4 ms·

Yes, iPadOS has deep, lingering deficiencies as an OS for professional use. But their ads and keynotes are convincing, so I can't blame people falling for it!

by jug 3y ago

Yes, iPadOS has deep, lingering deficiencies as an OS for professional use. But their ads and keynotes are convincing, so I can't blame people falling for it! There's this weird juxtaposition of a terrible productivity machine combined with some mature, amazing and easy to use software in the demos, and Apple makes it look like iPads can be deeply embedded in your workflow and people have fun and laugh as that tiny device with its M1 CPU is a heavy lifter even for 4K and professional audio mixing. And everything looks good at first sight. Until you reach the final 5% of usage where you either 1) need to interact with other software, 2) other storages like a Mac main storage, NAS, Samba, NFS drive, personal cloud etc, or 3) just somehow move out of (and back into) that sandboxed app for any reason. Then everything falls apart. Yes, even with that Files app. There are tools and methods to exit the sandboxed app (share sheets omg all the share sheets) but it's just painted with bold letters all over the place that this is not what iPadOS was designed for from the ground up, but it's in fact still just a smartphone OS with a brand change and some special purpose features added on top that you can run on a device with a large display. When Apple announced the iPadOS brand, I thought "Wow they finally get it" but I don't think they can figure this one out. They've had so many years now and we still have articles like these. I want them to figure it out because a slick system with optional keyboard and mouse sounds great to me.

classified 3y ago
> I want them to figure it out They've figured it out long since, but they're making more profit as it is now.
jpgleeson 3y ago
I used to work in architecture, and I think that's where something like an iPad really shines. It was possible to have all the drawing sets on the iPad, and mark them up on the job site to send back to the office for revisions. Being able to annotate them with photographs of the site conditions and redlining as you talk with the foreman is excellent, it makes things a lot more seamless. Yes, you weren't going to do any actual CAD work and still need a workstation in the office, but as a digital notebook, it's excellent.
kcplate 3y ago
I’ve never really understood why folks complain that a screwdriver makes a lousy hammer.
loehnsberg 3y ago
I use an iPad Pro mostly for my lectures and for reading and annotating PDFs. After the latest upgrade of iPadOS, I also explored it for more serious work connecting it to a mouse and keyboard. If you're happy with working inside a browser and use it as a terminal, it works just fine, but as soon as you need to manage files or quickly want to edit a document on the device, it becomes pretty painful. I really don't understand why an iPad Pro with Apple silicon - the latest versions sport an M2 - does not get a Pro OS such as Mac OS.
- _fat_santa 3y ago
  And if you're using it primarily as web browser you can get a Chromebook that will do the job for a fraction of the cost.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    This is an excellent & undervalued point: chromeos is basically an easier to use and maintain iPad Pro at half the price, with a performant Linux container I’m really pleased with my $4K MacBook Pro M2, really amazing device. but after 3-4 years of chromeos before that, I’d trade it for a $1000 i7 Chromebook in a heartbeat, if it wasn’t for darn local LLMs. They’re not even good or fast but I need them professionally.
    - mdhb 3y ago
      Will also second this. I’ve used on old linux box with ChromeOS flex as my daily driver doing fullstack web and mobile development for a bit over a year now and it’s easily the best desktop experience I’ve ever had compared to Windows, Linux and MacOS. Highly underrated indeed.
- vonseel 3y ago
  I bought my iPad 5th gen years ago pretty much for reading PDFs. Sadly, it's barely even usable for that, even after a fresh device reset it's laggy and so slow. I'm not sure if it was always that way; I don't think so. I've stopped upgrading iOS but I think I'm already at 15, if there's a way to go wayyy back that's probably what I want to do, but it's sad that even an iPad can be bogged down so much as to barely run PDF readers. And I always wished mine supported pencil / annotations, but I think I'm one generation behind. I imagine most employees who get by in cloud docs (Google/Microsoft/etc.) and don't really open apps other than browsers can learn to be comfortable with an iPad, but many people don't want to. I have friends who refuse to even learn to use a trackpad on Macbook because they are so set in their ways.
duped 3y ago
I'm somewhat convinced that Apple wants to remove the notion of a Unix filesystem (there are files and directories of files/directories and they have owners/permissions/etc) from their users' understanding of how to use a computer. Both out of ideological purity ("what is a computer?") and so that their users can't use a different device that has an entirely different mental model for interaction. I already see this with juniors/students/kids that grew up using nothing but mobile devices, tablets, and chromebooks with GSuite. They don't know what a file is.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Yes, this is part of the genius strategy that most people don't see. There is an entire generation of people growing up where iPhones and iPads are the computer. Many of them also don't even know that there is a difference between a mobile device and an iPhone. Android is this weird sort of alternative that nobody uses, and Windows is this "PC" thing which they've never used but they hear that some people use for gaming. To these people, the Apple way is the way, and converting them to anything else will be nigh impossible. The current professionals that find iPads insufficient will age out, and the next generation will consider them the standard workstation.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Android is only used by 80% of the rest of the world, but who's counting anyway.
    - Fatnino 3y ago
      So is metric
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Indeed if are actually going to count, first we need to define which units are relevant.
    - 2143 3y ago
arvinsim 3y ago
IMO, I think they figured out what they want. They don't want iPads to cannibalize their Macs. They then kneecap iPads accordingly.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Interesting, I think it's the opposite. I think they would love iPads to cannabalize or eat entirely Macs. Macs are still fairly open compared to the iPad, and this allows people to use the device as a general purpose computer (instead of an appliance) without Apple as the gatekeeper/protector.

by jug 3y ago

classified 3y ago

> I want them to figure it out They've figured it out long since, but they're making more profit as it is now.

jpgleeson 3y ago

I used to work in architecture, and I think that's where something like an iPad really shines. It was possible to have all the drawing sets on the iPad, and mark them up on the job site to send back to the office for revisions. Being able to annotate them with photographs of the site conditions and redlining as you talk with the foreman is excellent, it makes things a lot more seamless. Yes, you weren't going to do any actual CAD work and still need a workstation in the office, but as a digital notebook, it's excellent.

kcplate 3y ago

I’ve never really understood why folks complain that a screwdriver makes a lousy hammer.

loehnsberg 3y ago

I use an iPad Pro mostly for my lectures and for reading and annotating PDFs. After the latest upgrade of iPadOS, I also explored it for more serious work connecting it to a mouse and keyboard. If you're happy with working inside a browser and use it as a terminal, it works just fine, but as soon as you need to manage files or quickly want to edit a document on the device, it becomes pretty painful. I really don't understand why an iPad Pro with Apple silicon - the latest versions sport an M2 - does not get a Pro OS such as Mac OS.

_fat_santa 3y ago
And if you're using it primarily as web browser you can get a Chromebook that will do the job for a fraction of the cost.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  This is an excellent & undervalued point: chromeos is basically an easier to use and maintain iPad Pro at half the price, with a performant Linux container I’m really pleased with my $4K MacBook Pro M2, really amazing device. but after 3-4 years of chromeos before that, I’d trade it for a $1000 i7 Chromebook in a heartbeat, if it wasn’t for darn local LLMs. They’re not even good or fast but I need them professionally.
  - mdhb 3y ago
    Will also second this. I’ve used on old linux box with ChromeOS flex as my daily driver doing fullstack web and mobile development for a bit over a year now and it’s easily the best desktop experience I’ve ever had compared to Windows, Linux and MacOS. Highly underrated indeed.
vonseel 3y ago
I bought my iPad 5th gen years ago pretty much for reading PDFs. Sadly, it's barely even usable for that, even after a fresh device reset it's laggy and so slow. I'm not sure if it was always that way; I don't think so. I've stopped upgrading iOS but I think I'm already at 15, if there's a way to go wayyy back that's probably what I want to do, but it's sad that even an iPad can be bogged down so much as to barely run PDF readers. And I always wished mine supported pencil / annotations, but I think I'm one generation behind. I imagine most employees who get by in cloud docs (Google/Microsoft/etc.) and don't really open apps other than browsers can learn to be comfortable with an iPad, but many people don't want to. I have friends who refuse to even learn to use a trackpad on Macbook because they are so set in their ways.

duped 3y ago

I'm somewhat convinced that Apple wants to remove the notion of a Unix filesystem (there are files and directories of files/directories and they have owners/permissions/etc) from their users' understanding of how to use a computer. Both out of ideological purity ("what is a computer?") and so that their users can't use a different device that has an entirely different mental model for interaction. I already see this with juniors/students/kids that grew up using nothing but mobile devices, tablets, and chromebooks with GSuite. They don't know what a file is.

freedomben 3y ago
Yes, this is part of the genius strategy that most people don't see. There is an entire generation of people growing up where iPhones and iPads are the computer. Many of them also don't even know that there is a difference between a mobile device and an iPhone. Android is this weird sort of alternative that nobody uses, and Windows is this "PC" thing which they've never used but they hear that some people use for gaming. To these people, the Apple way is the way, and converting them to anything else will be nigh impossible. The current professionals that find iPads insufficient will age out, and the next generation will consider them the standard workstation.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Android is only used by 80% of the rest of the world, but who's counting anyway.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    So is metric
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Indeed if are actually going to count, first we need to define which units are relevant.
  - 2143 3y ago

arvinsim 3y ago

IMO, I think they figured out what they want. They don't want iPads to cannibalize their Macs. They then kneecap iPads accordingly.

freedomben 3y ago
Interesting, I think it's the opposite. I think they would love iPads to cannabalize or eat entirely Macs. Macs are still fairly open compared to the iPad, and this allows people to use the device as a general purpose computer (instead of an appliance) without Apple as the gatekeeper/protector.