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I found it immediately limiting - either you put your stuff in one of the preordained categories like music, movies, photos, videos (and pretty much nothing els

I found it immediately limiting - either you put your stuff in one of the preordained categories like music, movies, photos, videos (and pretty much nothing else), or your stuff is siloed in whatever specific application you load it into. That's not a tool you can use to create things with, unless it's music, movies, photos or videos. It lacked the freedom to permit innovation. (I have never acquired an iPad beyond the first one I got, which was a gift.)

lbotos 7y ago
What did you want to create with it, that you couldn't? My parents went from "scared of computers" to "ipad" pros, because it's really hard to break or get hacked, it doesn't get viruses they know how to force quit an app. I'm scared of iPad getting files now, because it's going to be a mess for me.
- barrkel 7y ago
  For me, files are the centre of the world, while apps come and go, companies come and go. Data is what lasts, and why it's so important to control it. I'd want to use command line tools - or UI's that are just as composable - to manipulate my files. The iPad perspective just seems completely crippled from the POV. Like a toy. Just to take an example - look at the Moon article also on the front page right now: https://medium.com/@sulej.robert/the-moon-made-twice-at-home-a2cb73b3f1e8 https://medium.com/@sulej.robert/the-moon-made-twice-at-home...
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Apple pretty much has acknowledged that, and has been slowly introducing a file system interface over the last several years. If you haven’t looked at an iPad in awhile, you should to refresh your POV. The obvious buildup is to when the iPad transitions to a notebook computer.
chrisseaton 7y ago
You can write on it, draw on it, paint on it, program on it, and you already mentioned video, photography, music, spoken word. Seems like an extremely powerful creation tool to me! You could create many of humanity’s greatest works on it! What are you expecting more?
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  I expect actual control and ownership over those very creations I create. On your iPad, point to where your latest video file is. Show me. Where is it? "On The Cloud"? On the iPad itself? Three clicks deep in some random purpose-specific app separate from the soundtrack file you want to integrate into the video? What about five years from now, can you still access that video however and whenever and wherever you please?
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > On your iPad, point to where your latest video file is. Show me. Where is it? Why do you care where the 'file' is? That's an implementation detail. I can copy the video to somewhere else any time I want. I do this all the time with photos and videos from my iPad. It's not the issue you're saying it is.
    - drdeadringer 7y ago
      It is an issue. I know people who are not able to properly manage their own files [no quotation marks needed]. They have copies of files here, there, and everywhere else and when asked which copy of the photograph they edited to their perfection they cannot tell you if it was the local copy, the cloud copy, the copy on the shared folder, the copy through that special app wherever that is... nevermind asking them about the concept of having backups. Simple point-and-show-me information saves you an organizational migraine.
      - htfu 7y ago
        Isn’t that an argument for abstracting that kinda back-and-forth away rather than against it? As it stands, if it’s in the cloud and not on your device there’s an indicator. Try to open it and it downloads. Edit it and the changes get synced back up. Unless something is edited in multiple places while offline, or someone takes your lead and tries to manually manage copying stuff back and forth, there’s no different local copy and cloud copy. When you start talking about like, starting to edit it, well with video that’s not really how things work. If you tweak the contrast of a photo sure today’s devices abstract that in-place, but assembling multiple media into something that, if not re-encoded is at least re-muxed, why would you assume it to be “the same” file? Should the audio track be automatically wiped, since it’s now been incorporated into the other file? That makes no sense, and I don’t see how an iOS device treats source material differently.
scarface74 7y ago
That hasn’t been true for years - at least since iOS 5 in 2011 with iCloud.

lbotos 7y ago

What did you want to create with it, that you couldn't? My parents went from "scared of computers" to "ipad" pros, because it's really hard to break or get hacked, it doesn't get viruses they know how to force quit an app. I'm scared of iPad getting files now, because it's going to be a mess for me.

barrkel 7y ago
For me, files are the centre of the world, while apps come and go, companies come and go. Data is what lasts, and why it's so important to control it. I'd want to use command line tools - or UI's that are just as composable - to manipulate my files. The iPad perspective just seems completely crippled from the POV. Like a toy. Just to take an example - look at the Moon article also on the front page right now: https://medium.com/@sulej.robert/the-moon-made-twice-at-home-a2cb73b3f1e8 https://medium.com/@sulej.robert/the-moon-made-twice-at-home...
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Apple pretty much has acknowledged that, and has been slowly introducing a file system interface over the last several years. If you haven’t looked at an iPad in awhile, you should to refresh your POV. The obvious buildup is to when the iPad transitions to a notebook computer.

chrisseaton 7y ago

You can write on it, draw on it, paint on it, program on it, and you already mentioned video, photography, music, spoken word. Seems like an extremely powerful creation tool to me! You could create many of humanity’s greatest works on it! What are you expecting more?

drdeadringer 7y ago
I expect actual control and ownership over those very creations I create. On your iPad, point to where your latest video file is. Show me. Where is it? "On The Cloud"? On the iPad itself? Three clicks deep in some random purpose-specific app separate from the soundtrack file you want to integrate into the video? What about five years from now, can you still access that video however and whenever and wherever you please?
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > On your iPad, point to where your latest video file is. Show me. Where is it? Why do you care where the 'file' is? That's an implementation detail. I can copy the video to somewhere else any time I want. I do this all the time with photos and videos from my iPad. It's not the issue you're saying it is.
  - drdeadringer 7y ago
    It is an issue. I know people who are not able to properly manage their own files [no quotation marks needed]. They have copies of files here, there, and everywhere else and when asked which copy of the photograph they edited to their perfection they cannot tell you if it was the local copy, the cloud copy, the copy on the shared folder, the copy through that special app wherever that is... nevermind asking them about the concept of having backups. Simple point-and-show-me information saves you an organizational migraine.
    - htfu 7y ago
      Isn’t that an argument for abstracting that kinda back-and-forth away rather than against it? As it stands, if it’s in the cloud and not on your device there’s an indicator. Try to open it and it downloads. Edit it and the changes get synced back up. Unless something is edited in multiple places while offline, or someone takes your lead and tries to manually manage copying stuff back and forth, there’s no different local copy and cloud copy. When you start talking about like, starting to edit it, well with video that’s not really how things work. If you tweak the contrast of a photo sure today’s devices abstract that in-place, but assembling multiple media into something that, if not re-encoded is at least re-muxed, why would you assume it to be “the same” file? Should the audio track be automatically wiped, since it’s now been incorporated into the other file? That makes no sense, and I don’t see how an iOS device treats source material differently.

scarface74 7y ago

That hasn’t been true for years - at least since iOS 5 in 2011 with iCloud.