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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 becaus

by 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).
lazide 6y ago
It’s been gratifying to see I’m not the only one with these issues! That said, lineage wise the limitations and issues aren’t arbitrary - iPadOS is basically a slightly upsized clone of iOS, and just like you wouldn’t be using your phone for precision data/pointing (or if you were it wouldn’t be as buy a deal, because you’d just be using a finger/thumb and not reaching across a keyboard), the original nature of iPad interactions are similar. Obviously seeing some improvements, but for instance copying 50GB of high precision photos (without potentially mangling them/importing them because it’s a dataset not a bunch of snapshots!) is a terrible experience in iPadOS - and a trivial exercise in every laptop/pc OS out there. They’ve got a long way to go, unfortunately, especially for enterprise use cases. The hardware really has potential though!
- jshen 6y ago
  yeah, I love the limitations in ios for my phone, but not for my computer!
enos_feedler 6y ago
If ipad’s limitations were arbitrary they wouldn’t exist. The product design is shaped by the use cases it optimizes for. This is no different than saying a GPU has arbitrary limitations for running general C++ code. In some sense yes, you could make a single thread c++ compiler target the GPU, but 1) it wouldnt fit the design well and 2) changing the design to make it work well would mess up the original intended use case.
- jshen 6y ago
  That's fair, arbitrary wasn't the right word. They were chosen for the use case of a smart phone, not a general purpose computer. People pretending that they are reasonable for a general purpose computer are missing the boat IMO. But some things are arbitrary. For example, only allowing one web browser engine is 100% arbitrary (or worse, an abuse of monopoly power).
  - enos_feedler 6y ago
    MacOS allows arbitrary web browser engines, yet I just use safari. My mac has never felt less like a general purpose computer because of this. How is this related?
    - jshen 6y ago
      I’m a developer that often does web work. I need to test on multiple browsers, which is literally impossible on the iPad for no good reason.
      - patates 6y ago
        Additionally: I have this beautiful device with great computing power but I can't install my favorite extensions on its browser.
  - enos_feedler 6y ago
    Yes those people are missing the boat. We don’t have to worry about them though. Let’em suffer the pain of ignorance ;)
- indymike 6y ago
  The limitations were born of hardware weaknesses when mobile devices were brought to market. The do seem arbitrary now, but they made sense 10 years ago. Those hardware weaknesses are long gone (it's not just Apple Silicon that is blazing fast in ARM land). Maybe it's time to rethink the whole mobile OS thing.
- 6y ago

by jshen 6y ago

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).

lazide 6y ago

It’s been gratifying to see I’m not the only one with these issues! That said, lineage wise the limitations and issues aren’t arbitrary - iPadOS is basically a slightly upsized clone of iOS, and just like you wouldn’t be using your phone for precision data/pointing (or if you were it wouldn’t be as buy a deal, because you’d just be using a finger/thumb and not reaching across a keyboard), the original nature of iPad interactions are similar. Obviously seeing some improvements, but for instance copying 50GB of high precision photos (without potentially mangling them/importing them because it’s a dataset not a bunch of snapshots!) is a terrible experience in iPadOS - and a trivial exercise in every laptop/pc OS out there. They’ve got a long way to go, unfortunately, especially for enterprise use cases. The hardware really has potential though!

jshen 6y ago
yeah, I love the limitations in ios for my phone, but not for my computer!

enos_feedler 6y ago

If ipad’s limitations were arbitrary they wouldn’t exist. The product design is shaped by the use cases it optimizes for. This is no different than saying a GPU has arbitrary limitations for running general C++ code. In some sense yes, you could make a single thread c++ compiler target the GPU, but 1) it wouldnt fit the design well and 2) changing the design to make it work well would mess up the original intended use case.

jshen 6y ago
That's fair, arbitrary wasn't the right word. They were chosen for the use case of a smart phone, not a general purpose computer. People pretending that they are reasonable for a general purpose computer are missing the boat IMO. But some things are arbitrary. For example, only allowing one web browser engine is 100% arbitrary (or worse, an abuse of monopoly power).
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  MacOS allows arbitrary web browser engines, yet I just use safari. My mac has never felt less like a general purpose computer because of this. How is this related?
  - jshen 6y ago
    I’m a developer that often does web work. I need to test on multiple browsers, which is literally impossible on the iPad for no good reason.
    - patates 6y ago
      Additionally: I have this beautiful device with great computing power but I can't install my favorite extensions on its browser.
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  Yes those people are missing the boat. We don’t have to worry about them though. Let’em suffer the pain of ignorance ;)
indymike 6y ago
The limitations were born of hardware weaknesses when mobile devices were brought to market. The do seem arbitrary now, but they made sense 10 years ago. Those hardware weaknesses are long gone (it's not just Apple Silicon that is blazing fast in ARM land). Maybe it's time to rethink the whole mobile OS thing.
6y ago