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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 i

by 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.
    - scalio 7y ago
      And there's the problem.
    - derefr 7y ago
      Or, y’know, we’re talking about the iPad Pro here, so use the keyboard cover. (Are there people buying an iPad Pro who don’t buy the keyboard cover? Seems silly to me.)
mumblemumble 7y ago
The one that's been driving me up the wall lately is that I can't use screen sharing unless the iPad and the Mac are on the same Apple ID. It really kills the value of that feature in a setting where multiple people who each own their own set of devices want to be able to work together more easily. Like, say, homes, offices and schools.
Firaxus 7y ago
Consider looking into iSH, it let's you access a Linux like environment where you can download and use common packages like vim and python in a terminal. It has to emulate x86 calls, but for my use case of writing notes in vim and compiling and running simple c++ programs, it works. You can see some more information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ish/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ish/ But I completely agree that it's practically a moral crime that the OS is so locked down. Just a sandboxed native terminal would make this device my main coding environment. The cheap wireless keyboard and mouse I use with it makes the lack of a native terminal where I'd have complete control the one thing holding it back for me.
- dividedbyzero 7y ago
  This can't be installed like a regular app, can it? Also, I wonder why they emulate x86 – isn't the iPad CPU ARM64? Couldn't this simply use binaries for that architecture?
  - mkskm 7y ago
    > This can't be installed like a regular app, can it? Surprisingly yes, it can, though it remains to be seen if it will be accepted to the App Store. > Also, I wonder why they emulate x86 – isn't the iPad CPU ARM64? Couldn't this simply use binaries for that architecture? This is explained on the FAQ: https://github.com/tbodt/ish/wiki/FAQ#q-is-ish-32-bit-or-64-bit https://github.com/tbodt/ish/wiki/FAQ#q-is-ish-32-bit-or-64-...
  - simonh 7y ago
    Then you’d be running unsigned, unreviewed binaries bypassing iOS controls directly on the CPU, which would be a security nightmare for iOS. This way it’s a completely emulated environment that’s isolated from the underlying system.
    - derefr 7y ago
      Running x86 binaries under software emulation, and forking off arbirary ARM binaries, aren’t the only two alternatives. You can do what Wine or gVisor does: run native-architecture code, but virtualize system calls as calls into the host binary.
FreakyT 7y ago
My single biggest problem on the iPad is the way Safari just randomly kills your background tabs. Filling out a web form? You'd better hope that their half-baked tab state saving worked! (Spoiler alert: it probably didn't) It's particularly annoying because of the headline features of iPadOS was that you could finally use Google Docs in Safari! It's actually amazing how well it works...until you switch tabs or apps and have to wait for your entire spreadsheet to reload.
- sillysaurusx 7y ago
  Whoa, they do this on iPad? Is that a new iOS thing? I have 500 tabs in Safari on my iPhone. It's a nice time capsule of what I used to be reading. (500 is the cutoff limit, apparently.)
  - austinhutch 7y ago
    The tab won't go away, but it will trigger a fresh http request (and thus any input in a form will disappear), I believe the behavior is the same on iOS for iPhone.
    - ljm 7y ago
      It’s identical and it’s aggressive. It’s more forgivable on the iPhone but I don’t reckon so on an iPad Pro. Oftentimes I’ve been underground and I’d go back into Safari to read a page I already had open, but it triggers a new request with no internet connection and then blows up. I would hope that at least the last open tab would be held in memory or otherwise heavily cached when the signal degraded enough to prevent a reload.
      - jandrese 7y ago
        Yep, and it's really frustrating when the tab was just a static webpage with some text you want to read. It has the iOS baked-in assumption that you always always have fast Internet access.
jseliger 7y ago
I don't think HN is the target audience for the iPad. I have one and use it as a reading device. Others use it for games and social media, where the many accurate deficiencies you point out don't matter much. The average person seems to use it within a narrow sandbox where it works. The minute you try to do something else with it, you'll struggle and be disappointed.
- JauntTrooper 7y ago
  It’s the device of choice for most public company directors and senior executives I meet. I know of a few companies that issued them to their directors for board use. Senior investment bankers also use them extensively while traveling. It’s the corporate lawyers and junior investment bankers that rely more on laptops (mostly for Word, PowerPoint and Excel).
- babypuncher 7y ago
  Yeah a lot of the comments here just don't make a lot of sense to me. I use mine to read books, and watch TV/Movies when traveling. It's a consumption device, not a work device. I guess where the confusion comes from is the iPad Pro, which Apple pitches as a device for creators. However, they've been pretty unambiguous about targeting artists, not developers. I don't think they expect anyone to start programming with an Apple Pencil.
snapetom 7y ago
I feel that Apple has lost its way with OS design in the past 5 years or so. Not at a macro level, but at a micro, "little things" level. Launch anything Apple-written these days and you'll get a wizard telling you how to use some new widget - just like any other software by anyone else. I don't think Apple has ever done that before because features were designed so well, you can easily figure it out. Then there are just tons of small decisions that are head scratchers. In iOS 13, they changed when Select/Select All appear, and it's a real pain in the ass. Early versions of iOS didn't have Select/Copy/Paste because the general belief was that they had to get it right the first time. They nailed it, but now they've tweaked it and made it much harder to use.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I agree with this - I feel like Windows has gotten much better at catering to delivering (or allowing other people to deliver) more targeted UX improvements. Once upon a time Fences was a requirement to be alive - now instant searching in the start menu means I hardly ever see my desktop - similarly universal key combinations (and global key capture) have let things like media keys really take off - being able to pause a video that skipped to the next entry in the playlist without ever backing out of a different fullscreen app is kinda beautiful. Heck, I've got, and regularly use, an iPad and had no idea you could go into split screen mode - the UX is entirely invisible and un-intuitive - especially if you pick up something running older iOS and need to remember how to pull up the carousel.
  - gowld 7y ago
    How do you get search to work? For me, Windows Search Indexer just uses 100% CPU forever.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      Oh sorry - I almost never use search in the context of documents - I use it for programs I need to pull up. I don't need a document search all that much as I generally store things by project and am only ever working on a modest set of files at a given time. If you're looking for a good finding utility I might suggest grepwin[1] which does a great job finding things fast. 1. https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html
simonh 7y ago
All of those are either kind of ‘eh’, or have decent workarounds, or aren’t even valid at all. There are plenty of ftp client and server apps that work absolutely fine, I don’t even know what your talking about on that front. Please don’t add a mouse cursor to iOS, No! I find the new cut n paste stuff outstanding. There are a range of decent screen sharing, presentation and touchpad apps. There’s a decent free Gmail app that supports multiple accounts. Can’t use Python? Good grief, where have you been hiding all these years? Pythonista is a fantastic Python dev environment on iOS, with several apps and games published using it, and there are a bunch of other dev apps for other languages, plus Working Copy for git and github integration. The iPad doesn’t do everything, sure, but it’s way beyond being a basic consumer device. In particular Pythonista, with its built in GUI designer, support for games development, community shell extensions and tools make it an incredible powerhouse device.
- derefr 7y ago
  > Please don’t add a mouse cursor to iOS, No! It has one! https://www.macworld.com/article/3405887/how-to-use-a-mouse-with-your-ipad-or-iphone.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3405887/how-to-use-a-mouse-...
- Teckla 7y ago
  Please don’t add a mouse cursor to iOS, No! I assume you're talking about iPadOS. I use the new mouse support in iPadOS all the time, and absolutely love it when I'm using my iPad like it's a laptop computer at my desk. It's so much more comfortable and ergonomic than constantly reaching up and pawing at the screen.
gregjor 7y ago
Working Copy and CodeHub handle git repos. I code from an iPad Pro sometimes with Blink (mosh/ssh client) and Working Copy with Textastic. I sympathize about not running local dev environments, but for the actual work I do the apps won't run on a laptop or local PC anyway without a lot of trouble, so I'm used to working over ssh to a dev server. That works very well on an iPad, even better with a decent keyboard with an escape key. As someone else mentioned Pythonista gives you local Python. I work on multiple large web applications for a few clients and I've tried using my iPad Pro exclusively. I've only run into two issues that make it less than ideal: No web inspector/JS debugged in Safari (though workarounds exist they're clunky), and difficult text selection (not an issue in a terminal window with vim but imprecise and fussy in iOS apps). Otherwise it's great and I do use my iPad a lot. My main work setup is a Chromebook (Pixel Slate), which I only prefer over the iPad Pro because of the trackpad/mouse text selection and Chrome web developer tools.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I'm quite confused why you'd pursue attempting to use an iPad for development work. As someone who hates laptop-style thin keyboards I could justify it by the fact that carrying around a laptop and a keyboard feels more silly than an iPad and a keyboard - but the weight difference is pretty negligible and the software running on a laptop just has so much more utility for task switching (checking the kanban - making sure the VPN is up and running - quickly tabbing to chat to make sure you can disregard an @ mention) ... all these, on an iPad, require fully backing out with clunky key-presses to activate a very limited app switcher.
  - mbreese 7y ago
    I’ve tried the iPad as a workstation off and on for many years (I had an original iPad). While I’ve never quite gotten it to work for me, I can still see the appeal. And for exactly the reason you state. A full laptop is much better at task switching. But when I’m working, and in a zone, task switching is the last thing I want to do. I want a distraction free workspace without widgets and notifications. On the iPad, this is so much easier to achieve. And if you have to change apps (and you have a keyboard), the app switcher is the same as on a Mac... cmd-tab still works.
SkyMarshal 7y ago
>PS: even having a console-only ubuntu VM would make me happy at this point. If you're ok with that console running on a home Ubuntu workstation/server or cloud server, then the Blink.sh iOS app is great for this. ssh into your Ubuntu workstation/server from your iPad. Discussed at HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932592
- Fiahil 7y ago
  I'm using blink, it's the best alternative currently. It's just sad to have a powerful 2k€ machine, but working on a 10€ raspberry pi.
xalava 7y ago
I wonder how much those problems are related to the design of the OS or to commercial strategies. I am under the impression to have a well designed base layer and apps. Then if I want anything more or different, I can use other apps that are secondary citizens with each their own isolated subscription/cloud/format strategy. The ecosystem of free apps that you can find on desktops (mac, windows, linux) of reliable text editors, command line tools, syncing software ... seems to be missing.
ellis0n 7y ago
I'm agree, problem in software, not hardware. I tried use Palm as remote terminal to my office servers before iPhone era and use iPhone and iPad later, but software progress looks like in 1990. This issue should be solved with new software, platforms like Animation CPU https://twitter.com/acpustudio https://twitter.com/acpustudio
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 7y ago
> 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... Nothing of that is something I care about. Pythonista, Continuous, Codea, Shaderific, Playgrounds, and a couple of others provide enough juice for my tablet coding needs.

by Fiahil 7y ago

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.
  - scalio 7y ago
    And there's the problem.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Or, y’know, we’re talking about the iPad Pro here, so use the keyboard cover. (Are there people buying an iPad Pro who don’t buy the keyboard cover? Seems silly to me.)

mumblemumble 7y ago

The one that's been driving me up the wall lately is that I can't use screen sharing unless the iPad and the Mac are on the same Apple ID. It really kills the value of that feature in a setting where multiple people who each own their own set of devices want to be able to work together more easily. Like, say, homes, offices and schools.

Firaxus 7y ago

Consider looking into iSH, it let's you access a Linux like environment where you can download and use common packages like vim and python in a terminal. It has to emulate x86 calls, but for my use case of writing notes in vim and compiling and running simple c++ programs, it works. You can see some more information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ish/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ish/ But I completely agree that it's practically a moral crime that the OS is so locked down. Just a sandboxed native terminal would make this device my main coding environment. The cheap wireless keyboard and mouse I use with it makes the lack of a native terminal where I'd have complete control the one thing holding it back for me.

dividedbyzero 7y ago
This can't be installed like a regular app, can it? Also, I wonder why they emulate x86 – isn't the iPad CPU ARM64? Couldn't this simply use binaries for that architecture?
- mkskm 7y ago
  > This can't be installed like a regular app, can it? Surprisingly yes, it can, though it remains to be seen if it will be accepted to the App Store. > Also, I wonder why they emulate x86 – isn't the iPad CPU ARM64? Couldn't this simply use binaries for that architecture? This is explained on the FAQ: https://github.com/tbodt/ish/wiki/FAQ#q-is-ish-32-bit-or-64-bit https://github.com/tbodt/ish/wiki/FAQ#q-is-ish-32-bit-or-64-...
- simonh 7y ago
  Then you’d be running unsigned, unreviewed binaries bypassing iOS controls directly on the CPU, which would be a security nightmare for iOS. This way it’s a completely emulated environment that’s isolated from the underlying system.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Running x86 binaries under software emulation, and forking off arbirary ARM binaries, aren’t the only two alternatives. You can do what Wine or gVisor does: run native-architecture code, but virtualize system calls as calls into the host binary.

FreakyT 7y ago

My single biggest problem on the iPad is the way Safari just randomly kills your background tabs. Filling out a web form? You'd better hope that their half-baked tab state saving worked! (Spoiler alert: it probably didn't) It's particularly annoying because of the headline features of iPadOS was that you could finally use Google Docs in Safari! It's actually amazing how well it works...until you switch tabs or apps and have to wait for your entire spreadsheet to reload.

sillysaurusx 7y ago
Whoa, they do this on iPad? Is that a new iOS thing? I have 500 tabs in Safari on my iPhone. It's a nice time capsule of what I used to be reading. (500 is the cutoff limit, apparently.)
- austinhutch 7y ago
  The tab won't go away, but it will trigger a fresh http request (and thus any input in a form will disappear), I believe the behavior is the same on iOS for iPhone.
  - ljm 7y ago
    It’s identical and it’s aggressive. It’s more forgivable on the iPhone but I don’t reckon so on an iPad Pro. Oftentimes I’ve been underground and I’d go back into Safari to read a page I already had open, but it triggers a new request with no internet connection and then blows up. I would hope that at least the last open tab would be held in memory or otherwise heavily cached when the signal degraded enough to prevent a reload.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Yep, and it's really frustrating when the tab was just a static webpage with some text you want to read. It has the iOS baked-in assumption that you always always have fast Internet access.

jseliger 7y ago

I don't think HN is the target audience for the iPad. I have one and use it as a reading device. Others use it for games and social media, where the many accurate deficiencies you point out don't matter much. The average person seems to use it within a narrow sandbox where it works. The minute you try to do something else with it, you'll struggle and be disappointed.

JauntTrooper 7y ago
It’s the device of choice for most public company directors and senior executives I meet. I know of a few companies that issued them to their directors for board use. Senior investment bankers also use them extensively while traveling. It’s the corporate lawyers and junior investment bankers that rely more on laptops (mostly for Word, PowerPoint and Excel).
babypuncher 7y ago
Yeah a lot of the comments here just don't make a lot of sense to me. I use mine to read books, and watch TV/Movies when traveling. It's a consumption device, not a work device. I guess where the confusion comes from is the iPad Pro, which Apple pitches as a device for creators. However, they've been pretty unambiguous about targeting artists, not developers. I don't think they expect anyone to start programming with an Apple Pencil.

snapetom 7y ago

I feel that Apple has lost its way with OS design in the past 5 years or so. Not at a macro level, but at a micro, "little things" level. Launch anything Apple-written these days and you'll get a wizard telling you how to use some new widget - just like any other software by anyone else. I don't think Apple has ever done that before because features were designed so well, you can easily figure it out. Then there are just tons of small decisions that are head scratchers. In iOS 13, they changed when Select/Select All appear, and it's a real pain in the ass. Early versions of iOS didn't have Select/Copy/Paste because the general belief was that they had to get it right the first time. They nailed it, but now they've tweaked it and made it much harder to use.

munk-a 7y ago
I agree with this - I feel like Windows has gotten much better at catering to delivering (or allowing other people to deliver) more targeted UX improvements. Once upon a time Fences was a requirement to be alive - now instant searching in the start menu means I hardly ever see my desktop - similarly universal key combinations (and global key capture) have let things like media keys really take off - being able to pause a video that skipped to the next entry in the playlist without ever backing out of a different fullscreen app is kinda beautiful. Heck, I've got, and regularly use, an iPad and had no idea you could go into split screen mode - the UX is entirely invisible and un-intuitive - especially if you pick up something running older iOS and need to remember how to pull up the carousel.
- gowld 7y ago
  How do you get search to work? For me, Windows Search Indexer just uses 100% CPU forever.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Oh sorry - I almost never use search in the context of documents - I use it for programs I need to pull up. I don't need a document search all that much as I generally store things by project and am only ever working on a modest set of files at a given time. If you're looking for a good finding utility I might suggest grepwin[1] which does a great job finding things fast. 1. https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html

simonh 7y ago

All of those are either kind of ‘eh’, or have decent workarounds, or aren’t even valid at all. There are plenty of ftp client and server apps that work absolutely fine, I don’t even know what your talking about on that front. Please don’t add a mouse cursor to iOS, No! I find the new cut n paste stuff outstanding. There are a range of decent screen sharing, presentation and touchpad apps. There’s a decent free Gmail app that supports multiple accounts. Can’t use Python? Good grief, where have you been hiding all these years? Pythonista is a fantastic Python dev environment on iOS, with several apps and games published using it, and there are a bunch of other dev apps for other languages, plus Working Copy for git and github integration. The iPad doesn’t do everything, sure, but it’s way beyond being a basic consumer device. In particular Pythonista, with its built in GUI designer, support for games development, community shell extensions and tools make it an incredible powerhouse device.

derefr 7y ago
> Please don’t add a mouse cursor to iOS, No! It has one! https://www.macworld.com/article/3405887/how-to-use-a-mouse-with-your-ipad-or-iphone.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3405887/how-to-use-a-mouse-...
Teckla 7y ago
Please don’t add a mouse cursor to iOS, No! I assume you're talking about iPadOS. I use the new mouse support in iPadOS all the time, and absolutely love it when I'm using my iPad like it's a laptop computer at my desk. It's so much more comfortable and ergonomic than constantly reaching up and pawing at the screen.

gregjor 7y ago

Working Copy and CodeHub handle git repos. I code from an iPad Pro sometimes with Blink (mosh/ssh client) and Working Copy with Textastic. I sympathize about not running local dev environments, but for the actual work I do the apps won't run on a laptop or local PC anyway without a lot of trouble, so I'm used to working over ssh to a dev server. That works very well on an iPad, even better with a decent keyboard with an escape key. As someone else mentioned Pythonista gives you local Python. I work on multiple large web applications for a few clients and I've tried using my iPad Pro exclusively. I've only run into two issues that make it less than ideal: No web inspector/JS debugged in Safari (though workarounds exist they're clunky), and difficult text selection (not an issue in a terminal window with vim but imprecise and fussy in iOS apps). Otherwise it's great and I do use my iPad a lot. My main work setup is a Chromebook (Pixel Slate), which I only prefer over the iPad Pro because of the trackpad/mouse text selection and Chrome web developer tools.

munk-a 7y ago
I'm quite confused why you'd pursue attempting to use an iPad for development work. As someone who hates laptop-style thin keyboards I could justify it by the fact that carrying around a laptop and a keyboard feels more silly than an iPad and a keyboard - but the weight difference is pretty negligible and the software running on a laptop just has so much more utility for task switching (checking the kanban - making sure the VPN is up and running - quickly tabbing to chat to make sure you can disregard an @ mention) ... all these, on an iPad, require fully backing out with clunky key-presses to activate a very limited app switcher.
- mbreese 7y ago
  I’ve tried the iPad as a workstation off and on for many years (I had an original iPad). While I’ve never quite gotten it to work for me, I can still see the appeal. And for exactly the reason you state. A full laptop is much better at task switching. But when I’m working, and in a zone, task switching is the last thing I want to do. I want a distraction free workspace without widgets and notifications. On the iPad, this is so much easier to achieve. And if you have to change apps (and you have a keyboard), the app switcher is the same as on a Mac... cmd-tab still works.

SkyMarshal 7y ago

>PS: even having a console-only ubuntu VM would make me happy at this point. If you're ok with that console running on a home Ubuntu workstation/server or cloud server, then the Blink.sh iOS app is great for this. ssh into your Ubuntu workstation/server from your iPad. Discussed at HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932592

Fiahil 7y ago
I'm using blink, it's the best alternative currently. It's just sad to have a powerful 2k€ machine, but working on a 10€ raspberry pi.

xalava 7y ago

I wonder how much those problems are related to the design of the OS or to commercial strategies. I am under the impression to have a well designed base layer and apps. Then if I want anything more or different, I can use other apps that are secondary citizens with each their own isolated subscription/cloud/format strategy. The ecosystem of free apps that you can find on desktops (mac, windows, linux) of reliable text editors, command line tools, syncing software ... seems to be missing.

ellis0n 7y ago

I'm agree, problem in software, not hardware. I tried use Palm as remote terminal to my office servers before iPhone era and use iPhone and iPad later, but software progress looks like in 1990. This issue should be solved with new software, platforms like Animation CPU https://twitter.com/acpustudio https://twitter.com/acpustudio

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 7y ago

> 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... Nothing of that is something I care about. Pythonista, Continuous, Codea, Shaderific, Playgrounds, and a couple of others provide enough juice for my tablet coding needs.