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Wow.. you can finally plug in a USB drive/card reader/camera/whatever... That alone actually takes the iPad a long way towards actually being real/Pro/whatever

Wow.. you can finally plug in a USB drive/card reader/camera/whatever... That alone actually takes the iPad a long way towards actually being real/Pro/whatever. I sold my first Gen iPad Pro over this stuff. It was just to painful to do a lot of real world stuff that involved files. Maybe today the experience would be a heck of a lot better.

prashnts 7y ago
Adding to the whatever list, you can also use USB Optical drives with a powered hub (just tried yesterday). It appears in Files app. Seems like they’ve finally implemented proper usb stack.
- radnor 7y ago
  You can connect quite a few things via the Camera Connection Kit (CCK) which has a USB port in it. MIDI controllers and USB soundcards are two things I've used recently.
  - prashnts 7y ago
    Not sure what’s the CCK. Is it one of the dongles they sell with HDMI, SD Reader, and USB? I first got excited that it can connect to USB webcams — I have some modded webcams I use as microscope — would be super useful if I could interface it with a camera app. But it didn’t work, last I tried. Are you aware of some way to do that? :)
    - radnor 7y ago
      I haven't heard of any webcams that work in iOS via the CCK - sorry! I'm not too familiar with how it all works, but I imagine it has a lot to do with the individual apps that are running to be able to read/write to the USB port.
      - prashnts 7y ago
        Seems like it, thanks anyway! Maybe now that there’s USBKit (although not sure if it’s MacOS only), one might be able to work out a camera driver implementation. Yay, weekend project!
        layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
        USBDriverKit is macOS only.
    - biztos 7y ago
      I believe they're talking about the "Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter."[0]. I have one of these and so far I have only used it to plug into my DAC[1] so I can use Apple Music on an old iPhone with a real HiFi, but I think this has been the preferred way to connect to multimedia stuff for a while. A long time ago on an iPad now far far away, I had the cordless little SD card reader, but the iPad itself wasn't much use for editing RAW photos in that generation. [0]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0W2/lightning-to-usb-3-camera-adapter https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0W2/lightning-to-usb-3-... [1]: https://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1 https://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Interesting implementation tidbit from a Federighi interview: >From a security architecture point of view, we did not want to have file system drivers running in the kernel communicating with external media that could have been tampered with. Getting all of our file systems to be isolated from the kernel, it was real hardcore engineering efforts.
  - robin_reala 7y ago
    Link? I’d like to read that.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      There's not much more, unfortunately: https://youtu.be/5ygYSdL42Zw?t=4778 https://youtu.be/5ygYSdL42Zw?t=4778
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  I’m pretty sure the USB stack was there all along, they just kept it to themselves. Just like how the iPhone baseband chip would be capable of receiving FM radio, they just don’t want to enable it.
robbyking 7y ago
In 2018 I took a year off fro work to be a stay-at-home dad, and one thing that really surprised me was how little I used my MacBook; the only time I would drag it out was to connect my pre-bluetooth Garmin to sync my cycling workouts to Strava. Had my iPad supported USB devices, there's a good chance I wouldn't have used it at all.
- luckydata 7y ago
  You probably weren't doing any work and just using the iPad to watch and read stuff. It's made for that.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Maybe they’re mostly used for that, but ‘made for that’ is just not true. Apple has consistently, right from the start marketed it as a productivity and creative device, even emphasising iWork apps in the launch presentation and releasing Garage Band for it a few months after launch. They’ve consistently highlighted creative apps for the iPad year after year. For me, my iPad is m primary creative device, by far. I write on it, sketch on it, code on it, spruice up photos on it. I don’t know what I’d do without Google Docs/Drive. I’m writing this on it. A few minutes ago I was posting, while doing some fact checking in Safari in a split view. It’s awesome!
    - luckydata 7y ago
      Apple can say a lot of stuff, doesn't make it true.
      - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        The OP literally just told you stuff they're creating on the iPad. I get we should be cynical of marketing-speak and all, but "it is possible to create real things on the iPad" is not just marketing speak, it's stuff people who are actually creating real things on the iPad have been saying for years. I'm currently kind of down on my iPad due to travails using it for writing screenplays (long story, not that interesting), but I have used it for creating -- and presenting -- slideshows to large audiences, writing multiple articles and publishing them directly to WordPress and Medium sites, creating technical diagrams for my office, writing a 110,000-word novel, doing revisions (change tracking and comments) on other people's novels, touching up photographs, doing GitHub reviews, on and on. There are people who edit successful podcasts with Ferrite, edit multitrack 4K video with Luma Fusion, on and on and on. iPads are tricky-to-useless for most development work currently and that tends, for obvious reasons, to be a major limitation for HN's main demographic. But that doesn't make the iPad "just for watching videos". To claim that it's not capable of being used for a wide range of real work is either ignorant or trolling.
noja 7y ago
It's meant to replace MacOS eventually
- chadlavi 7y ago
  Once they give access to a terminal (even if it's sandboxed) and start letting developers port apps like vscode and sketch to iPadOS, there will be 0 barrier any more for me personally to making the leap.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Your wish is granted. http://osxdaily.com/2018/01/08/get-terminal-app-ios-command-line/ http://osxdaily.com/2018/01/08/get-terminal-app-ios-command-... Bit limited, but it’s a start. Personally I prefer Pythonista with the Stash shell command extensions package. https://github.com/ywangd/stash https://github.com/ywangd/stash
  - Keyframe 7y ago
    I love ma iPad. It replaced laptop for me for almost everything I do. Even the MS Office suite is great. There’s even vim for it, but it’s half there. What I miss the most is having an ability to go into a zsh, spin up my vim, run node, gcc, acme+vice (I code for c64 as a hobby)... Essentially, the dev side of laptop use is missing. And I really miss it. It feels like the machine could handle it with ease, but Apple won’t have it.
- criddell 7y ago
  What makes you say that?
- stephen_g 7y ago
  Pretty sure they've specifically said that's not the case. There's always been rumors that Apple are going to switch the Mac to ARM and make it only run iOS, but this is going the other way if anything, with iPadOS splitting off from iOS.
supermatt 7y ago
You've been able to do a lot of that for a while with the official camera adapter.
- banana_giraffe 7y ago
  And on the iPad Pro, you can do it with a random USB-C card reader.
gowld 7y ago
It's amazing that "connecting a peripheral" is not considered Pro. Remember when the Mac was the "digital hub" ? https://www.imore.com/evolution-apples-digital-hub https://www.imore.com/evolution-apples-digital-hub
gumby 7y ago
Not arguing with your overall point, but I don't think your use of the term "real world" is appropriate. Clearly many people are using iPads in the real world for all sorts of things and are satisfied with the results. You mean "laptop/desktop like things" which is a reasonable comparison to make, for the small subset of people who want that kind of functionality. But to say that that stuff is "real world" while other uses cases are not is condescending. It's like the people who say MacBook pros "aren't really designed with pros in mind". I've written over a hundred thousand lines of code for work on MacBook airs and plain old MacBooks which are just great for my particular work flow. Doesn't mean I'm not a pro, any more than it means that people who need a larger machine to run Xcode etc are more pro, or less pro, than I. I don't mean to harsh on you but I do think this is an important point.

prashnts 7y ago

Adding to the whatever list, you can also use USB Optical drives with a powered hub (just tried yesterday). It appears in Files app. Seems like they’ve finally implemented proper usb stack.

radnor 7y ago
You can connect quite a few things via the Camera Connection Kit (CCK) which has a USB port in it. MIDI controllers and USB soundcards are two things I've used recently.
- prashnts 7y ago
  Not sure what’s the CCK. Is it one of the dongles they sell with HDMI, SD Reader, and USB? I first got excited that it can connect to USB webcams — I have some modded webcams I use as microscope — would be super useful if I could interface it with a camera app. But it didn’t work, last I tried. Are you aware of some way to do that? :)
  - radnor 7y ago
    I haven't heard of any webcams that work in iOS via the CCK - sorry! I'm not too familiar with how it all works, but I imagine it has a lot to do with the individual apps that are running to be able to read/write to the USB port.
    - prashnts 7y ago
      Seems like it, thanks anyway! Maybe now that there’s USBKit (although not sure if it’s MacOS only), one might be able to work out a camera driver implementation. Yay, weekend project!
      - layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
        USBDriverKit is macOS only.
  - biztos 7y ago
    I believe they're talking about the "Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter."[0]. I have one of these and so far I have only used it to plug into my DAC[1] so I can use Apple Music on an old iPhone with a real HiFi, but I think this has been the preferred way to connect to multimedia stuff for a while. A long time ago on an iPad now far far away, I had the cordless little SD card reader, but the iPad itself wasn't much use for editing RAW photos in that generation. [0]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0W2/lightning-to-usb-3-camera-adapter https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0W2/lightning-to-usb-3-... [1]: https://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1 https://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1
wlesieutre 7y ago
Interesting implementation tidbit from a Federighi interview: >From a security architecture point of view, we did not want to have file system drivers running in the kernel communicating with external media that could have been tampered with. Getting all of our file systems to be isolated from the kernel, it was real hardcore engineering efforts.
- robin_reala 7y ago
  Link? I’d like to read that.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    There's not much more, unfortunately: https://youtu.be/5ygYSdL42Zw?t=4778 https://youtu.be/5ygYSdL42Zw?t=4778
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
I’m pretty sure the USB stack was there all along, they just kept it to themselves. Just like how the iPhone baseband chip would be capable of receiving FM radio, they just don’t want to enable it.

robbyking 7y ago

In 2018 I took a year off fro work to be a stay-at-home dad, and one thing that really surprised me was how little I used my MacBook; the only time I would drag it out was to connect my pre-bluetooth Garmin to sync my cycling workouts to Strava. Had my iPad supported USB devices, there's a good chance I wouldn't have used it at all.

luckydata 7y ago
You probably weren't doing any work and just using the iPad to watch and read stuff. It's made for that.
- simonh 7y ago
  Maybe they’re mostly used for that, but ‘made for that’ is just not true. Apple has consistently, right from the start marketed it as a productivity and creative device, even emphasising iWork apps in the launch presentation and releasing Garage Band for it a few months after launch. They’ve consistently highlighted creative apps for the iPad year after year. For me, my iPad is m primary creative device, by far. I write on it, sketch on it, code on it, spruice up photos on it. I don’t know what I’d do without Google Docs/Drive. I’m writing this on it. A few minutes ago I was posting, while doing some fact checking in Safari in a split view. It’s awesome!
  - luckydata 7y ago
    Apple can say a lot of stuff, doesn't make it true.
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      The OP literally just told you stuff they're creating on the iPad. I get we should be cynical of marketing-speak and all, but "it is possible to create real things on the iPad" is not just marketing speak, it's stuff people who are actually creating real things on the iPad have been saying for years. I'm currently kind of down on my iPad due to travails using it for writing screenplays (long story, not that interesting), but I have used it for creating -- and presenting -- slideshows to large audiences, writing multiple articles and publishing them directly to WordPress and Medium sites, creating technical diagrams for my office, writing a 110,000-word novel, doing revisions (change tracking and comments) on other people's novels, touching up photographs, doing GitHub reviews, on and on. There are people who edit successful podcasts with Ferrite, edit multitrack 4K video with Luma Fusion, on and on and on. iPads are tricky-to-useless for most development work currently and that tends, for obvious reasons, to be a major limitation for HN's main demographic. But that doesn't make the iPad "just for watching videos". To claim that it's not capable of being used for a wide range of real work is either ignorant or trolling.

noja 7y ago

It's meant to replace MacOS eventually

chadlavi 7y ago
Once they give access to a terminal (even if it's sandboxed) and start letting developers port apps like vscode and sketch to iPadOS, there will be 0 barrier any more for me personally to making the leap.
- simonh 7y ago
  Your wish is granted. http://osxdaily.com/2018/01/08/get-terminal-app-ios-command-line/ http://osxdaily.com/2018/01/08/get-terminal-app-ios-command-... Bit limited, but it’s a start. Personally I prefer Pythonista with the Stash shell command extensions package. https://github.com/ywangd/stash https://github.com/ywangd/stash
- Keyframe 7y ago
  I love ma iPad. It replaced laptop for me for almost everything I do. Even the MS Office suite is great. There’s even vim for it, but it’s half there. What I miss the most is having an ability to go into a zsh, spin up my vim, run node, gcc, acme+vice (I code for c64 as a hobby)... Essentially, the dev side of laptop use is missing. And I really miss it. It feels like the machine could handle it with ease, but Apple won’t have it.
criddell 7y ago
What makes you say that?
stephen_g 7y ago
Pretty sure they've specifically said that's not the case. There's always been rumors that Apple are going to switch the Mac to ARM and make it only run iOS, but this is going the other way if anything, with iPadOS splitting off from iOS.

supermatt 7y ago

You've been able to do a lot of that for a while with the official camera adapter.

banana_giraffe 7y ago
And on the iPad Pro, you can do it with a random USB-C card reader.

gowld 7y ago

It's amazing that "connecting a peripheral" is not considered Pro. Remember when the Mac was the "digital hub" ? https://www.imore.com/evolution-apples-digital-hub https://www.imore.com/evolution-apples-digital-hub

gumby 7y ago

Not arguing with your overall point, but I don't think your use of the term "real world" is appropriate. Clearly many people are using iPads in the real world for all sorts of things and are satisfied with the results. You mean "laptop/desktop like things" which is a reasonable comparison to make, for the small subset of people who want that kind of functionality. But to say that that stuff is "real world" while other uses cases are not is condescending. It's like the people who say MacBook pros "aren't really designed with pros in mind". I've written over a hundred thousand lines of code for work on MacBook airs and plain old MacBooks which are just great for my particular work flow. Doesn't mean I'm not a pro, any more than it means that people who need a larger machine to run Xcode etc are more pro, or less pro, than I. I don't mean to harsh on you but I do think this is an important point.