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The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

• zweep 7y ago
  I remember discovering iPad split screen more than a year into owning one. It was like magic, then I didn't know what I had done to invoke it. I started trying random stuff looking for the incantations and eventually gave up and Googled it.
• swiley 7y ago
  I’d say the iPad is the symbol of everything wrong with consumer computing devices, I really hate it. The most upsetting thing is that I’m not sure that’s true, look at the cheap Windows PCs and Android phones: they’re full frontal active assaults on the users! It’s all terrible!
• cm2187 7y ago
  Text selection is the most broken thing to me on an ipad. It makes any kind of editing pretty much unusable. Great device to browse the web from my bathtub and watch movies on a plane, but haven’t found any other usage.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    I just learned the spacebar trick a few months ago. I still get “5e” instead of “the” about twice a month. And once in a while I will be typing and four words to half a sentence will just disappear and I still have no idea how I’m doing that. A whole new text entry system wouldn’t go amiss for me, either.
    • cm2187 7y ago
      But try selecting text from a web page...
    • Decade 7y ago
      For me, a chunk of text would go missing because it interprets fast typing as double, triple, quadruple tapping. Which means the text is selected and then promptly overwritten. The solution is to be deliberate about typing slowly on the screen keyboard. https://www.howtogeek.com/441872/how-to-use-text-editing-gestures-on-your-iphone-and-ipad/ https://www.howtogeek.com/441872/how-to-use-text-editing-ges...
    • silveroriole 7y ago
      It would be nice if they fixed the autocorrect learning insane things like correcting “male” to “Male” and “doesn’t” to “DOESNT”, so I wouldn’t have to do so much text selection to fix it. My iPhone which is really behind on iOS versions doesn’t do this but my iPad is awful for it.
      • nothrabannosir 7y ago
        Autocorrect on the iOS from four years ago was nothing short of magic. It would understand the most confused babble and rarely needed any guidance. It even seemed to get used to my style of typing after a while. Today, it is a constant battle. It keeps trying to rope in my address book, different languages I’m not typing in, and arcane words. I correct it every four sentences at least. I thought I wanted these features; boy was I wrong.
    • asplake 7y ago
      > And once in a while I will be typing and four words to half a sentence will just disappear and I still have no idea how I’m doing that I don't edit text on the iPad for exactly that reason. As soon as I start typing fast using the screen keyboard, I keep losing stuff
  • jonplackett 7y ago
    This is so much worse as of ios13 - which was somehow meant to make text selection better, but for me made it so much less consistent. I really feel like this should be a solvable problem though. It can’t be that complicated to select text reliably.
    • jodrellblank 7y ago
      This has been such a pet hate for years on systems with a mouse as well as iPhone iOS, that I assume it is nigh impossible to select text reliably and conveniently, for some unexplored reason or other. It's always the case that I can get a selection backwards up to the first letter but missing it, or including the first letter and some extra junk from the lines before, but not simply up to and including the first letter. Right now replying to your comment on Windows, FireFox, with a mouse, I have just discovered a new text selection mode I've never noticed before[1] - double-click-and-drag selects whole words. Consistently up to the new word boundary on the right. That means it's possible to select an entire sentence up to (but without) the period. Or including the period and a trailing space. But not the obvious one to want - a sentence including the period and no trailing space. [1] I know double-click commonly selects words, and triple-click selects sentences, but didn't know of double-click-drag.
      • johnwalkr 7y ago
        Just checked and it works on MacOS too. Thank you, what a game-changer!
    • gmac 7y ago
      Agreed — moving the cursor and selecting text has become almost unusable for me on iOS 13 [1]. It's a shame, because I always used to be impressed at how easy and natural it felt. I really hope they figure this out and reinstate the old approach. [1] As I was saying only the other day: https://twitter.com/jawj/status/1221038674193932288 https://twitter.com/jawj/status/1221038674193932288
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  • ekianjo 7y ago
    Not Just broken on ipads, pretty much every touch based system out there has horrible UI to select text...
  • e_proxus 7y ago
    My favorite pet peeve is trying to edit URLs in the address bar in Safari. Just trying to get the cursor to the end of the address field a an error prone chore. Often the text is select and there’s no way to unselect it. Then of course it doesn’t help when you want to remove some components of the URL that Safari helpfully autocompletes back to the URL you jus visited.
    • TrickyRick 7y ago
      Force touching on the keyboard gives your finger control over the cursor more like a touch pad on a computer. It works really well on the iPhone, not sure if it's available on iPad. But yet again, one of those feature you just have to know about to use.
      • johnwalkr 7y ago
        It was never available on iPad, and is no longer on newer iPhones. It's replaced by a long touch, but this cursor control function has disappeared.
        • monocularvision 7y ago
          Long touch the space bar in the keyboard to get the trackpad-like functionality back.
          • JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
            Thank you. I had trouble activating this feature. On iOS it seems to work anywhere on the keyboard, not limited to a particular key.
            • egypturnash 7y ago
              Two-finger touch anywhere on the keyboard also turns it on, though I usually find that pretty awkward.
          • 7y ago
  • irrational 7y ago
    It is fantastic for creating artwork, if you are artistic.
• broodbucket 7y ago
  iPads have complete market dominance in the world of the kiddies. I can't believe how many there are - big iPads in big cases, young children playing with some game or watching YouTube Kids. I don't think it's the market Apple invisioned, but it's a hugely successful one regardless. I think judging the iPad based on changes they make for power users is near pointless in terms of its success.
  • x3ro 7y ago
    He says nothing about success, but about personal disappointment with the product. Why would you judge that against other people's experiences?
    • broodbucket 7y ago
      I wasn't really responding directly to the blog, more the title and the discussion I expected it to bring. Doing that was probably not the best idea in hindsight, I just see people judging products like the iPad as if their success relies specifically on the demographic they exist in
  • jonplackett 7y ago
    What I didn’t appreciate before having kids was the sky high valuation you put on a little peace and quiet, especially while travelling. Kid not screaming for X hours on a flight is a reason to buy and iPad for that trip alone. Plus you can easily justify it to yourself as ‘educational’.
  • ekianjo 7y ago
    > iPads have complete market dominance in the world of the kiddies. Hence it can almost be fitting to categorize them as toys.
    • scarface74 7y ago
      Because people are paying money for 12.9 iPad Pros with a keyboard, pencil and cellular as toys.
• twsted 7y ago
  I agree completely with Gruber's analysis: the multi-tasking, drag&drop, split-screen interface is very complex and confusing even for me, who have been using the iPad for ten years.
  • Brave-Steak 7y ago
    > the multi-tasking, drag&drop, split-screen interface is very complex and confusing even for me, who have been using the iPad for ten years. I use my iPad Pro's multitasking stuff daily and it still confuses and infuriates me. Who came up with this stuff?
• lowkeyokay 7y ago
  >By 1994 almost all graphic designers and illustrators were using computers for work. The iPad is a great device but, it isn't essential to anything or anyone. If tomorrow there where no iPads anymore, we would all just get on with our lives.
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    That's because it's a consumption device, despite the heroic efforts of some people to prove otherwise. If I want to reply to an email I'll walk upstairs to my real computer rather than attempt to do it on our iPad. As Joey Hess said[1] "If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." [1] https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/
    • stock_toaster 7y ago
      ipads have a non-insignificant footprint as point of sales systems these days too, so I wouldn't say ipads are _only_ a consumption device. They are also a pretty solid task specific unit for certain specific industries.
      • rusk 7y ago
        They make good head units too. I guess what OP was trying to say is that their application as creative tools (production vs consumption) is far more limited than the full fledged PC systems that we are used to.
        • rorykoehler 7y ago
          In my experience that has more to do with the artificial limitations devs put into ipad software. Take MPC drum machines for example. iMPC Pro 2 could replace all hardware MPCs if they wanted to but they would cannibalize their hardware if they did that so they made the ipad version a toy instead.
          • 7y ago
• Maakuth 7y ago
  > How would anyone ever figure out how to split-screen multitask on the iPad if they didn’t already know how to do it? I actually recently got my first personal iOS (okay, iPadOS) device and this is how I feel about many of the UI features. Touching some side of the screen triggers this or that surprising feature and I'm struggling to undo what I did to get back to the business. Maybe what's needed is good old RTFM, but having heard how easy Apple device are to supposed to be to use, it's kind of unexpected that so much of this stuff is not that discoverable.
  • rusk 7y ago
    > Touching some side of the screen triggers this or that surprising feature Ah this brings back fond memories of Windows 8 :-)
    • GordonS 7y ago
      They even did this silly "corner thing" in the server edition, Windows Server 2012 - I remember the first time I RDP'd onto one, and had no clue how to open the start menu (the Windows key didn't work over RDP)! I had to google it, obviously whilst cursing profusely the whole time. Microsoft have a lot of UI/UX people - it boggles the mind that someone thought this was a good idea!
      • asenna 7y ago
        I legit had to google how to Shut down / Restart a Windows 8 machine back then! It's insane to think that tech people could not figure out the UI, imagine what the regular people had to go through.
        • ken 7y ago
          I had to open system Help to try to figure out how to log out of Windows NT 4 the first time I used it. We didn’t even have Google. Helpfully, choosing Help crashed the system, which accomplished my goal.
        • 7y ago
• aj7 7y ago
  Multitasking? Huh? You’re missing the iPad business model. You’re not allowed to do anything (except maybe wash the dishes or get dressed) when the iPad is showing an ad that gets you free something. True multitasking would break the business model of thousands of sites.
  • jonplackett 7y ago
    How can this be when you can multitask on a computer anyway
    • aj7 7y ago
      What does “on a computer” have to do with using an iPad. My computer is in another room.
• davedx 7y ago
  The iPad could have been a new Dynabook. Alan Kay was actually fairly impressed with it when it came out. Unfortunately I agree with Gruber, it has really failed to live up to expectations. Missing a hardware keyboard is quite a big deal I think.
  • simonh 7y ago
    Oh grief no, an integrated hardware keyboard would kill everything that is great about the iPad. We have compact mobile devices with keyboards already, they're called laptops.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • chucky 7y ago
    > Alan Kay was actually fairly impressed with it when it came out. I think you are misremembering. Every interview I can find points to Alan Kay being disappointed in the iPad. See this, for example: https://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-pioneer-alan-kay/ https://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-compu...
• jwr 7y ago
  This is a very good take on the subject. I love the iPad, I use it all the time. It's an unbelievably good piece of hardware with a number of really good software applications. It is a surprisingly good thinking and note-taking tool, it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents), it is a great music workstation if you connect a MIDI keyboard and/or an external USB audio interface. But it is so sadly limited by the user interface and artificial restrictions that Apple places on the OS. The worst thing is that the forced over-simplification of the UI features did not make it easier to use for beginners. I can see many people (including myself) struggling. So we have been forced into a "compromise" with all the downside, but none of the upside. Given how great the hardware is (really, I think this is under-appreciated), I really hope Apple can get out of that thinking rut. I also think that the slow iPad sales are directly connected to the mediocre OS software.
  • tomgp 7y ago
    Spot on. I've been using an iPad Pro for 3 years now I use it every day and I love it but I still can't reliably get two apps to sit side-by side on the screen.
    • dceddia 7y ago
      I just got an iPad Pro and I agree this gesture is awkward. Plus, some apps seem to not support it at all, so it’ll silently fail when one of those apps is on either side.
    • ghaff 7y ago
      Maybe if I used the feature more. But the only time I use it is with a somewhat older large iPad that I sometimes use for drawing but which mostly sits in my kitchen to display recipes. I can never remember the right incantations when I try to do the split screen thing. And don't even try on the smaller iPad I use day to day.
  • acqq 7y ago
    > The worst thing is that the forced over-simplification of the UI features did not make it easier to use for beginners. I believe Gruber argues completely the opposite: that the recent changes to add features like split screen make it more confusing (e.g. the example of his mother getting stuck in the split screen and calling him). He continues in the very article we comment here (emphasis mine): "if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. Which is to say, now that iPadOS has its own name, I wish I could install the iPhone’s one-app-on-screen-at-a-time, no-drag-and-drop iOS on my iPad Pro. I’d do it in a heartbeat and be much happier for it." And I think that should be a configurable accessibility option: to have UI completely discoverable and non-stuckable, even if some "so-called-Pro" features need more steps (or can't be implemented). Or even better and safer: that should be the default, with "advanced" shortcuts as an opt-in option. The interface should by default to never bring users to the point where they can remain "stuck" in some mode from which they can't get out. Steve Jobs understood that that 100% "discoverability" and "non stuckiness" must be the default UI, that's why Gruber would like to switch back to that older ideal. And Steve Jobs was old enough to learn that much earlier: that the "modes" are bad and that good UI doesn't require one to do some magic to switch between them, as it can be summarized in the joke: "How to Quit Vim and Exit the VI Editor — the most popular Stack Overflow question -- and I'm using vi last two years because I can't figure out how to exit it." Even these "visual" UI changes that made the UI more "Ive-conform" (removing buttons and having only text) made the UI more confusing for anybody not trained and retrained. The back "button" in the apps was drawn as a button when Jobs controlled the UI. Then it got to be switched to just the < sign, which those who don't frequently use the UI never understand to be anything more than a meaningless symbol on the screen.
• gnicholas 7y ago
  > The iPads Pro outperform MacBooks computationally. Off-topic, but it's an interesting choice to pluralize "iPads Pro", especially in a sentence where it could easily be singular ("The iPad Pro outperforms MacBooks computationally"). After all, there aren't different tech specs on the different iPads Pro (of the same generation). They just differ in screen size, IIRC.
  • toasterlovin 7y ago
    Being fussy about pluralization and other assorted grammatical issues is something Gruber is known for to his fans. He famously (if you're deep in the Apple blog/podcast world) made a point of referring to the new Pro AirPods as AirPods Pro, which follows Apple marketing, but sounds completely ridiculous when spoken aloud.
  • CiaranMcNulty 7y ago
    Wouldn't it be strange to compare 'iPad' to 'MacBooks'?
    • gnicholas 7y ago
      That’s not what I suggested. There is one processor and RAM setup across all (current model) iPads Pro. There are multiple processors and RAM configurations on the various MacBooks Pro (ugh, that sounds terrible to me — I much prefer MacBook Pros). So if the iPad Pro processor (or whatever metric he was referring to) is faster than all the MacBook Pro processors, then it would be perfectly normal to say the one singular is faster than the other plural. It would be like saying the iPhone 11 Pro has a better camera than all the iMacs (which vary by model, but none are as good as the iPhone).
• bsaul 7y ago
  ipad + youtube ( or twitch) has replaced TV for many people, and ipad is definitely a game changer in some niche professional markets where autonomy and keyboardless makes it a true alternative to paper (any people taking notes while standing). i think the most lacking features are related to pencil interactions ( which still can't be used to enter text in iOS text fields easily), but i feel it's really slowly getting there
  • jannes 7y ago
    Hilariously the pencil can't even be used to switch apps. You need to swipe from the bottom with a finger for that.
• threatofrain 7y ago
  > The iPad was a new class of device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. To succeed, it needed not only to be better at some things than either a phone or laptop, it needed to be much better. It was and is. For me the problem of the iPad is that it's merely inconsistently better at a slew of entertainment/consumption based activities but for everything else it's worse than any decent laptop. As even consumption-based workflows may involve intermediate bursts of typing, and just to extend the iPad's range into more uses I am tempted to have a keyboard -- but then it almost nears the inconvenience of carrying a laptop. IMO to be revolutionary the iPad should convince you not to buy a laptop, or it should be as light as the kindle so that you would consider reading it Star Trek style for 20-30 minutes per day, as even the iPad mini is a bit weighty. Right now with the focus on iPad Pro and Air I think Apple is going toward the former.
  • crooked-v 7y ago
    > IMO to be revolutionary the iPad should convince you not to buy a laptop The key thing sitting in the way of that for me, at least for the most part, is the lack of true background multitasking. I understand the need to avoid the battery problems of the Android ecosystem, but there needs to be some way to take an app and say 'yes, I really want to let this sit active indefinitely until I intentionally quit it'. For a simple example, consider an IRC client: it's useless if it drops the connection every time you turn off the screen or switch to another app for too long.
    • cesarb 7y ago
      > For a simple example, consider an IRC client: it's useless if it drops the connection every time you turn off the screen or switch to another app for too long. I believe the "correct" way to do it would be to have a server in the middle, which keeps the connection alive, buffers the necessary data, and sends a notification to the device when appropriate. That is, unlike a desktop or a laptop, a tablet or smartphone is not designed to be a fully independent device.
      • crooked-v 7y ago
• gnicholas 7y ago
  Gruber is right that the iPad hasn't revolutionized an industry like the Mac or iPhone. But the iPad was launched smack in the middle of the iPhone and the Mac, not in the middle of a green field. The iPhone had competition below it, from feature phones and Blackberrys. But there was nothing above it. Similarly, the Mac was launched into a very nascent market, where there were competitors (PCs), but it wasn't facing competition from above and below in the same way the iPad was. Perhaps the iPad would have done better and grown faster if it had been made by a company that wasn't worried about cannibalizing iPhone or Mac sales. But surely part of the reason the iPad has been as successful as it has is that it runs the same apps as iPhones and has attracted devs who might not have otherwise been interested.
  • ghaff 7y ago
    The iPad arguably succeeded because it wasn’t a convertible. However, now, especially given big phones, it feels as if some sort of tablet/laptop convergence will eventually be the future.
    • gherkinnn 7y ago
      I’d argue that the iPad is an excellent chance to downgrade to a less capable phone. Get an iPhone ~8 — no need for an 11 in combination with an iPad.
      • ghaff 7y ago
        Mostly disagree. The camera progression on newer iPhones is a big differentiator [for many]. Also I don’t more or less always have an iPad in a pocket like I do a phone.
        • gherkinnn 7y ago
          Camera is true. Speaking for myself, I’m a hopeless photographer and the iPhone X’ camera won’t save me.
          • 7y ago
• nallo 7y ago
  I actually use iPad for coding nowadays. It is of course slower than using a keyboard but also a quite relaxing and fun way of programming.
  • rhlsthrm 7y ago
    What type of code do you write on iPad? Do you ssh into something to make it run?
    • nallo 7y ago
      PHP, html, JavaScript. Using FTP to push code directly from the app.
    • shmoogy 7y ago
      I ssh, and I run a vscode server, and jupyter notebooks from my iPad. Let's me query sql, full programming, normal IDE for NetSuite stuff I need to work on. It's great
  • steeleduncan 7y ago
    After a few years of frustration with trying to make my iPad useful for coding, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 and keyboard case for about 200GBP. Install Termux from the Google Play store (no warranty voiding rooting required). `apt install clang` and off you go. The iPad I had before this was undoubtedly prettier and had a better UI, but the cheapest iPad is twice this price and after years of buying apps, faffing with file sharing, and even porting one or two interpreters across to iOS I never managed what takes 10 minutes on Android.
  • jmkni 7y ago
    What apps do you use for coding?
    • nallo 7y ago
      Textastic
• w-m 7y ago
  > The iPad has been a spectacular success, and to tens of millions it is a beloved part of their daily lives, but it has, to date, fallen short of revolutionary. Why does everything have to be revolutionary? Pretty much everybody I know who has an iPad love using their device. It's a wonderful tool for media and web consumption, it just works for that use case very, very well. It can be used effortlessly, for multiple hours a day. Does it really have to do more? Personally I just don't use split-screen apps on the iPad, but I'm not the least inconvenienced by the feature being around, behind some strange gestures I don't really bothered to learn.
  • Brave-Steak 7y ago
    > Personally I just don't use split-screen apps on the iPad I think that's the problem. As somebody who uses splitscreen all the time, it's utterly painful. It's a great feature, but whoever designed it from a usability-standpoint was, quite frankly, retarded. The problem is that it could be so much better, even revolutionary, but it stumbles on the implementation of features like this.
  • leadingthenet 7y ago
    > Does it really have to do more? It should do more to justify the price tag of the Pro model. It should also do more simply because Apple's advertising for the product attempts very hard to push it into a productivity device angle, not a consumption one. Hence the "what is a computer?" debacle.
• kerrsclyde 7y ago
  Plenty of iPad use within industry. Using it as more than just a consumption device. Yesterday the guy fixing the mobile traffic lights was using an iPad to configure them / My gym gets me to change my membership plan using an iPad within a floor standing cabinet.
  • k_bx 7y ago
    Ukraine's biggest bank Privat Bank figured that having the system on iPad is pretty superior to computers, they got LTE, batteries and even camera to make client's photo. So now their computers are mostly not used.
• thomasfl 7y ago
  The iPad has slowly revolutionized personal computing. After the music production apps became available, including Apples own Garageband, the iPad has become a very common sketching tool for musicians. When the Apple pen and the Procreate became available, the iPad pro also became one of the most used tools for painting and sketching. An iPad pro with Apples keyboard, is more useable for most common day users than most windows based laptops.
  • fiblye 7y ago
    >When the Apple pen and the Procreate became available, the iPad pro also became one of the most used tools for painting and sketching. Yep. I had zero interest in tablets whatsoever, but the day I saw the Apple Pencil had launched, I went to a store to try it out. Ended up buying it and an iPad after less than 5 minutes of thinking. Drawing pads for PCs were a pretty bad market before Apple hopped into the game. Your only real options were buying a "cheap" tablet at a couple hundred bucks (the lower end ones are inaccurate and barely a step above struggling with a mouse) with no screen and trying to adapt to drawing without looking directly at your hands, or you could spend a huge amount of cash on a drawing pad with a screen built in. The latter was really only available for people with loads of cash to spare and certainty that they'll be getting their money's worth. An iPad with a Pencil barely costs more than a garbage bin drawing tablet, but you get a highly responsive screen and direct input. All of that plus Procreate is about the price of a 2 year Photoshop scheme. The last thing to open up the digital art world this much to normal folk was Paint.exe.
  • catalogia 7y ago
    > An iPad pro with Apples keyboard, is more useable for most common day users than most windows based laptops. Do you think a young novice user with such an iPad, rather than a windows or mac laptop, would be as likely to develop a more advanced computer skillset? iOS seems easier for common users because it's more regimented, but I wonder if that same trait might leave less room for creative exploration of the machine itself. I can't say I have a lot of experience using iPads, so I'm curious what others think.
    • irrational 7y ago
• rusk 7y ago
  Any chance we could get a Ctrl-F type function? I'm enjoying the mental training of learning to scan text for keywords myself, but from time to time this is a feature that I miss ...
  • itsaride 7y ago
    You mean the “find on this page” function? Type a word in the search bar on a page then scroll to the bottom of the overlay that pops up.
    • rusk 7y ago
      FANTASTIC thank you! Works in Safari anyway.
    • dredmorbius 7y ago
      The advantage of a keyboard-initiated search is that it works in all apps (or damned well should). Mind: on Android, with a keyboard (bluetooth), poor app support is frustratingly apparent. Even where basic keyboard input is recognised, obvious things don't work as expected. In Pocket, the backspace/delete keys won't delete tags. In PocketBook (an eBook reader), hitting space when entering a search term (which cannot be initiated with Ctrl-F) ... scrolls forward in the document. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...
      • rusk 7y ago
        yes android physical keyboard support is completely useless. I bought one of those foldy keyboard android tablets thinking I could use it as an about the house small laptop, but the issues you describe, and yet others, made it an utterly futile exercise.
  • theshrike79 7y ago
    Or just press Command-F on the keyboard =)
    • rusk 7y ago
• killjoywashere 7y ago
  The issue is the entrance into split-view, which should expose the springboard, not the dock. The intuitive way to launch a second app would be to slide in from the right or left with two (three?) fingers, which would expose a compressed view of the springboard in split view. Then you could access all the apps intuitively (by swiping to the next page of apps) and launch the second app in the intuitive click-an-app method. This could even be tiled in a golden-rectangle geometry to expose a third app. All you're trying to do is repurpose the slide-right slide-left function to expose springboard in a new way, which can be done with a multi-finger gesture.
  • zaphoyd 7y ago
    Yes yes yes. I’ve often wondered why they didn’t do this. Having to go through silly hoops like full exit back to the spring board to launch an app so that it is available in the dock to pick for split view... why not just use the springboard in the first place.
    • Marsymars 7y ago
      My feeling is that they’ve deliberately avoided gestures that are similar to Windows 8 tablet UI.
• Slartie 7y ago
  The iPad has failed as a general purpose computing device, sure. But it has succeeded (along with other tablet devices of similar form factor) as a basis for a large and growing number of single-purpose use cases in various industries: - iPad POS are popular in smaller coffee shops and similar outlets - iPad-based document viewing solutions are used by pilots to replace large bags with manuals for planes that they used to lug around - iPads are used for meeting room management solutions, information displays for customers and similar purposes where one single application is to be run basically 24/7 on a device with low power and space requirements, but where certain aesthetic requirements to the app as well as the hardware have to be satisfied Granted, iPads don't hold this space exclusively. But so don't iPhones or Macs hold their respective application spaces exclusively, even though they significantly catalyzed their genesis.
  • flixic 7y ago
    The issue with each of these examples is that hardware advancements barely matter. $200 Android tablet with a simple enough design works just as well. Apple doesn't want to participate in such markets. That's why they try to push creativity narrative, "what's a computer" and so on. iPad can only succeed as a premium enough product, and that requires software differentiation.
    • Slartie 7y ago
      I get that, but after all it's not really Apple's choice what their buyers do with their devices. If they overwhelmingly decide the iPad is a nice base for this kind of application, Apple can either embrace that decision and cater to these customers (of which a good part are obviously ready to at least pay more than those $200 for the cheap Android tablet option, probably because of better update support as suggested by that other comment alongside this one) or try to make the device appealing to other target markets that they'd like to be in. But when those other markets don't really take the bait, at some point it might be a good idea to accept that there is a market, but in a somewhat different place than originally anticipated.
    • Nextgrid 7y ago
      iPad succeeds in these examples because it's a consistent environment with updates. The problem with the cheap Android tablet is that unless the entire world standardises on a single model of tablet for these purposes you'd have all kinds of quirks around hardware, etc. Updates are also another issue even on premium-priced Android devices, so the cheap one is a lost cause.
• mikehall314 7y ago
  I don't think I can substantively disagree with anything said here. Though I can think of a few places where iPad has revolutionised things; most notably point-of-sale. Especially for small businesses, I commonly see iPad and other tablet form factors used for retail point of sale.
• pintxo 7y ago
  As no one has brought it up yet. Playing civilization on the 12 inch iPad Pro is awesome. Unfortunately it's a drain on the battery.
• thefrog 7y ago
  One of the biggest assholes in tech is right about something for once.
• ArmandGrillet 7y ago
  I always wonder if ipadOS should have a permanent dock or not, it would reduce the screen space but makes split-view much more discoverable.
• myt6fore 7y ago
  John Gruber craves the power of keyboard macros on his iPad. He apparently thinks that's not possible as iPad's main power is one-state mode (and it truly is a remarkable tool that way). There's always a learning curve with artificial interfaces. Standard way to bridge this is use of metaphors. The problem with iOs on iPad is that iPhone was it's metaphor...
• Heliosmaster 7y ago
  From the comments here, I think many people are missing a very important factor: while we (as technologists) focus on what WE think of the iPad, or what we can do with it to be productive, this is only part of the picture of the general population. In my opinion the iPad has had a tremendous impact within the general population and (combined with smartphones) got rid of the PC altogether for the average family. And tablets, especially for the elderly, are a true game-changer. My mother, not a technologist at all (she doesn't even have a cellphone) cannot live without her iPad. Granted that she could do everything with a smartphone, but the bigger screen of an iPad is particularly good for people who have a waning eyesight and, in general, might require a bit of a bigger UI (bigger buttons, etc.).
  • k__ 7y ago
    I don't know anyone with an iPad and only professionals who sometimes use an Android tablet for special cases (drawing, audio stuff) Most non-tech people I know simply have a Smartphone and that's it. Tablets in general still seem like a niche product to me.
  • Darkstryder 7y ago
    I agree with this. My grandmother (who passed away in 2018 at the age of 91) tried to get into computers regularly for a decade, starting in the early 2000. We tried a lot of things, nothing stuck. Every device we would give her would quickly gather dust, unused after a few days. Then in 2013 she got an iPad 2 and she instantly started using it several hours a day for the next five years. In particular, I set it up so I could push new family photographs to her iPad remotely through iCloud. That was absolutely life-changing for her: now she was able to see super recent photos of all her children and grandchildren without having to beg for a printed version. That also worked for videos: for the first time since the VHS days she could replay family videos whenever she wanted. She also liked multiple card games and the iPad was a wonderful device to play them electronically. The biggest self-service I ever gave myself was to only suggest games that had a paying version without ads, and pay a few euros to buy them. The biggest problems with ads for her was that she could sometimes be a bit sloppy with the touchscreen : when an ad was present it would redirect her to a random website and she would get lost. The quality of the iPad touchscreen and that we stuck to ad-free apps allowed her to almost never get lost like this anymore. While the iPad may not have been a revolution for the general population, it definitely changed the world for my grandmother. For that I will be grateful for this device to exist. Miss you, grandma.
• jxdxbx 7y ago
  Slide Over is one of the best features out there. And it’s as simple as can be. You get what amounts to a mini iPhone available on command. And split screen is not only very useful, I think it’s a fundamentally better multitasking model that the traditional desktop OS for screens under 23” or so. I agree that adding apps to multitasking seems to baffle people. But this seems like it can
  • zaphoyd 7y ago
    Speaking of mini iphone... I have so many iPhone only apps that I wish I could run in the “mini iPhone split” next to whatever else I am doing rather than forcing them to take over the whole screen with an iPhone sized picture in the middle.
    • scarface74 7y ago
      That was intentionally. Apple wanted iPhone apps to suck on the iPad to force developers to make an iPad app. If developers can get away with just shipping an iPhone app and still have a decent experience they will.
• icanhackit 7y ago
  The iPad as a portable computer suffers from the same problem cameras do - the best camera is the one you have with you, and in that same way the best computer is often the phone in your pocket.
• mensetmanusman 7y ago
  I have been using some version of an iPad since the day it came out. Version 1 is still alive and kicking and being used by our 3 year old, so far, it has been the most robust :) Pros: biometrics / security / immediately usable to check email Cons: software has started going all SAAS and Apple allowed developers to upgrade and break previous versions to force users on to SAAS versions
• Jemm 7y ago
  My main gripe is that Apple chose to very aggressively kill or sleep apps running in the background. I can understand this from a battery perspective but why not give us an option to let certain apps run in the background, especially when the iPad is plugged in to power. As an example, if I start a download in Safari, I can’t use a different app until Safari finishes the download. I could use split-screen but who wants to watch a video I split screen.
  • fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    >if I start a download in Safari, I can’t use a different app until Safari finishes the download. If true, that's surprising. I thought Safari initiates a background download.
    • brandonhorst 7y ago
      It's no longer true since iOS 13. Safari has a full-featured download manager now.
  • eknkc 7y ago
    I loved Android's notification model for these stuff. When I'm sharing a large video to WhatsApp on iOS, it shows a progress bar that needs to be on the screen. Android just fires a progress bar notification that stays in the notification center. It is fantastic.
  • dhruvmittal 7y ago
    Related to backgrounding apps, I don't understand why if I split screen an app during a video chat, my video turns off. It's a little awkward if I'm trying to read an email during a Zoom call.
  • wenc 7y ago
    iPadOS 13 supports downloading in the background.
• DrScientist 7y ago
  The software is important, but the real reason for the iPad's existence is the physical aspects. Form is function. Bigger than phone, touched orientated versus keyboard/mouse mac. That's also whythe physically 'panic' home button was very good. Personally the most interesting feature of the iPad these days is the pen - a way of physically interacting with the computer that's different. At the end of the day, the 'user interface' isn't just software it's physical. Whether it be touch, voice, pen, or keyboard. One of the problems with the more 'advanced' UI features/gestures is that they don't anchor in the physical - you have no idea it existed or why the software responded in that way.
• cactus2093 7y ago
  Good points in the article. I also find the model names weirdly confusing, how did the iPad become the smaller, less powerful variant when the Air still exists? They did this with MacBooks too, though I think the tiny one may be discontinued now. And why is the iPad peripheral system such a mess? The released the pencil 2 which is a significant usability improvement and had every indication of replacing the pencil 1, but that was years ago and they keep releasing new pencil 1 only devices, while just calling both of them “Apple Pencil” in many places. If you want a good pencil now, there’s no way to buy a moderately specced machine with it, you have to pay for the pro with more compute power than a high end laptop. And ipads now have full usb host support, but instead of marketing that as a perk, they kind of pretend it doesn’t exist by calling it the “camera kit” like it only has one specific use.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    The first generation pencil wasn’t bad and it works with all iPads now.
    • robohoe 7y ago
      Yeah I use one extensively. It’s great, especially for browsing website with tiny buttons (like HN) and drawing in notes. I don’t think going to 2 is a huge concern.
  • CarlRJ 7y ago
    IIRC, the Pencil 2 requires different (and likely more expensive) support in the screen, as well as docking to the side of the iPad and charging magnetically - both of which raise the costs for the iPad. And then the lower cost models wouldn’t be so lower-cost any more. It does feel like they could have thought ahead a little better on that, though. FWIW, the Pencil 1 isn’t a -bad- stylus - it was hugely praised when it was released, the Pencil 2 is just a bit better. As to the “Air” name... they got to where they had a solid low-priced offering and a “Pro” line with huge prices. And a big hole in the middle. But “iPad Medium” wasn’t appealing, so they resurrected the “Air” name. (FWIW, writing this on an iPad Air 3, and I love it - the only real loss for me, from the Pro, was the “ProMotion” variable rate 120Hz display, and I could live without that, for $$$ less.)
• trey-jones 7y ago
  Ten years ago this was a good reminder that what I want is not necessarily what the majority want. Make that "definitely not what the majority want". I thought the iPad was a stupid idea that I had no use for. I still feel mostly that way (though I think it could be handy for easy page turns in music). Obviously I was wrong about it being a stupid idea, and I'm happy to own that. I've built several apps specific to iPad over the years, and I'm going to start another one today. I _do_ also think that iOS has fallen behind Android in several important ways in the last 2 or 3 years. Not in every way, but things like the Keyboard on iOS drive me crazy. Can't speak for iPad OS. Today will be my first experience with that.
  • jsight 7y ago
    Aren't keyboards (finally) replacable on iOS, though?
    • Marsymars 7y ago
      It drops back to the system keyboard sometimes - in my case, that difference was too jarring to make a non-stock keyboard practical to use at all.
• classified 7y ago
  > mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. Jobs' criticisms may have been a bit abrasive at times, but these kinds of problems seem to indicate that nobody is currently filling that important role at Apple.
• apexalpha 7y ago
  This is excellent. My grandma (89) uses an iPad and iPhone. She can use both these devices exactly because of the simplicity mentioned in the article. 1. Open app by tapping it. 2. Close it by tapping the physical button. (rip) That's it. And that's why my grandma can use it. The first and only device she comfortably uses to this day. People in our (tech) communities tend to overestimate a users ability with technology.
  • bathtub365 7y ago
    The article is partially about how bad the UX is on iPad.
  • tsmarsh 7y ago
    I work with people with multiple phds. They’re smart. Technology focused professionals and they still have problems. Computer skill must be a parretto distribution. The difference between the top 1% and top 0.5%is enormous.
  • irrational 7y ago
    Same here. My grandmother is 97. She grew up as a shepherdess during the great depression, was a nurse during WWII, and then raised 6 children. She has no technical training, but she can use an iPad with no trouble while she always struggled using a desktop computer or laptop. iPads really are great for her use case.
    • mort96 7y ago
      My experience is similar, but my grandmother has gotten worse at using her iPad as iOS has gotten more and more confusing. I usually see her with Safari in split-screen as Gruber mentioned, and know that: A) there's not really any way to teach her to get out of it because the gestures literally require more precise movements than her fingers are capable of, and B) there's no way to teach her to avoid open Safari in split-screen mode, because I constantly do it myself accidentally too on my iPad. The iPad used to be a really great device for her use case, but the more they add gestures which it's easy to accidentally trigger but hard (as in physically hard, requiring precise finger movements) to reverse, the worse it gets.
• mark_l_watson 7y ago
  The solution is simple: ability to set in System Preferences whether to enable split screen and floating second window. Personally, I really like the split window support but to be honest I had to practice the gestures for opening and closing second windows. Off topic, but my big complaint about my iPad Pro is that the physical buttons for volume control, etc. are placed differently than my iPhone 11 Pro. This always makes me pause when switching devices because I like to think of my iPhone and iPad to sort-of be the same device as far as apps and most use cases. Apple, place the hardware controls in the same locations. Also, the menu bar on Safari is different on the two devices. I wish Apple would fix that also.
  • moomin 7y ago
    The volume thing annoys the heck out of me as well. I'm constantly having to stop and reason out which button does what. Never have to do that on my iPhone.
• ibn_khaldun 7y ago
  The main gripe of this article seems to be focused on a single issue. But it is a valid point. But it is sort of strange to see this article boil down to the author's displeasure with just this one issue. To be honest I never was aware that you could only pull apps from your dock into split screen because I really only use those apps for that function. There is a comment buried toward the bottom that suggests a very nice solution to the problem. There is also another comment buried toward the bottom questioning why everything has to be "revolutionary", which I agree with. I find that the iPad is a cozy fit for most people's personal and professional workflows and the fact that it's Apple keeps everything cohesive. What revolution is it supposed to spark? It is a companion, a bridge, so to speak, between two pieces of equipment that the author has already acknowledges as "revolutionary" on their own.
  • masklinn 7y ago
    It seems more a pointed and emblematic example of the overarching point. There is no cause to spend thousands of words covering dozens of issues when a single one suffices to clarify the thesis.
  • oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
    I agree that the iPad doesn’t have to be revolutionary. I agree with the author that hardware-wise, it just about is, but software-wise it falls short. The article may be mainly about one issue, but it's an important one. Apple has made a horrible mess of multitasking on the iPad, which not only causes frustration with that product, but also should make us wary about the future. I personally never (literally never) want multi-windowing on my iPad: it's only an iPad-mini, so multi-windowing isn’t very practical anyway. All I need is a single toggle to turn it off, and any gripes essentially disappear. But I have to have it, even though I actively don’t want it. So I have to, periodically, work out how to exit multi-windowed mode, because it’s very easy to accidentally enter it. And exiting it is NOT easy - pretty sure one time I just gave up, put the iPad down, and did something else instead, I was that frustrated.
  • Terretta 7y ago
    And, he’s wrong: > I like my iPad very much, and use it almost every day. But if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. Which is to say, now that iPadOS has its own name, I wish I could install the iPhone’s one-app-on-screen-at-a-time, no-drag-and-drop iOS on my iPad Pro. I’d do it in a heartbeat and be much happier for it. Apple Multitasking Support page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207582 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207582 Last section: To turn Multitasking features on or off, go to Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Multitasking, then you can do the following: - Allow Multiple Apps: Turn off if you don't want to use Slide Over or Split View.
• pdimitar 7y ago
  As a programmer, I absolutely gave up on the multitasking on my iPad Pro. I don't use it in such a way and usually don't care. And the very few cases I wanted to use it like that I couldn't succeed in doing it even after my wife showed me 3 times (she uses her own iPad Pro in split screen very often and gotten used to the gestures; and even she makes mistakes occasionally). Just an anecdote. I am a very technical user and I still got confused by the multitasking / slide-over thing. So I just ignore it.
  • mlfia 7y ago
    Yes - I have the same experience. I use the iPad Pro and Juno connect as my main development tools, together with a VNC connection to an AWS instance for tasks that need a desktop. I tried to use split screen initially but found little value in it and now ignore.
  • jrockway 7y ago
    I also can't figure it out. I still have some window that appears on the side and I can't figure out how to completely get rid of it (from my experiments with multitasking while I was reading the documentation, or at least some website describing it). I don't know if that's intended but I have no idea how to use it, so don't. I had an easier time learning Xmonad back in the day, which might say something about Apple's UI design these days.
• d--b 7y ago
  > “It’s just a big iPhone” was the most common initial criticism > The iPad has been a spectacular success, and to tens of millions it is a beloved part of their daily lives, but it has, to date, fallen short of revolutionary. Yes, well it has fallen short of revolutionary, probably because it's just a big iphone, (or a laptop without keyboard). There was no new paradigm here.
• theriddlr 7y ago
  It's good value for money due to its lifespan. My family's iPad 2 is 8 years old and still going strong. Daily game-playing and web surfing sites still compatible with the old version of Safari. Whereas my Samsung Note tablet died after 2 years and wouldn't charge.
• tenant 7y ago
  Nobody I know bothers with a tablet anymore. Everything they formerly did on the tablet they now do on their phone. And most of the iPhone users I know have now switched to Android, mostly Samsungs. Myself being a bit of a cheapskate have a motorola moto and I think it's great. Tim Cook is a very lucky man. He earns an eye watering salary, for what?
  • bluedays 7y ago
    Yeah, it's the opposite for me. I do nearly all of my computing on my iPad, and almost none on my phone. I also switched from Android (I was an early adopter, and originally bought the first G1 when it came out) to iPhone because the longer I used Android the more it felt hacked together.
• egdod 7y ago
  My biggest annoyance with my iPad is accidentally opening links in a new Safari window. Sometimes that happens when I’m just scrolling and didn’t mean to open the link at all. So now you have multiple Safari windows that are completely undiscoverable. To switch between windows, you have to swipe up slowly and pick the one you want. I have literally never wanted multiple windows of the same app on my iPad. But it keeps happening. I’m a computer guy. I shudder to think what this is like for my grandmother.
• clircle 7y ago
  As a statistician, and collector of statistics textbooks, the iPad had made my life (marriage) much better! I can download all the books I want, and have a (typically) better reading experience on the iPad, and I don't need to expand the number of book shelves in my apartment. Big win for me!
• tuananh 7y ago
  ipad pro is such a nice device but the iPadOS is still so limited. if ipadOS is 50% capable as macOS, the ipad pro would be a dream machine for web developer.
• theshrike79 7y ago
  I managed to snag an iPad Pro (pre USB-C model) last summer and bought the official Apple keyboard for it. I've been using my MBP less and less ever since. I can cover a good deal of my normal "laptop" activities with the iPad. - I can put the latest CW DC Superhero show I'm hate-watching on from Plex in picture-in-picture and browse Reddit or Hacker News at the same time - I can use Newsblur to check my RSS feeds, Telegram/Discord/IRCCloud to chat - The battery lasts me all day, from morning to night - I can even use Blink.sh to log in via ssh/mosh to any server to tune some template or adjust script settings The only time I actually pick up my MBP is when I need to do some Serious Coding with a Big Display (or two). Even my commutes are more enjoyable with synced Plex media and Netflix downloads, beats looking at a 5" phone screen.
• dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
  Sad author is sad because interface not like the other interfaces he has historically enjoyed. Bites at valid quirks of what every new style interface inevitably suffers from when different from the norm. Also, people are mad that tightly coupled computing devices are not easily swappable with other software and hardware.
• dredmorbius 7y ago
  The tablet form-factor, battery-life, screen display, and wifi connectivity make it a potentially incredible tool -- yes, between a phone and a laptop, but also able to instantly convert between protrait and landscape modes, be tossed in a bag, propped up on a lap. With the addition of a folio-type keyboard and self-supporting tip-up mode, there's little the device cannot do from a set of basic laptop functionality. And yet it's still a fully-capable touch device. Where failure enters is in the accessories and peripherals (especially keyboards), and of course, the OS and apps. At which point I think I'm going to end up re-writing the rant I'd composed nearly three years ago, so I'll just link it: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq TL;DR: 1. Standardise form factors so keyboards Just Freaking Fit. 2. Offer a true and robust shell and Linux userland, with filesystem access. 3. Provide real apps with full keyboard support. 4. Uncripple the OS. I'm looking at PineTab and Purism's tablet offerings with interest. 2-in-1 laptop designs ... might work, though the additional hardware and fragility strike me as large liabilities.
  • AgloeDreams 7y ago
    On #2, I've been really impressed with using ChromeOS's 'Linux Shell' I actually went out and bought a Chromebook Pixel LS and have been able to easily replace my work MacBook with it, love the 3:2 display and bits of the cleverness. Lenovo has a new tablet hybrid that might meet your needs. The Android App keyboard support sucks but the Linux stuff works great and for just content browsing and web work, Chrome OS comes pretty close to iPadOS or a Mac, it's very much a two headed monster of sorts. The problem with competing with the iPad is just how hilariously advanced Apple is in the category of basic use. It's shocking really just how good the technical engineering side of their work is. The iPad Pro honest to goodness runs at 120 FPS with a less than 10ms pencil input response rate in a 6mm package with Core i7 Level CPU performance at ~$650. Microsoft can't currently match those numbers in a Windows based product, Google couldn't come close with the pixel Slate. Apple's $330 product outperforms the average laptop so doing something competitive in open source levels for under $200 is hard as heck to impossible just for things like 'open an app' and the bar is so high due to phones, people expect touch to compete with a $1000 phone (and rightfully so, they are great!).
• wlesieutre 7y ago
  > Oh, and apps that aren’t in the Dock can’t become the second app in split screen mode. What sense does that limitation make? I've heard people say this before, as if there's no way to use anything but your permanent dock apps in split screen. But if it's not in the Dock, you launch it, and now it's in the dock. That's why the recent items section on the right side exists. My personal gripe with iOS multitasking is that it's easy to make a second instance of an app by dragging and dropping (such as Safari tabs to split screen), but then it's not as easy to close the second copy when you're done with it. When split screen was a special implementation within Safari, dragging the last tab from one side to the other would automatically collapse that side and bring the remaining one back to full screen. Now it leaves an empty Safari window hanging around. If you want to close that, you have to make one side or the other full screen, open the app switcher, and swipe the empty one up off the top.
  • bradleyankrom 7y ago
    I’ve had an iPad for over a month now and still can’t figure out how to close the second app when I am in split screen.
    • wlesieutre 7y ago
      You can't close it one at a time when it's in a split view pair, it only lets you close the whole pair together. If you just want to kill one of them, first you have to grab the middle divider and push it all the way to one side or the other to make either app full screen. The other app becomes backgrounded. Once they're separate, you can close them from the app switcher by swiping them off the top of the same, same as an iPhone.
    • ihuman 7y ago
      Slide the border between apps to the left/right end of the screen
• readhn 7y ago
  Awkwardly turns 10? Poor title choice! Every household in USA has one ipad or wants to have one. (360million total sold in usa - so 1.1 ipad per person). 360,000,000 ipads x $400 (example average price) = $144B in sales !!! There is nothing Awkward about that. They crushed it! ongrats to Apple for making a great product for media consumers!
• xg15 7y ago
  (warning, rant follows) I wonder if the trend to confusing designs has something to do with the recent rise of "use case centered" UI design. My impression is that many graphical designs in the past were designed by coming up with certain fundamental abstractions or metaphors first and then integrating the different functions of the software into it: That way, we got windows and standard widgets which function the same way everywhere, no matter which particular application makes use of them. We also have abstractions like "files" or "desktop icons" that a user can interact with in a consistent way independent of application. This way of design has pitfalls: You can choose the wrong metaphors and paint yourself into a corner, you can overvalue consistency to the point the UI becomes cumbersome to use or you can find that a new feature doesn't fit into your abstractions and you have to shoehorn it in. However, what this design guarantees is that the user has some basic tools to orient themselves, without needing to consult a manual for everything or remember some random onboarding popup that appeared a week ago when the user had completely other things on their mind. I feel today, UI design has shifted away from common abstractions to the point it's almost seen as an anti-pattern. Instead, the design process is started with assembling an exhaustive list of "use cases" or "user stories": The app is supposed to enable the user to do the tasks on the list - and only those tasks. Then, every item on the list is passed, one-by-one to the UI team, who add a button, gesture or other affordance to perform exactly that task. Finally, users are watched via telemetry to see if they are using the app as intended and if any additional tasks must be added via the above procedure. This method of design does have advantages: The most common tasks are easy to access, even if they are, by themselves, complex procedures involving different components (such as "make a photo, color-correct it, upload it to Twitter and refer to it in a tweet"). On the other hand, everything that falls outside ymthe immediate attention of the developers becomes ridiculously hard to do or even impossible: Take the above photo, but zip it, then send it in an email? Sorry, you need an app for that. Take a photo, color-correct it and send it to mastodon? Sorry, not integrated. Etc, etc. To be honest, I have no idea if modern UI design really is done like this, but it very often feels that way. I really wonder if a return to some well-dosed consistency wouldn't improve a whole lot of things both for casual and power users.
• oflannabhra 7y ago
  Gruber has some good points, but I think in some ways he misses the forest for the trees. The iPad is essentially, at this point, a two-mode device. There is the simple paradigm, screen-as-app mode inherited from the iPhone. Then, for power users, there is the multitasking paradigm with Flyover, Split Screen, Drag & Drop. The multitasking paradigm is not meant to co-exist with the simple one, and it is not meant to be discoverable. I agree with Gruber that there is work to do here to make it better, but iPad can't drop the simple paradigm, because many people use it that way. So anything more that the iPad offers has to build on top of and integrate with that paradigm. That is really a huge challenge. It's not often that challenges like that come along. In desktop computing, lots of things are un-intuitive or at least not intuitively discoverable, such as right-clicking for context menus or keyboard shortcuts. We all don't consider them that way because we are so used to them, and we almost never meet someone who hasn't ever had to interact with them the first time. I'd also argue that the simple paradigm iPhone and iPad offer has made computing more approachable to great swaths of people (not even considering things like cost, etc). Yes, iPad multitasking is not perfect. But I think they are at least on the right track, and I am thankful they have protected that approachability.
• Four8Five 7y ago
  I gave up doing any meaningful, multi-tasking work on the iPad. Now it just sits as a $1000 Netflix / Email machine.
  • mensetmanusman 7y ago
    I would try to set up Remote Desktop. It is amazing how nice it is to have high powered computation available on a light weight, long battery life machine. Simply VPN / VNC in, and you are set to go. Also, iOS 13 supports any Bluetooth mouse, so that may help as well.
• fortran77 7y ago
  Imagine how powerful an iPad could be if you could run GNU/Linux well on it: https://ipadlinux.org/ https://ipadlinux.org/ Instead of iOS, Arch GNU/Linux! It's too bad that even old iPads haven't been figured out enough to bring first-class GNU/Linux support to these machines.
• totaldude87 7y ago
  One recent thing that i hate about latest iPadOS is the automatic readable mode for websites.. you cant just put readable mode on all sites :|
• GolDDranks 7y ago
  I bought my first and only tablet, an iPad, two years back. I havent't much used it since then. I bet it would be great for reading and watching videos, but the moment I want to type something, I just become needlessly irritated and switch back to my MacBook Pro. It's not just typing on a touch screen; that's awful, but then I bought a keyboard. But using the Dvorak layout, Scandinavian letters and Japanese input in my daily life makes iPad just not cut it. It's not a flexible device like a PC is. I still haven't been able to type the way I'd want to.
  • pcurve 7y ago
    Not to be funny, but I had almost 500 subscriptions to youtube channels. On desktop, Youtube made it deliberately hard to unsubscribe (it used to be easier), on ipad, the experience is much better. I also find netflix ux less crappy on ipad than on desktop.
    • lobster45 7y ago
      The aspect ratio of the iPad is not great for video which is mostly a widescreen format. I really don’t like losing so much screen real estate. Sometimes I prefer my iPhone XS Max to watch a video on than my iPad Air. I specifically bought a kindle Fire 10” tablet to watch videos. Everything else on the iPad is superior to the kindle
  • eru 7y ago
    I use Dvorak on my Kineses Advantage (and every other keyboard). I tried dvorak layout on the phone and tablet, but didn't like it. I think qwerty's design of making commonly-consecutive letters far apart might actually help here? (Or perhaps the autocorrect is just much better at correcting typical qwerty mistakes than dvorak mistakes?)
• gwbas1c 7y ago
  > The iPad at 10 is, to me, a grave disappointment. The biggest disappointment to me is that I can't buy a Macbook that converts into a tablet. I've never owned a tablet, and my wife never replaced her 1st generation iPad, because there's just too much overlap between tablet and phone; and between tablet and laptop. And, as far as multitasking goes: When I do serious work that requires that kind of multitasking, I need a keyboard and mouse. Furthermore, I'll probably be sitting in a chair, at a desk, with a giant monitor... Multitasking is just an absurd use case for a "tablet." Instead, it shows that "tablet" and "laptop" just need to converge to be the same ^%#$ device. Windows tablets might suck, but at least you don't have to own two devices!
  • dangus 7y ago
    On the contrary, Apple is the only one who has this market figured out. Ever see anyone at a coffee shop using a Surface Pro in tablet mode? I haven’t. That’s because the second you sit down to complete tasks for more than a minute or two you’ll want a keyboard at least if not a mouse, too. In my view that eliminates productivity as a legitimate use for a tablet. There’s no way I’d prefer touching my screen to the kind of keyboard and trackpad you get on a MacBook Pro. Next up, content consumption. As you mentioned, your phone covers this use case. I watch videos on the bus nearly every day and never desired a tablet. If you need that bigger screen, you’ve either already got a computer because you do productive work, or you buy a cheap tablet because you don’t need all the extra stuff a computer has, or you’ve got a bigger phone. Why would I watch content on a tablet when my laptop or TV can do that? A tablet doesn’t even stand itself up on my lap. I think only kids tolerate consuming content this way. Finally, there’s the creative market. Apple has this nailed down with the iPad Pro. The only other reason to need a tablet over a phone or laptop is to do digital art. These are probably the only folks who need to buy two devices, but they’ve needed to buy expensive computer peripherals for ages. So I think what you’re asking for is for someone to find the really tiny market who wants their tablet to do full computer stuff but doesn’t prefer a proper laptop computer, and then make special software modifications just for them like Microsoft did.
    • pcurve 7y ago
      Yeah tablet serves generally different market, but it can also meets needs of existing laptop users who just want more portable media consumption device, whether around bedroom, bathroom, or on a plane on business trip where you're likely to have locked-down work-issued PC.
• gdubs 7y ago
  Can’t believe it’s been 10 years. The iPad launched my app development career. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) bought the first generation iPad for me so that I could finish developing an app. I felt that I had missed the wave with iPhone apps, and the iPad was a new opportunity. The result was Polychord. From day 1, the iPad was a great format for music making. But it’s fun to look back and remember that back then it didn’t have MIDI, and Audiobus would be some time to follow.
• Fiahil 7y ago
  I completely agree with this article. The iPad hardware is absolutely wonderful, it's light, gorgeous and powerful. I got the latest iPad pro to watch Netflix in bed and it fills that purpose completely. However, the OS running on the machine is bad. Very bad. The multitasking is horrifying. The Files app is unusable (especially if you want to access your files from an FTP server). You have to use your finger to select a textbox on the screen before you can use your physical keyboard. Copy/Paste between apps is a nightmare (mostly because of the really poor multitasking). Sharing your screen via Airplay is useless except for demoes (doesn't match the target monitor resolution, nor transform the iPad into a giant touchpad). It doesn't support multiple icloud/gmail accounts (if you want to share it with your SO). I can use a terminal and SSH to my raspberry pi, but I can't use git, bash, node, python, go or rust on it... Just let met install MacOs instead, it can't be worse. PS: even having a console-only ubuntu VM would make me happy at this point.
  • brailsafe 7y ago
    How much Netflix are you watching!?
  • ngcc_hk 7y ago
    The file system if you use it is a god sent. You can share files, organised files ... not as good as lap top one but it is good enough especially if you have an macbook to arrange and tag files.
    • streb-lo 7y ago
      Why on earth should I need a separate device to organize the files on my device?
      • radnor 7y ago
        You don't need to, but doing so with a virtual on-screen keyboard is annoying and slow compared to using a separate laptop.
        • 7y ago
• caconym_ 7y ago
  For me the biggest gap between the iPad and a general purpose computer is the lack of a sensible, simple filesystem abstraction, and the pile of janky and inconsistent UI bullshit they apparently think can replace it. My iPad Pro is great for drawing and writing and browsing the web and watching video content, which are the things I bought it for, but when I use it I don't feel in control of my data. It's really sad, because I love it as a computing device and the missing pieces are totally arbitrary. It could offer the same user experience it offers now while still giving me the tools I need to have it replace my laptops and desktops. I bought my mom an iPad in 2012 and she is still (!) using it. She loves it. But she has an iMac too, which as far as I can tell she mostly uses to—you guessed it—manage files. Or, at least, that's the only part of her workflow that can't be hosted on the iPad. 8 years later, that's still the case.
  • pier25 7y ago
    I also own a Pro and it's a fantastic device dragged down by the OS. Apple should have made iPadOS from day one instead of forcing an oversized phone OS into a bigger form factor. We'll see how that turns out in a couple of years.
    • caconym_ 7y ago
      Yeah, I think "forking" iOS was a fine decision at this point but I really hope they make the aggressive product decisions that are really needed to turn it into a practical general-purpose machine for users who aren't just content consumers. Also, I don't think they will. But I hope it anyway.
• throw0101a 7y ago
  The iPad (and tablets in general) have really changed the game when it comes to flying. So many private pilots use e-charts nowadays: I'd love to see the sales figures on paper charts over the last decade. Even commercial crews (CPL, ATPL) are using them, and no longer have to lug around booklets. For 'redundancy' people often don't use paper, but have multiple electronic devices as well.
• takanori 7y ago
  It’s an $11 Billion dollar hardware business that’s double the size of the Mac. IMHO, the biggest innovation is that an enterprise can purchase one of these interest free for ~$20 / month (no interest) and get a brand new one in 3 years through Apple’s enterprise sales. Hardware sold as a service. $11B. I think the focus on multitasking misses the real innovation.
• ngcc_hk 7y ago
  I recently bought 3 ipad (and two e-ink one) as a replacement of book and reference. The ipad is great as it can be used and sync ... it works great with my MacBook Pro. It is a good part of the ecosystem.
• shams93 7y ago
  It's become a platform for music production. A lot of music apps like beatmaker3 only exist on the iPad. It's replaced the computer for me as my daw system for music production.
• pcurve 7y ago
  part of the problem is, apple is refusing to make the basic window bar control needed to facilitate multi-tasking and exposing its funcionality, because that would create interface clutter and reduce perceived simplicity of the UI. Instead they're inventing all sorts of hidden gesture based workarounds. They're no longer targeting ipad for new users.
• obelos 7y ago
  Sure, getting apps into multitasking mode is hard, but have you tried to get an app _out_ of multitasking? Especially a “Slide Over” window? Just when you think you've banished it, you open the host app again and the slide over app revivifies. It's maddening. Every time I accidentally get an app into this mode I have to search the support docs for the magic sequence to make the window finally go away. I love my iPad, but a couple aspects are unambiguously terrible UX.
• wpietri 7y ago
  It seems to me is that his main complaint is that the iPad fell short of what he dreamed it could do. But I think the problem there is in the dreaming, not the device. I have a Samsung tablet, the Galaxy Tab S4. As a consumption device, it's great. I read books and newspapers; I watch videos and movies; I play the occasional game. It's great for that. I use my projector way less now, and don't have to struggle with the awkwardness of phones or laptops for those tasks. Like Gruber, I thought it might do more, so I got it with the keyboard case, and thought about traveling with just that. But I pretty quickly swapped that for a dumb case and just kept traveling with my laptop when I needed to do actual work. A real keyboard and a real trackpad are way more effective for productive work than anything that's going to snap on to a tablet. Conversely, when I'm just aiming to consume something, there's a lot of hardware and OS complexity I just don't need. I think it's telling here that he doesn't say what sort of revolution he really expects out of the iPad. He doesn't talk about an audience or a use case the iPad could serve if there were specific changes. Instead it's just a grumble about an obscure feature and how his grandmother struggles with it. In my view, tablets have definitely lived up to their potential. It just took us a bit to figure out what that potential really was.
• dangus 7y ago
  I’m surprised that John Gruber hasn’t just turned off split screen for his mom: Settings > General > Multitasking and Dock > Allow Multiple Apps (Off) > But if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. I think you can, check your settings.
• dirktheman 7y ago
  Our iPad 2 (bought new in 2011) is still being used on a daily basis by our kids. Battery life is still more than sufficient and it's not too slow to run some games, YouTube or Netflix. I think it's the longest we've done with a single electronic device ever!
• tiffanyh 7y ago
  It’s interesting how success & potential is defined. iPad generates ~$20B/year in revenue with huge margins. [1] If iPad was a standalone business, it be the 156th largest company in the world by revenue (Fortune). [2] How can having a single product where only 155 entire companies are bigger than it, “not live up to its potential”? [1] https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/10/apple-results-64b-in-revenue-on-record-services-income/ https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/10/apple-results-64b-in-reve... [2] https://fortune.com/fortune500/2019/search/ https://fortune.com/fortune500/2019/search/
  • antipaul 7y ago
    This is not what the Steve Jobs era prioritized. Revolutionary product first, market share and revenue second. Gruber follows that philosophy
  • ajscanlan 7y ago
    If the iPad was a standalone business, and had no access to the Apple ecosystem or brand, do you think it would still generate ~$20B/year? Obviously we can't know, but the point is success is relative. Some people might expect better from Apple and so their standard for success is higher than $20B/year on one of their flagship products.
• Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  Fun thing is, it is very easy to do a convenient multitasking on iPad that a toddler would understand: Just make a multitask button in slide up menu or dock, which, when press, would present a user with his own home screen and an overlay titled "Select an app", maybe with slight clarification, "the launched app will be run next to your current app". Maybe not the best solution, but way better than the current one
• CivBase 7y ago
  > Turns out, “just a big iPhone” was a fantastic idea for a new product - music to tens of millions of iPhone users’ ears. Was it? I've never personally been interested in tablets, but my perception is that they're not especially popular. Over the last few years, I've rarely seen them being used for anything other than mobile video machines for little kids. A lot of people bought the iPad, but very few people appear to regularly use one. I'm aware that the iPad extremely useful for some people. I'm just not convinced it's the breakout success this article paints it as. My personal experience and observations show that it is more of a niche product.
• 0xCMP 7y ago
  As someone who uses his iPad Pro regularly, I love all the multi tasking of the iPad. I know many have written that they have issues with multiple windows on the iPad, but for me it's never been better or easier. My main gripe is keyboard behavior which is very buggy, but not related to how easy/hard it is to make and move apps around the screen. The fact is that the iPad is only useful because of its software. In my case it'd be useless without Files, Working Copy, Blink, Wireguard, and Screens. Only 1 of those is built-in and still it's a fairly recent addition. And it's the latest version on iOS 13 which is really the version which turbo-charged using many apps together easily. I use these apps to pretty much avoid directly using my "real computers" as much as possible via VMs or remote access via Wireguard. But, I think we're only seeing the beginning of the iPad. I can relate to the feeling that "we should have more of what we expected by now", but the fact is that designing these power user interfaces, actually redesigning them for touch while making them compatible with existing ones, is very difficult. A great example for HN is how we develop like we're in the 70s with text terminals and executing commands. Where on the iPad it might make more sense for the terminal to be rich like a REPL where commands/expressions act more like the results of a Shortcut (rich data, not just text) or code might be edited as an AST instead of the text which allows the concept of a "source file" to go away and instead there be a source database. Instead of trying to rebuild the editors we had we build something else designed for testing, iterating, and managing the AST. Dark[1] is a good example of this, but currently focused on the web. This is all way out there right now, but it makes me think that the iPad is still just getting started. [1]: https://darklang.com/ https://darklang.com/
  • Terretta 7y ago
    Fully agree. I think Gruber’s dead wrong, and folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Aside from being able to turn his complaint off: To turn Multitasking features on or off, go to Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Multitasking then turn off Allow Multiple Apps if you don't want to use Slide Over or Split View. I think it works fine for business and development consumption and creation, both. I’ve daily drivered iPad Pro with Apple keyboard for last 3 generations of iPad 12.9”. It started as an experiment to see if we could move employee population over for less support costs, and then became a habit because it’s just too ideal if you’re mobile for travel or even between multiple offices and meetings. Each new Macbook model, I get nostalgic for MBP days and carry it around for a bit, and then realize too many compromises carrying a laptop compared to carrying or traveling with just the iPad Pro. I’m on a two week trip right now, with the brand new top of line Macbook Pro 16” with full dev and Adobe setup in my bag. But it only came out of my carry on once in two weeks, and that was a failure. Tried to display a web demo, some custom diagramming, and a PowerPoint on conference room screen from the laptop. Unable to use the enterprise guest WiFi due to their security proxies, and the hotspot was too slow. Popped the same USB-C HDMI adapter in the iPad, and showed all the content over LTE. In a room built for Windows world, people struggled, and failed, to get HDMI from their HP or Dell or Lenovo laptops working, via HDMI ports or USB-C ports. Both the Macbook and iPad “just worked” with Apple’s same latest USB-C to HDMI adapter. With the always on networking, all day battery life, decent choice of text based dev tools including code editors, git clients, and terminals like Blink (mosh) to do git-commit based development/deployment, Citrix and RSA and enterprise VPN, not to mention full O365 and Adobe suites (though I recommend Affinity now), it’s hard to figure out what it is I need the laptop for enough to deal with the PITA of carrying it. This was not true 10 years ago, but today, iPad Pro can be the sole computing device even for an enterprise technology executive. Bonus anecdata, I’ve recently noticed the iPad Pro is what’s used by 80% of folks in the board room, even though it’s a Windows based enterprise. Something’s changed.
• koboll 7y ago
  I do digital painting on the side, as a hobby. In that field, the iPad Pro, specifically the Procreate app, has been revolutionary -- every single famous digital illustrator, concept artist, and comics artist I follow on Instagram has one, and they post gorgeous work done on them regularly. It's the only tool that comes remotely close to challenging the gold standard workflow of Wacom tablet + Photoshop, and Wacom and Adobe have been feeling the heat, ratcheting up their marketing efforts to try and attract back budding young artists to their tools. On the other hand, the iPad can't seem to actually replace those tools. Those pro artists still use a Wacom for their professional corporate work. The problem is less the software, I think, than the limitations the software forces by nature of the hardware. For professional work, you need as big a screen as possible -- Wacoms go up to 32". You also need hotkeys for an efficient workflow. Hunting and tapping through menus on a touchscreen is, by nature, going to be slower then having your left hand ready to hit the undo command at a moment's notice. Sure, it might be possible to plug a big external screen and a full keyboard into your iPad, but at that point, is it really an iPad anymore? What professional artist would bother buying an iPad to act as a desktop computer tower when they could buy an actual desktop computer tower with better specs for cheaper? So the iPad is about as good as it can possibly be: such a good touchscreen tablet that professional artists love it in all situations where they're willing to sacrifice power and flexibility for the convenience of a fully portable touchscreen tablet. It's not very good at replacing a full professional art setup on a desktop. But should it really aspire to be? In other words, I agree with this article, but disagree with its conclusions. Tablets won't replace laptops not because the iPad isn't a good enough tablet, but because they're simply never going to be the most efficient work machine you can buy.
  • callmeed 7y ago
    Would you mind sharing some of your favorite IG follows for illustration? I'm just getting into this on the iPad.
    • koboll 7y ago
      Some favorites off the top of my feed: - karlkopinski - justingerardillustration - joel_chaim_holtzman - kienan_lafferty - thealexrossart - spudonkey - miles_art - etheringtonbrothers - monafinden - jesper_ejsing - evanefimov - deviantart (yes, they have an insta) - aaronmiller - tfiddlerart - superani.insta - julbenart - sparth - arielolivetti - mattdixonart - devburmak
• altitudinous 7y ago
  An article written by a technologist. Only 1% use multitasking. Software is absolutely the strength. The extraordinary social impact of iPad on education, bringing technology and books to the masses, especially the non technical, education and entertainment to the young (who can use this device even before they can read), the elderly and most importantly the enablement of the disabled are the greatest achievements of the iPad. This is the device of the 2010's. Focussing on something like multitasking in the OS is really narrow and misses why this device even exists.
  • wmeredith 7y ago
    You should talk to some teachers about the iPads impact on education. Teachers hate the devices in their classrooms. It makes their job much harder.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• hyperpallium 7y ago
  An ipad/tablet is halfway between a laptop and a phpne, amd worse than either. For a while, phones got bigger (phablets), but any bigger and they don't fit a pocket, nor usable one-handed. The convenience of a phone form-factor is overwhelming. Rhe next big thing going to be VR/AR/glasses, but have stalled. It might be foldable displays, but I think they'll suffer the same fate as tablets, for the same reasons. Convenience is kimg.
• chadlavi 7y ago
  > But the Mac’s “When do I click, when do I double-click?” issue has confused untold millions of non-expert users for decades. I mean. Does it really, still? If so, that's horrifying as a technologist and sad.
• garrickvanburen 7y ago
  Within weeks, I sold the iPad v1 I bought the day it was released and I derided the iPad from that day on. Fast forward to today, iPad Pro has been my primary device for pushing 2 years. With a keyboard and multi-tasking it’s a far more flexible, collaborative, and portable compute experience compared to my MacBook.
• victor106 7y ago
  Well written article. I love Gruber's realistic take on Apple more than when it seems like he is a fanboy. >and apps that aren’t in the Dock can’t become the second app in split screen mode. What sense does that limitation make? I think that hits the nail on the head. I just couldn't believe that somehow Apple settled on this UI interaction for multitasking.
• egypturnash 7y ago
  God I hate the multitasking, all I ever did with it was accidentally open Safari links in a new window I couldn’t get rid of instead of open them in a new tab when I mis-tapped. I turned that right off about a day after updating.
• xixixao 7y ago
  The article talks about two different things: 1) Whether the iPad is revolutionary, and how in this respect it compares to the iPhone and the Mac. 2) iPad’s split-screen UX The two are not linked in a casual relationship imho. I personally never use split screen on my Mac (and of course on my iPhone), but this has not precluded it from being a device I use almost every waking hour. So to address the first point, the reason the iPad is not as revolutionary is because being in the middle of the two revolutionary products, it’s shares the pros and cons of both, in a way that negates each other. So the iPad is not small enough to be truly portable, but not big enough to be the perfect work horse. It will never have the same success and impact on the world, no matter its UX.
• MengerSponge 7y ago
  I can't believe I'm the first to metion LiquidText! It's the reason I bought an iPad pro, and more than a year later I don't regret it. If you have to collect information from a bunch of disparate documents, make comments, and share your collected thoughts, LiquidText is the absolute best. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/liquidtext/id922765270 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/liquidtext/id922765270
• jedberg 7y ago
  Almost every comment in this thread can be summarized thusly: "I wish I could install my own OS/Apps on my iPad to solve the problems I have".
• sneak 7y ago
  > The iPads Pro outperform MacBooks computationally. How quickly Gruber falls in line with the propaganda machine the moment that official guidance (Airpods Pro) comes out. :D
• bnjms 7y ago
  Lots of good discussion here about the state of iPad tablets. My SO is returning to school and wants a tablet for school. She likes her iPhone. Is the iPad ready to be a primary note taking solution? I have seen its note taking app used to great effect but how is external keyboard support? Does anyone use an ipad in uni as their primary input device?
  • schwartzworld 7y ago
    For this use case, why not a laptop? Any chromebook or inexpensive laptop would work fine for taking notes.
    • bnjms 7y ago
      I think mostly because she wants a touchscreen and already has an old laptop. Hand written notes are often easier since they seem to tap into the brain differently. And while her wants are primary, the chromebook system is awful. I could never encourage use of a chrome book for anything except something managed like a school.
  • dlivingston 7y ago
    It depends on what she's studying, IMHO. If there are domain specific apps (i.e., AutoCAD, Terminal, etc.) then the iPad is a non-starter. If she just needs to take notes, make PowerPoints, and write essays, then the iPad is great. The Apple Pencil (and keyboard case) is a virtual requirement, but I prefer it far above even traditional pen-and-paper notes.
• sixstringtheory 7y ago
  I've used an iPad Pro 10.2" with smart keyboard for 2 years now, trying to shift all my non-iOS-development work to it, with some success. I like using the iPad, and I like using it with multitasking much more than I did before that existed. I think the criticisms in the article have some merit but I don't know what better alternatives would be, and didn't see any suggested in the article. I assume that Apple has worked very hard and thrown away a lot of less good solutions to arrive where they're at with iPadOS thus far. The answer to a lot of this should be "open the Tips app and follow the tutorials," but they don't cover the entire set of possibilities, so a valid criticism would be that the Tips app should be improved. A tip for people that might not know: > apps that aren’t in the Dock can’t become the second app in split screen mode. Not true: on an external keyboard you can execute the same key command you use for Spotlight in macOS: ⌘ + Space, then you can immediately type the name of the app you want, and drag it into multitasking from the results. As Gruber points out with the dual purpose gesture of dragging icons from the dock (either multitasking or removing from dock), there is one here too: if you swipe down in the center of the home screen to activate a search, you can't drag those icons into multitasking. It makes sense because there's no other app open to multitask with, but the gesture is overloaded nonetheless. A personal bummer lately is that my $150 smart keyboard stopped working, so I'm rocking a Magic Keyboard with it currently at my desk. The Bluetooth connection story isn't perfect, and I don't take it around with me, so when I'm mobile I just have the dead keyboard cover.
• 40acres 7y ago
  iPad is an excellent consumption device, I never quite saw the appeal in productivity based add-ons. A few years ago my MBA died and I was quite slow in getting a replacement due to financial commitments. As a cord cutter w/o a TV my iPad was my main source of video entertainment and I was surprised that I didn't miss my Air as much as previously thought.
• esch89 7y ago
  Good article. Shows the importance of being able to steer in a different direction + change despite past successes.
• Causality1 7y ago
  I'm in love with the idea of the ipad/tablet but they just don't work for me in practice. Either I'm out and don't have anything on me but my phone or I'm at home and already have my computer in front of me. Ipads just don't work as replacement computers for me. I can't manage my media and document archives. I can't create bootable USB drives. I can't maintain a folder full of installers for necessary software. I just don't feel in control on a tablet.
• notlukesky 7y ago
  The iPad is there for mass consumption as primarily a consumption tool (pun intended). Power users following the aptly named power law already know the tricks to use it as a production tool like split screen and multitasking etc... the masses will not invest the time to learn those tricks because they don’t need it and their willful ignorance is bliss. The good thing that the article points out is that Apple’s historical business model (4.99 price cap) limited productivity tools by capping the prices that could be charged through the app store. Fair point there. Apple can still breathe life going forward for developers by rebooting the developer ecosystem. 10 years on the tablet has just arrived for productivity. That is still a fraction of iPad consumers. Prosumers are a minority and the only ones demanding landscape view and split screen apps. I work for an IAM consultancy and the password manager we recommend to our clients and that I use is SAASPASS and one of the reasons is that it supports multitasking, landscape view and split screen. Split screen is great for Authenticator codes and password management. But the masses probably don’t care at all for these features. Although AutoFill has solved some of these UX issues with most apps and websites. If anyone is interested in an iPad friendly Authenticator and Password Manager see here: https://saaspass.com/ https://saaspass.com/
  • SahAssar 7y ago
    You posted the same comment and I asked you for a comment on your affiliation with saaspass here, but got no reply, any chance you will get to that? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173634 It might be good to clear this up.
• brailsafe 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, visual artists love the ipad pro. I still have my ipad 3, and it serves it's purpose for reading content and looking at stuff. I've done the same on an Ipad pro, and damn that screen is smooth, but can't think of anything to use it for that would remotely permit me to spend the $$$$$ on it. The software gets in my way and is just bad. Somewhat pathetically, Safari still doesn't support WebGl2 either. The cost approximates a pretty good gear setup for any other more constructive hobby.
• julienb_sea 7y ago
  The core problem with ipad is it's not going to be able to compete with a laptop + desk setup for productivity. Laptops are complicated machines, and we take for granted the extent to which we are attuned to using a laptop. The speed with which we can fly around a laptop and get things done is staggering. Ipad has too many limitations in UX to really compete. You can in theory accomplish pretty much all the same things, and it might be more fun and more pleasant of an experience. But for complicated work, with a variety of applications, how can an ipad compete with 3 large screens, a full keyboard and trackpad, and a full suite of consistent well supported hotkeys?
• octokatt 7y ago
  Industry hasn't caught up yet with the iPad, because it's a very different tool. But you can see it start to happen. An iPad is becoming the default point of sale system in a lot of places. My wife works with autistic kids; he doesn't have a computer, he has an iPad so he can go from recording behavioral data to YouTube in a fluid motion. The iPad stumbled because it was supposed to be a consumer device, and then developers and users realized it filled a niche for a lot of creation tasks, and Apple has been playing catch-up ever since.
• jarjoura 7y ago
  As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product. "These things will probably sell in the educational market or something." "Developers will always surprise us, they will come up with use cases for us." During development Amazon was proving that people wanted E-Book readers. So when it was clear the iPad didn't yet have a coherent story from Apple, iBooks was thrown together at the eleventh hour and then SJ went on the attack against Amazon to push back against the growing Kindle market. And then Windows 8 happened! People asked Apple (And Tim Cook), will we see touch-screen Macs? And instead Apple trapped itself in a corner by doubling down that the iPad was going to forgo running full macOS because something about people not wanting to touch their laptop screen. So here we are, a product that launched without a vision, and then hamstrung by ego. It's true that people who love their iPads, LOOOVE their iPads. So it's a nice product. It's definitely well made and I love reading the news on mine. It's a great device to travel with, for sure, yet I agree with Gruber, this thing will never flourish outside of the niche markets its found itself in.
  • Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
    I still remember people saying that the iPad was just going to be a big iPhone and what is the point? I NEVER understood this. I was one of those people that was immediately excited about the iPad. Being able to lay back in bed and casually browse the web, read magazines, watch movies, play games? On something with a decently large screen, decent battery life and something that wasn't bulky? PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY!!!! It really surprises me to hear that there wasn't much excitement inside Apple for it. I now have the first generation of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and it's just about always in my bag with me. I do think it's a shame you can't really develop apps ON the device. I'm glad the OS is getting more capable with the direction they're taking, so who knows? We might get Xcode one day :)
    • beatgammit 7y ago
      Eh, I'm still not particularly excited about iPads or tablets in general. Tablets are awkward, to the point that I prefer: - my phone for casual reading and watching (6" max) - my Kindle for longer reading sessions - my laptop for mobile productivity and gaming - my desktop for serious work/gaming We mostly use our tablets to distract our kids, especially for long road trips. My wife has started using a tablet for drawing in lieu of a desktop drawing tablet, but that's about as close to "real" use of a tablet that we have. It works out really well for some people, but I just don't see it.
• audiodude 7y ago
  > How would anyone ever figure out how to split-screen multitask on the iPad if they didn’t already know how to do it? Or if this article hadn't just taught me how to do it. Be right back, about to go multitask on my ipad for the first time...
• frankzen 7y ago
  I hear people junk talk the iPad all the time but I love mine. I rarely open a computer at home because of the iPad. A lot of times I don't even turn on my TV and just use it as my mini TV. It's basically a laptop in a truer sense of the word IMHO.
• zapzupnz 7y ago
  Something I haven't seen in the comments yet: do we think that Apple now referring to iPadOS by a separate name means future releases will slowly-but-surely (in typical iterative Apple fashion) morph the iPad experience to address not only Gruber's complaints but some of our own? I'm actually surprised by a lot of HN's failure of imagination — "I can't imagine why you would want an iPad when you could use an xyz", often translating into "I don't believe an iPad could ever become abc". And yet, against all odds and despite its relative decline in sales, the iPad marches forward, stands strong despite its flaws, and defies the naysayers of 2010 and 2020. To give my own answer to my question: I prefer optimism over pessimism, myself.
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• SllX 7y ago
  Reality is actually more exciting and more boring. Apple sold about $20B worth of iPads last year alone and it has a sizable install base for all these services Apple is pushing: TV+, Arcade, News+, Apple Music, iCloud, etc. There’s a lot to criticize about the software, it is actually very easy to criticize the software for not doing the things you want it to do because it seems like it ought to be able to, and there is obviously a better way to do the thing you want to do if Apple would only do X, Y, and Z and stop doing A and B to hold it back. Here’s where reality gets really boring though: iPads are only tablets, and only of the stuff in your bag, leave on a table or have it permanently docked in some kind of kiosk variety. That lends itself to being a bit better at some applications than others, but there‘a some applications it will always be downright inferior to compared to a laptop or phone. It’s not going to fit in my pocket better than my phone, and it’s not the entire self-contained package that my laptop is, nor does it have the benefit of always being plugged into a wall socket being able to draw essentially unlimited power that my desktop has. I could try to replicate some of the benefits of those devices with some creative planning and a big enough pile of money with some mixed success, but in exchange for not being as good for certain applications, it is absolutely top tier for reading and drawing. It’s all about the trade offs you are willing to make. If what a tablet is better at is more important to you than what a laptop is better at, and the few things you would prefer to do on a laptop can still be done on a tablet, you might make the tradeoff to spend more money to have both, or you might make the tradeoff to save some money and only have the tablet. Neither is a bad choice to make. Putting it that way is boring though, and it doesn’t play into the narrative that we’re only going to have one or the other at some far flung point in the future and tablets are the predestined winner of that zero sum game, you know, just like how we only have GUIs these days and positively no one uses what we once called the command-line interface. In retrospect the above comment is less a direct response to Gruber’s article, and more a response to a broad swath of sentiments expressed here in this thread and across the part of the web that spends too much time talking about Apple. It should be understood as such anyway.