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iPad has some good tools for content creation. Procreate for example is probably one of the best drawing tools available at the moment. But these apps are sti

by skohan 5y ago

iPad has some good tools for content creation. Procreate for example is probably one of the best drawing tools available at the moment. But these apps are still largely islands. Powerful pro workflows require multiple applications to be used together in interesting ways. With iPad that's impossible. You have an anemic file system, and strict limitations on what an app can do. What I want is a proper *Nix layer, like I have on macOS. For instance, if I want to synchronize my files across multiple systems, I need my iPad app to have a built-in solution for that. I want to be able to run a daemon in the background to synchronize my creative work with an S3 bucket using a custom protocol of my choosing. That kind of customizability is just not possible on iPad, and it's a huge limitation.

Copernicron 5y ago
Even a lot of amateur workflows are difficult to impossible on the iPad. I'm an amateur photographer and after using the iPad Pro as my primary editing computer for months I gave up and went back to Windows. I wanted to make it work. I really did. The file system makes the workflow incredibly painful, my preferred RAW converter isn't available, and the Adobe apps that are available are sorely lacking compared to the desktop versions. I have a couple hundred dollars worth of Photoshop plug-ins and none of them work on the iPad. There isn't even a way to load plug-ins on iPad. I can't print at all (yes, some of us still like to print). Backups can't be automated. Internal storage is very limited and external drives are painful to use. There's simply no way to tell when the iPad is accessing the external drive or not. I have had to perform multiple filesystem repairs because of that. The iPad has some definite advantages. Battery life is great, performance is great, the screen is amazing, but it's all severely crippled by the software. Until Apple makes the OS as powerful as MacOS there is no point at all in having so much power that you simply can't use.

by skohan 5y ago

Copernicron 5y ago

Even a lot of amateur workflows are difficult to impossible on the iPad. I'm an amateur photographer and after using the iPad Pro as my primary editing computer for months I gave up and went back to Windows. I wanted to make it work. I really did. The file system makes the workflow incredibly painful, my preferred RAW converter isn't available, and the Adobe apps that are available are sorely lacking compared to the desktop versions. I have a couple hundred dollars worth of Photoshop plug-ins and none of them work on the iPad. There isn't even a way to load plug-ins on iPad. I can't print at all (yes, some of us still like to print). Backups can't be automated. Internal storage is very limited and external drives are painful to use. There's simply no way to tell when the iPad is accessing the external drive or not. I have had to perform multiple filesystem repairs because of that. The iPad has some definite advantages. Battery life is great, performance is great, the screen is amazing, but it's all severely crippled by the software. Until Apple makes the OS as powerful as MacOS there is no point at all in having so much power that you simply can't use.