitter.com/wlmiddelkoop/status/1655475645860786176?...
But here are things I think they drag their feet on:
1. iPhone on Lightning. USB-C is everywhere now, the only charging port on every MacBook for years, and on iPad Pro.
2. macOS not on iPad Pro. M2 processor is pointless, but they price the iPad Pro as though the M2 would benefit you... somehow.
3. you pretty much have to jailbreak iOS and iPadOS to compile real code (not Playgrounds), or to do your own things on hardware that you... own.
For each of the above there are obvious monetary reasons not to make progress.
1. MFI lock in, licensing fees.
2. if iPad Pro could run macOS, there would (rightfully) be a lot of "lost" MacBook Air sales
3. if people could write real code on an iPad (or use "real" tools like XCode or Visual Studio Code, or just about ANY IDE), lot of "lost" Mac sales
I would like to think that if Apple reversed course on their foot-dragging, they would actually gain a much wider market share, making up for any lost sales. Also, people would not think twice when a new iPad with M3 would be announced. As for myself (and I suspect a growing number of tech people), I refuse to spend one red cent, precisely because I refuse to reward this kind of behaviour.
Agree with most points. However, Safari does have extensions and it has all the ones I need.
The pace of development on iPadOS has been pretty sad, but I'm interested in the USB-C thunderbolt support so you can use the iPad with any external display or dock. Once you connect that up, it starts to feel like a real portable computer, although still hampered by Stage Manager. In that mode, fine grained control is really needed, and that's when we need something more like macOS to appear.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 93.3 ms ] threadWell, millions of people do use two screen setups, so perhaps this is more about you?
>Note-taking/drawing with the Pencil is good, but is it better than a $2 pen and notepad? Not really. Sure, I can draw something to explain a concept while I'm on a Zoom call with the team, but I've only used this feature twice.
Well, others like the ability to sync and search those. And there are millions of graphic designers, illustrators, and digital painting amateurs, so...
>VS reality:
Depends on your skill, no?
>In bed, it won't replace the Kindle for melatonin, eye strain, etc.
The "blue light bad" is a myth. Also, that the e-ink/Kindle display is more like real paper is a fact. That it is "better for the eyes" than a backlit screen is not supported by any real scientific results. It's just marketing. A photon is a photon. Just reduce the brightness.
>It's really frustrating knowing the iPad has all the necessary hardware for powerful work (M2 processor) but the software heavily limits it. MacOS running on this thing would be game-changer.
Maybe you just want a small laptop? You don't care for the pencil/drawing, you don't like it as a sidecar display, you don't have a use it for reading/viewing in bed, and for dev work you'd add a keyboard anyway.
So, what you really need is a 12" Macbook to be made again.
Sure, if you use it exactly like a paper notepad it's not going to bring much value. You buy an iPad Pro if you want the 120Hz screen and/or pencil hover feature, which artists are quite fond of.
Or just get a cheap Wacom tablet with USB for $50 or less and you can take notes on the laptop directly.
> I hate everything about iPadOS
Does this person ever look at reviews before spending almost $2000 on a new device? What iPad OS can and can't do isn't a secret. Though I agree it would be a game-changer to get full desktop Mac OS on that thing.
> Does this person ever look at reviews
Forget reviews, the iPad has been out for 13 years and the capabilities haven’t changed much since then. You’d have to have lived under a rock to not know what it can and can’t do. Did they have an android phone?
If you walk into it thinking it's a desktop/laptop replacement, you're going to walk out unhappy.
I do agree that I'd much be able to run a youtube clone app like STube with sponsorblock integrated, but, it's hardly a deal-breaker. I'm paying for youtube premium already (very reasonably priced IMO) so I avoid all native youtube ads already. It hardly makes watching youtube "terrible"
I also agree I'd rather use Brave with extensions, but, Adblock and Safari work fine.
I have played around a bit with using the device in a content-creation role, but, I haven't found a workflow that I like at this point. My programming style is very tightly looped and I need to be able to compile my code and run/test locally. I thought perhaps there was a path for programming on the iPad and there still might be but I haven't fully explored it yet, at this point I don't spend much time directly programming. The one major point I agree with the author there is that having 3-4 $40 apps which could theoretically solve this problem without any trial or anything, it's hard to invest the time and money to try each. Termius is great though, fully worth the cost.
The Youtube/Safari issue I was fully aware of before I bought the device since I know my iPhone can't do these things either.
Regarding the note taking and drawing skills I fully agree with the other commenter here. This is entirely skill based and the iPad and apple pencil are fully capable. I am not artistic but I sat my mother down with the iPad and Pixelmator and the iPad Pro and she (an amazing artist in other mediums who never did any digital art before) was within an hour drawing things which fully exceeded the examples from apple marketing. I still can't do stick figures.
Ultimately as a power communication tool, it works very well and it was, for me, fully worth the price. I've had iPads since the original iPad and they generally last a long time for me (much longer than iPhones or laptops).
I had SponsorBlock temporarily off (because some channels get crazily over blocked -- How Ridiculous comes to mind) and realized that their sponsored segments were these short little skits comprised of the couple doing funny voices and wearing minimalist but funny costumes and generally hilarious. Still shilling products but if you have to see some ads that's exactly what you want and I'd missed it because of SponsorBlock!
Thanks for the Vinegar suggestion, that's great!
The #1 missing capability is a hypervisor for running Linux VMs, e.g. for web development and other services. M2 already supports nested virt. Until then, a sidekick Linux SBC is needed. The local Neural Engine is also underutilized, hopefully Apple will announce new use cases at WWDC next month. The Photos app will use it to detect duplicate photos with different resolutions.
Yattee for iPad/iPhone is available in the app store for YouTube with blocks, it uses the Invidious API, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yattee. StopTheMadness iOS Safari browser plugin can rewrite URLs on the fly, e.g convert YouTube to Invidious, or Reddit to old.reddit.
DevonThink to Go has a fantastic web scraper and local search engine for offline read-it-later, and WebDAV for cloud-free local sync. The Lire RSS reader supports full caching of articles, even if not provided by the RSS feed, for offline reading, https://lireapp.com. GoodReader offers a traditional file system UX and remote sync, with optional in-app encryption.
iOS Shortcuts can be used for local app automation, or send URLs to a Linux SBC via SSH for additional processing.
Codebook is a subscription-free iOS/macOS password manager with 20-year (PalmPilot) heritage, sync without cloud, TOTP support.
2Do is a mature, subscription-free iPhone/iPad task/project management app with CalDAV for cloud-free local sync.
On the road its ok as a lifeline device, but no more useful than an iPhone. In bed, it's awkward and needs constant holding to watch something.
To be honest, the BEST thing I've found it useful for is cooking... It's small, relatively risk-free of getting water in it. And the backlight stays on perpetually when you're mid-recipe.
Beyond that, Safari mobile SUCKS. Not having extensions is excruciating.
It's the device I want to love, but it's sat on the shelf 98% of its life. Which is why I haven't updated it. And it's such a shame. I even bought a keyboard case for it, which is again basically pointless.
Safari does have extensions. The problem is that they’re nowhere near Chrome’s in quantity, but userscripts and shortcuts are also available without limits.
See https://developer.apple.com/safari/extensions/#:~:text=about....
Playing or sight reading is great on iPad, almost as good as paper.
I know it’s a ridiculous thing for the price, but I just love consuming content with it - browsing the internet, watching YouTube videos, reading books (Libby, Google Play Books), hand-writing notes (Evernote), occasional drawing (Adobe Fresco), etc… there’s nothing like it. Well, there is… normal 10-11” tablets can do all of that… just a little smaller… the Surface is also good for this, but it’s heavier. Light laptops are fine but are awkward, have way worse battery life, and are still much heavier.
I personally never use my phone when I’m in the house - I always carry around my iPad Pro. I love it for traveling - it’s insane for plane rides (offline YouTube, podcasts, tons of storage for offline books, etc). Obviously, all that stuff a phone or normal sized tablet can do.
I’ll say, I’ve replaced the screens of these mega tabs probably like 6 times it feels like (I always had apple care or insurance replace it, though). My current one has a crack in the screen that makes it annoying to type on, but I’m limping along - it still works for most stuff. That and the price are the only downside. I don’t know if I’ll be able to justify buying another one when I give up on this one… but probably will.
On the other end, my daughter is on her way to being a professional artist of some kind. She has done many illustrated novels of her own creation. It's absolutely the perfect device for her needs.
While mine does collect more dust than it should, like others in this thread I've found it very handy for sheet music and recipes. I like to use it as a small TV when I'm cooking too. It's handy for lots of odd tasks.
I'm convinced that the original plan behind putting an M-processor into an iPad was to allow running macOS applications via virtualization.
There's no point otherwise, "serious computing" was the M1's whole brand, the whole point behind calling it that was signifying that it wasn't some limited iPhone chip. Otherwise they could've just kept calling it A14.
Creating notes is not easy and needs practice. Yes, a pencil and notepad is better. But without the ability and skill to create structured notes and illustrations, it will also be frustrating to work with these if they're on paper.
Note-taking is really two different things. For notes you want to save long-term, it's a lot better than paper. For ephemeral notes, paper is better. It's extremely popular with students.
The browser is not a desktop-class browser despite what Apple says.
The basic 9th gen iPad, or the M1 iPad Air, is good enough for most people.
But the PlayStation Pro, AirPods Pro, etc - it's just the top tier version of the product.
After the honeymoon phase I only used it for watching YouTube in bed at night which was a terrible habit. So I got a Kindle and gave it away to a family member after months of not using it.
If it could run macOS apps now that would be a game changer.
(forScore is excellent, although the latest version occasionally fails to display the next page after a page turn. It’s a bug that’s rare but is widely discussed. It happened to me accompanying a violinist at a competition last week. Pressed the Bluetooth pedal, and.., nothing. Only my markings, the score wouldn’t render. But that’s a discussion for a different day.)
I have both an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro. For development and many other tasks I prefer the MacBook Pro.
For some tasks I prefer the iPad Pro. But there are things I don't like about the iPad (some because of its particular software/hardware and some because of the device class). So I would agree with some of the points.
I find text editing on the iPad screen to be difficult. The screen also gets dirty and needs to be cleaned. The keyboard is bulky. I'd like a few more interfaces on the hardware - otherwise I have to use a dongle/dock or wireless interfaces. Using more than one app for tasks is still difficult, due to the lack of software integration. Generally the software integration is incredibly weak. For me the iPadOS is a bit too locked, not sure if I wanted to run Linux on it in a VM, but I would like to see visual programming languages compiling down to the instruction set. I'd like to see programming on the device, but in a tablet-optimized way - but I admit that the majority of the user base is not doing programming and that's where the larger market is. It lacks stuff which the iPhone has, like being a native platform for health data.
What I like: the screen, the portability, the speed, the connectivity (included 5g), the precision, the responsiveness, ...
I bought the iPad just for that. As a device to video-call other people. At a previous job, I used to videocall almost daily. So it kind of paid for itself.
> accessibility: set large accessibility font sizes, doesn't apply to app icons or the toolbar. the clock and app names are so tiny. its an insult to people with poor vision.
> environment: gives you a usb cable shorter than your index finger and which doesnt connect to your previous charger forcing you to spend more and waste more.
I do agree that it’s not suitable for serious productivity work (and that that is kind of disappointing when the hardware is the same as a MacBook) but for videos and reading and Web browsing it’s hard to beat.
That’s my position, too.
I’ve been using iPads since the first generation, and in the early years I tried a couple of times to make them my main tool for writing, e-mail, and other work requiring a keyboard or the manipulation of files. That became frustrating very quickly, and I soon went back to my computer.
But now I do almost all of my reading and video watching on my iPad Pro, and I love it for that. It’s also great for handwritten work—scribbling notes on PDFs, drawing pictures, etc.
The fact that the "thunderbolt" port seems to arbitrarily reject usb drives that work on my phone (s23 ultra) and steam deck, that I am treated like a child in a safety helmet when using my own device, that browsers are all just shitty reskins of safari, that windowing system which seems like the fisher price toy version of a real computer...
all of this is even more infurating because some of my most productive artistic work has been done on an ipad pro, as a 3d artist I have enormous chunks of my workflow that I accomplish on Nomad Sculpt, and Cozy Blanket (modelling and retopology) I take notes on Concepts, and I really enjoy the fantastic screen and pen responsiveness... I just wish this device wouldnt occupy such disparate corners of the quality histogram. as it is, I upgraded from a 2018 pro to a 2021 1TB / 16GB of ram because I regularly sculpt models in the tens of millions of polygons on this device. I just wish I wasnt treated like some interloper when I was ready to actually do work on it.
But here are things I think they drag their feet on:
1. iPhone on Lightning. USB-C is everywhere now, the only charging port on every MacBook for years, and on iPad Pro.
2. macOS not on iPad Pro. M2 processor is pointless, but they price the iPad Pro as though the M2 would benefit you... somehow.
3. you pretty much have to jailbreak iOS and iPadOS to compile real code (not Playgrounds), or to do your own things on hardware that you... own.
For each of the above there are obvious monetary reasons not to make progress.
1. MFI lock in, licensing fees.
2. if iPad Pro could run macOS, there would (rightfully) be a lot of "lost" MacBook Air sales
3. if people could write real code on an iPad (or use "real" tools like XCode or Visual Studio Code, or just about ANY IDE), lot of "lost" Mac sales
I would like to think that if Apple reversed course on their foot-dragging, they would actually gain a much wider market share, making up for any lost sales. Also, people would not think twice when a new iPad with M3 would be announced. As for myself (and I suspect a growing number of tech people), I refuse to spend one red cent, precisely because I refuse to reward this kind of behaviour.
The pace of development on iPadOS has been pretty sad, but I'm interested in the USB-C thunderbolt support so you can use the iPad with any external display or dock. Once you connect that up, it starts to feel like a real portable computer, although still hampered by Stage Manager. In that mode, fine grained control is really needed, and that's when we need something more like macOS to appear.