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I got a phone call from my nephew a few weeks back asking how to mod an NES rom. My wife pretty frequently wants to do simple room diagrams. I'm hosting a gam

I got a phone call from my nephew a few weeks back asking how to mod an NES rom. My wife pretty frequently wants to do simple room diagrams. I'm hosting a game night for an RPG. Everybody needs a laptop - the player software doesn't work in Safari. I frequently pull and add notes to large passages of text. My notes are kept in markdown and in the cloud. This workflow is basically unusable outside of a real computer. Most people want real computers.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Your definition of “most” is wrong. MOST people don’t want or need to do any of the things you mention. BUT let’s talk about them: 1. The ROM. Sure, hardware hacking is probably going to require specialized tools not available in iOS. Most people don’t do this, though. 2. There’s nothing about “simple room diagrams” that suggests this is a task you need a traditional desktop/laptop to do — unless you’re insisting on using a drawing program that only exists on those platforms. No points here. 3. I’m taking your word for it that your software won’t work in Safari, but plenty of us played RPGs for decades without having any computers around at all, and I’ve definitely been party to game nights where an iPad was entirely sufficient. 4. I mostly live in text files, too. You know what works great on my iPad? Text files. No idea what you’ve done to your workflow to make it impossible to do on a tablet, but suffice it to say it’s not an inherent limit to iOS (or, I presume, Android). All that said, nobody is arguing that YOU should switch tools. But it’s hilariously wrong to insist that iPads aren’t “real” computers, or aren’t capable of handling a broad range of general computing tasks that formerly required full-on laptops or desktops.