Touchscreens suck for text manipulation. The keyboard and the mouse are the superior input devices for wrangling characters and words and lines and paragraphs.
The author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very happy with a MacBook Neo instead (but they could have just been using a MacBook Air the whole time).
The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”, and it’s an amazing tool for digital artists and anyone who does lots of hand annotation work. So really overall a product that’s found its niche, and when I see grandpas and grandmas and students at my local cafe using their iPad their hands are effectively swooping and swiping in a finger ballet.
I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air), and for some reason that induces some sort of frustration in them and they feel like things somehow shouldn’t be that way. I guess I get it, the iPad hardware is pretty slick. But yeah, your work makes you a MacBook person, not an iPad person, that’s just how it is. (Apple should make an 11” MacBook again though).
> iPad apps should be weird as hell, unlike anything you find on a desktop operating system […] The iPad should be a highly-focused touch playground. Weird as hell, one-of-a-kind apps
I don’t know what this obsession with “weird apps” is, but 99.9% of people don’t care about “weird apps” and so that’s not enough to justify a whole device category (and you can find weird apps on all platforms anyways).
This article makes me very, very strongly want Bryce 3D for iPad.
Everything about using that app was about trying to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the screen. Now you can. Its user interface was nonsenical at the time. Now a spherical marble is sensible. Tap an object, then tap and hold; use other hand to operate the three-axis arrow control bar that swells up out of the interface into easy to touch controls. When you let go, they pop with a little spray of tri-color paint and a few speckles get left on the user interface.
Seriously, we have done almost nothing with what’s possible because everything is either Word, Letterpress, Tabletop Simulator, or cross-platform port. Meanwhile there’s an engine in there powerful enough to run Bryce with realtime rendering, but everyone wants to emulate a sheet of paper rather than letting me do the most basic things.
We could have painting with a pen and controlling z-depth with a hand at the same time. Path snap to collision avoidance margins on a slider. Negative margins and a setting to define collision handling: do you materials simulate two oils colliding at their spline velocity? Do they intersperse and blend like translucent colored sand? How far after the intersection does the aftertint continue in the brush stream?
Instead, we have, courtesy of AI, U-turned the industry all the way back to text adventure games with sentient potatoes.
I just want a notebook the size and weight of a 10" ipad pro that I can run desktop software on. The Macbook Neo is 12" and weighs 1.23kg which is light but not "forget you have it in your bag" light.
It's frustating knowing that the ipad _could_ run mac os but won't due to intentional market segmentation by Apple.
This is the what everyone that says they want Xcode in an iPad actually means. They don’t want an iPad at all, they want a super portable Mac. Every single complaint around iPadOS is from someone trying to use it like a Mac.
I do wish Apple would make an 11” Mac just so people would stop complaining about the iPad lol.
Buried in here is the very nice idea of an AI dividend for CLI users - as we keep designing interfaces for LLMs directly, those interfaces are text-oriented, and afford us a look at a future with the command line being central.
I like that. My recent tools are mostly AI first, and therefore CLI first. I’ve been toying with adding JSON modes to them, and this is undeniably useful, but I think I’ll keep JSON under flags; it’s a way to prioritize human users as well.
I think this touch-only idea would be more viable if we had far better haptic feedback from screens. All the fancy gestures and fluidic UI don't help when your only means of interaction is pushing against an unresponsive pane of glass. Maybe something better just isn't possible, but I'd love to see Apple push things forward in this area.
This makes me think of the interface for one handed touch screen typing that was used in the movie version of Ended’s game; it stuck with me as an example of a more touch friendly flexible input mechanism that really challenged how I thought about interfaces. Someone made an open source implementation of it but half the battle is getting these idioms to take root. I wish Apple would experiment more with novel touch interfaces in the way the article describes.
I sign this essay. Apple has apparently multiple opposing goals for the iPadOS:
1. Make it powerful enough so that it can be sold as equivalent to macOS
2. Keep it locked like iOS, to be sold as secure alternative to computer for your parents and kids (which rules out all the workflow customization pros need)
3. Don’t make it powerful enough for people to stop buying Macs (Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever)
The intersection of these is an empty set.
I use my 2018 Pro as a great browser and YouTube machine, with zero intent to upgrade until the above situation changes. It’s useless for anything else, and even if I got M4 powerhouse, I wouldn’t be able to take it as a single machine for holiday for emergency Weathergraph hotfix or server debugging.
No real person wants that. A bunch of hackers want it, so that they can try it a couple of times as a fun side project and then never use it again in their life.
I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig.
Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.
The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.
Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.
The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
I suggest that you watch people in cafes, offices, and libraries (especially young people) use Windows-based touchscreen-equipped laptops. There's nothing that "sucks" or is "useless" about having the additional option of a touch interface on a laptop.
You don't even have to use it! There is zero downside to having a touch input on a laptop. As a component it has essentially invisible cost or negative tradeoff in any way. You still have a keyboard and mouse. It is helpful to have for little things. Examples below:
- Resizing photos with pinch zoom
- Scrolling smoothly through PDFs
- Hitting OK on a dialog box
- Making a digital signature
- Hell, macOS runs a good amount of iPhone and iPad apps that were designed for a touch screen, so we could add "using iOS apps" to the list.
- Using handwriting to take notes...much nicer to be able to draw diagrams versus being limited to text only (in a 2-in-1 form factor on a device with pen support)
Apple just hasn't made the 2-in-1 device format that a very large percentage of Windows laptops are sold with, the kind with a folding hinge. Perhaps this is because they have had Tim Cook's operations mindset so long. They don't really care that it's a device that 1/3 of users will enjoy. They couldn't even keep selling the iPhone mini even though a device that sells 5% of the iPhone's volume is still an incredibly successful device. They just want to make as few SKUs as possible to maintain profit margins, not to deliver innovative tech that at least some customers want and enjoy.
What we need is a single MacOS that can run an iOS-like touchscreen launcher and dumbed-down 'apps' while operating via touchscreen, but with a keyboard+mouse connected switches back to 'productivity mode', exposing the full power of MacOS.
MacOS can basically do this already, running iOS software on Macs. It's just a matter of choosing to unlock the potential of modern iPad hardware, putting the same OS on iPads and Macbooks. Full software compatibility. iPads that can be more than locked-down toys.
But would Apple ever give up the control and App Store revenue that locked-down devices provide?
My wife just retired, and with that went the work computer (that she rarely used for personal stuff to begin with). Now she uses her iPad. But that has the problems of no keyboard/mouse, so I gave her an old Apple keyboard and trackpad. But as parent points out, there's still a lot of touching going on. It's just not the setup for real work.
I find it particularly frustrating to watch, because she has an account on the weeks-old MBP I just bought (which will connect to a 27" monitor). But instead she'd rather just keep poking at that iPad screen while she complains about how hard it is to use: "I just don't get along with this Mac stuff." This woman worked at Microsoft for over fifteen years, she's not technically illiterate, but apparently it's easier to work with a horrible setup than to walk 20 feet down the hallway and put her finger on the fingerprint reader. :eyeroll:
The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or write with a pen, ever, then I'm at a loss to explain it.
But it's there nonetheless.
We've got a long way to go to really understand UI and UX. A long, long way.
Now, please excuse me while I go and tap dance about architecture for a bit...
Am I the only person who likes the concept of "Sidebar" and using an iPad (often w/ an Apple Pencil) as a second display on a Mac?
Let me do that w/ a MacBook Neo and iPad Air pair which look as if they belong together and which fit nicely into a bag and afford me the option of taking only the iPad Air and Apple Pencil when I want to travel light, and maybe I'll come back to the fold (the last thing I bought from Apple was Mac OS X Public Beta, before that it was OpenSTEP 4.2, and the last thing Apple made which I truly liked wholeheartedly was Snow Leopard).
Oh yeah, make the Apple Pencil work on an iPhone....
Instead, these days, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360 (two of them, panic-bought a spare when I though the line was being discontinued, it's now up to a Book 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (replacing a first-gen unit) and a Wacom One display connected to a MacBook (purchased by an employer) and more Wacom styluses than I can easily count....
The high watermark of my graphical computing experience was using an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint w/ FutureWave SmartSketch when mobile, and a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ --- I've tried pretty much every thing in-between since, but when things were finally getting better, Microsoft did Fall Creator's Update and everything came crashing down....
I'd really like for Apple to make a device trifecta which I would actually be willing to buy.
The part that makes ipadOS feels like a toy is Apple’s iron grip in “App Store only” app delivery. The thing has so much power, but to do anything useful, you gotta play by Apple’s rules. All that dream of quirky, useful, innovative ipadOS leveraging apps would show up if they relinquished that software control and let indie or otherwise apps get there without the Apple Tax both in money and rules.
Would the iPad still be that days long, cohesive device is another story.. it Apple cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Audio apps on the iPad show that this isn’t the case. The iPad has an incredible amount of amazing audio apps that simply don’t exist and/or are much cheaper than on other platforms. Some of that is due to the great audio performance from day one but a lot of it can be chalked up to the lack of piracy. There are a seemingly endless number of synths, effects, sequencers, etc. in the App Store. It’s a relative ghost town in the Android world. Both Mac and Windows are better environments for DAW work but the plug ins are uniformly (usually much) more expensive.
The console approach to software distribution is good for developers and in this case leads to better software for consumers.
Hard disagree. The iPad is a fantastic mac replacement for many purposes. I use the iPad Pro w/ the “magic keyboard” case for working essentially whenever I’m not physically in home or office in similar ways that I do my Mac, for two really big reasons:
(1) The (11-inch) size is fantastic: you get enough screen real estate to see what you’re reading and writing, but it still fits into an arbitrarily small bag and is light enough that you can comfortably walk around all day with it. The death of the original tiny MacBook Air was a huge fail for apple
(2) CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY FOR GOD’S SAKE CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY. Yes, you can always hotspot your phone, however, that’s still not nearly so reliable as a device with its own connectivity, some providers still limit bandwidth there, plus the last thing I need is extra battery drain on my phone when I’m already stressed about it.
TBF, if Apple ever brought back the original MacBook Air with modern specs and with a cellular chip, I would just take gigantic buckets full of money and throw them in the general direction of Cupertino until I got one, like, instantly. And there are definitely still compromises—-as an academic, I’ve been meaning to just write a command line front end to zotero and fling it onto a digital ocean server or something, because its iPad app is so godawful. But on the whole, I still reach for my iPad much much much more than my MacBook, for those two killer features.
I kind of disagree. I always wished apple could copy Microsoft Surface Go and Surface Book.
I would still use macbook for most things but I did use my surface go more often for (deep) work than now my ipad pro (which is better for consumption).
Surface Go in app mode was not as good as ipad and many apps lacking but it shined if I had to to more work/research and I didn't have laptop with me.
I would just love to have something like even smaller size Macbook Neo where I can unplug screen and then would behave like iPad consumption device.
Right now I hate keeping everything synced in apple ecosystem so I usually even won't bother to use ipad while in train or plane.
"Almost anything that doesn’t involve the Apple Pencil (Procreate being one of the true killer apps, the app that may have sold more iPads to creative professionals than anything else) could be done better on a MacBook. Even email feels better on a MacBook.
"Today, they sit in the corner. iPadOS simply isn’t an environment for most “serious” work."
You sound ridiculous.
Half of your argument evolves around your distorted view of "serious work".
What do you consider serious work?
I analyse satellite pictures from conflict zones on my M1 Pro iPad while smoking a blunt, on my back, on a blanket in the park, right now, and probably get paid by the hour more than you make in a day. I can ENHANCE with the power of my fingers as gradually as I need on a 13" screen, not being limited by tiny touchpad space or getting a stiff neck. Try the same with a MacBook.
I’d call that serious work.
My GF put her MacBook away and does Music via Creator Studio on her iPad Pro since it released, mobile and in a creative setting without disruption by her phone, or the necessity of a table, because the iPad got Cellular, and she can live comfortably from it. She’s actually working right now on the other side of the tree.
Not serious work either I guess.
My brother is taking photos of government officials during their travels, and works on iPad Pro exclusively during shoots. It’s much nicer to discuss and touch up photos with an official on an iPad than holding your MacBook in their face like an early 2000s playboy photographer.
Not serious work either I guess.
I frequently visit the Parliament in my country. A lot of the legislation knowledge work is done on iPads. By people who rather chill with the Parliament visitors in the sunlight, thanks to nanotexture, having a chat with them, without looking unapproachable behind a laptop screen or balancing a MacBook on their knees. iPads invite social interactions and make you approachable. MacBooks put up a wall.
Not serious work either I guess.
They are more mobile. I can basically sit down everywhere and get serious work done without looking like a MacBook Moron with an external screen battleship setup and an extra mouse.
My brother’s wife is using the LiDAR sensor inside the iPad Pro for her interior design work. She can do everything on one device. Where’s the LiDAR in the MacBook?
Guess that is not serious work either.
It has GPS, good luck navigating to the next gas station from the middle of nowhere when your phone dies with your MacBook. Guess you’ll just point it at the sky and yell Connect!.
If you travel for work iPad can be a lifesaver.
My lawyer does most work on his iPad Pro.
If you read and annotate documents for a living, why the hell would you do it on a MacBook?
I know people in construction who only use iPad and get work done. Not everyone is a writer, or photographer, or walker.
It’s not the iPad or iPadOS that is limited in a way that doesn’t let you do "serious work".
It’s actually your mental ability to come up with better solutions. Don't blame Apple for being unflexible and dumber than most smart people choosing the right tool for the right job in the place they want to be, rather than being tied to an office or a wall outlet or relying on a phone with a lot smaller battery than an iPad, and their laptop.
The pencil is just another plus. If coding is your way to do serious work, yeah you’re kinda fucked on iPad but there are millions of people who get serious work done on their iPad and then use it recreationally laying on the couch or sitting in the bus where MacBooks look silly and are uncomfortable.
My dream is having an “app” on ipadOS that switches out userland from ipadOS to macOS when launched. Let them be two silos, containers, VMs, whatever.
Only allow “Mac mode” if you have a keyboard and monitor attached. Hell, automatically “sleep” it if you undock. Make it unapologetically keyboard-and-mouse first.
One UI for keyboard/mouse. A second UI for touch. One device that can do it all. That’s the dream.
I feel like we’ve had a few ham fisted attempts over the years at this, and Apple could actually pull it off. I get that it probably won’t happen though.
Touch and mouse are two very distinct forms of input that need to be kept separate. Every convertible Windows laptop I have ever used has convinced me of that.
Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. You can flick your wrist to select any target the size of a grain of rice on a 32" screen. Touch interfaces require larger targets because fingertips are larger than a cursor point, and also require smaller screens because your arm now has to move the entire length of the screen, which is slow and tiring.
Where touchscreens excel is tactile experiences, things that mice cannot replicate. Multi-touch, pressure sensitivity, pen angle. Sweeping motions are difficult to control with a mouse. Manipulating multiple analog controls is nigh-impossible with a mouse.
When an app tries to accommodate both input styles, it inevitably ends up catering to one style or the other, unless two separate interfaces are built. And because a touchscreen laptop can be touched or have the mouse moved at any given time, it's not really possible to switch between the two input styles seamlessly.
I would really enjoy having a device that is capable of both, since the iPad has a gorgeous screen, a great form factor, and a lot of killer uses. But it can't cannibalize mouse interfaces or we wind up with the direction that MacOS is going.
There is nothing wrong with having a keyboard connected to a touch device per se, but the gross arm motion required to move between the touchscreen and the keyboard, and the awkward angle the keyboard puts the touchscreen at sort of nukes the usefulness of the touchscreen. And again, jumping in text is the sort of small target action that mice excel at.
Touch and mouse are complementary inputs that must be included. Working on a Windows laptop with touch and an iPad with Magic Keyboard have convinced me of that.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that having touch means you only use touch. Same for a mouse/trackpad pointer. Each has strengths and weaknesses and it better at some tasks than others. The pointer is good for clicking on small UI elements or doing small movements. It suffers with larger movements across the screen. Touch is good for scrolling, zooming, tapping buttons, tabs, and sometimes links. It’s good for jumping around the screen and moving things.
The keyboard is a third input/control interface and can be even faster and more precise than the mouse pointer. When the mouse first came on the scene, people derided it as less efficient than a keyboard and complained that you had to move your fingers away from the keyboard to use one. They swore they would never use one.
Where these work best is a mix of input modes using different ones for different scenarios. Having a mix if broad and precise inputs means you don’t need to tailor the whole interface for just precision or just broad strokes. The interface can be designed to accommodate the presentation of information and let the choice of inputs be up to the user. A side benefit of having difference input modes is that your hands move in different ways for each. You are less subject to repetitive stress from doing the same hand motion for everything.
I like what the iPad is and it just doesn’t make sense to have a keyboard and mouse with it. Let’s leave the tablets as is and use laptops for serious typing.
I agree except for the monitor attached part. There’s so reason my iPad Pro with that expensive keyboard and trackpad can’t run macOS. I had such dreams
Of using it as a laptop replacement and all it’s ended up being is a very expensive portable monitor.
iPads have M-series chips in them that support hardware virtualisation. But Apple goes out of its way to disable the hypervisor for its iOS/iPadOS builds[1]. All they have to do is stop doing that and allow apps to make use of the virtualisation APIs. UTM hypervisor already exists in App Store, so Apple is clearly not against the principle of it. As soon as that happens, running macOS (or Linux) will become elementary.
When Google ships unified ChromeOS+Android on pKVM on ex-Apple Qualcomm laptops from Dell/HP/Lenovo, Apple executives will have a market-driven reason to make this change. Some iPad improvements appeared after Microsoft shipped Surface 2-in-1.
I want the same mode, but on iOS! Imagine carrying nothing but the phone in your pocket, sitting down at your desk, plugging your phone into the monitor, which has your keyboard and mouse docked, and you have a full development environment.
Partially there on Android Pixels with "Linux Terminal". With the rumored convergence of ChromeOS and Android, it should be possible to have a desktop ChromeOS pKVM VM with accelerated vGPU graphics on Android mobile devices that have enough RAM.
Can someone who personally knows John Ternus please send this essay to him? And can they do it immediately? (...and tell him to implement this business plan)
I grow tired of the MacBook Neo gloating and almost like a light version of bragging in articles like this. It's coded as a critique of the iPad but it feels a lot more like "I'm typing this on a MacBook Neo and it's oh soo amazing!"
Apple is essentially selling the modern version of the eMac, and I would say the Neo is almost as bad of a purchase as that product. The real selling point of the device is that it's newly in box with a warranty. If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better. Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
The Neo situation is the equivalent of buying a brand new $500 Acer machine versus buying a $500 eBay ThinkPad T14 or something like that. You'll get a much better laptop by buying a used laptop versus buying that brand new Acer.
The same story goes for the MacBook Neo. It'll be successful in sales, and it's a nice machine in a lot of ways, but it's one of the most overhyped devices of our present times.
It will go down in history as a device like the iPhone 5C. Save a few bucks now, but pay for it in the near future with the kind of performance you're actually getting from it. Even basic casual tasks will chug in the very near future.
Apple is selling a device that is approximately equivalent to the $1000 laptop they were selling 5 years ago and we are acting like this is a revolutionary product. And, by the way, it's not a $500 product unless you can use the education store. It's actually $600, or $700 if you are buying a configuration that actually makes some level of sense and has enough storage. $700 will buy you a 16GB/512GB MacBook Air M2, a much better machine (better screen, battery, speakers, processor, keyboard, trackpad, I/O, etc).
I see a lot of people in the comments wanting to use iOS on a laptop, or connecting a mouse and keyboard to an iPad/iPhone. I don't know what the point would be. For anything that is not purely content consumption, a regular laptop is superior to a tablet, phone, or touchscreen generally. What use case other than "it's cool" do you actually expect to use this for?
I keep wanting to buy an iPad, but I create more than I consume, and it's a pointless device for creators (except maybe for drawing/illustration). I have no idea why someone would want a touchscreen and iOS on a Macbook Neo. If you're trying to do something other than passively consume content, a Macbook Neo is a better device than an iPad and does not need a touchscreen.
So I agree the iPad range is more complicated than it needs to be but I'm not as enthralled by the Macbook Neo as the author.
For one thing, a base iPad is US$349. Sure you need a keyboard too but it is less than $599. And the core of the Macbook Neo is a previous generation iPhone chip whereas the latest iPad has an M14.
If anything, a better melding of these product lines looka a lot more like the Huawei Mate Book Fold [1].
My biggest issue with Apple's current lineup is actually Face ID. I dearly love my iPad Air because it's about the last Apple device I own that still uses Touch ID.
Nobody will change my mind about Face ID. It's terrible. I'm fine if others want to use it. But please just put Touch ID on the button like the iPad Air on every device, particularly the iPhone.
Face ID terrible for visually impaired people who have to look closer at the screen. This is a common cause for Face ID failures where you have to move the device away from your face for it to work. And you rack up false posiitves this way. Apple is way too zealous with how many false negatives force a passcode entry. I know in the Touch ID entry I barely have to use my passcode. With my current iPhone I have to use it many times a day.
And then Face ID just fails all the time in low light conditions such that you have to light up your face with an external light to make it work. The iPad's screen light by itself isn't enough.
So much for "seamless".
So if you solved this problem there's no real reason to separate the iPad Pro and iPad Air lines.
The $349 iPad has an A16 chip. The Neo has an A18pro chip. the iPad Air has an M4 chip but is $599. The single-core performance of the A18pro and the M4 are the same as they have the same kind of chip cores. The M4 has a couple more cores though.
I’m not sure why you are having to much problem with FaceID. Low light shouldn’t matter as it doesn’t use ambient light to “see” your face. It has an infrared emitter that shines a pattern on your face and that is what the sensor picks up.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadThe author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very happy with a MacBook Neo instead (but they could have just been using a MacBook Air the whole time).
The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”, and it’s an amazing tool for digital artists and anyone who does lots of hand annotation work. So really overall a product that’s found its niche, and when I see grandpas and grandmas and students at my local cafe using their iPad their hands are effectively swooping and swiping in a finger ballet.
I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air), and for some reason that induces some sort of frustration in them and they feel like things somehow shouldn’t be that way. I guess I get it, the iPad hardware is pretty slick. But yeah, your work makes you a MacBook person, not an iPad person, that’s just how it is. (Apple should make an 11” MacBook again though).
> iPad apps should be weird as hell, unlike anything you find on a desktop operating system […] The iPad should be a highly-focused touch playground. Weird as hell, one-of-a-kind apps
I don’t know what this obsession with “weird apps” is, but 99.9% of people don’t care about “weird apps” and so that’s not enough to justify a whole device category (and you can find weird apps on all platforms anyways).
Everything about using that app was about trying to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the screen. Now you can. Its user interface was nonsenical at the time. Now a spherical marble is sensible. Tap an object, then tap and hold; use other hand to operate the three-axis arrow control bar that swells up out of the interface into easy to touch controls. When you let go, they pop with a little spray of tri-color paint and a few speckles get left on the user interface.
Seriously, we have done almost nothing with what’s possible because everything is either Word, Letterpress, Tabletop Simulator, or cross-platform port. Meanwhile there’s an engine in there powerful enough to run Bryce with realtime rendering, but everyone wants to emulate a sheet of paper rather than letting me do the most basic things.
We could have painting with a pen and controlling z-depth with a hand at the same time. Path snap to collision avoidance margins on a slider. Negative margins and a setting to define collision handling: do you materials simulate two oils colliding at their spline velocity? Do they intersperse and blend like translucent colored sand? How far after the intersection does the aftertint continue in the brush stream?
Instead, we have, courtesy of AI, U-turned the industry all the way back to text adventure games with sentient potatoes.
Sigh.
It's frustating knowing that the ipad _could_ run mac os but won't due to intentional market segmentation by Apple.
I do wish Apple would make an 11” Mac just so people would stop complaining about the iPad lol.
I like my MBA, but it could be shrunk. Without the wedge it’s much more easier, too.
I like that. My recent tools are mostly AI first, and therefore CLI first. I’ve been toying with adding JSON modes to them, and this is undeniably useful, but I think I’ll keep JSON under flags; it’s a way to prioritize human users as well.
Like a product I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.
1. Make it powerful enough so that it can be sold as equivalent to macOS
2. Keep it locked like iOS, to be sold as secure alternative to computer for your parents and kids (which rules out all the workflow customization pros need)
3. Don’t make it powerful enough for people to stop buying Macs (Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever)
The intersection of these is an empty set.
I use my 2018 Pro as a great browser and YouTube machine, with zero intent to upgrade until the above situation changes. It’s useless for anything else, and even if I got M4 powerhouse, I wouldn’t be able to take it as a single machine for holiday for emergency Weathergraph hotfix or server debugging.
iPhones need desktop mode. Your apps, your data. USB-C screen + Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Running like iPadOS or even macOS.
The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.
Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.
I suggest that you watch people in cafes, offices, and libraries (especially young people) use Windows-based touchscreen-equipped laptops. There's nothing that "sucks" or is "useless" about having the additional option of a touch interface on a laptop.
You don't even have to use it! There is zero downside to having a touch input on a laptop. As a component it has essentially invisible cost or negative tradeoff in any way. You still have a keyboard and mouse. It is helpful to have for little things. Examples below:
- Resizing photos with pinch zoom
- Scrolling smoothly through PDFs
- Hitting OK on a dialog box
- Making a digital signature
- Hell, macOS runs a good amount of iPhone and iPad apps that were designed for a touch screen, so we could add "using iOS apps" to the list.
- Using handwriting to take notes...much nicer to be able to draw diagrams versus being limited to text only (in a 2-in-1 form factor on a device with pen support)
Apple just hasn't made the 2-in-1 device format that a very large percentage of Windows laptops are sold with, the kind with a folding hinge. Perhaps this is because they have had Tim Cook's operations mindset so long. They don't really care that it's a device that 1/3 of users will enjoy. They couldn't even keep selling the iPhone mini even though a device that sells 5% of the iPhone's volume is still an incredibly successful device. They just want to make as few SKUs as possible to maintain profit margins, not to deliver innovative tech that at least some customers want and enjoy.
"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee." -- Yahtzee Crowshaw
We figured out that light pens were an abomination for ergonomics back in the 1980s.
MacOS can basically do this already, running iOS software on Macs. It's just a matter of choosing to unlock the potential of modern iPad hardware, putting the same OS on iPads and Macbooks. Full software compatibility. iPads that can be more than locked-down toys.
But would Apple ever give up the control and App Store revenue that locked-down devices provide?
I find it particularly frustrating to watch, because she has an account on the weeks-old MBP I just bought (which will connect to a 27" monitor). But instead she'd rather just keep poking at that iPad screen while she complains about how hard it is to use: "I just don't get along with this Mac stuff." This woman worked at Microsoft for over fifteen years, she's not technically illiterate, but apparently it's easier to work with a horrible setup than to walk 20 feet down the hallway and put her finger on the fingerprint reader. :eyeroll:
The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or write with a pen, ever, then I'm at a loss to explain it.
But it's there nonetheless.
We've got a long way to go to really understand UI and UX. A long, long way.
Now, please excuse me while I go and tap dance about architecture for a bit...
Let me do that w/ a MacBook Neo and iPad Air pair which look as if they belong together and which fit nicely into a bag and afford me the option of taking only the iPad Air and Apple Pencil when I want to travel light, and maybe I'll come back to the fold (the last thing I bought from Apple was Mac OS X Public Beta, before that it was OpenSTEP 4.2, and the last thing Apple made which I truly liked wholeheartedly was Snow Leopard).
Oh yeah, make the Apple Pencil work on an iPhone....
Instead, these days, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360 (two of them, panic-bought a spare when I though the line was being discontinued, it's now up to a Book 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (replacing a first-gen unit) and a Wacom One display connected to a MacBook (purchased by an employer) and more Wacom styluses than I can easily count....
The high watermark of my graphical computing experience was using an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint w/ FutureWave SmartSketch when mobile, and a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ --- I've tried pretty much every thing in-between since, but when things were finally getting better, Microsoft did Fall Creator's Update and everything came crashing down....
I'd really like for Apple to make a device trifecta which I would actually be willing to buy.
Would the iPad still be that days long, cohesive device is another story.. it Apple cannot have their cake and eat it too.
The console approach to software distribution is good for developers and in this case leads to better software for consumers.
(1) The (11-inch) size is fantastic: you get enough screen real estate to see what you’re reading and writing, but it still fits into an arbitrarily small bag and is light enough that you can comfortably walk around all day with it. The death of the original tiny MacBook Air was a huge fail for apple
(2) CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY FOR GOD’S SAKE CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY. Yes, you can always hotspot your phone, however, that’s still not nearly so reliable as a device with its own connectivity, some providers still limit bandwidth there, plus the last thing I need is extra battery drain on my phone when I’m already stressed about it.
TBF, if Apple ever brought back the original MacBook Air with modern specs and with a cellular chip, I would just take gigantic buckets full of money and throw them in the general direction of Cupertino until I got one, like, instantly. And there are definitely still compromises—-as an academic, I’ve been meaning to just write a command line front end to zotero and fling it onto a digital ocean server or something, because its iPad app is so godawful. But on the whole, I still reach for my iPad much much much more than my MacBook, for those two killer features.
I would still use macbook for most things but I did use my surface go more often for (deep) work than now my ipad pro (which is better for consumption).
Surface Go in app mode was not as good as ipad and many apps lacking but it shined if I had to to more work/research and I didn't have laptop with me.
I would just love to have something like even smaller size Macbook Neo where I can unplug screen and then would behave like iPad consumption device.
Right now I hate keeping everything synced in apple ecosystem so I usually even won't bother to use ipad while in train or plane.
"Today, they sit in the corner. iPadOS simply isn’t an environment for most “serious” work."
You sound ridiculous.
Half of your argument evolves around your distorted view of "serious work".
What do you consider serious work?
I analyse satellite pictures from conflict zones on my M1 Pro iPad while smoking a blunt, on my back, on a blanket in the park, right now, and probably get paid by the hour more than you make in a day. I can ENHANCE with the power of my fingers as gradually as I need on a 13" screen, not being limited by tiny touchpad space or getting a stiff neck. Try the same with a MacBook.
I’d call that serious work.
My GF put her MacBook away and does Music via Creator Studio on her iPad Pro since it released, mobile and in a creative setting without disruption by her phone, or the necessity of a table, because the iPad got Cellular, and she can live comfortably from it. She’s actually working right now on the other side of the tree.
Not serious work either I guess.
My brother is taking photos of government officials during their travels, and works on iPad Pro exclusively during shoots. It’s much nicer to discuss and touch up photos with an official on an iPad than holding your MacBook in their face like an early 2000s playboy photographer.
Not serious work either I guess.
I frequently visit the Parliament in my country. A lot of the legislation knowledge work is done on iPads. By people who rather chill with the Parliament visitors in the sunlight, thanks to nanotexture, having a chat with them, without looking unapproachable behind a laptop screen or balancing a MacBook on their knees. iPads invite social interactions and make you approachable. MacBooks put up a wall.
Not serious work either I guess.
They are more mobile. I can basically sit down everywhere and get serious work done without looking like a MacBook Moron with an external screen battleship setup and an extra mouse.
My brother’s wife is using the LiDAR sensor inside the iPad Pro for her interior design work. She can do everything on one device. Where’s the LiDAR in the MacBook?
Guess that is not serious work either.
It has GPS, good luck navigating to the next gas station from the middle of nowhere when your phone dies with your MacBook. Guess you’ll just point it at the sky and yell Connect!.
If you travel for work iPad can be a lifesaver.
My lawyer does most work on his iPad Pro. If you read and annotate documents for a living, why the hell would you do it on a MacBook?
I know people in construction who only use iPad and get work done. Not everyone is a writer, or photographer, or walker.
It’s not the iPad or iPadOS that is limited in a way that doesn’t let you do "serious work".
It’s actually your mental ability to come up with better solutions. Don't blame Apple for being unflexible and dumber than most smart people choosing the right tool for the right job in the place they want to be, rather than being tied to an office or a wall outlet or relying on a phone with a lot smaller battery than an iPad, and their laptop.
The pencil is just another plus. If coding is your way to do serious work, yeah you’re kinda fucked on iPad but there are millions of people who get serious work done on their iPad and then use it recreationally laying on the couch or sitting in the bus where MacBooks look silly and are uncomfortable.
Only allow “Mac mode” if you have a keyboard and monitor attached. Hell, automatically “sleep” it if you undock. Make it unapologetically keyboard-and-mouse first.
One UI for keyboard/mouse. A second UI for touch. One device that can do it all. That’s the dream.
I feel like we’ve had a few ham fisted attempts over the years at this, and Apple could actually pull it off. I get that it probably won’t happen though.
Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. You can flick your wrist to select any target the size of a grain of rice on a 32" screen. Touch interfaces require larger targets because fingertips are larger than a cursor point, and also require smaller screens because your arm now has to move the entire length of the screen, which is slow and tiring.
Where touchscreens excel is tactile experiences, things that mice cannot replicate. Multi-touch, pressure sensitivity, pen angle. Sweeping motions are difficult to control with a mouse. Manipulating multiple analog controls is nigh-impossible with a mouse.
When an app tries to accommodate both input styles, it inevitably ends up catering to one style or the other, unless two separate interfaces are built. And because a touchscreen laptop can be touched or have the mouse moved at any given time, it's not really possible to switch between the two input styles seamlessly.
I would really enjoy having a device that is capable of both, since the iPad has a gorgeous screen, a great form factor, and a lot of killer uses. But it can't cannibalize mouse interfaces or we wind up with the direction that MacOS is going.
There is nothing wrong with having a keyboard connected to a touch device per se, but the gross arm motion required to move between the touchscreen and the keyboard, and the awkward angle the keyboard puts the touchscreen at sort of nukes the usefulness of the touchscreen. And again, jumping in text is the sort of small target action that mice excel at.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that having touch means you only use touch. Same for a mouse/trackpad pointer. Each has strengths and weaknesses and it better at some tasks than others. The pointer is good for clicking on small UI elements or doing small movements. It suffers with larger movements across the screen. Touch is good for scrolling, zooming, tapping buttons, tabs, and sometimes links. It’s good for jumping around the screen and moving things.
The keyboard is a third input/control interface and can be even faster and more precise than the mouse pointer. When the mouse first came on the scene, people derided it as less efficient than a keyboard and complained that you had to move your fingers away from the keyboard to use one. They swore they would never use one.
Where these work best is a mix of input modes using different ones for different scenarios. Having a mix if broad and precise inputs means you don’t need to tailor the whole interface for just precision or just broad strokes. The interface can be designed to accommodate the presentation of information and let the choice of inputs be up to the user. A side benefit of having difference input modes is that your hands move in different ways for each. You are less subject to repetitive stress from doing the same hand motion for everything.
[1] https://x.com/utmapp/status/1708907045314035986
Love having a touchscreen laptop, though I'm annoyed that Apple will lock it behind a $5k price tag for now.
Apple is essentially selling the modern version of the eMac, and I would say the Neo is almost as bad of a purchase as that product. The real selling point of the device is that it's newly in box with a warranty. If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better. Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
The Neo situation is the equivalent of buying a brand new $500 Acer machine versus buying a $500 eBay ThinkPad T14 or something like that. You'll get a much better laptop by buying a used laptop versus buying that brand new Acer.
The same story goes for the MacBook Neo. It'll be successful in sales, and it's a nice machine in a lot of ways, but it's one of the most overhyped devices of our present times.
It will go down in history as a device like the iPhone 5C. Save a few bucks now, but pay for it in the near future with the kind of performance you're actually getting from it. Even basic casual tasks will chug in the very near future.
Apple is selling a device that is approximately equivalent to the $1000 laptop they were selling 5 years ago and we are acting like this is a revolutionary product. And, by the way, it's not a $500 product unless you can use the education store. It's actually $600, or $700 if you are buying a configuration that actually makes some level of sense and has enough storage. $700 will buy you a 16GB/512GB MacBook Air M2, a much better machine (better screen, battery, speakers, processor, keyboard, trackpad, I/O, etc).
I love to do math on the iPad. I like to also draw on the iPad.
A pencil is necessary.
I keep wanting to buy an iPad, but I create more than I consume, and it's a pointless device for creators (except maybe for drawing/illustration). I have no idea why someone would want a touchscreen and iOS on a Macbook Neo. If you're trying to do something other than passively consume content, a Macbook Neo is a better device than an iPad and does not need a touchscreen.
Trackpad of a 16 inch MacBook Pro is humongous anyways.
Add a touchscreen display to the trackpad, and give it iPad OS
For one thing, a base iPad is US$349. Sure you need a keyboard too but it is less than $599. And the core of the Macbook Neo is a previous generation iPhone chip whereas the latest iPad has an M14.
If anything, a better melding of these product lines looka a lot more like the Huawei Mate Book Fold [1].
My biggest issue with Apple's current lineup is actually Face ID. I dearly love my iPad Air because it's about the last Apple device I own that still uses Touch ID.
Nobody will change my mind about Face ID. It's terrible. I'm fine if others want to use it. But please just put Touch ID on the button like the iPad Air on every device, particularly the iPhone.
Face ID terrible for visually impaired people who have to look closer at the screen. This is a common cause for Face ID failures where you have to move the device away from your face for it to work. And you rack up false posiitves this way. Apple is way too zealous with how many false negatives force a passcode entry. I know in the Touch ID entry I barely have to use my passcode. With my current iPhone I have to use it many times a day.
And then Face ID just fails all the time in low light conditions such that you have to light up your face with an external light to make it work. The iPad's screen light by itself isn't enough.
So much for "seamless".
So if you solved this problem there's no real reason to separate the iPad Pro and iPad Air lines.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvXZQ4Tv-pY
I’m not sure why you are having to much problem with FaceID. Low light shouldn’t matter as it doesn’t use ambient light to “see” your face. It has an infrared emitter that shines a pattern on your face and that is what the sensor picks up.