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I too was skeptical for a long time, but a couple of days ago, after spotting a second hand iPad (6th gen from 2018) for 90€, I picked it up and I’m actually su

I too was skeptical for a long time, but a couple of days ago, after spotting a second hand iPad (6th gen from 2018) for 90€, I picked it up and I’m actually super impressed. The difference here is expectation vs. money spent and the value received. Last time I had a tablet, it was the Nexus 7-inch (the screen size of modern phones) and my GF’s surface tablet with 2-4GB of RAM running an entire desktop Windows experience which should be prohibited by law. This along with me seeing some relatives having iPads across the years for web browsing and email, I never felt they’d be useful for much of anything at all. However, yesterday I managed to mix some music creating a nice melody, edit some of my best photos in Lightroom, annotate PDFs for my thesis’ literature review while copying notes into MS Word, and use it as a second display to my M1 Macbook Air with the sidecar function and it’s been wonderful. The main reason I got it for, however, is the 20€ apple pencil alternative I ordered for my creative drawing and for illustrating my blog. So far it’s frankly amazing, particularly considering the little money I’ve spent. However, stretching its abilities to coding or anything else seriously productive is definitely asking to have some unnecessary difficulties in life. Especially when you spend so much money for expensive models. I guess common sense by now would imply that if you want to do serious work, just get a laptop instead.

not_your_vase 3y ago
iPads are great tablets - even the cheapest ones. You can't go wrong with any iPads from the last n-3 generations. But they are tablets. They do tablet-y things great. Other things not so much.
- iamsanteri 3y ago
  Yeah, I always thought it’s only good for architects with their drawings or for businesses offering product configurators and such to their customers in their physical spaces or museums, etc. But look at that, instead of carrying one more paper notebook in my bag I now have this extra thing in addition to my laptop and it’s pretty good!
  - jug 3y ago
    This is a good point. I criticized it in another post here in typical Hacker News fashion but just to add some positivity, iPad Pro is great for precisely architects and engineers bringing CAD drawings etc because the guys pack a tablet with a large screen with them to the actual site and can intuitively work with and demo the project with their hands alone. I know this works because we have people at work doing precisely this and they wanted the big displays for ease of use and showing. But be very cautious if you need to integrate multiple applications and maybe even those not on the iPad (like Visual Studio Code), having to restort to web interfaces or remote computing apps, terminals... Stuff exists for all of this but it's going to get progressively more painful from my experience, the more involved and "not in this single app" your workflow is. If you stay like 95% of the time on the iPad and a very few apps in a very basic workflow (like bring a CAD drawing to the iPad before you head out), sure that's a good iPad Pro use, I think!
    - jdechko 3y ago
      Or marking up PDF plans and reviewing the field plan review comments with the pencil in the field. It’s better than trying to manage 60+ tabloid-size pages and a 30 page document in the field. It’s a tool that’s really good for some things but not for others. Unfortunately, it’s the software, and not the hardware, that’s holding it back.

not_your_vase 3y ago

iPads are great tablets - even the cheapest ones. You can't go wrong with any iPads from the last n-3 generations. But they are tablets. They do tablet-y things great. Other things not so much.

iamsanteri 3y ago
Yeah, I always thought it’s only good for architects with their drawings or for businesses offering product configurators and such to their customers in their physical spaces or museums, etc. But look at that, instead of carrying one more paper notebook in my bag I now have this extra thing in addition to my laptop and it’s pretty good!
- jug 3y ago
  This is a good point. I criticized it in another post here in typical Hacker News fashion but just to add some positivity, iPad Pro is great for precisely architects and engineers bringing CAD drawings etc because the guys pack a tablet with a large screen with them to the actual site and can intuitively work with and demo the project with their hands alone. I know this works because we have people at work doing precisely this and they wanted the big displays for ease of use and showing. But be very cautious if you need to integrate multiple applications and maybe even those not on the iPad (like Visual Studio Code), having to restort to web interfaces or remote computing apps, terminals... Stuff exists for all of this but it's going to get progressively more painful from my experience, the more involved and "not in this single app" your workflow is. If you stay like 95% of the time on the iPad and a very few apps in a very basic workflow (like bring a CAD drawing to the iPad before you head out), sure that's a good iPad Pro use, I think!
  - jdechko 3y ago
    Or marking up PDF plans and reviewing the field plan review comments with the pencil in the field. It’s better than trying to manage 60+ tabloid-size pages and a 30 page document in the field. It’s a tool that’s really good for some things but not for others. Unfortunately, it’s the software, and not the hardware, that’s holding it back.