I just left for a trip today and have a macbook I purchased three days ago along for the ride. Both the spouse and I were uncomfortable with only having ipads - and within 4 hours of landing it's already been the right call.
It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
It really is -- my iPad has the same CPU as my Mac, and it highlights just how much iPadOS lets the hardware go to waste. MacOS is better in essentially every possible way -- faster, can run whatever you like, better multitasking.
This is a new development, and only on the most expensive versions. Historically, the iPad has always been running an iPhone-class processor.
I'd bet that Apple is still shipping 5x-10x as many A-series iPads as M-series iPads.
I'd love to be able to run a more capable OS on an M-series iPad, but not if that means all the rest have a worse experience. Maybe Apple needs to release an iPadOS Pro to go along with the M-series chips?
What are you missing? If only a few tasks you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks. I would assume most things that requires such OS requires an internet connection anyway.
I still primary use a laptop, but that is because I like the form of it. So I have no actual experience trying to survive with only iOS.
> you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks
There are many places in the world where the availability of the internet is so spotty and so poor, that trying to use VNC to get work done would not be possible.
>A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
There are many, many ways to acquisition that, just because apple won't let you do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Anything that can run linux with the KDE plasma desktop environment will, at very least, feel very familiar to OSX. You might have to seek out some app alternatives if you're doing something specific, but nowadays general desktop computing like you'd do on a laptop is well covered in most distros, and if you're looking for a place to start, Kubuntu is likely your best OOB experience.
Combine that with basically any windows native tablet computer, and you're off to the races. You'll likely have to play with some things to get it how you want it, but the nice thing about linux is you can play with those things.
The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.
I think MS got the closest to sort of addressing it with windows 8, but everyone simply defaulted to the desktop mode rather than the touch mode (didn't help that the windows store was/is incredibly poorly done).
This is why devices like the surface pro or other 2 in 1 devices never really seemed to work out. You are either harming the tablet experience or the keyboard experience.
> The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.
This is really not the case with iPadOS though. It already works quite well with a touchpad and keyboard. The hardware is already there to control a full desktop OS, iPadOS already allows itself to be be controlled as if it’s a desktop OS, and with continuity mode, it’s already possible to control macOS via an iPad.
All of these things already work pretty well, and paint a pretty decent picture of what might be if Apple decided to go further.
Some things just work better on a touchscreen, even when they’re running on macOS. Some things just work better with a mouse and keyboard, even when they’re running on iPadOS.
As long as there’s some way to transition between them, I do really think a best-of-both-worlds option exists, because it’s mostly there already.
> "A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail."
A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.
This is a silly thing to say. macOS is specifically designed for use with a mouse and keyboard. iOS is specifically designed for use with a touch screen.
Adapting either one to work with the other would only make it worse.
MacOS allows me to run any software I want. It has a terminal, and allows me to run scripts. It has a shared file system and offers true multi-tasking.
You can already run some iOS apps in MacOS. I'd like a single computer where I can switch between mobile / pencil usage and desktop keyboard / mouse usage.
That's exactly what I have with a convertible Chromebook. Super Snappy ChromeOS for web browsing. It can run Android apps, or stream them from my phone. Flip it around and it's a BIG tablet. 15.6" 4k screen. Going back into computer mode I can run full blown Linux, very quickly via Crouton or virtualized slightly less quick with official Crostini. Can also do a lot of the terminal stuff directly in the ChromeOS shell. In either Linux environment I can emulate Windows via QEMU/KVM. It's as fast as native in Crouton, again a bit slower in Crostini. Lightweight,long battery life, charges over USB-C will fast charge my phone and interfaces seamlessly with the phone for tethering that doesn't use hotspot data and doing messages notifications, etc.
No... I use an iPad with Magic Keyboard case daily.
It works pretty well for things designed for keyboard and pointing device -- one of my main uses is to remote in to a Windows machine.
The main problems with this setup aren't inherent... while the track pad is quite good, the keyboard is passable at best (needs function keys and for the frequently used keys to stop semi-dying).
Pretty quickly you start to naturally switch between touching the screen, typing on the keyboard or using the trackpad, depending on what you're doing and what software you're using.
Now my wife laughs at me when I'm using a regular MacBook and try to swipe or tap the screen.
I don't get why this is still impossible in 2023, with M1 in both macbooks and ipads.
I'm sure at some point someone at apple has built a prototype and did extensive testing, I'd love to know why was that shut down. And whether it was a business related issue, or a tech/UX related issue.
My guess is that Apple wants companies to reinvent their programs to work well on a touchscreen, which has largely been happening. If you could just drop macos on the ipad, we wouldn't have things like Procreate. You'd just get told to install desktop photoshop and connect a mouse and keyboard.
Surface tablets exist (they can run Linux but I'd stick with Windows on them). 2-in-1 laptop/tablet hybrids have also existed for a while, sold with Windows and ChromeOS but many of them work fine with standard Linux.
Some models can even become relatively competent Hackintosh, though macOS lacks proper pen drivers of course.
Samsung has Dex, which is a desktop interface for Android tablets (and phones hooked up to a dock). For a while they experimented with offering a full Ubuntu desktop, but I believe they've stopped that experiment.
Honestly, Apple seems to be the only tablet manufacturer that still tries its hardest to push professional users back to laptops. With the virtualisation support in Android 13+, I wonder how long it'll take before someone brings out the first macOS-on-Samsung-Galaxy app; various people have already run Windows 11 as a proof of concept on Pixel devices so who knows how long it'll take.
I hope they never do this. Bolting touch into a desktop OS is too much of a compromise for me. It didn't work well in Windows 8 and I don't think it would in macOS.
When the iPad first came out, people knocked it as "a big iPod touch".
But…maybe that wasn't a bad thing?
I feel like the iPad, despite alllll the efforts to seemingly make it a pro device, is an iPhone, but bigger. It's great for messages, browsing Facebook, and watching video, and that's just fine. Because that serves a lot of people's needs, and trying to add in a bunch more stuff just overloads the touch interface paradigm. (Ugh, the number of times I activated the split screen thing when they first introduced multitasking…)
I think "iPad is a big iPod" worked great, but then they brought out the iPad Pro. That thing was supposed to be for Professionals doing Professional Work Things. After that came the iPad Mini, which is an iPad but smaller (so it's an iPod but bigger but smaller?).
Weirdly enough, I don't think the iPad Pro is more than just the iPad but faster and bigger. There are tons of model-based software restrictions between the different models for what I assume are market segmentation reasons.
Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".
Apple's reveal of their weird multitasking iPad interface was quite humorous to me. It just screams "don't try to do anything professional on here" compared to the existing solutions Samsung have provided for years.
Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple. Dex on an iPad could replace many people's laptops and desktops and compete with Microsoft's Surface series.
The biggest issue with the iPad Pro is macos. It should either run macos, or get a compatibility layer that runs macos programs, but Apple's sitting on this fence for a decade neither pushing the mac to get touch, nor letting the iPad become desktop class.
> Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple
I'd argue Microsoft did, and they're at their 9th iteration of a decently good product. As do Dell, Huawei, ASUS and the other makers shipping windows tablets. They're definitely there on the "Pro" side.
Samsung also pushed some pretty good devices on the Chromebook side, which I'd argue is a more direct competitor to iPad if it comes to elderly or kids in school where you need a more constrained and touch first experience.
I've said this in other places, but the biggest issue with the Surface lineup is that the Go line is ... just garbage performance wise, absolutely unusable in my experience (despite really really wanting to use it, and basically just using it for PDF annotations!). And the Pro line is good! But it has no 11-inch line and (importantly) it costs so much compared to iPads. If you are looking for a high-end tablet with some pen/pencil input, an iPad Pro 11 inch is the cheap option!
It's kind of frustrating, because I think what's happening here is that the Surface Go line makes a lot of money, and a 11-inch-but-fast thing would probably be popular but have less juicy margins.
I see the Surface Go line in the same position as the iPad mini. Some people love it but I think it's heavily polirazing.
On the price, tbh I was only looking at the 13 inch line as that's the standard A4 size, but I get it's not ideal if portability is a priority. At 13 inch a 1000+ price is competitive with the iPad Pro, but for smaller size/prices the Huawei or Dell tablets could be a better value.
> Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".
It is a lot more convenent to carry an iPad with a magic keyboard than to carry a USB-C dock, keyboard and mouse though.
The ipad is the perfect device for old people. You can't mess it up, it's extremely simple to use, has a long life span, etc. The users do not care that they can not host a webserver on it because it prevents their bank account being drained after they click the wrong advert.
there is something inspiring about someone living boomerness to the theoretical maximum. people say young people can't get off their phones but man, boomers can't use anything else but their phones
That hit close to home because my father’s bank account was indeed drained after clicking the wrong ad on an iPad. But it did require the intermediate step of my father having to call the number in the ad to talk to “bank security”.
Having fewer malware vectors is a big plus but one still needs to exercise caution.
At least that vector brings the scam in to the human understandable space. While silently installed malware stealing your session tokens in the background is completely transparent and beyond the comprehension of most people. "Call bank security and transfer your money to us" is at least detectable by the common person.
I remember when iPad came out, and I was younger and cared more for arguing online. This is one of the hills I time and time again chose to die on. The anti-Apple brigade was about at its most insufferable at that point in time. The ‘full Windows running on a tablet’ utopia has to this day neger eventuated to any mainstream degree. iPad as a larger iOS device was and is the right way forward. IPadOS’s inscrutable ‘power user’ features of late are purely a consequence of Apple setting the expectations for a continuous iteration schedule, and Apple as a company being a huge self-serving bureaucracy looking to make work for itself year after year.
Before I begin: I own a first gen Surface Pro and have never purchased an iPad lol.
Now then, I think the problem with the Surface Pro was that it was perfect for that transitional period of time where the iPad made for a very awkward computer. Microsoft gave the Surface Pro USB ports, a slick magnetically attached keyboard, and the OS that let you run practically anything whether or not it made sense to do it on a tablet. Oh and you could draw on it!
The original iPad did NONE OF THAT. However, the current iPad does have a slick magnetic keyboard, a usb-c port, and you can draw on it with the apple pencil. Plus I think there are many more apps developed for iOS than there are for Windows - especially involving tablet use cases.
So I don't think the Surface Pro is really needed anymore. I'm not sure Microsoft is even interested in continuing to make them in the long run (but I may be wrong!)
The other thing - I keep saying this: MS isn't interested in consumers. They just aren't. Their primary interest is selling Office 365, Azure 365, AD hosting, etc to businesses. Windows and almost every other product they make seems to get more love and attention in controlling the users/administering the users/giving sysadmins the keys to control their loyal servants... than anything else... It really shows in the way they produce their products.
I always found the 'multitasking' features on iPad OS to be really poor. It suspends things in the background so aggressively that any kind of switching back and forth between Safari tabs (to and from a Github Codespace) is just non-feasible. And the lack of browser dev tools without tethering to a 'real' computer.
Never understand why apple ships their iPads and Macbooks with such little ram by default. Yes I understand profit, but it really limits what these devices can do. The numbers have not really changed much in the last several years...
Limiting the amount of ram goes a long way in reducing power consumption. It takes constant voltage to keep the cells alive, even when the device is locked and seemingly doing nothing.
The iPad really does have great battery life on the other hand.
I may be way off base but I think on iPhones/iPads RAM isn't a concern so much as processes sitting in the background keeping the CPU and radios doing cartwheels indefinitely for little to no reason, as they tend to on desktop operating systems. By throttling or quitting backgrounded apps they've made it much more reasonable to deliver promised numbers on battery life.
Apple wants strict market segmentation. Why would they sell you once device that does everything when they can sell you 2 or 3 devices for specific tasks.
There might even be some logic to that with each device optimized for it's specific best purpose. It also doesn't hurt that it makes them more money.
I think Apple is very much a mega-corp who does everything to create greater profit but I'm not sure they are limiting devices to make sure you buy more. More than likely it's because iPadOS is based on iOS, and thus it's naturally more of a consumption device with all of those locked down hard limits.
IMO they should do a hard turn and make iPadOS it's own thing. Give it the benefits of iOS but with macOS flexibility. Right now, it's essentially a bigger phone.
Lots of RAM uses more battery. Not a huge amount, but battery life is something Apple and its customers weigh more heavily. Same reason for aggressive suspending of background apps.
I know Apple has a strong resistance to the two-in-one form factor, but an M-series MacBook Air with detachable screen that seamlessly transitions between macOS and iPadOS is basically my dream device.
I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much.
I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.
Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.
different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood.
ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut
Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it.
(before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
the os isn't the hard part, its the app ecosystem and navigating how do you ensure they all run properly on x86, and not with a huge performance or battery hit. i would be rosetta2 in reverse, and as great as rosetta2 is it has limitations & does come at a cost.
sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.
Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices.
> it would be rosetta2 in reverse
It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.
I think you’re grossly overestimating how many of those apps are actually used regularly. Even if Apple only got 15% of the entire App Store available on x64 it would fulfill the needs of almost all users.
Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.
Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do.
> made all their software offerings over the last 20
What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection.
The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party.
> they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.
Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now.
> plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device
That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer.
I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
> What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example?
How about starting with iMessage?
Keynote etc. for Linux would be rather nice.
At one point, I joined a local MUG (Mac Users Group), hoping we could find common cause and support each other in a Windows world. Sadly, that was naive of me.
> The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
It's been a long time since I stopped trying to like Android devices, but quite a few years ago I remember Android phones no longer working as a mass storage device you could drag files onto. That was a widely discussed intentional decision by Google and was one of several things that made me decide that Android's talk about freedom, openness and all that was just marketing. You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?
> You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?
I don't think that ever changed, though the vendor can probably turn it off, since they have the source.
On Linux, it can (depends on what you told the phone to present) photos or storage or such. It appears in Nautilus like any other external drive. I usually use it it move the photos off my phone onto my computer.
> Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really.
A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
> I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions.
"They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."
What is this in reference to? I have an iPad and a MacBook. I don't pay a subscription. I usually use Microsoft OneDrive, so I can sync between/to my non apple devices, though I usually just use airdrop.
Are you referring to extra cloud storage?
edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?
I don't understand. There's no iCloud subscription to enable all the cross-device interoperability.
The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.
And in the case of the iPad, try to sell you them individually for each family member...
It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.
The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member.
For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others.
EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
I've heard that the multi user feature for schools is pretty skin deep and that it basically just acts as an auth for apps which store all data remotely. Not at all something you could just drop on regular consumers.
The thing is: I can't even do media consumptions and web browsing on iPad. Browsing the web without uBlock and a few other extensions is a battle I'm not willing to fight. And so many video codecs not supported on iPad makes it unusable for media consumption. And have you tried opening your videos in other apps? Guess what? The file gets copied to the other app, meaning that now you have two versions of the same movie/whatever.
The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
It doesn’t offer macOS. My whole point is that when I have a keyboard I don’t want to be touching a screen, and I want the power and freedom macOS offers to be able to do productive work. I also want iPadOS for other types of interaction, like reading or watching, or drawing.
The problem with a convertible MacBook is that you'd have to move the battery to behind the display, at which point you're really just making an iPad that can be attached to a keyboard dock and run macOS.
I think the latter is a plausible evolution of the iPad Pro.
Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct, from the hardware to the software, and that mixing the two is confusing and a bad experience.
I happen to agree with them, but I would love to be able to switch between the two. macOS is powerful, but adding touch to it would actually be terrible.
Switching between those modes and input paradigms, while maintaining some level of context would be a really great experience.
> Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct
They're allowing iPad and iOS apps on the macs, so it doesn't seem so clear cut. Feels more like they don't have a clear incentive to push further when people keep buying both products.
That might have been their philosophy once, but important people who believed that seem to be gone now, because basically every piece of software that gets touched on the Mac now resembles an unloved offspring of their touch platforms.
See examples: Control Center, Share Sheet, Notifications, the entirety of the new System Settings app…
This. Or a Yoga style fold-over in an 11" formfactor.
I picked up an X13s (the ARM one) for travel. It's not perfect -- one thing I like about iOS is that the airline apps are kind of required for IFE, but, my X13s weighs the same as my iPad Pro with a keyboard and can do much more. Trying to use Google Slides or Docs on the iPad is a poor experience.
iPad with a power connector on the side where the cover attaches, and a macbook the exact size of an iPad with no screen, just a remote desktop on the iPad.
Either data over the charging port, or low throughput over Bluetooth 5 (when is 6 due?)
I'm amazed the two haven't converged yet. I've no doubt apple have lurking in their labs a "double iPad" with a "screen" and a second screen where the keyboard now lives, running a version of iOS-like MacOS. Would love that device and think it'll emerge eventually.
Yeah does seem like it’ll go that way. Not sure I want to spend the day “goggled in” (as Neal Stephenson would say) - I may already be an old timer and want to use external devices (my first computer had 48kb of memory). But no doubt I’ll be engoggled at some point in the not too distant future. Plus for the time being, there doesn’t seem to be a way of plugging in external peripherals to the Vision, so we’re stuck with the same problem of not being able to reasonably use pro audio interfaces and suchlike, same as the iPad.
I think there’s probably benefits to be had in terms of interface without having a fixed typing keyboard. Logic and Final Cut for example, could be hugely improved by this.
I mostly use the iPad for reading, ebooks, pdfs, saved web articles, HN, etc.
I initially got the biggest iPad but it was certainly too heavy to hold like a book and read comfortably. I switched to an iPad mini which was perfect for reading everything but PDFs, the problem is I read a lot of PDFs. I currently use an 11” and take the cover off to read with it, I find it to be the right trade off between size and weight for me.
I just traded in my 12in pro for this reason. However, I think a MacBook Air may be a better reading device because it will prop up the display at whatever angle you need it to be for comfortable reading, while remaining ultra portable or easily resting it on your lap or chest (if you like reading lying down).
Someone should make a list of analogies of: if X were an iPad you couldn’t do Y.
Perhaps after a few hundred of these we could identify a higher level pattern that would “make sense” instead of being frustrating. I feel like there’s some deep philosophical underpinning or monad-like slip-through-your-fingers constraint that is maddening.
I'm also looking for a two in one, a tablet that can be a laptop. The best I've found is a surface, and I think dell has some two in ones too. The surface feels like the right call because it's just light enough to be a powerful tablet, but not so power hungry that it's stationary. I think they've hit the right balance here.
It's a shame this form factor isn't so common, and what would be perfect for a vacation would be a Chromebook. It's browser centric which is 98% of vacation related activities.
I was about to comment something to the same effect.
Like the author, as well as many who have commented, I've long been disappointed in the gap between macOS' support for advanced use cases (which I need), and the iPad's portability (which I like).
I picked up a Surface Go 3. Having an actual desktop OS on a well-built, decently powerful (albeit hot at times) tablet struck the perfect balance for me. Wish I had done it years ago.
I love the Surface tablets! Runs Windows, Linux (WSL), and Android (WSA) so covers almost any use-case I'd need. Stick to the ones with Intel processors for maximum compatibility.
I’ve been using Remote Desktop to a windows environment in the cloud for a while. It’s been pretty great actually. As long as you have a Bluetooth mouse an IPad makes a great thin client in a pinch.
I know people want MacOs, but it’s a workaround that works.
As a developer/CTO who's use-case when travelling is just being able to take care of emergencies if something present itself I wanted to do away from bringing a laptop in vacation. Since I develop using Docker, my solution is basically an EC2 machine I can fire if needed that has VSCode installed as a server running in a browser with Docker installed in the same machine. Basically a cloud dev environment available in the browser.
It's amazing how it all works well, even the Docker integration inside VSCode. The main thing that doesn't work as well as locally is searching the source code which is very slow. A work-around would be to search your code separately in Github or whatever service you use.
Anyway, with this setup, I can go away with a clear mind that I have a dev machine available even if I only bring my iPad (with keyboard cover).
I trialed a similar set up with code-server for a few weeks, and was shocked at how well it works, provided stable and fast internet access.
Although VSCode is impressive, at the end of the day, I'm an emacser. I went back to: emacs in a terminal over mosh, accessed with Blink Shell on the iPad; or access the same instance over Microsoft Remote Desktop for a desktop experience.
emacs in a Blink terminal over mosh is still my goto; I haven't found a better solution yet. It's surprisingly effective, and being able to access it instantly over the cell network of my iPad Pro is awesome for dealing with emergencies/little changes while I'm traveling.
One serious problem is that only a limited set of PC keyboard keys and key combinations are available in that setup (mapped from the local keyboard). It works in a pinch, using the Windows on-screen keyboard when necessary, but I found it impractical for regular work,
I really, really wish that Apple had not let developers opt-out their apps from running on M1/M2 Macbooks.
My use case is a long flight where I want to watch a movie on a screen bigger than my phone. For a while, some of the streaming service iOS apps ran on my MBP. In fact, I subscribed to HBO Max partially because their app worked on my MBP. But since their rebrand to Max, it no longer works.
Even if you do have a connection, it's typically expensive and bandwidth limited. Having whatever you want to watch already locally on your device just makes more sense.
Many flights do not have reliable internet access that is fast enough to stream video. And I want to watch what I want to watch, not the random selection of stuff I might find on the inflight entertainment. Not to mention that I want to zone out, and not hear a captive airline credit card sales pitch from the flight attendants at 90db in my headphones while they pause the video I'm watching.
So, for all those reasons, I'd prefer to download content prior to the flight and watch it in-flight.
I sympathize to some extent with their reasoning here, that developers for good reason want to sell separate macOS and iOS apps, and that they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.
But there are plenty of cases where I cannot fathom why the developer has opted out. Like, Genshin Impact won't let you play on macOS, because ???
Same for Minecraft (Bedrock Edition, the one written in C++, not Java). They unchecked this "allow to run on Mac" checkbox the instant it got added.
Mojang (= Microsoft) hates the idea of Minecraft Bedrock running on Mac with a burning passion. If you told me they somehow lobbied Apple to add this option to the App Store specifically because of Minecraft, I would have believed it.
Because this is at least the second time they have had a Mac port of Bedrock basically right in their hands, yet actively decided not to release it (the first one being Education Edition, which also runs on the Bedrock engine and is like 90% the same game – and they offer it for macOS, yet never bothered to release normal Minecraft the same way).
The other port might've cost them probably a few days of work (basically an asset swap, because the engine is done). This version (running on M-chips) they could've gotten for free, yet they killed it too.
Makes sense, so why not only offer this for devs who actually do that? Declare that a Mac version of the app already exists and let Apple check.
> they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.
This comes up every time and it's a legitimate concern, but IMO no way it warrants to completely block users from running compatible software on their computers. Call it "Unsupported Mode", spam me with warnings, prevent me from submitting reviews… but never completely block it. That's the asshole approach.
I do not want to do my work on an iPad. I have never understood what the Mac was lacking that the iPad might provide. The essay explains the perfection of the Mac: You can do anything with it. If you are a developer, you can really do anything with it.
For me, the iPad is the optional one (not that I would ever not take it). My MacBook is pretty close to being a perfect device for work. iPad is a perfect device for, well, everything else. Done.
An iPad with (any) Bluetooth keyboard and mouse along with codespaces (or replit, gitpod, et al) works well.
As long as you accept that what you’re using isn’t a full blown computer, it’s absolutely enough. All about managing expectations.
It's quite disappointing. They have so much potential but Apple do not want to meet it for whatever reason, maybe they do not want people cutting into their MacBook sales. Beautiful UI but poor UX, especially its file management which is nothing short of abysmal.
I travel with an Android tablet now — and while they have their own problems they still are far more functional and flexible than iPads. Want to watch a movie that's not on Netflix or Prime? Just find a torrent and open Flud. You can use it as a FTP server, basically anything you need, an Android tablet is perfect for. My iPad is delegated to note taking now with the pencil.
It's also pretty clear that iPads nowadays are the lowest of Apple's priorities.
I'm fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, but one of the most useful pieces of tech I own is a device that turns my car's touch screen into an unrestricted Android tablet (ironically, using the Apple CarPlay protocol to interface)
The concept of this website (sixcolors.com) is bewildering to me. I sincerely hope the authors are being handsomely paid by Apple behind the scenes, otherwise they just spend their lives doing free advertising for a trillion dollar corporation.
unlike this website, which provides a penumbra of authenticity to a tech funding cartel which regularly runs pump'n'dump schemes against the rest of the world?
Is it though? Seems like (1) they are fans of the products; (2) they want to write about stuff they like; and (3) they figure out that they can make a career out of it.
The proprietor was editor of Macworld and similar publications for a couple decades. It probably sounds crazy to you, but there are and/or were entire print magazines reporting on the Apple ecosystem!
He's a long term journalist (was editor in chief at MacWorld) focusing on Apple and is also podcasting on Apple. If you're married to the Apple ecosystem his insight are pretty interesting.
I like the 12.9” iPad for reading all kinds of documents, and video. I use it most as a “computer” when I remote in to my media server. But I still can do all my work on it when traveling, despite the inconveniences.
I basically haven't used an apple product (outside of the ipod) since my powermac circa 2003. I got an iPad pretty much entirely for the pencil and Procreate. Both are wonderful but it's a horrible OS otherwise. I don't think I would ever get an iPhone given how inflexible everything feels in that ecosystem.
I thought I might be able to do some light development work on it.. No chance.
I don't even know why it has so much storage space. The file system is so poorly designed it's a pain in the ass to transfer anything to it.
If all you need is to carry a computer for emergency work related tasks on vacation, you can do it straight from an iPhone thin client and Bluetooth keyboard. No MacBook or iPad required.
Coworkers were always amazed when we'd be at lunch and I'd pull out my phone and make a code change or fix an issue right there. It's not that hard. Much easier with an external keyboard though.
I wrote a 160,000 word book this year on an iPad Air with smart keyboard (I find how the pro keyboard doesn't fold all the way back to allow holding the iPad landscape too big of an annoyance to buy one). I think it's a brilliant device, and while limited, does do some things better than the Mac - annotating PDFs and ebooks with the Pencil being one of them. Also nice to hold a document one is working on in landscape so that it looks like it's on paper, yet remains interactive. Yeah I get it's kind of hamstrung and annoyingly clunky in a way that you'd think apple could resolve, but still think as a device it's pretty remarkable, and still got loads of potential for getting better, somehow.
I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.
One other side benefit is that the iPad somehow seems incongruous - with a laptop out in public you're "working" yet with an iPad you're somehow perceptually not.
Plus, iPad coupled with Library Genesis is awesome. Totally awesome. Yeah I'm a terrible libertarian pirate, but it's just incredible. Better than the libraries I've paid a fortune for as part of my education. Heaps better than the annoying tedium of logging in to various publishers and databases and subscriptions via a library website to then use a locked-down epub in a horrible and further locked down DRM e-reader, every one of which I've ever tried is basically an abomination.
Like all things Apple, iPad is great if you only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for. The moment you start to be beyond that slightly it completely falls apart.
Contrast it to a more general computer running macOS or Windows, which does a poorer job at what iPad does best, but it has a much longer tail where the complexity ramps up linearly, compared to the hockey stick of iOS.
At the same time though, limited tools can lead to creativity. I know we're in the company of coders with complex workflows, but using and understanding a limited tool well to the point where you can max it out can be better than living with a "long tail" of untapped power and productivity. Strange though, how the iPad is ostensibly a much better device given the touchscreen and keyboard (and now pencil) and yet remains somehow less useful than a MacBook. Might also be an issue of perception that the iPad can't do certain things well, when it almost can. From a user standpoint, having a device that really is like an appliance that never blinks or goes wrong is pretty brilliant. Windows has let me down on that front too many times for too many years, and now the only time I use it I live in a web browser 99.9% of the time (in a university library)...
Does it? I find creative solutions very rarely occur when I am actually using a computer rather than sitting back and thinking or going for a walk etc.
Computers seem to be awesome tools for refining ideas yet really bad at facilitating their creation.
There is no shortage of limitations in real life or on a massively powerful desktop computer. People on desktop are not gods. Nor are they unlimited. I don't know what creative solutions you're talking about but unless we're talking about things making art with limited colors and resolutions which is only necessary because that's what the customer has, there is not much point in limiting oneself artificially unless you are truly stuck otherwise or are doing it for its own sake on some sort of metaphysical quest
In the case of music and recording, often times better and more creative records were made by people having to devise complicated solutions to having technology with huge limitations - a famous example being that Sgt Pepper by the Beatles was made using tape machines that were limited to four tracks. Hence those involved had to think deeply and be inspired to find solutions to “defeat the machine” (in the words of Paul McCartney). Compare this to the state of affairs today where people are virtually “gods” in terms of power - the number of audio tracks, sounds, editing capabilities of someone using Logic is essentially unlimited, and yet music hasn’t responded very much to the technology because now the machine is incredible and powerful to the point where it basically cannot be defeated - almost nobody can even come close to utilising the power and capabilities offered. We haven’t had an explosion of novel forms and a wealth of newness, people just use them to clone what was produced in the past but cheaper and more quickly. The horizon of the canvas of a DAW is really too huge to ever get to the end of, and it’s almost overwhelming for most artists to rise to the challenge of, so they just stick with the limitations and live an easier life. There’s been no great flourishing of 21st century music with the emergence of this power, we’re mostly stuck in forms and genres created in the 20th century.
There’s also an analogous situation in hip-hop with the very limited SP-1200 and MPC 60 samplers. They don’t do much but what they do, they do well, so it’s up to producers to work to that and try to transcend it. Having an unlimited workspace in the computer to replicate the same doesn’t lead to better hip hop.
So you’re right to invoke metaphysics, because the machines have a kind of ontology, same as the mode of life of the artists using them. It doesn’t have to be a metaphysical quest, but there can be better and more interesting ways of creating on limited tools, particularly if you’ve used them for a long time. Some writers such as Jean Baudrillard stuck with typewriters as a writing tool long after the introduction of the desktop computer (he died in 2007) because he found it was simpler and better, less distracting, more focussed on the word and him. You could invoke the same “omfg you could be pasting in hyperlinks and doing referencing and surfing at the same time you’re just doing it for your own sake!” toward someone like that, but actually it’s not for its own sake, he only needs to think and produce text and it’s the perfect tool for that, the computer is only ever pretending to be a typewriter and comes with a load of noise and headache alongside.
Did Beethoven make his best stuff after he went deaf (genuinely curious; I'm inherently Beethskeptical after being Toccata-Fugue-D-minor-pilled)? Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori were technologically well-resourced as far as I can tell. Why did nujabes pioneer lo-fi?
I don't think there's anything fundamentally limiting about the iPad or iPhone computationally. The only limiting factor is the interface. Which if you're trying to cultivate frustration in order to pour it into your album, sure. But mere frustration is better had elsewhere, imo.
I think that staying with the typewriter to write books is entirely different than adopting a curated, sandboxed mobile device as one's medium. Firstly, it was at one point the gold standard for writing. Never the case with touch screens. Secondly, iPhones and iPads are not simpler or less distracting than a typewriter, or even a computer not connected to the internet. playing with the chmod command from 1970 is really not that interesting.
But also I seriously doubt that people will look back on iPhone 5 videos like they do and will do vinyl records, LaserDiscs, or even CDs.
“iPhones and iPads are not simpler or less distracting than a typewriter”
Yeah, my point. Please read my comment before negating it as matter of course.
Beethoven’s ears breaking is a slightly different issue than technological limitations - his technology of ink on paper was still the same. He wasn’t playing each orchestral part one by one when he wrote his symphonies, he just couldn’t hear his main composing instrument any more, but had obviously internalised the skill of hearing it all in his head long before he lost the ability to hear it outside of his head upon playback, sadly.
the beatles and john lennon ripped off a lot of people. the list is not exhaustive.
what are you talking about? Five Deez is credited. The song is even called Latitude! LOLLLL. where's the theft? also, I'm surprised that you couldn't find any actual wholesale theft (it's DEFINITELY there, ahem Aruarian Dance https://www.reddit.com/r/Nujabes/comments/3fagps/the_story_o...) because lo-fi as a genre IS ENTIRELY CONSTRUCTED AROUND SAMPLING OTHER PEOPLE, often uncredited, looping it, and making it sound like vinyl on a tube amp or some shit. What did you think lo-fi was? LOL. it's like vaporwave. not like electronic pop rock or rap. So your argument that theft is what prevents someone from having pioneered a genre built on theft is not just absurd, the exact opposite is true. Theft is what make lo-fi lo-fi.
What is your actual argument? That the songs stolen weren't obscure enough to count as authentic lo-fi stealery? Are you some kind of lo-fi hipster that only listens to tracks with the most obscure samples from the 17th century or something?
To Rococo Rot isn't lo-fi nor is that song. Björk isn't lo-fi either. It's electronic. You're not even in the same genre. So how in the fuck could they have pioneered the genre they've never been part of? Or are you off on some idiotic pedantic technicality that nujabes didn't pioneer the genre, the sounds themselves did. OOOOOHHHH. We're all so impressed.
You probably think it's really insightful to blather on about how pop art is derivative because it's remixing the label from a soup can. Ten thousand IQ.
The background music. The music in the background, not Five Deez (lol) bland rapping. The sample is from Clouds by Gigi Masin, and had already been stolen and reused (better) before Nujabes came along. Nothing to do with lo-fi, more to do with stealing (lazily, and derivatively in Nujabes case. Couldn't even steal as an act of originality).
It’s like you can’t even read or understand the basic logic of sentences. Nujabes pioneered nothing. Stick whatever label you like on his bland music if you need to.
Def Leppard is the polar opposite of lo-fi but you think they're lo-fi artists because they have shitty demo tapes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU2XiEq5eE4 holy shit. this means that everyone pioneered lo-fi. LOL, bro. get it together. this is embarrassing.
The only thing that is embarrassing is the depth of your stupidity.
By all means, strictly delimit a made-up genre (based upon the confusion of internet neckbeards) and fix it by definition to ensure you remain correct - musically and musicologically your lo-fi genre and the artists within are replicating music that is sonically and functionally identical to music made a decade or two earlier. And try telling Pete Rock, The Bomb Squad, JayDee, MF Doom, RZA, almost any actual pioneer producers: “Wait you guys are mistaken, Nujabes was the pioneer of lo-fi hip hop, even though he came out years after you guys.” Try even doing the same with DJ Krush even if you want to remain in Japan. And even worse, you’re defending the honour (for some strange reason) of a producer whose music and beats are beyond lame. Keep enjoying your crappy music.
Who did J Dilla and Pete Rock sample and loop? Who did any of them sample and loop? The fact that you can't answer means that you're in the wrong genre, bro. Where are their chopped vocals?
I would love to hear you tell Daniel Boone that he's not a pioneer because some skeleton turned up. LOL.
The limitations removed by a computer is the size of my working memory. Draw a line, type something, or whatever and suddenly it stops competing for space in my head. The idea space I can explore with a computer is so many orders of magnitude larger it’s practically unbound by comparison.
However, by saving those thoughts to a computer suddenly they are more likely to be tweaked than discarded. I’m not bound to include them they just get sticky and slow down my exploration of novel ideas.
A whiteboard lends itself to constantly erasing things rather than meaningless tweaks. Collaborate with a few people and nobody suggests moving a box you just drew on a whiteboard, but on a computer someone will want to move it around. The capacity itself becomes a distraction.
I fail to see how a box's position on a digital whiteboard is considered more up for debate than a box on a real whiteboard. Have you ever used a real whiteboard in a collaborative environment? When you move it, you have to redraw all the lines to and from it. Also, what is your point?
The mechanism of using a general purpose computer is so engaging that people stop to argue about the color of the bike shed instead of attending to the conceptual,world where the problem they are trying to solve lies. People spend their mental energy optimizing trivial things instead of writing the great American novel of our century or creating an infrastructure to allow decentralized, non-advertising based products that bring the benefits of networked communications and less of the harm.
That has not been my experience. But a physical whiteboard doesn't get distributed to millions of people over potentially hundreds of years or more. If it were, then at that point you may as well take the time to get it right. You contribute to bikeshedding when you whine about how the position of the box doesn't matter. Let them put it wherever they want then if it doesn't matter.
You think that Jason Snell, completely sold into the iPad-only lifestyle for many years, who records and edits podcasts on his iPad, is limited by his perception of iPad's ability?
In this case, the limitation is more on developers of iPad apps than users. It’s making developers more creative but I don’t think it’s making users more creative.
there is nothing creative about swiping on an app to update a feed of algorithmic nonsense, true. which is 99% of what people do on phones in my experience. even tablets.
Yeah but it’s not Apple’s fault the general public are lazy and stupid. I’m a creative and don’t do those things so much - I make records and read philosophy and write whatever book takes my fancy on the same device. It’s not Apple’s fault that when given a handheld supercomputer people use it for instagram - a black mirror reflects the good and bad of the human and that’s where we are. Steve Jobs really did want to make “a bicycle for the mind* and for some of us it is the most amazing one of those, just for the rest it’s too much power and responsibility, so the Californian capitalists at Infinite Loop are going to profit of them anyway.
and it doesn't bother you that you have to delegate your participation in a decentralized network? through which you can only do what they decide to allow
DPoS is worse in terms of resistance to collusion government interference. Which is a problem because the function of blockchains is to secure trillions of dollars.
Gotta love the discussions on HN about Apple, it doesn't take long till somebody starts arguing that less is better and you don't actually know what you really want and what's the best for you, on Hacker news
I guess some people like to be managed and set strict boundaries, but that's a far cry from creativity. If creativity happens, as it always does, its despite these hard limits
I’ve used a PowerBook / MacBook since about 2002, and even had one with me at the time when I was writing, but nevertheless found the iPad Air a perfect tool for the task at hand. I needed to read and write and create, and it did that brilliantly. When I needed to get more involved and manage heaps of files and format them into a multi-gigabyte publication, yeah of course I switched to doing that on a MacBook, but it remains that I wasn’t hamstrung in creative terms by carrying an iPad around all day, and indeed, more inspired by being able to use a computer more often and more effectively. Some of the images in my book were also taken with the iPad, which the MacBook couldn’t have done. So yeah, some limitations but some new freedoms.
> only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for
Only if you stipulate that it was never designed to handle text editing, multi-object selection, and a number of other fundamental use cases that apparently no one at Apple bothers to do on their iPads — if they did, they’d either 1. Experiment to find better solutions; or 2. Admit that there is no good touch-based solution for this UX scenario.
Totally respect this viewpoint. I think the parent comment is about the shame of having a powerful device that could be programmed but is locked down only because the manufacturer thought so: an iPad can do a lot more but isn't allowed to just for it to appear as an appliance.
In your analogy, it's like a truck is clothed as a Camry but it really needn't be.
I guess it's the difference between a geek's and generalist's viewpoints.
Hmm, maybe…? I think there’s a difference in people who are thinking the power and abilities and differences come from the hardware and those who think it’s the software.
Now clearly the hardware is different too. But I think the whole “appliance” thing is software.
Maybe refining the argument to: It’s a Camry with the same horsepower as the truck?
Funny thing I was at the hardware store today looking at modern trucks and was laughing to myself that they seem so much more car-like than when Steve Jobs made that comment. They have pretty interiors with cup holders and infotainment centers. And cars these days have horsepower approaching trucks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why are people trying to use a tool it wasn’t designed for?
Eg the iPad does not have a built in keyboard. Why are people trying to use it to write long form essays/books when it’s designed default keyboard is on display - and then they get upset at Apple.
looks at beardyman's insane live music setup running a mix of open source and commercial software on a six iPad matrix deck
I would argue that some form factors are better for some use cases, others for other use cases, and we are still figuring out how to best take advantage of each particular form factor.
Despite how popular it seems to be, I think framing it as "it's bad for certain use cases because Apple is evil" is a bit reductionist, and sort of gives up on the power we do have to mold tools to our needs.
Beardyman still uses a laptop running Ableton as the central hub for his rig. It's 5 ipads and a laptop. The iPads are all just controllers.
You can see it in this short explanation video at the very start. And when he goes into the explanation, the very first thing he says is that the iPads control Ableton.
Unlike most everything else Apple, the degree to which iPads seem to dominate the tablet market is interesting. In general tablets never really caught on, but to the extent that people want tablets, they apparently actually want exactly the use case Apple envisioned.
If apple did a proper convertible laptop format, which is a hinge and touchscreen away, how many pros would care about the iPad? It would be lighter than the iPad and keyboard combo too.
Same here, that was in 2018 and I was using the Editorial app. Great app for its time BTW. Although, once I got to the publishing part, I found it lacking and switched to my Windows(At the time) now I use PopOS. But that was before Obsidian. I discovered Obsidian on Hackernews BTW. Thanks guys. Obsidian was exactly what I needed as a drop it replacement for the power of the Editorial App on MacOS.
> I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.
Side note: I wonder if Adobe ever regrets discontinuing Framemaker for Mac given the resurgence of Apple in the intervening years.
The iPad isn't for multimedia production like podcasting or for connecting niche peripherals to.
But if you just want to write and e-mail and Zoom and read(+annotate) and watch, it's fantastic.
I just use a Bluetooth (Magic) keyboard with mine for writing in coffee shops and it's great. And the Pencil is a godsend for highlighting and annotating PDF's.
Really just an in joke to myself because I have a friend who calls his paddy. I’ve also got a laptop called ‘urgh’ and a MacBook Pro 13 from about 2016 - the first one with the Touch Bar/strip (given as a freebie) that is called ‘shite’ because its still the worst Mac I’ve ever owned. It’s clunky, riddled with latency, and unresponsive to quite an extreme degree, and I think it’s because of some kind of hardware deficiency with the touch strip being introduced. I’d work on Paddy over Shite any day of the week.
I haven't used an iPad keyboard but 160,000 words is about 159,000 more than I could stomach writing on a Macbook keyboard - which is the best laptop keyboard I've tried.
I've liked the recent XPS 13 Plus keyboards. I'd put them at least on par with recent Macbooks. Decent travel depth, but still limited as it's an Ultrabook.
I really don’t see much wrong with it. It’s fabric-y and squidgy and kind of only alright, but at the same time, it works fine and my typing speed on it is about the same as anything else.
Don’t forget that people coded whole programmes on the Sinclair ZX80 and rubber-membrane-keyed ZX Spectrum, which were both abominable, nightmare fuel in fact to those desirous of Cherry keycaps and clicky tactility. The Smart Keyboard is a functional middle ground.
I also wrote the book in Google Docs, and pecked out some of it on my Android smartphone if inspiration struck. The fact that changes instantly sync so seamlessly and unthinkingly between platforms and devices I think is also really brilliant. It’s easy to forget in our quest for computing perfection that ‘good enough’ really is good enough if inspiration strikes. I wrote huge chunks of the book on transport and in public – literally on aeroplanes, trams, sitting on benches outside the library or by the beach. Creating where for the most part people are just consuming or scrolling content in those environments. The iPad and its day-long battery is amazing for this, and I’m not sure that a laptop would have been the same.
Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”
The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more.
Save yourself some travel weight. Just pack your Mac. You were already packing it anyway.
Well a 12.9” iPad Pro with the keyboard case gives you basically all the same computing hardware as a 13” MacBook Pro, plus:
Better quality mini-LED display
Better/additional cameras
Touchscreen with pen support
Magnetic charging for the pen
Detachable keyboard
Cellular data option
It’s not really a surprise that the iPad can cost more. Just a shame that the App Store limitations prevent it from being as useful a software platform for many use cases.
I think the real world use cases for an iPad are slightly broader, but not by much. My partner uses one to make digital art; it also has a relatively decent camera, some apps for video/audio production (like Final Cut/Logic), it's also better than a phone at being an SSH terminal... But the creative applications end somewhere around right there.
It's an appliance. An appliance with mind-boggingly awesome specs - if it were a computer - but it's just that, an appliance closer in spirit to a microwave than to a PC. Treat it as such, and it will be one of the best appliances you'll ever own; but to expect it to be a computer is to set oneself up to be disappointed.
I'm more than happy with it for what it is, but don't mistake it for what it's not.
A basic iPad as a reasonably priced (~$300-$500) media consumption device is fantastic. The problem is that's not what Apple is selling it as anymore. Look up all their advertising from the last few years and they barely even acknowledge that price point. Instead you will see all the "Pro" models, fancy accessories, M1/M2 chips, LiDAR, terabytes of storage and prices eclipsing that of mid-range MacBooks. Everyone I know who ate up the advertising and bought $1500+ iPads as a primary or secondary productivity device is now regretting it as they either lay unused or are glorified Netflix and Facebook tablets.
Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”
If that were the case, they’d be making much more money from laptops than from iPads, right?
If they were making just as much money from iPads, though, it would make sense to make the iPad as good as possible. Cannibalizing Mac sales wouldn’t be a big deal.
The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning.
They’ve gone back on plenty of things Steve Jobs said (in many cases, Jobs himself was the one who did it).
I don’t think they have a religious objection to making the iPad useful, as you seem to be saying; I think they think they are making it useful, that the current design (including its limitations) is the best compromise.
I was thinking recently that there was something weirdly cryptic and prophetic at the end of that Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs - I haven't looked it up again, but there's some tale along the lines of Steve on his deathbed playing with an interface, like he's seen a vision of the future and having an epiphany. The book tells it as if like he's playing with an Apple TV and a remote control which doesn't make much sense as a deathbed experience...but now I realise he had an Apple Vision prototype and that's what he was looking at/through. I think they must be that many years ahead in their labs, like decadal R&D.
I had the impression that they saw it replacing the computer for ordinary users. That a PC with Windows/macOS was overkill for the average man on the street. In the end phones have done that for a lot of people.
These types of articles come out periodically and annoy me quite a bit. iPadOS has been my interface to the digital world for going on 6 years. Here are the things I do exclusively via an iPad Pro:
* administer a dozen HPC clusters
* perform all the digital tasks required of a non-profit board member
* learn/read, communicate, consume media, photo edit and all the other normal life things one does on a computer nowadays
It’s true that I don’t have a podcast. But I think I’m in the majority of computer users there! I’ll also say that I have had to accept some limits or look for workarounds in the past, but the big additions of file downloads, safari compatibility modes and finally stage manager have effectively taken care of those.
Yeah, same. I think at the end of the day, some folks don’t want to work that way. Which is fine.
I do all of my personal business on an iMac. The big gap for me was the shell, which is now not an issue with iSH available. There’s literally nothing I cannot do that I need to do that can’t be done on the iPad.
But isn’t that the point of the article? The iPad works great for the things you want to do on it because Apple has decided to support those workflows (or you have been able to adjust your own practices to suit the device). But on a Mac (or Windows, or Linux), no-one needs to think ahead for your use case. Someone can just build software that enables it.
Software development is a much less niche area than podcast recording but one that is equally unsupported on the iPad. I doubt many are itching to swap their dev machines for an iPad, but given the hardware it sure would be nice if I could tinker with stuff on the sofa. But no amount of workarounds or developer ingenuity would enable that because Apple has decreed that I cannot run arbitrary code, or run a local server.
So far I've been managing to keep up with work while traveling using a Samsung tab. So far its been going well, granted that I mostly only need MS Office and sometimes a terminal for some code.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 309 ms ] threadIt's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
I'd bet that Apple is still shipping 5x-10x as many A-series iPads as M-series iPads.
I'd love to be able to run a more capable OS on an M-series iPad, but not if that means all the rest have a worse experience. Maybe Apple needs to release an iPadOS Pro to go along with the M-series chips?
I still primary use a laptop, but that is because I like the form of it. So I have no actual experience trying to survive with only iOS.
There are many places in the world where the availability of the internet is so spotty and so poor, that trying to use VNC to get work done would not be possible.
The only way to make VNC worse is to have to do it on a $1000 locked down tablet.
There are many, many ways to acquisition that, just because apple won't let you do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Anything that can run linux with the KDE plasma desktop environment will, at very least, feel very familiar to OSX. You might have to seek out some app alternatives if you're doing something specific, but nowadays general desktop computing like you'd do on a laptop is well covered in most distros, and if you're looking for a place to start, Kubuntu is likely your best OOB experience.
Combine that with basically any windows native tablet computer, and you're off to the races. You'll likely have to play with some things to get it how you want it, but the nice thing about linux is you can play with those things.
So yes, the holy grail is here weary traveler.
I think MS got the closest to sort of addressing it with windows 8, but everyone simply defaulted to the desktop mode rather than the touch mode (didn't help that the windows store was/is incredibly poorly done).
This is why devices like the surface pro or other 2 in 1 devices never really seemed to work out. You are either harming the tablet experience or the keyboard experience.
This is really not the case with iPadOS though. It already works quite well with a touchpad and keyboard. The hardware is already there to control a full desktop OS, iPadOS already allows itself to be be controlled as if it’s a desktop OS, and with continuity mode, it’s already possible to control macOS via an iPad.
All of these things already work pretty well, and paint a pretty decent picture of what might be if Apple decided to go further.
Some things just work better on a touchscreen, even when they’re running on macOS. Some things just work better with a mouse and keyboard, even when they’re running on iPadOS.
As long as there’s some way to transition between them, I do really think a best-of-both-worlds option exists, because it’s mostly there already.
A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.
It served as a overspec baby cam monitor for a few months but we had so many issues that the second time I went to reformat it, we replaced it.
Adapting either one to work with the other would only make it worse.
You can already run some iOS apps in MacOS. I'd like a single computer where I can switch between mobile / pencil usage and desktop keyboard / mouse usage.
It works pretty well for things designed for keyboard and pointing device -- one of my main uses is to remote in to a Windows machine.
The main problems with this setup aren't inherent... while the track pad is quite good, the keyboard is passable at best (needs function keys and for the frequently used keys to stop semi-dying).
Pretty quickly you start to naturally switch between touching the screen, typing on the keyboard or using the trackpad, depending on what you're doing and what software you're using.
Now my wife laughs at me when I'm using a regular MacBook and try to swipe or tap the screen.
I'm sure at some point someone at apple has built a prototype and did extensive testing, I'd love to know why was that shut down. And whether it was a business related issue, or a tech/UX related issue.
Some models can even become relatively competent Hackintosh, though macOS lacks proper pen drivers of course.
Samsung has Dex, which is a desktop interface for Android tablets (and phones hooked up to a dock). For a while they experimented with offering a full Ubuntu desktop, but I believe they've stopped that experiment.
Honestly, Apple seems to be the only tablet manufacturer that still tries its hardest to push professional users back to laptops. With the virtualisation support in Android 13+, I wonder how long it'll take before someone brings out the first macOS-on-Samsung-Galaxy app; various people have already run Windows 11 as a proof of concept on Pixel devices so who knows how long it'll take.
But…maybe that wasn't a bad thing?
I feel like the iPad, despite alllll the efforts to seemingly make it a pro device, is an iPhone, but bigger. It's great for messages, browsing Facebook, and watching video, and that's just fine. Because that serves a lot of people's needs, and trying to add in a bunch more stuff just overloads the touch interface paradigm. (Ugh, the number of times I activated the split screen thing when they first introduced multitasking…)
Weirdly enough, I don't think the iPad Pro is more than just the iPad but faster and bigger. There are tons of model-based software restrictions between the different models for what I assume are market segmentation reasons.
Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".
Apple's reveal of their weird multitasking iPad interface was quite humorous to me. It just screams "don't try to do anything professional on here" compared to the existing solutions Samsung have provided for years.
Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple. Dex on an iPad could replace many people's laptops and desktops and compete with Microsoft's Surface series.
> Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple
I'd argue Microsoft did, and they're at their 9th iteration of a decently good product. As do Dell, Huawei, ASUS and the other makers shipping windows tablets. They're definitely there on the "Pro" side.
Samsung also pushed some pretty good devices on the Chromebook side, which I'd argue is a more direct competitor to iPad if it comes to elderly or kids in school where you need a more constrained and touch first experience.
It's kind of frustrating, because I think what's happening here is that the Surface Go line makes a lot of money, and a 11-inch-but-fast thing would probably be popular but have less juicy margins.
On the price, tbh I was only looking at the 13 inch line as that's the standard A4 size, but I get it's not ideal if portability is a priority. At 13 inch a 1000+ price is competitive with the iPad Pro, but for smaller size/prices the Huawei or Dell tablets could be a better value.
It is a lot more convenent to carry an iPad with a magic keyboard than to carry a USB-C dock, keyboard and mouse though.
iPad solves exactly ONE single problem for him: no enough screen space on his phone.
Having fewer malware vectors is a big plus but one still needs to exercise caution.
Now then, I think the problem with the Surface Pro was that it was perfect for that transitional period of time where the iPad made for a very awkward computer. Microsoft gave the Surface Pro USB ports, a slick magnetically attached keyboard, and the OS that let you run practically anything whether or not it made sense to do it on a tablet. Oh and you could draw on it!
The original iPad did NONE OF THAT. However, the current iPad does have a slick magnetic keyboard, a usb-c port, and you can draw on it with the apple pencil. Plus I think there are many more apps developed for iOS than there are for Windows - especially involving tablet use cases.
So I don't think the Surface Pro is really needed anymore. I'm not sure Microsoft is even interested in continuing to make them in the long run (but I may be wrong!)
The other thing - I keep saying this: MS isn't interested in consumers. They just aren't. Their primary interest is selling Office 365, Azure 365, AD hosting, etc to businesses. Windows and almost every other product they make seems to get more love and attention in controlling the users/administering the users/giving sysadmins the keys to control their loyal servants... than anything else... It really shows in the way they produce their products.
The iPad really does have great battery life on the other hand.
Scroll down to "Chip": https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/
There might even be some logic to that with each device optimized for it's specific best purpose. It also doesn't hurt that it makes them more money.
IMO they should do a hard turn and make iPadOS it's own thing. Give it the benefits of iOS but with macOS flexibility. Right now, it's essentially a bigger phone.
I'm pretty sure Final Cut Pro would export a video in the background of an 8GB MBA just fine.
I bet they means three devices, since I would wager they does not leave theys "more expensive than a Windows-based laptop" iPhone at home.
I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.
Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice
Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could)
https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106
And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops
Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.
Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.
ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut
Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
(before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.
Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices.
> it would be rosetta2 in reverse
It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.
Sure, a small number of apps would fall to the wayside. But it’s not like Apple has hesitated to do that before.
What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience.
[1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus...
edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?
Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
> made all their software offerings over the last 20
What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection.
The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party.
> they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.
Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now.
> plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device
That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer.
I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
...
https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/microsoft-corporation/id...
:)
bah gawd that’s IrDA’s music!
How about starting with iMessage?
Keynote etc. for Linux would be rather nice.
At one point, I joined a local MUG (Mac Users Group), hoping we could find common cause and support each other in a Windows world. Sadly, that was naive of me.
It's been a long time since I stopped trying to like Android devices, but quite a few years ago I remember Android phones no longer working as a mass storage device you could drag files onto. That was a widely discussed intentional decision by Google and was one of several things that made me decide that Android's talk about freedom, openness and all that was just marketing. You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?
I don't think that ever changed, though the vendor can probably turn it off, since they have the source.
On Linux, it can (depends on what you told the phone to present) photos or storage or such. It appears in Nautilus like any other external drive. I usually use it it move the photos off my phone onto my computer.
A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
"They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."
Are you referring to extra cloud storage?
edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?
The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.
It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.
https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/e...
The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member.
For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others.
EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
AdGuard and Hush for ad blocking, both free.
VLC for video, has built in ftp server which makes loading your pirated videos on super easy.
foobar2000 for music. Hands down the best music player, also has ftp support for easily loading all your favorite pirated music.
Bitwarden for password/totp management.
Joplin for notes (free). GoodNotes for pdf/sketchnotes (not free but worth it imho)
I don’t care about the particulars of the hardware that enables such an experience.
I think the latter is a plausible evolution of the iPad Pro.
I happen to agree with them, but I would love to be able to switch between the two. macOS is powerful, but adding touch to it would actually be terrible.
Switching between those modes and input paradigms, while maintaining some level of context would be a really great experience.
They're allowing iPad and iOS apps on the macs, so it doesn't seem so clear cut. Feels more like they don't have a clear incentive to push further when people keep buying both products.
See examples: Control Center, Share Sheet, Notifications, the entirety of the new System Settings app…
I picked up an X13s (the ARM one) for travel. It's not perfect -- one thing I like about iOS is that the airline apps are kind of required for IFE, but, my X13s weighs the same as my iPad Pro with a keyboard and can do much more. Trying to use Google Slides or Docs on the iPad is a poor experience.
The fact that they don’t allow this is absurd. They basically charge $1500 for macOS. I’d probably pay that to let my iPad dual boot if they’d let me!
Either data over the charging port, or low throughput over Bluetooth 5 (when is 6 due?)
https://www.theverge.com/23794761/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review
It's too heavy to read from.
I initially got the biggest iPad but it was certainly too heavy to hold like a book and read comfortably. I switched to an iPad mini which was perfect for reading everything but PDFs, the problem is I read a lot of PDFs. I currently use an 11” and take the cover off to read with it, I find it to be the right trade off between size and weight for me.
Perhaps after a few hundred of these we could identify a higher level pattern that would “make sense” instead of being frustrating. I feel like there’s some deep philosophical underpinning or monad-like slip-through-your-fingers constraint that is maddening.
It's a shame this form factor isn't so common, and what would be perfect for a vacation would be a Chromebook. It's browser centric which is 98% of vacation related activities.
Like the author, as well as many who have commented, I've long been disappointed in the gap between macOS' support for advanced use cases (which I need), and the iPad's portability (which I like).
I picked up a Surface Go 3. Having an actual desktop OS on a well-built, decently powerful (albeit hot at times) tablet struck the perfect balance for me. Wish I had done it years ago.
I know people want MacOs, but it’s a workaround that works.
It's amazing how it all works well, even the Docker integration inside VSCode. The main thing that doesn't work as well as locally is searching the source code which is very slow. A work-around would be to search your code separately in Github or whatever service you use.
Anyway, with this setup, I can go away with a clear mind that I have a dev machine available even if I only bring my iPad (with keyboard cover).
Although VSCode is impressive, at the end of the day, I'm an emacser. I went back to: emacs in a terminal over mosh, accessed with Blink Shell on the iPad; or access the same instance over Microsoft Remote Desktop for a desktop experience.
My use case is a long flight where I want to watch a movie on a screen bigger than my phone. For a while, some of the streaming service iOS apps ran on my MBP. In fact, I subscribed to HBO Max partially because their app worked on my MBP. But since their rebrand to Max, it no longer works.
So, for all those reasons, I'd prefer to download content prior to the flight and watch it in-flight.
But there are plenty of cases where I cannot fathom why the developer has opted out. Like, Genshin Impact won't let you play on macOS, because ???
Mojang (= Microsoft) hates the idea of Minecraft Bedrock running on Mac with a burning passion. If you told me they somehow lobbied Apple to add this option to the App Store specifically because of Minecraft, I would have believed it.
Because this is at least the second time they have had a Mac port of Bedrock basically right in their hands, yet actively decided not to release it (the first one being Education Edition, which also runs on the Bedrock engine and is like 90% the same game – and they offer it for macOS, yet never bothered to release normal Minecraft the same way).
The other port might've cost them probably a few days of work (basically an asset swap, because the engine is done). This version (running on M-chips) they could've gotten for free, yet they killed it too.
Makes sense, so why not only offer this for devs who actually do that? Declare that a Mac version of the app already exists and let Apple check.
> they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.
This comes up every time and it's a legitimate concern, but IMO no way it warrants to completely block users from running compatible software on their computers. Call it "Unsupported Mode", spam me with warnings, prevent me from submitting reviews… but never completely block it. That's the asshole approach.
For me, the iPad is the optional one (not that I would ever not take it). My MacBook is pretty close to being a perfect device for work. iPad is a perfect device for, well, everything else. Done.
I travel with an Android tablet now — and while they have their own problems they still are far more functional and flexible than iPads. Want to watch a movie that's not on Netflix or Prime? Just find a torrent and open Flud. You can use it as a FTP server, basically anything you need, an Android tablet is perfect for. My iPad is delegated to note taking now with the pencil.
It's also pretty clear that iPads nowadays are the lowest of Apple's priorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Snell_(writer)
I thought I might be able to do some light development work on it.. No chance.
I don't even know why it has so much storage space. The file system is so poorly designed it's a pain in the ass to transfer anything to it.
Did everyone clap?
https://mgsloan.com/posts/supine-computing/
https://www.piratekingdom.com/blog/my-productivity-couch-set...
https://www.jefftk.com/p/folding-couch-monitor
I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.
One other side benefit is that the iPad somehow seems incongruous - with a laptop out in public you're "working" yet with an iPad you're somehow perceptually not.
Plus, iPad coupled with Library Genesis is awesome. Totally awesome. Yeah I'm a terrible libertarian pirate, but it's just incredible. Better than the libraries I've paid a fortune for as part of my education. Heaps better than the annoying tedium of logging in to various publishers and databases and subscriptions via a library website to then use a locked-down epub in a horrible and further locked down DRM e-reader, every one of which I've ever tried is basically an abomination.
Contrast it to a more general computer running macOS or Windows, which does a poorer job at what iPad does best, but it has a much longer tail where the complexity ramps up linearly, compared to the hockey stick of iOS.
Computers seem to be awesome tools for refining ideas yet really bad at facilitating their creation.
There’s also an analogous situation in hip-hop with the very limited SP-1200 and MPC 60 samplers. They don’t do much but what they do, they do well, so it’s up to producers to work to that and try to transcend it. Having an unlimited workspace in the computer to replicate the same doesn’t lead to better hip hop.
So you’re right to invoke metaphysics, because the machines have a kind of ontology, same as the mode of life of the artists using them. It doesn’t have to be a metaphysical quest, but there can be better and more interesting ways of creating on limited tools, particularly if you’ve used them for a long time. Some writers such as Jean Baudrillard stuck with typewriters as a writing tool long after the introduction of the desktop computer (he died in 2007) because he found it was simpler and better, less distracting, more focussed on the word and him. You could invoke the same “omfg you could be pasting in hyperlinks and doing referencing and surfing at the same time you’re just doing it for your own sake!” toward someone like that, but actually it’s not for its own sake, he only needs to think and produce text and it’s the perfect tool for that, the computer is only ever pretending to be a typewriter and comes with a load of noise and headache alongside.
I don't think there's anything fundamentally limiting about the iPad or iPhone computationally. The only limiting factor is the interface. Which if you're trying to cultivate frustration in order to pour it into your album, sure. But mere frustration is better had elsewhere, imo.
I think that staying with the typewriter to write books is entirely different than adopting a curated, sandboxed mobile device as one's medium. Firstly, it was at one point the gold standard for writing. Never the case with touch screens. Secondly, iPhones and iPads are not simpler or less distracting than a typewriter, or even a computer not connected to the internet. playing with the chmod command from 1970 is really not that interesting.
But also I seriously doubt that people will look back on iPhone 5 videos like they do and will do vinyl records, LaserDiscs, or even CDs.
Yeah, my point. Please read my comment before negating it as matter of course.
Beethoven’s ears breaking is a slightly different issue than technological limitations - his technology of ink on paper was still the same. He wasn’t playing each orchestral part one by one when he wrote his symphonies, he just couldn’t hear his main composing instrument any more, but had obviously internalised the skill of hearing it all in his head long before he lost the ability to hear it outside of his head upon playback, sadly.
Nujabes didn’t pioneer lo-fi.
What do you want? I guess you mean he only pioneered good lo-fi that wasn't Grandmaster Flash cringe. How did Niggaz Of Destruction pioneer lo-fi?
You completely skipped over my point about the internet but ok.
Nujabes steals Gigi Masin's "Clouds" totally wholesale for a remix of Five Deez https://youtu.be/Yu_hqMfXIN8
It had even been stolen wholesale before by To Rococo Rot in 1999: https://youtu.be/Dzx7p2HyKik and by Bjork in 2002: https://youtu.be/A-AukyfMTKE
what are you talking about? Five Deez is credited. The song is even called Latitude! LOLLLL. where's the theft? also, I'm surprised that you couldn't find any actual wholesale theft (it's DEFINITELY there, ahem Aruarian Dance https://www.reddit.com/r/Nujabes/comments/3fagps/the_story_o...) because lo-fi as a genre IS ENTIRELY CONSTRUCTED AROUND SAMPLING OTHER PEOPLE, often uncredited, looping it, and making it sound like vinyl on a tube amp or some shit. What did you think lo-fi was? LOL. it's like vaporwave. not like electronic pop rock or rap. So your argument that theft is what prevents someone from having pioneered a genre built on theft is not just absurd, the exact opposite is true. Theft is what make lo-fi lo-fi.
What is your actual argument? That the songs stolen weren't obscure enough to count as authentic lo-fi stealery? Are you some kind of lo-fi hipster that only listens to tracks with the most obscure samples from the 17th century or something?
To Rococo Rot isn't lo-fi nor is that song. Björk isn't lo-fi either. It's electronic. You're not even in the same genre. So how in the fuck could they have pioneered the genre they've never been part of? Or are you off on some idiotic pedantic technicality that nujabes didn't pioneer the genre, the sounds themselves did. OOOOOHHHH. We're all so impressed.
You probably think it's really insightful to blather on about how pop art is derivative because it's remixing the label from a soup can. Ten thousand IQ.
https://youtu.be/tyXvSN0QiIc
This is lo-fi, from 1991 https://youtu.be/ZWCQQ1ZWi04
Def Leppard is the polar opposite of lo-fi but you think they're lo-fi artists because they have shitty demo tapes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU2XiEq5eE4 holy shit. this means that everyone pioneered lo-fi. LOL, bro. get it together. this is embarrassing.
By all means, strictly delimit a made-up genre (based upon the confusion of internet neckbeards) and fix it by definition to ensure you remain correct - musically and musicologically your lo-fi genre and the artists within are replicating music that is sonically and functionally identical to music made a decade or two earlier. And try telling Pete Rock, The Bomb Squad, JayDee, MF Doom, RZA, almost any actual pioneer producers: “Wait you guys are mistaken, Nujabes was the pioneer of lo-fi hip hop, even though he came out years after you guys.” Try even doing the same with DJ Krush even if you want to remain in Japan. And even worse, you’re defending the honour (for some strange reason) of a producer whose music and beats are beyond lame. Keep enjoying your crappy music.
I would love to hear you tell Daniel Boone that he's not a pioneer because some skeleton turned up. LOL.
However, by saving those thoughts to a computer suddenly they are more likely to be tweaked than discarded. I’m not bound to include them they just get sticky and slow down my exploration of novel ideas.
A whiteboard lends itself to constantly erasing things rather than meaningless tweaks. Collaborate with a few people and nobody suggests moving a box you just drew on a whiteboard, but on a computer someone will want to move it around. The capacity itself becomes a distraction.
At least I think that is the point.
“The best camera is the one you have with you” is common photography advice
Whether or not the author is limited by his perception of iPad’s ability is needless hair-splitting.
How does BitTorrent work via the app store by the way? Kappa.
There's thousands of "they"s.
I don't think torrents are at any risk of being taken over by a small number of actors.
I guess some people like to be managed and set strict boundaries, but that's a far cry from creativity. If creativity happens, as it always does, its despite these hard limits
I’ve used a PowerBook / MacBook since about 2002, and even had one with me at the time when I was writing, but nevertheless found the iPad Air a perfect tool for the task at hand. I needed to read and write and create, and it did that brilliantly. When I needed to get more involved and manage heaps of files and format them into a multi-gigabyte publication, yeah of course I switched to doing that on a MacBook, but it remains that I wasn’t hamstrung in creative terms by carrying an iPad around all day, and indeed, more inspired by being able to use a computer more often and more effectively. Some of the images in my book were also taken with the iPad, which the MacBook couldn’t have done. So yeah, some limitations but some new freedoms.
Only if you stipulate that it was never designed to handle text editing, multi-object selection, and a number of other fundamental use cases that apparently no one at Apple bothers to do on their iPads — if they did, they’d either 1. Experiment to find better solutions; or 2. Admit that there is no good touch-based solution for this UX scenario.
That’s actually the definition of a product. To create something for specific use cases. That’s not an Apple problem/issue.
Sure, I could use my Toyota Camry (iPad) to haul lumber - but it’d make more sense to use a truck (MacBook) that was designed for those use cases.
In your analogy, it's like a truck is clothed as a Camry but it really needn't be.
I guess it's the difference between a geek's and generalist's viewpoints.
Now clearly the hardware is different too. But I think the whole “appliance” thing is software.
Maybe refining the argument to: It’s a Camry with the same horsepower as the truck?
Funny thing I was at the hardware store today looking at modern trucks and was laughing to myself that they seem so much more car-like than when Steve Jobs made that comment. They have pretty interiors with cup holders and infotainment centers. And cars these days have horsepower approaching trucks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why are people trying to use a tool it wasn’t designed for?
Eg the iPad does not have a built in keyboard. Why are people trying to use it to write long form essays/books when it’s designed default keyboard is on display - and then they get upset at Apple.
And that's without acknowledging the keyboard they sell!
> … computer running macOS …
I would argue that some form factors are better for some use cases, others for other use cases, and we are still figuring out how to best take advantage of each particular form factor.
Despite how popular it seems to be, I think framing it as "it's bad for certain use cases because Apple is evil" is a bit reductionist, and sort of gives up on the power we do have to mold tools to our needs.
You can see it in this short explanation video at the very start. And when he goes into the explanation, the very first thing he says is that the iPads control Ableton.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yp5ICEWmtuQ
Side note: I wonder if Adobe ever regrets discontinuing Framemaker for Mac given the resurgence of Apple in the intervening years.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_FrameMaker
The iPad isn't for multimedia production like podcasting or for connecting niche peripherals to.
But if you just want to write and e-mail and Zoom and read(+annotate) and watch, it's fantastic.
I just use a Bluetooth (Magic) keyboard with mine for writing in coffee shops and it's great. And the Pencil is a godsend for highlighting and annotating PDF's.
gross.
Perhaps I'm spoiled.
Don’t forget that people coded whole programmes on the Sinclair ZX80 and rubber-membrane-keyed ZX Spectrum, which were both abominable, nightmare fuel in fact to those desirous of Cherry keycaps and clicky tactility. The Smart Keyboard is a functional middle ground.
I also wrote the book in Google Docs, and pecked out some of it on my Android smartphone if inspiration struck. The fact that changes instantly sync so seamlessly and unthinkingly between platforms and devices I think is also really brilliant. It’s easy to forget in our quest for computing perfection that ‘good enough’ really is good enough if inspiration strikes. I wrote huge chunks of the book on transport and in public – literally on aeroplanes, trams, sitting on benches outside the library or by the beach. Creating where for the most part people are just consuming or scrolling content in those environments. The iPad and its day-long battery is amazing for this, and I’m not sure that a laptop would have been the same.
The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more.
Save yourself some travel weight. Just pack your Mac. You were already packing it anyway.
Better quality mini-LED display
Better/additional cameras
Touchscreen with pen support
Magnetic charging for the pen
Detachable keyboard
Cellular data option
It’s not really a surprise that the iPad can cost more. Just a shame that the App Store limitations prevent it from being as useful a software platform for many use cases.
It's an appliance. An appliance with mind-boggingly awesome specs - if it were a computer - but it's just that, an appliance closer in spirit to a microwave than to a PC. Treat it as such, and it will be one of the best appliances you'll ever own; but to expect it to be a computer is to set oneself up to be disappointed.
I'm more than happy with it for what it is, but don't mistake it for what it's not.
If that were the case, they’d be making much more money from laptops than from iPads, right?
If they were making just as much money from iPads, though, it would make sense to make the iPad as good as possible. Cannibalizing Mac sales wouldn’t be a big deal.
Per the Six Colors breakdown of Apple’s financial results (https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/08/charts-apple-q3-2023-resu...) Macs and iPads accounted for 8% and 7% of their revenue.
The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning.
They’ve gone back on plenty of things Steve Jobs said (in many cases, Jobs himself was the one who did it).
I don’t think they have a religious objection to making the iPad useful, as you seem to be saying; I think they think they are making it useful, that the current design (including its limitations) is the best compromise.
RIP Steve.
I do all of my personal business on an iMac. The big gap for me was the shell, which is now not an issue with iSH available. There’s literally nothing I cannot do that I need to do that can’t be done on the iPad.
Software development is a much less niche area than podcast recording but one that is equally unsupported on the iPad. I doubt many are itching to swap their dev machines for an iPad, but given the hardware it sure would be nice if I could tinker with stuff on the sofa. But no amount of workarounds or developer ingenuity would enable that because Apple has decreed that I cannot run arbitrary code, or run a local server.