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The iPad has slowly revolutionized personal computing. After the music production apps became available, including Apples own Garageband, the iPad has become a

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
  We have a desktop computer, a few laptops, and a few iPads. I've never seen any of my kids (elementary school age up to college age) try to creatively explore the machine itself. I'm a programmer and I've even tried to interest them in programming. Nope. All they are interested in is Facebook, Instagram, and other web pages. If it doesn't take place in a browser windows, they have no interest. But, they aren't even interested in web development! A computer is just a tool. They have no more interest in looking under the hood than they do tearing apart the engine of a car to see how it works. As long as the car gets them from A to Z, that is all that matters. If it breaks, well, that is someone else's job to fix.
- AlanYx 7y ago
  I think that's the biggest lost opportunity of the iPad. I read through Alan Kay's Early History of Smalltalk [1] essay recently, and the level of applications young teenagers were developing with the rudimentary hardware is truly astonishing. The iPad is not facilitating that type of thing for the most part, but it also arguably goes in the opposite direction, encouraging a highly siloed, app-centric view of computing where users have even less direct agency over data. [1]: http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/

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
We have a desktop computer, a few laptops, and a few iPads. I've never seen any of my kids (elementary school age up to college age) try to creatively explore the machine itself. I'm a programmer and I've even tried to interest them in programming. Nope. All they are interested in is Facebook, Instagram, and other web pages. If it doesn't take place in a browser windows, they have no interest. But, they aren't even interested in web development! A computer is just a tool. They have no more interest in looking under the hood than they do tearing apart the engine of a car to see how it works. As long as the car gets them from A to Z, that is all that matters. If it breaks, well, that is someone else's job to fix.
AlanYx 7y ago
I think that's the biggest lost opportunity of the iPad. I read through Alan Kay's Early History of Smalltalk [1] essay recently, and the level of applications young teenagers were developing with the rudimentary hardware is truly astonishing. The iPad is not facilitating that type of thing for the most part, but it also arguably goes in the opposite direction, encouraging a highly siloed, app-centric view of computing where users have even less direct agency over data. [1]: http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/