11 ms·

iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

157 points by janober 9y ago

sirmike_ 9y ago
Just an observation but at this pace which will happen quicker to market -- mouse integration on iOS or Windows 10 ARM? And of those two which has a bigger impact?
- simonh 9y ago
  Mouse integration on the iPad would be a disastrous blunder. It just wouldn't fit with any aspect of the interaction model and would represent a dire loss of the plot on Apple's part. So I think that would have the greater impact.
  - post_break 9y ago
    I don't know why it would be a blunder. On a jailbroken iPad it's a god send to be able to have a tablet with a mouse and keyboard with a battery that lasts forever. Touching the screen gets "gorilla arm" fast and also makes it dirty. Could also lead to tablet cases with built in track pads. But I can see the "this doesn't apply to me so it's dumb" narrative that seems to circle around Apple opinions so much.
  - canuckintime 9y ago
    I'd argue that the iPad Keyboard Cover already represents a loss of the plot. Gorilla arm fatigue is real. Either Apple go whole hog and provide a trackpad in that keyboard cover (not necessarily enabling a mouse cursor mind you [1]) or Apple should sufficiently innovate their software keyboard so we don't need a keyboard cover to begin with. [1] https://twitter.com/DaveChap/status/869192781960499200 https://twitter.com/DaveChap/status/869192781960499200
- tyingq 9y ago
  By units sold or overall revenue? Apple tends to make up a lot of ground with high prices :)
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  Windows 10 ARM would certainly happen quicker, not sure that mouse on iOS will ever happen. As far as impact - x86 emulation on ARM, if good enough, can significantly undercut Intel, which may end x86 dominance on the desktop eventually.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    Intel is already going to be facing tough competition from AMD's Zen architecture too. AMD actually also make powerful ARM chips for servers, so I wonder if they might seize the chance for another angle of attack if it makes sense for them.
  - hendersoon 9y ago
    Not necessarily. Intel could easily walk away from some of its margin. Even the latest Qualcomm SoCs aren't particularly fast compared to modern intel CPUs, so intel would still maintain its high-end. That doesn't mean ARM is inherently slow. Apple's SoCs are much faster on single threaded tasks than Qualcomm and Samsung's, easily approaching modern intel CPUs.
- wluu 9y ago
  > quicker to market I'd say Windows 10 on ARM. [0] [0] https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171
- hendersoon 9y ago
  Win10 on ARM devices are already announced for Q4 this year, assuming Intel doesn't sue Microsoft and get a stay on the Win10 x86 translation layer. Pretty easy to conceive of scenarios where these devices would have real impact, if the translation is fast enough. Imagine a $300 10" windows laptop with a 10 hour battery life and roughly ivy bridge i3 level performance. In comparison, Apple hasn't even hinted they'd allow mouse input on iOS. If you need that level of precision, they want you to use their stylus.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    For what it's worth: you can get a $100-200 10" Windows 10 laptop (well, 2-in-1 tablet) with an Atom. (Battery life as a laptop is closer to 3 than 10, at least for me.) MS has already hit that price point/form factor, and is working on making it more efficient/performant.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  Wasn't it possible to use USB mice with the iPad 1?
  - duskwuff 9y ago
    Not without jailbreak tweaks. iOS has never natively supported a mouse cursor.
Shivetya 9y ago
the part of being able to measure items "AR" style is going to be amazing for businesses, both in direct in the home work and allowing customers to do their own measurements and such
- fooker 9y ago
  Not very accurate though. You can see about half a cm difference in 40 cms (compared to a tape measure beside it.)
  - 0xCMP 9y ago
    Unless you're doing something either destructive or hard to reverse ARKit will be plenty accurate for things like knowing if a piece of furniture will fit through a door or something will hang on a wall. It'll also help make the ("it's a 55.5inch TV" + "No, it's clearly just a 30 inch one") argument much easier to settle.
csours 9y ago
I didn't read the whole thing. Does it do anything better than other operating systems, or just bring desktop features to the iPad? I'm not saying bringing desktop features to a tablet is a problem, just curious.
- simonh 9y ago
  The only really important question is whether it does anything better than other tablet operating systems. For the iPad, that's what really matters - becoming the best tablet OS it can be. Anything else would be a distraction.
  - csours 9y ago
    Fair enough, and props if it beats Windows, who have been trying to get here for years.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - hendersoon 9y ago
    Microsoft would disagree, and they have been astonishingly successful with the Surface Pro line. The iOS11 desktop features are a vindication of Microsoft's original Windows 8 vision. Microsoft didn't /execute/ on that vision particularly well in either Win8 or Win10, but the convergence between handheld and desktop does offer some tangible advantages. It isn't all marketing BS.
    - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
      I have a Windows 10 tablet (well, a "2-in-1" since it came with a keyboard using a Surface-style connector), and it seems to behave reasonably as both a tablet and laptop. It's certainly more integrated than my experience has been with other OSs on tablets: Android doesn't do well as a laptop, nor does iOS; Windows 10 is a desktop operating system, and works reasonably as a tablet. (I don't like Windows 10 for other reasons that have nothing do with mode switching.) I'm curious why you think Windows 10 didn't execute well on the idea.
marcoperaza 9y ago
It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.
- quink 9y ago
  You mean the company that has you dragging disks into the trash for about three decades now?
  - evv 9y ago
    Speaking of hidden features.. you can just use Cmd-e to eject a disk in finder.
    - fredoliveira 9y ago
      That's a keyboard shortcut, though. No way that is a hidden feature.
    - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
      Ah, youngsters. It used to be the case that Cmd-E ejected, but you rarely wanted just to eject (i.e. just remove the disk from the Mac), usually you wanted to Put Away, and that was Cmd-Y. I miss System 7.
      - rhencke 9y ago
        Nostalgia's a funny thing though. Remember the 'bomb' dialog box with the reset button that didn't always work? Cooperative multitasking allowing apps to lock the computer? ...I miss it, too.
        Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
        Very much. Having Tetris and MacWrite Pro open simultaneously would cause a bomb, every time. It genuinely did wonders for my productivity. I remember System 7.1 most for its purity of interface. Everything from 7.5 onwards seemed to be bolting on more bells and whistles in a faintly uncoordinated fashion, and OS X has continued that. 7.0/7.1 were simple, efficient and fast. Much of the featuritis in the last 25 years has been good, of course, but I would still kill to have the old Spatial Finder back.
tlrobinson 9y ago
There's a long ways to go, but I wonder if we're headed for an eventual unification of iOS and macOS?
- secfirstmd 9y ago
  I hope so. I feel like this has been Apple's end game for quite while but they have been squeezing out the profit from the movement towards that in the interim. I mean, the new Macbook ribbon thing, what a piece of crap compared to the innovation of a Surface Pro. But if you can give me a Macbook's power with a touchscreen and detachable keyboard - "Here, take my money!" :)
- mi100hael 9y ago
  That writing has been on the wall since the iOS style application "launcher" was added to OS X.
  - algesten 9y ago
    That launcher may be indication Apple was thinking that way, but look at their latest U-turns on pro hardware and reinforcing their commitment to laptop/desktop. I don't believe they're going that way anymore. Also. Did you ever see anyone using that launcher as primary interaction?
  - _ph_ 9y ago
    They are certainly experimenting with which features might make sense on the "other" OS. But until your post, I had almost forgotten that the launcher still exists on macOS. Likewise, Dashboard still exists, but does not get much attention any more. But even with the new iOS giving more "desktop" powers to the iPad, Apple still seems to aim for a UI model quite different to macOS. So this seems to be intended.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    They more-or-less tore down the wall when they renamed the company from "Apple Computer" to just plain "Apple." I'll be surprised if they're still selling Macs in 5-7 more years.
blowski 9y ago
I tried iOS 11 on the latest version of the iPad Pro 9.7" and iPhone 6S. I've actually downgraded back to iOS 10 because the beta was still too buggy for day-to-day use. The existing 'multi-tasking' on the iPad Pro is fiddly, and this was no easier. Apps were locking themselves to the Dock and I couldn't work out how to remove them. Switching between apps was far from "Cmd + Tab" of the desktop. A lot of apps that I still use but haven't been updated in years broke because they're not 64 bit. And it was very slow. Even native apps like Settings and Notes were just hanging for seconds at a time. The hardest bit is the sheer number of different ways of doing things. "You're in landscape mode, so if you slide down from the top and then slide left in the resulting screen you can see the last notification that popped up a second ago." I did like the new keyboard, where I could just swipe down to get a capital letter or special character. And the control screen was good, as I could enable "Battery Saver Mode" and the "Personal Hotpoint" more quickly. But I'll need to see a lot more polish to the Dock before re-upgrading.
- x0x0 9y ago
  Does the dock hide itself, or will it permanently eat the bottom inch of my ipad? edit: I got blocked for writing thank you in response, so I'll write it here instead. Thank you for taking the time to answer me.
  - blowski 9y ago
    It hides itself. It's supposed to slide up intelligently, but sometimes it doesn't, so you have to go back to the home screen.
- martin_bech 9y ago
  Must of the previous IOS beta have had similar poor performance. I dont know if some debug mode i running in the background or whats going on, but final version, is always much more performant.
  - blowski 9y ago
    I upgraded to the iOS 10 beta almost immediately as it came out (only on the iPhone) and it felt very polished. There were a few performance issues, but I was able to live with them - this time around it was unusable.
notadoc 9y ago
But it's still an iPad. Touch screens are just slower, less accurate, and more cumbersome than a cursor and a good hardware keyboard for the vast majority of professional applications and use cases.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
  Point, but it may end up as an SLR vs. phone cam thing. We know the numbers on that ...
  - notadoc 9y ago
    I get what you're saying, but a phone camera is much easier to use than an SLR.
bkdbkd 9y ago
meh. not much, handing back features they could have delivered in 2010. A great bit of positive fluff imho
0xCMP 9y ago
I think I'm going to sell my existing 9.7" to get the new 10.5" to get a bit more space to work with on this new version of iOS. I can't wait until I can really use iOS the way I use my mac. Which at this point really is based on either mobileOrg getting better or some app coming out where I can easily manage a rich personal knowledge base/wiki on the iPad.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Have you looked at Scrivener on Mac/iOS? Used by writers doing research. http://2doapp.com http://2doapp.com on iOS/Mac has robust WebDAV sync and can handle large databases.
  - 0xCMP 9y ago
    Yes, I have it, but most of what I do isn't so much writing, which I believe it's a great tool for. Most of the writing tools out there are mainly for writers and not more researchers like me (learning stuff about development and etc.). I have actually now started to think maybe I use DEVONThink instead and I get all the features I wanted, but I guess the UI on the mac isn't the nicest. Then again going from Emacs to this is probably nicer. Ugh so many options. I like OrgMode and Emacs as it is! Why can't I just use one thing and focus on all the things I need to write down and figure out.
    - walterbell 9y ago
      For tracking concepts while learning, this is a fun app, but no Mac version: http://www.mindscopeapp.com http://www.mindscopeapp.com
      - 0xCMP 9y ago
        Wow that really is a cool app. Awesome concept/implementation. Thanks for showing me that. I wish there were better lists of these kinds of apps.
        9y ago
bkdbkd 9y ago
read the article. not much there. very fluffy. as usual apple made old work flows different. as usual, people will be confused at first. as usual, not much to write home about. "Before IOS 11 we arbitrarily limited the apps in your dock to 6. Today we will allow up to 8!" <cheers from the crowd>. They've been dripping out features, that they could have delivered in 2010 but for reasons like Courage chose to hold back. The article doesn't support the headline. Unless that also means 'Your ipad will still be the same old iPad, but you will find it more awkward to use"
kartan 9y ago
I'm planning to buy a Microsoft Surface Pro because Android and iOS tablets have very limited Operating Systems. So I think that some of this changes go in the right direction, for tablets at least. On long trips, to Japan or the USA, I usually travel with an iPad and a Macbook (1 or 2 phones, 2 digital cameras). It has worked well. Next time I'm trying to get around with just one device that allows me to move around the city with all the information I need, and that I can use to do some more advanced stuff when I get to the hotel (Classify pictures and videos, edit and process them, upload them to Google Pictures/Facebook/...). Let's see how that goes. I understand that Apple doesn't want to scare current customers offering something that they don't need/want. But I need it now. :)
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  Speaking as someone using 11 on an iPad Pro 12.5", I would take this (and will be taking this) over my Surface Pro 3. The screen is amazing, the new multitasking features are great, the battery life even on the beta destroys the Surface, I could keep going on but really this is a very laptop replacing device, for me. As usual YMMV, but seriously this can cover probably 90% of what I use my laptop for in a mobile setting. Addressing my itch of curiousness: Why carry 2 phones?
  - tylerpachal 9y ago
    Perhaps a work phone and a personal phone?
    - kartan 9y ago
      Yes. :)
bshimmin 9y ago
I'm slightly terrified that this update is going to confuse the hell out of my ageing parents, who find the simplicity, lack of meaningful support for multitasking, and absence of the Dock, to be key selling points of their iPad.
- danso 9y ago
  You posted exactly what I was thinking. I recently gave my parents my iPad Air 4th gen and orienting them to it was an eye-opening experience. They are retired but they both worked as programmers (think COBOL-era). I've owned an iPad since launch day and so many features that feel instinctive -- double-tap home button to bring up apps, slide-down-from-top to see notifications -- are decidedly not. And that's before you get to the confusion of what's the difference between logging into email via the browser, versus a specialized app. And then there's me. I got myself an iPad Pro, one of the 9.7 inch models that Apple didn't see fit to put 3D-touch on. It took me a long time to realize that the reason I couldn't delete items from the core TV app was because the delete functionality, which used to work on a long touch, was deprecated for 3D-touch. The amount of no-shits given by Apple designers toward long-time users with year-old devices still amazes me. Making iOS more like a computer is appealing to me, but I feel bad for the non-professionals who are likely to be super confused.
  - guu 9y ago
    None of the iPads have 3D touch so it is not about your tablet being old. I looked it up and the discover-ability on this feature is pretty poor. You click the "downloaded" button to get the option to delete. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204343 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204343
clw8 9y ago
Until I hear that Xcode for iPad Pro is in the works I'll be holding onto my first gen Air. Otherwise there's no point spending a grand when my $200 touchscreen convertible Chromebook does all the tablety things I need and runs Linux beautifully.
- supercoder 9y ago
  I don't think Chromebook runs Xcode either
  - 6Typos 9y ago
    What the parent is saying is that it is useless to buy a new iPad, because he already has a Chromebook. If iOS 11 brought XCode, then he would buy a new one, because it would have one more important feature (XCode).
ChuckMcM 9y ago
This is what I expect 'iOS laptop edition' is. As ChromeOS is 'Android laptop edition' and Win10 already is Windows laptop edition. With the addition of WSL to Win10 it makes it more developer friendly for me. Very much like MacOS always has been, drop into terminal and blam, there is all of UNIX. And all of it makes Canonical's "one Ubuntu across three platforms" pitch seem pretty prophetic. Very fun to watch excellent designers try these things out in the market.
tambourine_man 9y ago
If Adobe releases its Creative Suite and Apple decides the iPad is big enough to run Xcode, the Mac is in trouble. And I think that's fine, even being a die hard Mac user with 30 years of usage under my belt. The hardware is simply amazing and the software is finally coming of age.
- pvinis 9y ago
  I don't know about Adobe stuff, but Xcode on the iPad is not so simple. First, the iPad has to be powerful enough to do fast compilations etc. But even if we give it that, it is a looooong way from being used as a computer. How are you going to use Xcode when you don't have Finder, a terminal with a compiler? I don't know if I would like to use an iPad for that anyway, even if all the currently existing problems were not there.
  - tambourine_man 9y ago
    >First, the iPad has to be powerful enough to do fast compilations etc. It already is, and has been for a while. The iPad Pro is faster than the MacBook Air and is approaching the MacBook Pro. >How are you going to use Xcode when you don't have Finder Files.app++ >a terminal with a compiler When I mean Xcode, I mean the whole package with LLVM, Bash, Brew and a Terminal emulator. Apple is already allowing “programming environments”[1] in the App Store. I can see a Dev Mode that allows you to fork and do all the things we are used to. [1]http://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/articles/2017-06-08-new-rules-following-wwdc-2017/ http://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/articles/2017...
- ggpsv 9y ago
  Honestly, I see very little appeal in working with iOS as a professional software developer. Both from a form-factor to OS perspective, I'd feel very limited and would not be as productive as I can be with a Mac or PC.
  - tambourine_man 9y ago
    Yes, but I imagine using a physical keyboard while coding on iOS. I think I'll always prefer a mouse for a lot of things, but who knows.
macspoofing 9y ago
Come on Apple, give-in to mouse support.
grogenaut 9y ago
lol the discussion at the bottom of the article is about why macos isn't on ipad, reminds me of when people said it was impossible to put macos on x86. My $.02 is that macos has a lot of bloated garbage hanging around and iOS is likely more slim for the task. However I'm sure it's got it's own garbage after 10 years.
- twiceaday 9y ago
  a much better question (that has the same answer) is why dont macbooks have touch screens. its definitely not because of hardware limitations.
ry_ry 9y ago
> If somebody tries to join your Wi-Fi network and has an iOS device, you get a prompt asking if you want to share your Wi-Fi password. How does that work? Will it happen on Corporate WiFi networks, and if multiple iDevices are connected will they all recieve the same prompt?
intromatt 9y ago
I wonder if this is coming to the Macbooks? MacOS feels like abandonware.

157 points by janober 9y ago

Just an observation but at this pace which will happen quicker to market -- mouse integration on iOS or Windows 10 ARM? And of those two which has a bigger impact?

simonh 9y ago
Mouse integration on the iPad would be a disastrous blunder. It just wouldn't fit with any aspect of the interaction model and would represent a dire loss of the plot on Apple's part. So I think that would have the greater impact.
- post_break 9y ago
  I don't know why it would be a blunder. On a jailbroken iPad it's a god send to be able to have a tablet with a mouse and keyboard with a battery that lasts forever. Touching the screen gets "gorilla arm" fast and also makes it dirty. Could also lead to tablet cases with built in track pads. But I can see the "this doesn't apply to me so it's dumb" narrative that seems to circle around Apple opinions so much.
- canuckintime 9y ago
  I'd argue that the iPad Keyboard Cover already represents a loss of the plot. Gorilla arm fatigue is real. Either Apple go whole hog and provide a trackpad in that keyboard cover (not necessarily enabling a mouse cursor mind you [1]) or Apple should sufficiently innovate their software keyboard so we don't need a keyboard cover to begin with. [1] https://twitter.com/DaveChap/status/869192781960499200 https://twitter.com/DaveChap/status/869192781960499200
tyingq 9y ago
By units sold or overall revenue? Apple tends to make up a lot of ground with high prices :)
AsyncAwait 9y ago
Windows 10 ARM would certainly happen quicker, not sure that mouse on iOS will ever happen. As far as impact - x86 emulation on ARM, if good enough, can significantly undercut Intel, which may end x86 dominance on the desktop eventually.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  Intel is already going to be facing tough competition from AMD's Zen architecture too. AMD actually also make powerful ARM chips for servers, so I wonder if they might seize the chance for another angle of attack if it makes sense for them.
- hendersoon 9y ago
  Not necessarily. Intel could easily walk away from some of its margin. Even the latest Qualcomm SoCs aren't particularly fast compared to modern intel CPUs, so intel would still maintain its high-end. That doesn't mean ARM is inherently slow. Apple's SoCs are much faster on single threaded tasks than Qualcomm and Samsung's, easily approaching modern intel CPUs.
wluu 9y ago
> quicker to market I'd say Windows 10 on ARM. [0] [0] https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171
hendersoon 9y ago
Win10 on ARM devices are already announced for Q4 this year, assuming Intel doesn't sue Microsoft and get a stay on the Win10 x86 translation layer. Pretty easy to conceive of scenarios where these devices would have real impact, if the translation is fast enough. Imagine a $300 10" windows laptop with a 10 hour battery life and roughly ivy bridge i3 level performance. In comparison, Apple hasn't even hinted they'd allow mouse input on iOS. If you need that level of precision, they want you to use their stylus.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  For what it's worth: you can get a $100-200 10" Windows 10 laptop (well, 2-in-1 tablet) with an Atom. (Battery life as a laptop is closer to 3 than 10, at least for me.) MS has already hit that price point/form factor, and is working on making it more efficient/performant.
akhilcacharya 9y ago
Wasn't it possible to use USB mice with the iPad 1?
- duskwuff 9y ago
  Not without jailbreak tweaks. iOS has never natively supported a mouse cursor.

Shivetya 9y ago

the part of being able to measure items "AR" style is going to be amazing for businesses, both in direct in the home work and allowing customers to do their own measurements and such

fooker 9y ago
Not very accurate though. You can see about half a cm difference in 40 cms (compared to a tape measure beside it.)
- 0xCMP 9y ago
  Unless you're doing something either destructive or hard to reverse ARKit will be plenty accurate for things like knowing if a piece of furniture will fit through a door or something will hang on a wall. It'll also help make the ("it's a 55.5inch TV" + "No, it's clearly just a 30 inch one") argument much easier to settle.

csours 9y ago

I didn't read the whole thing. Does it do anything better than other operating systems, or just bring desktop features to the iPad? I'm not saying bringing desktop features to a tablet is a problem, just curious.

simonh 9y ago
The only really important question is whether it does anything better than other tablet operating systems. For the iPad, that's what really matters - becoming the best tablet OS it can be. Anything else would be a distraction.
- csours 9y ago
  Fair enough, and props if it beats Windows, who have been trying to get here for years.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hendersoon 9y ago
  Microsoft would disagree, and they have been astonishingly successful with the Surface Pro line. The iOS11 desktop features are a vindication of Microsoft's original Windows 8 vision. Microsoft didn't /execute/ on that vision particularly well in either Win8 or Win10, but the convergence between handheld and desktop does offer some tangible advantages. It isn't all marketing BS.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    I have a Windows 10 tablet (well, a "2-in-1" since it came with a keyboard using a Surface-style connector), and it seems to behave reasonably as both a tablet and laptop. It's certainly more integrated than my experience has been with other OSs on tablets: Android doesn't do well as a laptop, nor does iOS; Windows 10 is a desktop operating system, and works reasonably as a tablet. (I don't like Windows 10 for other reasons that have nothing do with mode switching.) I'm curious why you think Windows 10 didn't execute well on the idea.

marcoperaza 9y ago

It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.

quink 9y ago
You mean the company that has you dragging disks into the trash for about three decades now?
- evv 9y ago
  Speaking of hidden features.. you can just use Cmd-e to eject a disk in finder.
  - fredoliveira 9y ago
    That's a keyboard shortcut, though. No way that is a hidden feature.
  - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
    Ah, youngsters. It used to be the case that Cmd-E ejected, but you rarely wanted just to eject (i.e. just remove the disk from the Mac), usually you wanted to Put Away, and that was Cmd-Y. I miss System 7.
    - rhencke 9y ago
      Nostalgia's a funny thing though. Remember the 'bomb' dialog box with the reset button that didn't always work? Cooperative multitasking allowing apps to lock the computer? ...I miss it, too.
      - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
        Very much. Having Tetris and MacWrite Pro open simultaneously would cause a bomb, every time. It genuinely did wonders for my productivity. I remember System 7.1 most for its purity of interface. Everything from 7.5 onwards seemed to be bolting on more bells and whistles in a faintly uncoordinated fashion, and OS X has continued that. 7.0/7.1 were simple, efficient and fast. Much of the featuritis in the last 25 years has been good, of course, but I would still kill to have the old Spatial Finder back.

tlrobinson 9y ago

There's a long ways to go, but I wonder if we're headed for an eventual unification of iOS and macOS?

secfirstmd 9y ago
I hope so. I feel like this has been Apple's end game for quite while but they have been squeezing out the profit from the movement towards that in the interim. I mean, the new Macbook ribbon thing, what a piece of crap compared to the innovation of a Surface Pro. But if you can give me a Macbook's power with a touchscreen and detachable keyboard - "Here, take my money!" :)
mi100hael 9y ago
That writing has been on the wall since the iOS style application "launcher" was added to OS X.
- algesten 9y ago
  That launcher may be indication Apple was thinking that way, but look at their latest U-turns on pro hardware and reinforcing their commitment to laptop/desktop. I don't believe they're going that way anymore. Also. Did you ever see anyone using that launcher as primary interaction?
- _ph_ 9y ago
  They are certainly experimenting with which features might make sense on the "other" OS. But until your post, I had almost forgotten that the launcher still exists on macOS. Likewise, Dashboard still exists, but does not get much attention any more. But even with the new iOS giving more "desktop" powers to the iPad, Apple still seems to aim for a UI model quite different to macOS. So this seems to be intended.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  They more-or-less tore down the wall when they renamed the company from "Apple Computer" to just plain "Apple." I'll be surprised if they're still selling Macs in 5-7 more years.

blowski 9y ago

I tried iOS 11 on the latest version of the iPad Pro 9.7" and iPhone 6S. I've actually downgraded back to iOS 10 because the beta was still too buggy for day-to-day use. The existing 'multi-tasking' on the iPad Pro is fiddly, and this was no easier. Apps were locking themselves to the Dock and I couldn't work out how to remove them. Switching between apps was far from "Cmd + Tab" of the desktop. A lot of apps that I still use but haven't been updated in years broke because they're not 64 bit. And it was very slow. Even native apps like Settings and Notes were just hanging for seconds at a time. The hardest bit is the sheer number of different ways of doing things. "You're in landscape mode, so if you slide down from the top and then slide left in the resulting screen you can see the last notification that popped up a second ago." I did like the new keyboard, where I could just swipe down to get a capital letter or special character. And the control screen was good, as I could enable "Battery Saver Mode" and the "Personal Hotpoint" more quickly. But I'll need to see a lot more polish to the Dock before re-upgrading.

x0x0 9y ago
Does the dock hide itself, or will it permanently eat the bottom inch of my ipad? edit: I got blocked for writing thank you in response, so I'll write it here instead. Thank you for taking the time to answer me.
- blowski 9y ago
  It hides itself. It's supposed to slide up intelligently, but sometimes it doesn't, so you have to go back to the home screen.
martin_bech 9y ago
Must of the previous IOS beta have had similar poor performance. I dont know if some debug mode i running in the background or whats going on, but final version, is always much more performant.
- blowski 9y ago
  I upgraded to the iOS 10 beta almost immediately as it came out (only on the iPhone) and it felt very polished. There were a few performance issues, but I was able to live with them - this time around it was unusable.

notadoc 9y ago

But it's still an iPad. Touch screens are just slower, less accurate, and more cumbersome than a cursor and a good hardware keyboard for the vast majority of professional applications and use cases.

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
Point, but it may end up as an SLR vs. phone cam thing. We know the numbers on that ...
- notadoc 9y ago
  I get what you're saying, but a phone camera is much easier to use than an SLR.

bkdbkd 9y ago

meh. not much, handing back features they could have delivered in 2010. A great bit of positive fluff imho

0xCMP 9y ago

I think I'm going to sell my existing 9.7" to get the new 10.5" to get a bit more space to work with on this new version of iOS. I can't wait until I can really use iOS the way I use my mac. Which at this point really is based on either mobileOrg getting better or some app coming out where I can easily manage a rich personal knowledge base/wiki on the iPad.

walterbell 9y ago
Have you looked at Scrivener on Mac/iOS? Used by writers doing research. http://2doapp.com http://2doapp.com on iOS/Mac has robust WebDAV sync and can handle large databases.
- 0xCMP 9y ago
  Yes, I have it, but most of what I do isn't so much writing, which I believe it's a great tool for. Most of the writing tools out there are mainly for writers and not more researchers like me (learning stuff about development and etc.). I have actually now started to think maybe I use DEVONThink instead and I get all the features I wanted, but I guess the UI on the mac isn't the nicest. Then again going from Emacs to this is probably nicer. Ugh so many options. I like OrgMode and Emacs as it is! Why can't I just use one thing and focus on all the things I need to write down and figure out.
  - walterbell 9y ago
    For tracking concepts while learning, this is a fun app, but no Mac version: http://www.mindscopeapp.com http://www.mindscopeapp.com
    - 0xCMP 9y ago
      Wow that really is a cool app. Awesome concept/implementation. Thanks for showing me that. I wish there were better lists of these kinds of apps.
      - 9y ago

bkdbkd 9y ago

read the article. not much there. very fluffy. as usual apple made old work flows different. as usual, people will be confused at first. as usual, not much to write home about. "Before IOS 11 we arbitrarily limited the apps in your dock to 6. Today we will allow up to 8!" <cheers from the crowd>. They've been dripping out features, that they could have delivered in 2010 but for reasons like Courage chose to hold back. The article doesn't support the headline. Unless that also means 'Your ipad will still be the same old iPad, but you will find it more awkward to use"

kartan 9y ago

I'm planning to buy a Microsoft Surface Pro because Android and iOS tablets have very limited Operating Systems. So I think that some of this changes go in the right direction, for tablets at least. On long trips, to Japan or the USA, I usually travel with an iPad and a Macbook (1 or 2 phones, 2 digital cameras). It has worked well. Next time I'm trying to get around with just one device that allows me to move around the city with all the information I need, and that I can use to do some more advanced stuff when I get to the hotel (Classify pictures and videos, edit and process them, upload them to Google Pictures/Facebook/...). Let's see how that goes. I understand that Apple doesn't want to scare current customers offering something that they don't need/want. But I need it now. :)

FussyZeus 9y ago
Speaking as someone using 11 on an iPad Pro 12.5", I would take this (and will be taking this) over my Surface Pro 3. The screen is amazing, the new multitasking features are great, the battery life even on the beta destroys the Surface, I could keep going on but really this is a very laptop replacing device, for me. As usual YMMV, but seriously this can cover probably 90% of what I use my laptop for in a mobile setting. Addressing my itch of curiousness: Why carry 2 phones?
- tylerpachal 9y ago
  Perhaps a work phone and a personal phone?
  - kartan 9y ago
    Yes. :)

bshimmin 9y ago

I'm slightly terrified that this update is going to confuse the hell out of my ageing parents, who find the simplicity, lack of meaningful support for multitasking, and absence of the Dock, to be key selling points of their iPad.

danso 9y ago
You posted exactly what I was thinking. I recently gave my parents my iPad Air 4th gen and orienting them to it was an eye-opening experience. They are retired but they both worked as programmers (think COBOL-era). I've owned an iPad since launch day and so many features that feel instinctive -- double-tap home button to bring up apps, slide-down-from-top to see notifications -- are decidedly not. And that's before you get to the confusion of what's the difference between logging into email via the browser, versus a specialized app. And then there's me. I got myself an iPad Pro, one of the 9.7 inch models that Apple didn't see fit to put 3D-touch on. It took me a long time to realize that the reason I couldn't delete items from the core TV app was because the delete functionality, which used to work on a long touch, was deprecated for 3D-touch. The amount of no-shits given by Apple designers toward long-time users with year-old devices still amazes me. Making iOS more like a computer is appealing to me, but I feel bad for the non-professionals who are likely to be super confused.
- guu 9y ago
  None of the iPads have 3D touch so it is not about your tablet being old. I looked it up and the discover-ability on this feature is pretty poor. You click the "downloaded" button to get the option to delete. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204343 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204343

clw8 9y ago

Until I hear that Xcode for iPad Pro is in the works I'll be holding onto my first gen Air. Otherwise there's no point spending a grand when my $200 touchscreen convertible Chromebook does all the tablety things I need and runs Linux beautifully.

supercoder 9y ago
I don't think Chromebook runs Xcode either
- 6Typos 9y ago
  What the parent is saying is that it is useless to buy a new iPad, because he already has a Chromebook. If iOS 11 brought XCode, then he would buy a new one, because it would have one more important feature (XCode).

ChuckMcM 9y ago

This is what I expect 'iOS laptop edition' is. As ChromeOS is 'Android laptop edition' and Win10 already is Windows laptop edition. With the addition of WSL to Win10 it makes it more developer friendly for me. Very much like MacOS always has been, drop into terminal and blam, there is all of UNIX. And all of it makes Canonical's "one Ubuntu across three platforms" pitch seem pretty prophetic. Very fun to watch excellent designers try these things out in the market.

tambourine_man 9y ago

If Adobe releases its Creative Suite and Apple decides the iPad is big enough to run Xcode, the Mac is in trouble. And I think that's fine, even being a die hard Mac user with 30 years of usage under my belt. The hardware is simply amazing and the software is finally coming of age.

pvinis 9y ago
I don't know about Adobe stuff, but Xcode on the iPad is not so simple. First, the iPad has to be powerful enough to do fast compilations etc. But even if we give it that, it is a looooong way from being used as a computer. How are you going to use Xcode when you don't have Finder, a terminal with a compiler? I don't know if I would like to use an iPad for that anyway, even if all the currently existing problems were not there.
- tambourine_man 9y ago
  >First, the iPad has to be powerful enough to do fast compilations etc. It already is, and has been for a while. The iPad Pro is faster than the MacBook Air and is approaching the MacBook Pro. >How are you going to use Xcode when you don't have Finder Files.app++ >a terminal with a compiler When I mean Xcode, I mean the whole package with LLVM, Bash, Brew and a Terminal emulator. Apple is already allowing “programming environments”[1] in the App Store. I can see a Dev Mode that allows you to fork and do all the things we are used to. [1]http://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/articles/2017-06-08-new-rules-following-wwdc-2017/ http://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/articles/2017...
ggpsv 9y ago
Honestly, I see very little appeal in working with iOS as a professional software developer. Both from a form-factor to OS perspective, I'd feel very limited and would not be as productive as I can be with a Mac or PC.
- tambourine_man 9y ago
  Yes, but I imagine using a physical keyboard while coding on iOS. I think I'll always prefer a mouse for a lot of things, but who knows.

macspoofing 9y ago

Come on Apple, give-in to mouse support.

grogenaut 9y ago

lol the discussion at the bottom of the article is about why macos isn't on ipad, reminds me of when people said it was impossible to put macos on x86. My $.02 is that macos has a lot of bloated garbage hanging around and iOS is likely more slim for the task. However I'm sure it's got it's own garbage after 10 years.

twiceaday 9y ago
a much better question (that has the same answer) is why dont macbooks have touch screens. its definitely not because of hardware limitations.

ry_ry 9y ago

> If somebody tries to join your Wi-Fi network and has an iOS device, you get a prompt asking if you want to share your Wi-Fi password. How does that work? Will it happen on Corporate WiFi networks, and if multiple iDevices are connected will they all recieve the same prompt?

intromatt 9y ago

I wonder if this is coming to the Macbooks? MacOS feels like abandonware.