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On Switching from an iPad Pro and MacBook to a Pixelbook

66 points by plg 8y ago

titanix2 8y ago
Tl;dr: dude works in school where they use Google Docs, which run better in a desktop web browser than the corresponding iOS app.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I’m pretty sure that Google purposely cripples their office suite on mobile Safari and iOS because it helps their narrative of iPad not being a “proper” computer, which helps them sell Chromebooks.
  - etse 8y ago
    Or more charitably, underallocates resources to keep feature parity. Yes, to sell more Chromebooks, but is Apple’s iWork suite available on the Chrome Store?
    - chenglou 8y ago
      It’s actually broadly available on iCloud.com and works very well.
    - duskwuff 8y ago
      It isn't explicitly a Chrome app, but there are web versions of the iWork apps available through icloud.com, and they work pretty decently in a browser.
  - jmole 8y ago
    This is 100% not true. Enterprise adoption of GSuite is infinitly more valuable to Google than chromebook sales, and that means having well-supported apps on iOS, which is the BYOD platform of choice for most office workers. Like another comment mentioned, it's much more likely that the web version, which constitutes the major use case for the app (chromebook, windows, macOS, etc.) just has a boatload more developers working on it.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I mean, when you can have your cake and eat it to by getting people to sign up for GSuite and buy Chromebooks, I see no reason why Google would want to release a good experience on iPad.
- hutattedonmyarm 8y ago
  To be fair, I'Ve found Google Docs (well, especially Google Sheets) to run like garbage on macOS Safari. Sometimes even completely breaking copy/paste etc
threatofrain 8y ago
I was also a little sad that Apple withdrew Safari from Windows. How does Apple envision bookmark sharing happen for a Windows user who buys an iPhone?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  You probably know the answer: Apple would rather you get a Mac. If you’re using Safari and want it on Windows, you’re in a small minority since there are many competing browsers on Windows.
- giobox 8y ago
  They’ve supported this for quite some time in the absence of Safari for Windows. The iCloud for Windows client will sync your bookmarks from your third party Windows browsers, much the same way as it plugs the holes for syncing photos and documents on Windows as well. > https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201391 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201391 > https://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-sync-bookmarks-between-macs-ios-and-windows-using-icloud/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-sync-bookmarks-...
- pdimitar 8y ago
  I was worried as well but as a sibling comment said, The iCloud for Windows client is quite adequate. I use it to have bidirectional bookmark syncing to and from both Chrome and Firefox. Works pretty well, never made a mistake so far.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  Literally everyone who is multiplatform uses Chrome/google utilities. it's undeniably better for internet workflows. i tried safari for a couple of days when i switched to mac and switched back to chrome. safari lack of feature parity isn't worth the battery savings(although i do have an android not an iphone so that probably affects my decision)
mensetmanusman 8y ago
I have been using the iPad since day 1 in 2010 and almost every single day since. Our home has 5 versions that I have cycled through for the wife/kids. It is my daily driver at work. The best thing about them is they require almost no troubleshooting except for the occasional restart. The first iPad still has a week standby battery life which blows my mind. That said, the devices are still fragile and require bulky protective cases for kids to not destroy them. If Apple really cared about iPad in education, they would release a $100 plastic version (hard poly clear screen and backing a la iphone 5c) to get kids on the OS. They have the software infrastructure to make sure the device only works through schools if they were afraid of it cannibalising sales of their glass/metal versions. Ipad could be an amazing remote teaching assistance device, where someone can write pen/paper style to walk students through problem solving (I tried this volunteering through WeTeach, but the browser software was too laggy). I am all for google docs dominating education if Apple is unwilling to compete here. We can’t honestly expect schools to spend money on ‘textbooks’ that will shatter if dropped, and that cost many hundreds of dollars per device.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  $100 is a really low price for an iPad. Comparable Android tablets at the price range tend to be complete garbage, with spyware, horrible build quality, and anemic processors.
- bluedino 8y ago
  >> That said, the devices are still fragile and require bulky protective cases for kids to not destroy them. Modern laptops aren't much different. You should see how easy it is for a kid to destroy a MacBook.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    Just because both are bad, doesn't mean one can become better.
  - vonseel 8y ago
    I broke a MBP screen a few years ago. Actually, two different laptops broke. One was warrantied, the other was an accident and had to be paid. The cost for a Retina display replacement in 2015? About $700. Ouch. I keep my MacBook on my desk nearly 24/7 now, but I’d hate to know the cost or have to pay for a display replacement.
malshe 8y ago
The title suggests that the article is going to be about Pixelbook but there is hardly anything about Pixelbook and the same old iOS can't do this and that type of a post.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  I don't know what the title was when you saw it, but the On Switching from an iPad Pro and MacBook to a Pixelbook title I see now seems to match the article -- it's about the reasons why IOS isn't meeting his needs. I didn't expect it to be about the virtues of a Pixelbook.
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    Actually that's exactly what I expected. If you replace A with B then I fully expect you to (1) first say how A is inadequate -- which the article did -- and (2) why is B better, which the article didn't state.
    - Johnny555 8y ago
      I thought that part was implied -- he switched to the Pixelbook because it's a Google product that works well with the other Google (Google Suite) product he uses.
      - pdimitar 8y ago
        Fair enough. I expected a bit more thorough motivation than that.
sneak 8y ago
I use both. The Pixelbook hardware is unparalleled. I like it better than anything from Apple right now. The Pixelbook of course does not support iMessage, so on it I would use OWS’ Signal for messaging... but they (OWS) discontinued their Chrome App version, and the Android/Play Store version is “incompatible with this device”, so I can’t use my Pixelbook to chat with anyone outside of Slack or IRCCloud (or other undesirable/non-e2e chat services like Hangouts/etc), which is super lame. OWS really needs to support that platform better.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  I can’t imagine using ChromeOS for anything. I can barely use Chrome, and it has massive memory leaks/eats up my free memory. I wonder what memory leaks OS is like.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Chrome might be horrible on desktop, but it performs great when it’s the only thing running. Chromebooks are quite snappy for the amount of resources they generally have.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      I use a Chromebook as a mobile terminal in the data center. A nice thing about them is they are ready to use in a second or two after opening the cover. Booting up is phenomenally quick for a device that cost about $300.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        I see an iPad with a keyboard doing decent for this instance as well.
    - zozbot123 8y ago
      > Chrome might be horrible on desktop, but it performs great when it’s the only thing running. Chromebooks are quite snappy for the amount of resources they generally have. Try comparing it with the obvious alternative - a lightweight Linux distro running on identical or roughly equivalent hardware - and you probably won't think of it as "snappy". Linux desktops can run absolutely fine on hardware from 10 years ago and sometimes more: "resources" are almost a non-issue these days. (And Linux distros are also about to get the sort of comprehensive touch-screen and small-screen support that iOS, Android and ChromeOS are usually known for, as a side effect of the ongoing work on "mobile" interfaces for the OS. Using a touch-screen-only device for productivity purposes will probably always be a challenge, but a high-quality OS and UX can absolutely make a difference.)
benjaminwootton 8y ago
I really wish they would add mouse support to iOS as it would allow me to work on gslides presentations. I could then leave the MacBook at home a lot more. Are there any workarounds or markdown presentation apps I should check out?
- ymolodtsov 8y ago
  Try Deckset.
- mensetmanusman 8y ago
  I use Jump desktop to remote into any number of powerful desktop or laptop computers. It supports the swiftpoint bluetooth mouse so you can use it in that way as a keyboard/mouse PC/Mac setup quite well.
goldcd 8y ago
I feel like some old fogey/luddite when I say "I've never seen the point of iPads" - or tablets for that matter. I've had a few and they're great as media consumption/browsing devices - but am utterly bemused when people say they do "all their work from them". I feel quite angsty enough when my laptop gets decoupled from the desktop-symbiotic multi-monitors and proper mouse and keyboard. I can see the point of a Chromebook - shoving Chrome into something cheap/efficient (if Chrome is all you need), but am eternally bemused over people trying to bolt keyboards to tablets - "you wanted a laptop"
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Same here, I don't understand people trying to shove work processes on entertainment devices. I love my iPad Pro for several purposes -- media consumption, some light gaming, reading, managing media / bookmark / book collections -- but it would never occur to me to code on it (even through shells to Linux). I am not fully comfortable even with my MacBook Pro. I am working on building a work process that doesn't rely on a mouse or a touchpad and then I could work on the MBP full time (mostly involving memorizing shell and editor shortcuts, and making a lot of shell aliases). Before that there's simply no point -- it's like trying to run with weights on your ankles.
  - goldcd 8y ago
    It would be perfect for Civ6 though..
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      I would be very okay with that. The iPad Pros have amazingly strong hardware, it's kind of wasted on anything but games and professional photo/video editing software.
    - selectodude 8y ago
      it is perfect for civ 6.
  - goerz 8y ago
philip1209 8y ago
Cloudflare is trialing chromebooks as a replacement for MacBooks: https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1068120826678001664?s=19 https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1068120826678001664?s=19
tomdeboer 8y ago
What keeps you from installing an alternative browser, like Firefox or Chrome for iOS? I recently switched to Opera Touch on iOS and it’s been great so far. Definitely worth a try I would say.
- jordache 8y ago
  Apple only allows the Safari Webkit engine to be installed on iOS. As a result, all third party browsers on iOS are using the identical browser engine as iOS Safari. Any browser incompatibility issues is likely shared across all iOS browsers.
writepub 8y ago
For one, this article could've been 30% the original length - it drones on and on repeatatively! While I find the reasoning sound on why iPads can't be your full time productivity device, completely ignoring Microsoft surface in this space seems either ignorant or a paid Google ad for the Chromebook
- ams6110 8y ago
  I think a history of failures in mobile tech keeps most people from even considering Microsoft gear. Surface may be great, but who is buying them? Who is developing for them? Mobile is Apple/iOS, or Google/Android, for better or worse.
  - Intermernet 8y ago
    Lots of people are buying them, and anyone developing windows apps is developing for them. I dual boot my surface book 2 with Linux and I have a decent Linux machine, a decent Windows machine, a decent tablet and a decent gaming machine in one device. It's not cheap though!
moondev 8y ago
I LOVE my pixel book. Crostini is really a game changer. Its a super polished experience using native chrome + Linux apps. Android apps too!
paultopia 8y ago
I actually use iOS for work stuff almost constantly, lots more than I use anything else. (My Macbook spends most of its time these days downloading things from Dropbox and backing them up to time machine, plus whenever I decide to actually write some serious code.) But I'm a professor-type in a non-collaborative field, so: - the iPad Pro is amazing for reading academic papers with the pencil at hand. Ditto for grading and such. - the keyboard is good enough that I can write on it at just about full speed, and I write in markdown anyway. - most of the things I need to do that require full computer chops can be done in the cloud---I have a bunch of little Heroku dynos sitting around sleeping (on free time) until I ask them to do something like run a document through pandoc or add something to a database for one of my data collection projects. The shortcuts app in ios12 + Pythonista + Heroku are an amazing combination, they allow me to turn almost anything complicated into an API call that I can trigger with a freaking voice command if I really want (but mostly share documents into). Just about the only way this hinders my usual workflow (apart from having to bust out the Mac for heavy coding) is that there's no Zotero on iOS. But sooner or later I will get around to shoving that into a Heroku dyno and making some shortcuts to push web pages into its readers and then it'll be solved too. For non-collaborative workflows this is perfect. I can see how the author's collaboration needs really would not be met by such a setup though.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  I'd love to see a guide on setting up that Shortcuts -> Heroku -> final result workflow in a streamlined manner. Now.sh could be another useful tool for that kind of thing, since their 2.0 product is focused on no-hassle lamda functions, without needing a full VM setup.
  - paultopia 8y ago
    Maybe I'll write a guide up! I've got a pretty good setup going. Pending full write up, here are some key pieces: Shortcuts side: the shortcuts app is really shockingly powerful, mainly because you can share almost anything you want into it and it intelligently figures out what you want. For example, if you share a web page from safari into it, if the first action receives a url, it'll treat it as such, if it receives a web page it'll take the DOM and not worry about the URL, etc. There are really three key actions. 1) `Get contents of URL` allows arbitrary http requests. You can pass in data from other actions. This is the main workhorse for heroku things. 2) `Run JavaScript on web page` allows you to just run arbitrary JS in the context of whatever page you share into it. It's great for data-collection type tasks, you can just rip whatever you need out of the DOM and POST it away per the above, and then shove it into a database from heroku. 3) `Run Pythonista script` does what you'd expect. It passes whatever the action receives into Pythonista as a command line argument. And then, obviously, anything goes. If you haven't tried Pythonista, you should check it out---it's hard to get 3rd party libraries in (and many don't work), but you get the full stdlib plus a bunch of key libraries that the dev has taken the trouble to build in, including numpy, requests, matplotlib, beautifulsoup, PIL, sympy, etc...) After receiving a response from heroku, it's trivial to save it to iCloud/Dropbox, put on clipboard, open a preview window with a share sheet available, etc. On the Heroku side, the key trick is that you can run Docker containers. So, for example, my mobile pandoc solution is a docker container that has texlive and pandoc on it, allowing me to have basically a personal improved docverter. So I just post a markdown document via shortcuts to a flask endpoint that converts the document and returns it to me as the response.
timbit42 8y ago
> and was even able to launch a successful podcast which has almost entirely been recorded, edited and published using iOS. Seriously? I could do that using a 1985 Amiga or Atari ST.
- xenozega 8y ago
  You haven't lived till you've used a toaster to accomplish this... IoT is here
ymolodtsov 8y ago
The only thing I can’t comprehend is how any person using iPad for work can be dissatisfied with the changes in iOS 12 — apart from the scale of those changes that could be bigger.
ricardobeat 8y ago
And this is exactly why Google makes sure all the G suite apps are just a little broken in iOS & Safari. It has been like this for the past half decade, since Apple stepped on their turf with Maps.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  There's a Google Docs app for iOS. Shouldn't be too hard for those who are invested in Google Docs to download the app; that's pretty much standard procedure on iOS anyway, plus an app will always be a better time than a website for editing on an iPad.
  - ricardobeat 8y ago
    This is in regards to the apps too (“iOS & Safari”). I mean, the native app shortcomings are the entire subject of this HN post. Where are you coming from?
anotheryou 8y ago
he only uses the browser... keyboard and battery should be his only concerns anyways
m0zg 8y ago
I'd much rather schools switched mostly to pen and paper, TBH. 95% of homework in the 9th grade SHOULD NOT require a computer. It's a distraction, and one which hits kids on the ADHD spectrum especially hard. There's nothing to be gained from requiring computers for homework in most cases, and kids get plenty of computer time outside of school. The net effect of this "progress" is that I have to constantly supervise my 15 year old like a hawk, or else no homework will get done and he will watch Youtube instead. This is not a good set-up, because eventually there will be no supervision, and then he will be well and truly fucked, because he can't seem to realize that he needs to actually care about anything other than YT and computer games. I'm afraid that by the time he realizes that it'll be too late to fix anything.
- guidedlight 8y ago
  In Australia, it’s mostly the government run schools that heavily promote laptops and tablets in the classrooms. Private run schools are increasingly going back to pen and paper under pressure from parents who work in corporate jobs, and see an overreliance on computers as a disadvantage.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    Overreliance isn't quite the word. It's as if someone told them they "have" to do it, and they're happy to oblige. I have a feeling (unsubstantiated) that nobody has seriously studied whether screens are advantageous in the classroom. My anecdata suggests they are strongly detrimental, especially in middle school.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  If I hadn't been allowed to take notes on a computer in school--or if I'd been born a few decades earlier and computers weren't available--I literally don't think I would be where I am today. As in, my grades would have been worse, I would have gotten into a lesser college, etc. My handwriting is slow and difficult to decipher. And handwriting makes tiny revisions—adding words into the middle of a sentence, restructuring a sentence slightly, etc—unduly annoying. If the internet is a problem, disable the internet. I should mention, I actually didn't start using a normal laptop until college. In grade school, I had this "digital typewriter" of sorts that ran Palm OS. Very nifty little device... it was far more lightweight than laptops of the time, and the battery lasted weeks.

66 points by plg 8y ago

Tl;dr: dude works in school where they use Google Docs, which run better in a desktop web browser than the corresponding iOS app.

saagarjha 8y ago
I’m pretty sure that Google purposely cripples their office suite on mobile Safari and iOS because it helps their narrative of iPad not being a “proper” computer, which helps them sell Chromebooks.
- etse 8y ago
  Or more charitably, underallocates resources to keep feature parity. Yes, to sell more Chromebooks, but is Apple’s iWork suite available on the Chrome Store?
  - chenglou 8y ago
    It’s actually broadly available on iCloud.com and works very well.
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    It isn't explicitly a Chrome app, but there are web versions of the iWork apps available through icloud.com, and they work pretty decently in a browser.
- jmole 8y ago
  This is 100% not true. Enterprise adoption of GSuite is infinitly more valuable to Google than chromebook sales, and that means having well-supported apps on iOS, which is the BYOD platform of choice for most office workers. Like another comment mentioned, it's much more likely that the web version, which constitutes the major use case for the app (chromebook, windows, macOS, etc.) just has a boatload more developers working on it.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I mean, when you can have your cake and eat it to by getting people to sign up for GSuite and buy Chromebooks, I see no reason why Google would want to release a good experience on iPad.
hutattedonmyarm 8y ago
To be fair, I'Ve found Google Docs (well, especially Google Sheets) to run like garbage on macOS Safari. Sometimes even completely breaking copy/paste etc

threatofrain 8y ago

I was also a little sad that Apple withdrew Safari from Windows. How does Apple envision bookmark sharing happen for a Windows user who buys an iPhone?

saagarjha 8y ago
You probably know the answer: Apple would rather you get a Mac. If you’re using Safari and want it on Windows, you’re in a small minority since there are many competing browsers on Windows.
giobox 8y ago
They’ve supported this for quite some time in the absence of Safari for Windows. The iCloud for Windows client will sync your bookmarks from your third party Windows browsers, much the same way as it plugs the holes for syncing photos and documents on Windows as well. > https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201391 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201391 > https://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-sync-bookmarks-between-macs-ios-and-windows-using-icloud/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-sync-bookmarks-...
pdimitar 8y ago
I was worried as well but as a sibling comment said, The iCloud for Windows client is quite adequate. I use it to have bidirectional bookmark syncing to and from both Chrome and Firefox. Works pretty well, never made a mistake so far.
kkarakk 8y ago
Literally everyone who is multiplatform uses Chrome/google utilities. it's undeniably better for internet workflows. i tried safari for a couple of days when i switched to mac and switched back to chrome. safari lack of feature parity isn't worth the battery savings(although i do have an android not an iphone so that probably affects my decision)

mensetmanusman 8y ago

I have been using the iPad since day 1 in 2010 and almost every single day since. Our home has 5 versions that I have cycled through for the wife/kids. It is my daily driver at work. The best thing about them is they require almost no troubleshooting except for the occasional restart. The first iPad still has a week standby battery life which blows my mind. That said, the devices are still fragile and require bulky protective cases for kids to not destroy them. If Apple really cared about iPad in education, they would release a $100 plastic version (hard poly clear screen and backing a la iphone 5c) to get kids on the OS. They have the software infrastructure to make sure the device only works through schools if they were afraid of it cannibalising sales of their glass/metal versions. Ipad could be an amazing remote teaching assistance device, where someone can write pen/paper style to walk students through problem solving (I tried this volunteering through WeTeach, but the browser software was too laggy). I am all for google docs dominating education if Apple is unwilling to compete here. We can’t honestly expect schools to spend money on ‘textbooks’ that will shatter if dropped, and that cost many hundreds of dollars per device.

saagarjha 8y ago
$100 is a really low price for an iPad. Comparable Android tablets at the price range tend to be complete garbage, with spyware, horrible build quality, and anemic processors.
bluedino 8y ago
>> That said, the devices are still fragile and require bulky protective cases for kids to not destroy them. Modern laptops aren't much different. You should see how easy it is for a kid to destroy a MacBook.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Just because both are bad, doesn't mean one can become better.
- vonseel 8y ago
  I broke a MBP screen a few years ago. Actually, two different laptops broke. One was warrantied, the other was an accident and had to be paid. The cost for a Retina display replacement in 2015? About $700. Ouch. I keep my MacBook on my desk nearly 24/7 now, but I’d hate to know the cost or have to pay for a display replacement.

malshe 8y ago

The title suggests that the article is going to be about Pixelbook but there is hardly anything about Pixelbook and the same old iOS can't do this and that type of a post.

Johnny555 8y ago
I don't know what the title was when you saw it, but the On Switching from an iPad Pro and MacBook to a Pixelbook title I see now seems to match the article -- it's about the reasons why IOS isn't meeting his needs. I didn't expect it to be about the virtues of a Pixelbook.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Actually that's exactly what I expected. If you replace A with B then I fully expect you to (1) first say how A is inadequate -- which the article did -- and (2) why is B better, which the article didn't state.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    I thought that part was implied -- he switched to the Pixelbook because it's a Google product that works well with the other Google (Google Suite) product he uses.
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      Fair enough. I expected a bit more thorough motivation than that.

sneak 8y ago

I use both. The Pixelbook hardware is unparalleled. I like it better than anything from Apple right now. The Pixelbook of course does not support iMessage, so on it I would use OWS’ Signal for messaging... but they (OWS) discontinued their Chrome App version, and the Android/Play Store version is “incompatible with this device”, so I can’t use my Pixelbook to chat with anyone outside of Slack or IRCCloud (or other undesirable/non-e2e chat services like Hangouts/etc), which is super lame. OWS really needs to support that platform better.

0x8BADF00D 8y ago
I can’t imagine using ChromeOS for anything. I can barely use Chrome, and it has massive memory leaks/eats up my free memory. I wonder what memory leaks OS is like.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Chrome might be horrible on desktop, but it performs great when it’s the only thing running. Chromebooks are quite snappy for the amount of resources they generally have.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    I use a Chromebook as a mobile terminal in the data center. A nice thing about them is they are ready to use in a second or two after opening the cover. Booting up is phenomenally quick for a device that cost about $300.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I see an iPad with a keyboard doing decent for this instance as well.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    > Chrome might be horrible on desktop, but it performs great when it’s the only thing running. Chromebooks are quite snappy for the amount of resources they generally have. Try comparing it with the obvious alternative - a lightweight Linux distro running on identical or roughly equivalent hardware - and you probably won't think of it as "snappy". Linux desktops can run absolutely fine on hardware from 10 years ago and sometimes more: "resources" are almost a non-issue these days. (And Linux distros are also about to get the sort of comprehensive touch-screen and small-screen support that iOS, Android and ChromeOS are usually known for, as a side effect of the ongoing work on "mobile" interfaces for the OS. Using a touch-screen-only device for productivity purposes will probably always be a challenge, but a high-quality OS and UX can absolutely make a difference.)

benjaminwootton 8y ago

I really wish they would add mouse support to iOS as it would allow me to work on gslides presentations. I could then leave the MacBook at home a lot more. Are there any workarounds or markdown presentation apps I should check out?

ymolodtsov 8y ago
Try Deckset.
mensetmanusman 8y ago
I use Jump desktop to remote into any number of powerful desktop or laptop computers. It supports the swiftpoint bluetooth mouse so you can use it in that way as a keyboard/mouse PC/Mac setup quite well.

goldcd 8y ago

I feel like some old fogey/luddite when I say "I've never seen the point of iPads" - or tablets for that matter. I've had a few and they're great as media consumption/browsing devices - but am utterly bemused when people say they do "all their work from them". I feel quite angsty enough when my laptop gets decoupled from the desktop-symbiotic multi-monitors and proper mouse and keyboard. I can see the point of a Chromebook - shoving Chrome into something cheap/efficient (if Chrome is all you need), but am eternally bemused over people trying to bolt keyboards to tablets - "you wanted a laptop"

pdimitar 8y ago
Same here, I don't understand people trying to shove work processes on entertainment devices. I love my iPad Pro for several purposes -- media consumption, some light gaming, reading, managing media / bookmark / book collections -- but it would never occur to me to code on it (even through shells to Linux). I am not fully comfortable even with my MacBook Pro. I am working on building a work process that doesn't rely on a mouse or a touchpad and then I could work on the MBP full time (mostly involving memorizing shell and editor shortcuts, and making a lot of shell aliases). Before that there's simply no point -- it's like trying to run with weights on your ankles.
- goldcd 8y ago
  It would be perfect for Civ6 though..
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    I would be very okay with that. The iPad Pros have amazingly strong hardware, it's kind of wasted on anything but games and professional photo/video editing software.
  - selectodude 8y ago
    it is perfect for civ 6.
- goerz 8y ago

philip1209 8y ago

Cloudflare is trialing chromebooks as a replacement for MacBooks: https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1068120826678001664?s=19 https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1068120826678001664?s=19

tomdeboer 8y ago

What keeps you from installing an alternative browser, like Firefox or Chrome for iOS? I recently switched to Opera Touch on iOS and it’s been great so far. Definitely worth a try I would say.

jordache 8y ago
Apple only allows the Safari Webkit engine to be installed on iOS. As a result, all third party browsers on iOS are using the identical browser engine as iOS Safari. Any browser incompatibility issues is likely shared across all iOS browsers.

writepub 8y ago

For one, this article could've been 30% the original length - it drones on and on repeatatively! While I find the reasoning sound on why iPads can't be your full time productivity device, completely ignoring Microsoft surface in this space seems either ignorant or a paid Google ad for the Chromebook

ams6110 8y ago
I think a history of failures in mobile tech keeps most people from even considering Microsoft gear. Surface may be great, but who is buying them? Who is developing for them? Mobile is Apple/iOS, or Google/Android, for better or worse.
- Intermernet 8y ago
  Lots of people are buying them, and anyone developing windows apps is developing for them. I dual boot my surface book 2 with Linux and I have a decent Linux machine, a decent Windows machine, a decent tablet and a decent gaming machine in one device. It's not cheap though!

moondev 8y ago

I LOVE my pixel book. Crostini is really a game changer. Its a super polished experience using native chrome + Linux apps. Android apps too!

paultopia 8y ago

I actually use iOS for work stuff almost constantly, lots more than I use anything else. (My Macbook spends most of its time these days downloading things from Dropbox and backing them up to time machine, plus whenever I decide to actually write some serious code.) But I'm a professor-type in a non-collaborative field, so: - the iPad Pro is amazing for reading academic papers with the pencil at hand. Ditto for grading and such. - the keyboard is good enough that I can write on it at just about full speed, and I write in markdown anyway. - most of the things I need to do that require full computer chops can be done in the cloud---I have a bunch of little Heroku dynos sitting around sleeping (on free time) until I ask them to do something like run a document through pandoc or add something to a database for one of my data collection projects. The shortcuts app in ios12 + Pythonista + Heroku are an amazing combination, they allow me to turn almost anything complicated into an API call that I can trigger with a freaking voice command if I really want (but mostly share documents into). Just about the only way this hinders my usual workflow (apart from having to bust out the Mac for heavy coding) is that there's no Zotero on iOS. But sooner or later I will get around to shoving that into a Heroku dyno and making some shortcuts to push web pages into its readers and then it'll be solved too. For non-collaborative workflows this is perfect. I can see how the author's collaboration needs really would not be met by such a setup though.

crooked-v 8y ago
I'd love to see a guide on setting up that Shortcuts -> Heroku -> final result workflow in a streamlined manner. Now.sh could be another useful tool for that kind of thing, since their 2.0 product is focused on no-hassle lamda functions, without needing a full VM setup.
- paultopia 8y ago
  Maybe I'll write a guide up! I've got a pretty good setup going. Pending full write up, here are some key pieces: Shortcuts side: the shortcuts app is really shockingly powerful, mainly because you can share almost anything you want into it and it intelligently figures out what you want. For example, if you share a web page from safari into it, if the first action receives a url, it'll treat it as such, if it receives a web page it'll take the DOM and not worry about the URL, etc. There are really three key actions. 1) `Get contents of URL` allows arbitrary http requests. You can pass in data from other actions. This is the main workhorse for heroku things. 2) `Run JavaScript on web page` allows you to just run arbitrary JS in the context of whatever page you share into it. It's great for data-collection type tasks, you can just rip whatever you need out of the DOM and POST it away per the above, and then shove it into a database from heroku. 3) `Run Pythonista script` does what you'd expect. It passes whatever the action receives into Pythonista as a command line argument. And then, obviously, anything goes. If you haven't tried Pythonista, you should check it out---it's hard to get 3rd party libraries in (and many don't work), but you get the full stdlib plus a bunch of key libraries that the dev has taken the trouble to build in, including numpy, requests, matplotlib, beautifulsoup, PIL, sympy, etc...) After receiving a response from heroku, it's trivial to save it to iCloud/Dropbox, put on clipboard, open a preview window with a share sheet available, etc. On the Heroku side, the key trick is that you can run Docker containers. So, for example, my mobile pandoc solution is a docker container that has texlive and pandoc on it, allowing me to have basically a personal improved docverter. So I just post a markdown document via shortcuts to a flask endpoint that converts the document and returns it to me as the response.

timbit42 8y ago

> and was even able to launch a successful podcast which has almost entirely been recorded, edited and published using iOS. Seriously? I could do that using a 1985 Amiga or Atari ST.

xenozega 8y ago
You haven't lived till you've used a toaster to accomplish this... IoT is here

ymolodtsov 8y ago

The only thing I can’t comprehend is how any person using iPad for work can be dissatisfied with the changes in iOS 12 — apart from the scale of those changes that could be bigger.

ricardobeat 8y ago

And this is exactly why Google makes sure all the G suite apps are just a little broken in iOS & Safari. It has been like this for the past half decade, since Apple stepped on their turf with Maps.

zapzupnz 8y ago
There's a Google Docs app for iOS. Shouldn't be too hard for those who are invested in Google Docs to download the app; that's pretty much standard procedure on iOS anyway, plus an app will always be a better time than a website for editing on an iPad.
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  This is in regards to the apps too (“iOS & Safari”). I mean, the native app shortcomings are the entire subject of this HN post. Where are you coming from?

anotheryou 8y ago

he only uses the browser... keyboard and battery should be his only concerns anyways

m0zg 8y ago

I'd much rather schools switched mostly to pen and paper, TBH. 95% of homework in the 9th grade SHOULD NOT require a computer. It's a distraction, and one which hits kids on the ADHD spectrum especially hard. There's nothing to be gained from requiring computers for homework in most cases, and kids get plenty of computer time outside of school. The net effect of this "progress" is that I have to constantly supervise my 15 year old like a hawk, or else no homework will get done and he will watch Youtube instead. This is not a good set-up, because eventually there will be no supervision, and then he will be well and truly fucked, because he can't seem to realize that he needs to actually care about anything other than YT and computer games. I'm afraid that by the time he realizes that it'll be too late to fix anything.

guidedlight 8y ago
In Australia, it’s mostly the government run schools that heavily promote laptops and tablets in the classrooms. Private run schools are increasingly going back to pen and paper under pressure from parents who work in corporate jobs, and see an overreliance on computers as a disadvantage.
- m0zg 8y ago
  Overreliance isn't quite the word. It's as if someone told them they "have" to do it, and they're happy to oblige. I have a feeling (unsubstantiated) that nobody has seriously studied whether screens are advantageous in the classroom. My anecdata suggests they are strongly detrimental, especially in middle school.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
If I hadn't been allowed to take notes on a computer in school--or if I'd been born a few decades earlier and computers weren't available--I literally don't think I would be where I am today. As in, my grades would have been worse, I would have gotten into a lesser college, etc. My handwriting is slow and difficult to decipher. And handwriting makes tiny revisions—adding words into the middle of a sentence, restructuring a sentence slightly, etc—unduly annoying. If the internet is a problem, disable the internet. I should mention, I actually didn't start using a normal laptop until college. In grade school, I had this "digital typewriter" of sorts that ran Palm OS. Very nifty little device... it was far more lightweight than laptops of the time, and the battery lasted weeks.