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To me, it doesn't matter how powerful the iPad is if the software experience is subpar. Multitasking is cumbrous enough that it might as well not exist, multi-d

To me, it doesn't matter how powerful the iPad is if the software experience is subpar. Multitasking is cumbrous enough that it might as well not exist, multi-display setups can only mirror at a fixed aspect ratio, it lacks multiple user profiles requiring a family to be under a single user, and the few apps that take advantage of the keyboard/trackpad are nowhere similar to their desktop counterparts. Take Excel for example. Try right-clicking on a cell or dragging down a formula, and you'll see that it only picks it up a fraction of the time, and you have to click multiple times with gesture-like latencies in between to get it to work.

smoldesu 6y ago
My thoughts exactly. Apple might have the apps, but actually getting stuff done on it feels cumbersome and strange. I'm not sure why they continue to stretch the iPad in so many directions when they could just be focusing on a good tablet experience.
- monkmartinez 6y ago
  It is a great tablet experience! They could have a dual boot option where you get a MacOS for real work. Otherwise you are right, don't try to make real work happen in the current form. SO MUCH FRICTION to copy and move a file around for example. The bulk of my use is strictly tablet stuff and I think it is really great at that.
  - jack_riminton 6y ago
    Exactly. The OP complaining that it’s cumbersome to use Excel, well yeah, but the things tablets are designed for; dragging, drawing, tapping etc. It excels at (pun intended)
    - smoldesu 6y ago
      Sure, but I think the overall sentiment is that Apple hasn't really pushed the iPad any further as an input device. It still does those drawing, dragging and tapping things well, but why haven't they pushed those gestures to work with context menus or have some unified purpose? In some ways, the iPad is still the bare minimum of being a tablet, but it's mastered that concept. As Apple continues to market it as a "computer" though, they have a responsibility to improve the computer aspects of it: file management, improved user control, and developer solutions are all weak or missing links in the chain here. Sure it does tablet well, but it sucks at computer.
f6v 6y ago
I'm still skeptical that Apple wants it to be a general-purpose computer.
- roody15 6y ago
  It doesn’t. It is more a consumer console than personal computer IMO
- intergalplan 6y ago
  Personally, if they make it a general-purpose computer, I'll be eagerly waiting for them or someone else to create the next iPad. It's already gone too far that way, IMO—I like it as a slab of smart glass that can become, entirely, a whole bunch of different, separate, specific tools, not as yet another complex, generic, multi-tasking computer. In that respect, it's mostly been going downhill since iOS 6, IMO, as far as the OS interface and behavior.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Why can't it let you just choose which experience you want?
    - f6v 6y ago
      We tried to build a universal app for two sides of a job board once. The app offered different workflows depending on whether you're a job seeker or a recruiter. Man, managing that UX- and code-wise was a pain the ass. Imagine doing that for the whole OS.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        This is a common workflow? two views talking to the same backend.
    - intergalplan 6y ago
      I like it better if 100% of the software on the device operates under the same constraints, so the developer of some app that I really need/want can't decide "no, you need to be in desktop-alike mode for this to run, because I just don't feel like dealing with tablet mode". It's basically the same problem as allowing multiple app stores, in that it'd fragment the experience and leave me having to choose between "do what the developer of this app wanted, which isn't what I wanted" and "don't have the app". I prefer that everyone has to deliver software the same way, under the same constraints, for predictability and user control of their environment (that is, I want the device to work like a traditional tablet, period, so I prefer that developers have to treat it that way, as it results in the device always working the way I want it to, for all software that runs on it) And in fact, I can currently choose the experience I want if I decide I want a typical multitasking desktop—by putting down the iPad and going over to a Mac (or Linux, or Windows, or FreeBSD machine, or whatever). Or, to extend the "I like a tablet that becomes things, modally" way of thinking about it, by putting the iPad in Remote Desktop mode and connecting over VNC or SSH or RDP to a traditional desktop or server.
swiley 6y ago
This is something I've been saying: Try cloning and building even a moderate project from github on iSH on the latest iThing with Apple silicon and compare the same on a pinephone with a decade old budget SoC. One will get painfully hot and visibly tick through a large fraction of the battery while not letting you look at anything else or look away from the screen without killing the 10s of minutes long operation while the other just does what you asked, does it quickly, and lets you do other things (on the phone or not) while it's working. And of course if there's something you don't like about the OS you can just change it on the phone. No need for some crazy setup process even to modify system software/configurations. You might say it's not fair because iSH isn't running natively but it's your only choice on the iPhone. EDIT: to be clear: even just running git clone on an iPhone in iSH can take upwards of 20 minutes and chew through ~20% of the battery on normal sized repos.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > Try cloning and building even a moderate project from github on iSH on the latest iThing with Apple silicon OK but you are describing something that 99.8% of iThing owners will never do.
  - swiley 6y ago
    sharing and building code is an important aspect of computing and making computers fundamental to people's lives while working to make them difficult to understand is very wrong. They don;t do it partly because it's so unpleasant.
    - rchaud 6y ago
      Watch a commercial for the iPad. It is not marketed as a computing device, to do CLI programming or spreadsheets on. It's selling points are stuff like Procreate and Lightroom...both 'work' apps but for the 'creative economy'. That being said, an executive at my company swears by the iPad Pro and he only ever uses it as a remote desktop device to log into his Citrix Windows environment.
    - 6y ago
andy_ppp 6y ago
I can’t speak to these issues, however it would be excellent to have one of these running a full OSX. I’d certainly get one if I had that level of control to develop on it and choose which software I installed without an App Store. As things stand these devices aren’t for us, so judging them on the needs of hacker news user vs more standard consumers isn’t really a fair fight. They are deliberately limited to appeal to your gran and your 6 year old and your casual user without too many issues.
- smasher164 6y ago
  I should mention that my frustration only came out of trying to switch my parents over from an old 32-bit Windows laptop to the iPad. They're already iPhone users and most of their time is either spent in a web browser or in document processing. So I figured that an iPad Pro with a magic keyboard would be perfect for them. Even still, the level of finesse they have with Excel and productivity software on a desktop OS was just not replicable on the iPad. It pained me to see my Dad work on his spreadsheets on the old laptop again. The silver lining to this is at least the iPad is good for watching videos and pretty decent at web browsing. They still use the device casually.
- FearlessNebula 6y ago
  My issue is that an $800 iPad Pro with keyboard and pencil ($1200 including the accessories) should be in a whole different class in terms of productivity than the $329 base iPad. But it's not. They both do the same thing (good for consumption, decent for creativity, pretty crappy for productivity)
  - ulfw 6y ago
    A $2000 PC isn't any different from a $900 one either. It's just faster/more memory/more SSD/better graphics card. It still runs the same Office/Photoshop/Chrome/whatever people use.
boardwaalk 6y ago
Yeah, I saw this announcement and was thinking, “Why do I need more power?” coming from a 2018 iPad Pro. All this power is cool, but, the design of iPadOS is just not conducive to me wanting to get anything done on it. I know that’s ambiguous and hand wavey. Part of it is certainly the multitasking. Part of it is the keyboard. Part of it is no local Unix or build tools or good code editor. Yeah, I can SSH into another machine, even using mosh on a local network so it feels entirely local. But given the choice I’ll bounce and use my Macbook or desktop instead and I always make that choice because I’m not in an iPad vacuum. It seems like they have everything lined up to put MacOS on the iPad, but it would be so unlike them to do it. What’ll they say, you can dual boot but you only boot MacOS if you have their expensive keyboard case attached? They wouldn’t do that. Maybe someone will hack it on there eventually. An M1 MacOS on an M1 iPad “hackintosh” doesn’t seem impossible.
- ideamotor 6y ago
  Apple should let users alternate between iOS and macOS on this device. They should also enable touch on the iMac and let users run iOS on that as well.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Agreed. They can already support mice, why can't I just use it as a computer when I want!
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    If Apple allowed macOS on the iPad, I wonder if they’d allow Rosetta?
  - brundolf 6y ago
    I would've thought this was a really silly notion until now, when they're not just running on similar chips but on the same chip.
  - LaSombra 6y ago
    I do not doubt that this may become a thing in the future
robertu 6y ago
True. But this is also what I am so exciting about what will be next on iPadOS on WWDC this year, hardware has already over Mac, it’s time to software.
- bluescrn 6y ago
  The problem is that nobody has really found a way to bridge the chasm between touchscreen UI design and mouse/keyboard UI design. Attempts to get there tend to dumb down and limit the functionality of the mouse+keyboard experience. I guess the obvious option would be to let Pro users switch an iPad into a 'MacOS mode' with the full desktop interface, mostly relying on an additional keyboard+mouse. But I can't see Apple going for anything like that. They're more likely to push the desktop interface more in the direction of iOS...
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    Windows 10 does it perfectly. If you haven't used a Windows 10 tablet for any amount of time, I'd suggest trying it out. I've used small and large Windows tablets for many years and have yet to find any big complaints about the UX.
    - tluyben2 6y ago
      In your opinion ofcourse. I find Windows 10 tablet mode ghastly, especially compared to ipados or ios. The only nice thing is that you have a real OS. If this iPad would run macos or windows, I would leave laptops and phones behind from that moment in. But alas. Maybe the 2nd gen surface X?
      - wayneftw 6y ago
        I suppose everybody here should always preface their comment with IMO... Good thing that if you don't like the way Windows 10 looks, you can easily change it. Other than that, functionally, everything just works and I'd challenge you to say what doesn't.
      - 6y ago
clairity 6y ago
> "...gesture-like latencies in between to get it to work." i hate that animations on ios are i/o blocking. every single time i have to enter my passcode, it misses at least one if not two of my keypresses, which means i have to erase the whole thing and do it more slowly since the missing keypresses are essentially random (not just the final one or two). another related annoyance is alert popups that occur more than once. the bounce animation takes over a second, so if you have multiple of these coming in succession, which happens constantly, it's a collossal waste of focus and time. i want to take a sledgehammer to my idevices every time these things happen.
- pkulak 6y ago
  "Pro" used to mean "professional" for Apple. Now it just means "expensive".
  - valesco 6y ago
    It’s been at least 13 years that the meaning has changed. Since the introduction of the 13 inch MacBook Pro.
    - drewzero1 6y ago
      While I do feel they should've continued the plain old "MacBook" designation for the 13" beyond 2008, I've got to admit the 2009-2012 13" MBP was a solid workhorse for a moderately professional user. In my experience with that whole line I really feel like only the 17" truly deserved the "pro" moniker since it got better options (processors, matte display) than the others.
      - erickhill 6y ago
        My 2015 MBPs (I have 2) rock. Ports galore, too. Hence why I've never upgraded.
        Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
JimBlackwood 6y ago
Exactly the same here, coming from a 2017 one. There hasn’t been a moment I lacked computing power or battery life or anything else. The software experience has been lacking. I was really hoping iPadOS would bring us closer to MacOS. There was even some hope that an M1 iPad would come with MacOS. I just want to be able to do things without needing an expensive app or a really shitty work around. If it wasn’t for needing the pencil, I’d have stepped away quite some years ago.
spideymans 6y ago
>Multitasking is cumbrous enough that it might as well not exist iPad OS desperately needs a persistent dock or taskbar, like we see on macOS and Windows. The gesture system is too cumbersome to be effective.
reader_mode 6y ago
I can think of one use case where it could be nice - content creators. For example I like to noodle on guitar and frankly guitar interface + iPad > laptop. Likewise for video editing, photo touchups, etc. I can see iPad for creatives using more processing power
- isatty 6y ago
  The iPad is great for musicians. I use mine for sheet music and also for noodling on the guitar but here’s what I don’t like about it: - you need a dongle to plug the interface and the charger together (maybe other interfaces can supply power but mine cannot) - my interface also behaves as an usb audio device (I suspect all of them do) but iOS does not let you choose audio out through internal speakers or airplay if the usb audio device is present - some apps don’t support multiple inputs and default to the first input (which on my interface is mic in), GarageBand does not have this problem Of course this is not a problem for things like digital pianos that just explore midi over Bluetooth.
notJim 6y ago
For me the overall experience just doesn't work as a productivity device. The gestures to multitask are too complex. Every edge and corner has a different meaning, and swiping does several different things depending on direction. It's not natural to have your monitor and keyboard super close together, and to have your monitor sitting directly on a desk. It's not comfortable to poke a semi-vertical touchscreen over a long period of time where you have to support your whole arm while also making precise movements with your fingers. Fingers are not precise enough to interact with basic elements like text fields and buttons. I'm sitting here at my desk with its large monitor on an arm, mechanical keyboard and precision mouse and appreciating the years of thought that went into making this setup work. I think there is a possibility of something better with an iPad like device, but Apple would need to be far more ambitious than they've been so far.
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  Productivity takes many shapes and forms. The use cases highlighted in the video were about capturing video podcasts, rendering previews in the field, etc. you can be productive without fitting into the traditional mold of productive computing. Thats what ipad is after.
  - jshen 6y ago
    ipad's limitations are arbitrary and have no strong reason to exist. I've been an apple fan for years, and bought my first PC in nearly 20 years recently because I shouldn't have to buy two very expensive apple devices (a mac, and an ipad) to cover all of my use cases.
    - emsy 6y ago
      Exactly, the Mac has very biased defaults but is open to customization. The iPad is very biased period. It’s „you’re using it wrong“ taken to the extreme. The device should work for the user. Every time I see a convoluted iPad remote webdev setup I can’t help but think the user is working for the device. (I have the same feeling towards using VIM as a general purpose IDE. It works but requires much more work than, say, using VSCode with a VI plug-in).
rasengan 6y ago
What I do these days is use an iPad Pro and use a cloud-based virtual desktop [1] so I have the best of both worlds with me. The caveat is that you can't do this without internet access. [1] https://shells.com/ https://shells.com/
- dmcginty 6y ago
  This is a neat idea, but I feel like an iPad Pro is overkill for accessing a virtual desktop. You could set up something similar with an old laptop for a fraction of the price.
  - drewzero1 6y ago
    Or an old regular iPad, if you like the form factor.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
busymom0 6y ago
I hope they are making these changes in order to take iPad into MacOS direction. Based on MacOS big sur UI changes (icons are now rounded corner iPad like, menu bar has more spacing and iPad like controls etc), I think they are prepping for it.
yakkers 6y ago
The software experience is the one thing I wish Apple would improve upon faster. It's got quite good as of late, but there's still a lot of things that could be way better all around. I can certainly agree that Excel on iPad is an awful experience, though. I gave up using my iPad for Excel stuff at work in short order.
samatman 6y ago
Things I do on an iPad, ranked by how unlikely I am to do them on another computer: - Draw. This is the big one. I'm no fine artist, but I do a bit of calligraphy now and then, and Procreate is amazing. - Make memes. It might not be more "productive" to caption funny pictures on my iPad than it would be to do it on desktop, but it's more fun. It feels more natural to manipulate images on a tablet. - Read PDFs. the 12.9" iPad is carefully sized to make US letter and A4 documents readable. I'll load a PDF up in one of the zones of my wide monitor if I'm using it as a reference for a slide deck or whatever, but if I'm just reading it, it's the iPad for me. - Edit video. I doubt I would stick with this work flow if I were a dedicated content creator. But I'm not, and stitching some footage off my mirrorless camera together, putting a soundtrack to it: the iPad makes this pleasant. - Look at photos. Also, showing them to other people. A couple weeks ago I took my iPad with me to the mechanic to show some pictures I had taken of my front bumper, lamentably separated from the rest of the vehicle in a fender bender. A phone might have sufficed, but a tablet is obviously better and I have one. When I'm in the mood to scroll through my memories, the iPad is the place to do it. - Twitter. This is the inflection point! I had a phase of taking my Twitter time on the tablet, and went back to using my laptop. Scrolling with a flick of the pencil is nice, but inputting text is very much not its strong suit, and there are ads. I don't like ads. Edited to add: I'm heavy on the gizmos. If I had to ditch one, it would be the iPad, and I have no interest in upgrading my 3rd gen whatsoever. But I'm glad I don't have to ditch it! For what it's good for, it really shines. I'm fond of it.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  Pretty similar for me. - reading pdf and books - import and watch photos - write notes and draw sketches and plans with the pencil - bring along in the shop I also use it as a laptop sometimes, with an external keyboard. As a linux/vim user, anything with an ssh client is good enough to get work done anyway. I still find it preferable to a windows machine.
- brundolf 6y ago
  I think the idea is: for most of these, extra horsepower isn't much of a selling point (video editing being the big exception). Not that it's bad - it means your device will stay capable for longer, if nothing else - it's just a weird thing to focus on in marketing materials
nunez 6y ago
Hard agree. M1 on the iPad is great from a technical perspective (having the same CPU/CPU arch on desktop and mobile platforms is a game-changer), but doesn't really do anything for me right now when things like Google Sheets are a pain to use on it.
- sharken 6y ago
  It does chew through a fair bit of your IT budget though, but yeah no doubt its a cool device. But, for the asking price of the iPad Pro I'd rather get a nice PC laptop with latest gen Ryzen and Nvidia hardware. Guess I'm just not in the target group for the iPad Pro.
crooked-v 6y ago
Really, at this point the only things keeping me from replacing my everyday-use personal laptop with an iPad Pro or iPad Air are: - The lack of a true development environment local to the device - The lack of true background app support for things that need persistent connections (ssh clients, etc)
- lofi_lory 6y ago
  I honestly think there is a great opportunity for a Linux tablet plus pen input (high dpi; precision and low latency). People just don't know yet, that's what they want. FOSS would thrive there.
- kimburgess 6y ago
  I’ve been working from an iPad as my main machine for the past couple of years now. Definitely doable (but as other have said, there’s _is_ pain when working local only). I keep an AWS box spinning that runs docker and my dev env (vim as editor), then connect to this via Blink shell. This lets me port forward via SSH. If I need L2 I then use ZeroTier. My SSH key lives in my local Secure Enclave and then forwards via ssh-agent when needed on the external box (eg pushing commits). Background offloading is avoiding by enabling the geo lock, which also has the bonus of tearing down any SSH connections if the device leaves the lock area. Ends up as a pretty neat setup.
Grustaf 6y ago
I personally think multitasking works great, but I guess that's subjective. The claim about external screens is not true though, as a developer you can put anything you want on an external screen, mirroring is just the fallback behaviour. Almost all apps obviously take advantage of the keyboard, and 100% of apps where it makes sense. The trackpad can also be used in all apps, although it is true that not all apps are optimised for it yet, but all standard UI elements support it automatically. Not sure why you'd expect iPad apps to be similar to the desktop variants, it seems that would be pretty pointless no? You might not like the iPad UX, but many people prefer it.
- smasher164 6y ago
  > as a developer you can put anything you want on an external screen as a developer, not a user. I can’t have two different apps running on different displays, nor can I take advantage of the display’s resolution. In practice, everything is mirrored. > Almost all apps obviously take advantage of the keyboard When I say take advantage of the keyboard and mouse, I mean to offer shortcuts/navigation akin to what you’d find on a desktop. I don’t mean to say that apps should be exactly like desktop apps, but the iPad UX is making it harder to use the current iteration of document/spreadsheet apps. There are things the iPad does strictly better, of course. But I don’t see these experiences as mutually exclusive.
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    It is true that the second screen is controlled by the current app, but I don’t think there are any other limitations. There are absolutely keyboard shortcuts. Obviously this is up to developers, a lot of apps like Things, Shapr3d etc have excellent shortcut support. It takes a while to optimise UX in a new interface paradigm, amd again this is obviously up to developers. There are few technical limitations. And considering how little Excel on the PC has changed over the last 20 years, we should be happy. And look at Numbers and Pages on iPad, really good UX.
fomine3 6y ago
Multitask UI is still horrible. I sometimes creates new Safari windows in mistake, closing them and return to correct window is not an easy task.
kidagakash 6y ago
reply test
nvarsj 6y ago
Yeah I seriously don't understand Apple here. The Microsoft Surface Pro is such a great example in contrast, offering a full OS in a tablet form. I had a Pro for about 6 months and I loved that thing, the only problem was the hardware was subpar and failed on me twice so I gave up on it. An iPad Pro M1 running OS X would be my dream portable machine. iOS is such a waste on this device. A crippled, mobile OS that barely lets you do any productivity work. Why, Apple, why.

smoldesu 6y ago

My thoughts exactly. Apple might have the apps, but actually getting stuff done on it feels cumbersome and strange. I'm not sure why they continue to stretch the iPad in so many directions when they could just be focusing on a good tablet experience.

monkmartinez 6y ago
It is a great tablet experience! They could have a dual boot option where you get a MacOS for real work. Otherwise you are right, don't try to make real work happen in the current form. SO MUCH FRICTION to copy and move a file around for example. The bulk of my use is strictly tablet stuff and I think it is really great at that.
- jack_riminton 6y ago
  Exactly. The OP complaining that it’s cumbersome to use Excel, well yeah, but the things tablets are designed for; dragging, drawing, tapping etc. It excels at (pun intended)
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    Sure, but I think the overall sentiment is that Apple hasn't really pushed the iPad any further as an input device. It still does those drawing, dragging and tapping things well, but why haven't they pushed those gestures to work with context menus or have some unified purpose? In some ways, the iPad is still the bare minimum of being a tablet, but it's mastered that concept. As Apple continues to market it as a "computer" though, they have a responsibility to improve the computer aspects of it: file management, improved user control, and developer solutions are all weak or missing links in the chain here. Sure it does tablet well, but it sucks at computer.

f6v 6y ago

I'm still skeptical that Apple wants it to be a general-purpose computer.

roody15 6y ago
It doesn’t. It is more a consumer console than personal computer IMO
intergalplan 6y ago
Personally, if they make it a general-purpose computer, I'll be eagerly waiting for them or someone else to create the next iPad. It's already gone too far that way, IMO—I like it as a slab of smart glass that can become, entirely, a whole bunch of different, separate, specific tools, not as yet another complex, generic, multi-tasking computer. In that respect, it's mostly been going downhill since iOS 6, IMO, as far as the OS interface and behavior.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Why can't it let you just choose which experience you want?
  - f6v 6y ago
    We tried to build a universal app for two sides of a job board once. The app offered different workflows depending on whether you're a job seeker or a recruiter. Man, managing that UX- and code-wise was a pain the ass. Imagine doing that for the whole OS.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      This is a common workflow? two views talking to the same backend.
  - intergalplan 6y ago
    I like it better if 100% of the software on the device operates under the same constraints, so the developer of some app that I really need/want can't decide "no, you need to be in desktop-alike mode for this to run, because I just don't feel like dealing with tablet mode". It's basically the same problem as allowing multiple app stores, in that it'd fragment the experience and leave me having to choose between "do what the developer of this app wanted, which isn't what I wanted" and "don't have the app". I prefer that everyone has to deliver software the same way, under the same constraints, for predictability and user control of their environment (that is, I want the device to work like a traditional tablet, period, so I prefer that developers have to treat it that way, as it results in the device always working the way I want it to, for all software that runs on it) And in fact, I can currently choose the experience I want if I decide I want a typical multitasking desktop—by putting down the iPad and going over to a Mac (or Linux, or Windows, or FreeBSD machine, or whatever). Or, to extend the "I like a tablet that becomes things, modally" way of thinking about it, by putting the iPad in Remote Desktop mode and connecting over VNC or SSH or RDP to a traditional desktop or server.

swiley 6y ago

This is something I've been saying: Try cloning and building even a moderate project from github on iSH on the latest iThing with Apple silicon and compare the same on a pinephone with a decade old budget SoC. One will get painfully hot and visibly tick through a large fraction of the battery while not letting you look at anything else or look away from the screen without killing the 10s of minutes long operation while the other just does what you asked, does it quickly, and lets you do other things (on the phone or not) while it's working. And of course if there's something you don't like about the OS you can just change it on the phone. No need for some crazy setup process even to modify system software/configurations. You might say it's not fair because iSH isn't running natively but it's your only choice on the iPhone. EDIT: to be clear: even just running git clone on an iPhone in iSH can take upwards of 20 minutes and chew through ~20% of the battery on normal sized repos.

throwawayboise 6y ago
> Try cloning and building even a moderate project from github on iSH on the latest iThing with Apple silicon OK but you are describing something that 99.8% of iThing owners will never do.
- swiley 6y ago
  sharing and building code is an important aspect of computing and making computers fundamental to people's lives while working to make them difficult to understand is very wrong. They don;t do it partly because it's so unpleasant.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    Watch a commercial for the iPad. It is not marketed as a computing device, to do CLI programming or spreadsheets on. It's selling points are stuff like Procreate and Lightroom...both 'work' apps but for the 'creative economy'. That being said, an executive at my company swears by the iPad Pro and he only ever uses it as a remote desktop device to log into his Citrix Windows environment.
  - 6y ago

andy_ppp 6y ago

I can’t speak to these issues, however it would be excellent to have one of these running a full OSX. I’d certainly get one if I had that level of control to develop on it and choose which software I installed without an App Store. As things stand these devices aren’t for us, so judging them on the needs of hacker news user vs more standard consumers isn’t really a fair fight. They are deliberately limited to appeal to your gran and your 6 year old and your casual user without too many issues.

smasher164 6y ago
I should mention that my frustration only came out of trying to switch my parents over from an old 32-bit Windows laptop to the iPad. They're already iPhone users and most of their time is either spent in a web browser or in document processing. So I figured that an iPad Pro with a magic keyboard would be perfect for them. Even still, the level of finesse they have with Excel and productivity software on a desktop OS was just not replicable on the iPad. It pained me to see my Dad work on his spreadsheets on the old laptop again. The silver lining to this is at least the iPad is good for watching videos and pretty decent at web browsing. They still use the device casually.
FearlessNebula 6y ago
My issue is that an $800 iPad Pro with keyboard and pencil ($1200 including the accessories) should be in a whole different class in terms of productivity than the $329 base iPad. But it's not. They both do the same thing (good for consumption, decent for creativity, pretty crappy for productivity)
- ulfw 6y ago
  A $2000 PC isn't any different from a $900 one either. It's just faster/more memory/more SSD/better graphics card. It still runs the same Office/Photoshop/Chrome/whatever people use.

boardwaalk 6y ago

Yeah, I saw this announcement and was thinking, “Why do I need more power?” coming from a 2018 iPad Pro. All this power is cool, but, the design of iPadOS is just not conducive to me wanting to get anything done on it. I know that’s ambiguous and hand wavey. Part of it is certainly the multitasking. Part of it is the keyboard. Part of it is no local Unix or build tools or good code editor. Yeah, I can SSH into another machine, even using mosh on a local network so it feels entirely local. But given the choice I’ll bounce and use my Macbook or desktop instead and I always make that choice because I’m not in an iPad vacuum. It seems like they have everything lined up to put MacOS on the iPad, but it would be so unlike them to do it. What’ll they say, you can dual boot but you only boot MacOS if you have their expensive keyboard case attached? They wouldn’t do that. Maybe someone will hack it on there eventually. An M1 MacOS on an M1 iPad “hackintosh” doesn’t seem impossible.

ideamotor 6y ago
Apple should let users alternate between iOS and macOS on this device. They should also enable touch on the iMac and let users run iOS on that as well.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Agreed. They can already support mice, why can't I just use it as a computer when I want!
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  If Apple allowed macOS on the iPad, I wonder if they’d allow Rosetta?
- brundolf 6y ago
  I would've thought this was a really silly notion until now, when they're not just running on similar chips but on the same chip.
- LaSombra 6y ago
  I do not doubt that this may become a thing in the future

robertu 6y ago

True. But this is also what I am so exciting about what will be next on iPadOS on WWDC this year, hardware has already over Mac, it’s time to software.

bluescrn 6y ago
The problem is that nobody has really found a way to bridge the chasm between touchscreen UI design and mouse/keyboard UI design. Attempts to get there tend to dumb down and limit the functionality of the mouse+keyboard experience. I guess the obvious option would be to let Pro users switch an iPad into a 'MacOS mode' with the full desktop interface, mostly relying on an additional keyboard+mouse. But I can't see Apple going for anything like that. They're more likely to push the desktop interface more in the direction of iOS...
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Windows 10 does it perfectly. If you haven't used a Windows 10 tablet for any amount of time, I'd suggest trying it out. I've used small and large Windows tablets for many years and have yet to find any big complaints about the UX.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    In your opinion ofcourse. I find Windows 10 tablet mode ghastly, especially compared to ipados or ios. The only nice thing is that you have a real OS. If this iPad would run macos or windows, I would leave laptops and phones behind from that moment in. But alas. Maybe the 2nd gen surface X?
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      I suppose everybody here should always preface their comment with IMO... Good thing that if you don't like the way Windows 10 looks, you can easily change it. Other than that, functionally, everything just works and I'd challenge you to say what doesn't.
    - 6y ago

clairity 6y ago

> "...gesture-like latencies in between to get it to work." i hate that animations on ios are i/o blocking. every single time i have to enter my passcode, it misses at least one if not two of my keypresses, which means i have to erase the whole thing and do it more slowly since the missing keypresses are essentially random (not just the final one or two). another related annoyance is alert popups that occur more than once. the bounce animation takes over a second, so if you have multiple of these coming in succession, which happens constantly, it's a collossal waste of focus and time. i want to take a sledgehammer to my idevices every time these things happen.

pkulak 6y ago
"Pro" used to mean "professional" for Apple. Now it just means "expensive".
- valesco 6y ago
  It’s been at least 13 years that the meaning has changed. Since the introduction of the 13 inch MacBook Pro.
  - drewzero1 6y ago
    While I do feel they should've continued the plain old "MacBook" designation for the 13" beyond 2008, I've got to admit the 2009-2012 13" MBP was a solid workhorse for a moderately professional user. In my experience with that whole line I really feel like only the 17" truly deserved the "pro" moniker since it got better options (processors, matte display) than the others.
    - erickhill 6y ago
      My 2015 MBPs (I have 2) rock. Ports galore, too. Hence why I've never upgraded.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

JimBlackwood 6y ago

Exactly the same here, coming from a 2017 one. There hasn’t been a moment I lacked computing power or battery life or anything else. The software experience has been lacking. I was really hoping iPadOS would bring us closer to MacOS. There was even some hope that an M1 iPad would come with MacOS. I just want to be able to do things without needing an expensive app or a really shitty work around. If it wasn’t for needing the pencil, I’d have stepped away quite some years ago.

spideymans 6y ago

>Multitasking is cumbrous enough that it might as well not exist iPad OS desperately needs a persistent dock or taskbar, like we see on macOS and Windows. The gesture system is too cumbersome to be effective.

reader_mode 6y ago

I can think of one use case where it could be nice - content creators. For example I like to noodle on guitar and frankly guitar interface + iPad > laptop. Likewise for video editing, photo touchups, etc. I can see iPad for creatives using more processing power

isatty 6y ago
The iPad is great for musicians. I use mine for sheet music and also for noodling on the guitar but here’s what I don’t like about it: - you need a dongle to plug the interface and the charger together (maybe other interfaces can supply power but mine cannot) - my interface also behaves as an usb audio device (I suspect all of them do) but iOS does not let you choose audio out through internal speakers or airplay if the usb audio device is present - some apps don’t support multiple inputs and default to the first input (which on my interface is mic in), GarageBand does not have this problem Of course this is not a problem for things like digital pianos that just explore midi over Bluetooth.

notJim 6y ago

For me the overall experience just doesn't work as a productivity device. The gestures to multitask are too complex. Every edge and corner has a different meaning, and swiping does several different things depending on direction. It's not natural to have your monitor and keyboard super close together, and to have your monitor sitting directly on a desk. It's not comfortable to poke a semi-vertical touchscreen over a long period of time where you have to support your whole arm while also making precise movements with your fingers. Fingers are not precise enough to interact with basic elements like text fields and buttons. I'm sitting here at my desk with its large monitor on an arm, mechanical keyboard and precision mouse and appreciating the years of thought that went into making this setup work. I think there is a possibility of something better with an iPad like device, but Apple would need to be far more ambitious than they've been so far.

enos_feedler 6y ago
Productivity takes many shapes and forms. The use cases highlighted in the video were about capturing video podcasts, rendering previews in the field, etc. you can be productive without fitting into the traditional mold of productive computing. Thats what ipad is after.
- jshen 6y ago
  ipad's limitations are arbitrary and have no strong reason to exist. I've been an apple fan for years, and bought my first PC in nearly 20 years recently because I shouldn't have to buy two very expensive apple devices (a mac, and an ipad) to cover all of my use cases.
  - emsy 6y ago
    Exactly, the Mac has very biased defaults but is open to customization. The iPad is very biased period. It’s „you’re using it wrong“ taken to the extreme. The device should work for the user. Every time I see a convoluted iPad remote webdev setup I can’t help but think the user is working for the device. (I have the same feeling towards using VIM as a general purpose IDE. It works but requires much more work than, say, using VSCode with a VI plug-in).

rasengan 6y ago

What I do these days is use an iPad Pro and use a cloud-based virtual desktop [1] so I have the best of both worlds with me. The caveat is that you can't do this without internet access. [1] https://shells.com/ https://shells.com/

dmcginty 6y ago
This is a neat idea, but I feel like an iPad Pro is overkill for accessing a virtual desktop. You could set up something similar with an old laptop for a fraction of the price.
- drewzero1 6y ago
  Or an old regular iPad, if you like the form factor.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

busymom0 6y ago

I hope they are making these changes in order to take iPad into MacOS direction. Based on MacOS big sur UI changes (icons are now rounded corner iPad like, menu bar has more spacing and iPad like controls etc), I think they are prepping for it.

yakkers 6y ago

The software experience is the one thing I wish Apple would improve upon faster. It's got quite good as of late, but there's still a lot of things that could be way better all around. I can certainly agree that Excel on iPad is an awful experience, though. I gave up using my iPad for Excel stuff at work in short order.

samatman 6y ago

Things I do on an iPad, ranked by how unlikely I am to do them on another computer: - Draw. This is the big one. I'm no fine artist, but I do a bit of calligraphy now and then, and Procreate is amazing. - Make memes. It might not be more "productive" to caption funny pictures on my iPad than it would be to do it on desktop, but it's more fun. It feels more natural to manipulate images on a tablet. - Read PDFs. the 12.9" iPad is carefully sized to make US letter and A4 documents readable. I'll load a PDF up in one of the zones of my wide monitor if I'm using it as a reference for a slide deck or whatever, but if I'm just reading it, it's the iPad for me. - Edit video. I doubt I would stick with this work flow if I were a dedicated content creator. But I'm not, and stitching some footage off my mirrorless camera together, putting a soundtrack to it: the iPad makes this pleasant. - Look at photos. Also, showing them to other people. A couple weeks ago I took my iPad with me to the mechanic to show some pictures I had taken of my front bumper, lamentably separated from the rest of the vehicle in a fender bender. A phone might have sufficed, but a tablet is obviously better and I have one. When I'm in the mood to scroll through my memories, the iPad is the place to do it. - Twitter. This is the inflection point! I had a phase of taking my Twitter time on the tablet, and went back to using my laptop. Scrolling with a flick of the pencil is nice, but inputting text is very much not its strong suit, and there are ads. I don't like ads. Edited to add: I'm heavy on the gizmos. If I had to ditch one, it would be the iPad, and I have no interest in upgrading my 3rd gen whatsoever. But I'm glad I don't have to ditch it! For what it's good for, it really shines. I'm fond of it.

jeromenerf 6y ago
Pretty similar for me. - reading pdf and books - import and watch photos - write notes and draw sketches and plans with the pencil - bring along in the shop I also use it as a laptop sometimes, with an external keyboard. As a linux/vim user, anything with an ssh client is good enough to get work done anyway. I still find it preferable to a windows machine.
brundolf 6y ago
I think the idea is: for most of these, extra horsepower isn't much of a selling point (video editing being the big exception). Not that it's bad - it means your device will stay capable for longer, if nothing else - it's just a weird thing to focus on in marketing materials

nunez 6y ago

Hard agree. M1 on the iPad is great from a technical perspective (having the same CPU/CPU arch on desktop and mobile platforms is a game-changer), but doesn't really do anything for me right now when things like Google Sheets are a pain to use on it.

sharken 6y ago
It does chew through a fair bit of your IT budget though, but yeah no doubt its a cool device. But, for the asking price of the iPad Pro I'd rather get a nice PC laptop with latest gen Ryzen and Nvidia hardware. Guess I'm just not in the target group for the iPad Pro.

crooked-v 6y ago

Really, at this point the only things keeping me from replacing my everyday-use personal laptop with an iPad Pro or iPad Air are: - The lack of a true development environment local to the device - The lack of true background app support for things that need persistent connections (ssh clients, etc)

lofi_lory 6y ago
I honestly think there is a great opportunity for a Linux tablet plus pen input (high dpi; precision and low latency). People just don't know yet, that's what they want. FOSS would thrive there.
kimburgess 6y ago
I’ve been working from an iPad as my main machine for the past couple of years now. Definitely doable (but as other have said, there’s _is_ pain when working local only). I keep an AWS box spinning that runs docker and my dev env (vim as editor), then connect to this via Blink shell. This lets me port forward via SSH. If I need L2 I then use ZeroTier. My SSH key lives in my local Secure Enclave and then forwards via ssh-agent when needed on the external box (eg pushing commits). Background offloading is avoiding by enabling the geo lock, which also has the bonus of tearing down any SSH connections if the device leaves the lock area. Ends up as a pretty neat setup.

Grustaf 6y ago

I personally think multitasking works great, but I guess that's subjective. The claim about external screens is not true though, as a developer you can put anything you want on an external screen, mirroring is just the fallback behaviour. Almost all apps obviously take advantage of the keyboard, and 100% of apps where it makes sense. The trackpad can also be used in all apps, although it is true that not all apps are optimised for it yet, but all standard UI elements support it automatically. Not sure why you'd expect iPad apps to be similar to the desktop variants, it seems that would be pretty pointless no? You might not like the iPad UX, but many people prefer it.

smasher164 6y ago
> as a developer you can put anything you want on an external screen as a developer, not a user. I can’t have two different apps running on different displays, nor can I take advantage of the display’s resolution. In practice, everything is mirrored. > Almost all apps obviously take advantage of the keyboard When I say take advantage of the keyboard and mouse, I mean to offer shortcuts/navigation akin to what you’d find on a desktop. I don’t mean to say that apps should be exactly like desktop apps, but the iPad UX is making it harder to use the current iteration of document/spreadsheet apps. There are things the iPad does strictly better, of course. But I don’t see these experiences as mutually exclusive.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  It is true that the second screen is controlled by the current app, but I don’t think there are any other limitations. There are absolutely keyboard shortcuts. Obviously this is up to developers, a lot of apps like Things, Shapr3d etc have excellent shortcut support. It takes a while to optimise UX in a new interface paradigm, amd again this is obviously up to developers. There are few technical limitations. And considering how little Excel on the PC has changed over the last 20 years, we should be happy. And look at Numbers and Pages on iPad, really good UX.

fomine3 6y ago

Multitask UI is still horrible. I sometimes creates new Safari windows in mistake, closing them and return to correct window is not an easy task.

kidagakash 6y ago

reply test

nvarsj 6y ago

Yeah I seriously don't understand Apple here. The Microsoft Surface Pro is such a great example in contrast, offering a full OS in a tablet form. I had a Pro for about 6 months and I loved that thing, the only problem was the hardware was subpar and failed on me twice so I gave up on it. An iPad Pro M1 running OS X would be my dream portable machine. iOS is such a waste on this device. A crippled, mobile OS that barely lets you do any productivity work. Why, Apple, why.