4 ms·
Starting to feel the fact Apple decided tablets should be siloed from traditional computing is really just starting to hurt development in these areas. There i
by whywhywhywhy 8y ago
Starting to feel the fact Apple decided tablets should be siloed from traditional computing is really just starting to hurt development in these areas.
There is some great work here but also you see things like the web clipper, it's already accepting that research web browsing is best done on a computer so then because of the tablet silo they need to create custom tech and run servers just to get the content from two devices next to each other. If Apple had a tablet Macbook you'd just be dragging and dropping from the browser to Muse.
When Microsoft launched their Surface line, I and many others joked that is was the wrong direction but as the years pass it's starting to feel more and more absurd to me that my tablet workspace and my workstation workspace are two incompatible operating systems.
If Apple hadn't been so strict and had a laptop line similar to the Surface as well as the iPad, does anyone seriously think anyone would be pursuing software like this in the locked down tablet OS when they could be doing both streams of work on the one device instead.
- mgkimsal 8y agoto follow on, the fear has always been that macos/osx would become more tablet-like vs ios becoming more mac-like. I don't think the convergence has been as bad as some predicted, it does feel like it's gone more in the mac->ios route than the other way around.
- walterbell 8y agoThis year will bring iOS apps to macOS. In the next few years, there is a planned shift of MacBooks from x86 to Arm CPUs.
- walterbell 8y ago> There is some great work here but also you see things like the web clipper, it's already accepting that research web browsing is best done on a computer so then because of the tablet silo they need to create custom tech and run servers just to get the content from two devices next to each other. Clipping is needed at the point of discovery, which today may include social media, which is often consumed on mobile. DevonThink has a mature clipper and search engine on macOS and iOS. It enables fast archiving of links, HTML, PDFs and audio files on phones, tablets and desktops, with multi-device sync via WebDAV, iCloud and other backends. It works very well, especially as Google's search index continues to shrink.
- jclardy 8y agoI agree with your thoughts on siloing being a poor decision by Apple, but I see nothing here that couldn’t already be done all on device using existing APIs. Apple already added drag & drop between apps, you can drag text/images from safari straight into notes (or any app that implements drag/drop.) The web clipper could be implemented as a safari extension and work in a nearly identical way.
- Terretta 8y agoAgree with this comment. It also (superficially) appears they haven’t studied deeper (more academic, research or UX driven) prior art. It’s easy to beat Preview or PDF Expert. Harder to surpass the more innovative examples. In particular, there’s a lot of depth in Liquid Text: https://www.liquidtext.net https://www.liquidtext.net But also a couple of the infinite canvas note anything apps, especially ones that also bring in audio recording or other ‘mixed media’ while covering swaths of the thinking outlined here. Finally, there’s an irony that all the video embeds on this article are disabled on my iPad Pro. Do they even iPad?
- endergen 8y agoThey mention Liquid Text being an inspiration
- whiddershins 8y agoSorta related: yesterday I was on the phone attempting to communicate with a colleague and I looked through my messages for a link on my phone. Unthinkingly I hit copy, on my phone, and then opened up his email on my Mac and hit paste. It worked. So many Apple is starting to figure all of this out?
- icebraining 8y agoIt's called Continuity: https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/ https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/ I'm not an Apple user, but it seems nice.