7 ms·

I know Apple has a strong resistance to the two-in-one form factor, but an M-series MacBook Air with detachable screen that seamlessly transitions between macOS

I know Apple has a strong resistance to the two-in-one form factor, but an M-series MacBook Air with detachable screen that seamlessly transitions between macOS and iPadOS is basically my dream device.

timestretch 3y ago
They want to sell you two devices, and a monthly subscription to iCloud to interoperate between them.
- dmonitor 3y ago
  I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much. I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.
  - gtvwill 3y ago
    Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.
    - katbyte 3y ago
      You are just speculating - having a 2 in 1 device is not as easy as “osx on an iPad” or “iOS on a Mac” Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice
      - hu3 3y ago
        > Until the m1 is was 100% not possible. Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could) https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        Spooky23 3y ago
        Sure, and they don’t sell particularly well. That whole segment of the Microsoft ecosystem is a dusty corner that doesn’t get a lot of respect. Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.
        katbyte 3y ago
        different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood. ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
      - afavour 3y ago
        Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it. (before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
        katbyte 3y ago
    - nomel 3y ago
      > they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience. [1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus-pc-in-the-enterprise/ https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus... edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?
      - gtvwill 3y ago
        Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
        nomel 3y ago
        As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do. > made all their software offerings over the last 20 What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection. The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party. > they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now. > plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer. I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      > Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
      - zakki 3y ago
        The problem is most other devices are cheaper so no complaint for the shit-show. With Apple’s prices, I want more.
  - housemusicfan 3y ago
    > I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. "They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."
- paulcole 3y ago
  Yeah, this is why they’ve pushed so hard for people to carry both iPhones and iPods.
- nomel 3y ago
  What is this in reference to? I have an iPad and a MacBook. I don't pay a subscription. I usually use Microsoft OneDrive, so I can sync between/to my non apple devices, though I usually just use airdrop. Are you referring to extra cloud storage? edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?
  - zeven7 3y ago
    I haven't owned an Apple device in 10 years, but I think they're talking about iCloud.
    - nomel 3y ago
      I don't understand. There's no iCloud subscription to enable all the cross-device interoperability. The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.
- giobox 3y ago
  And in the case of the iPad, try to sell you them individually for each family member... It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    You can if you're a school! https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/edua714f0cdx/web https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/e... The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member. For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others. EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      I've heard that the multi user feature for schools is pretty skin deep and that it basically just acts as an auth for apps which store all data remotely. Not at all something you could just drop on regular consumers.
  - behnamoh 3y ago
    The thing is: I can't even do media consumptions and web browsing on iPad. Browsing the web without uBlock and a few other extensions is a battle I'm not willing to fight. And so many video codecs not supported on iPad makes it unusable for media consumption. And have you tried opening your videos in other apps? Guess what? The file gets copied to the other app, meaning that now you have two versions of the same movie/whatever. The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
    - mattl 3y ago
hhh 3y ago
The iPad pro is basically this, but just needs to be able to swap when you hook up the Magic Keyboard.
- oflannabhra 3y ago
  It doesn’t offer macOS. My whole point is that when I have a keyboard I don’t want to be touching a screen, and I want the power and freedom macOS offers to be able to do productive work. I also want iPadOS for other types of interaction, like reading or watching, or drawing.
  - hhh 3y ago
    By 'It just needs to swap' I mean to be able to swap into MacOS (when you hook up the magic keyboard)
    - oflannabhra 3y ago
      Oh, then yeah! This is exactly what I would like. I don’t care about the particulars of the hardware that enables such an experience.
TillE 3y ago
The problem with a convertible MacBook is that you'd have to move the battery to behind the display, at which point you're really just making an iPad that can be attached to a keyboard dock and run macOS. I think the latter is a plausible evolution of the iPad Pro.
- novok 3y ago
  Or they can leave it in the body and give it a 360 hinge
- oflannabhra 3y ago
  Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct, from the hardware to the software, and that mixing the two is confusing and a bad experience. I happen to agree with them, but I would love to be able to switch between the two. macOS is powerful, but adding touch to it would actually be terrible. Switching between those modes and input paradigms, while maintaining some level of context would be a really great experience.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    > Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct They're allowing iPad and iOS apps on the macs, so it doesn't seem so clear cut. Feels more like they don't have a clear incentive to push further when people keep buying both products.
    - oflannabhra 3y ago
      Yes, but not touch.
  - isametry 3y ago
    That might have been their philosophy once, but important people who believed that seem to be gone now, because basically every piece of software that gets touched on the Mac now resembles an unloved offspring of their touch platforms. See examples: Control Center, Share Sheet, Notifications, the entirety of the new System Settings app…
blackaspen 3y ago
This. Or a Yoga style fold-over in an 11" formfactor. I picked up an X13s (the ARM one) for travel. It's not perfect -- one thing I like about iOS is that the airline apps are kind of required for IFE, but, my X13s weighs the same as my iPad Pro with a keyboard and can do much more. Trying to use Google Slides or Docs on the iPad is a poor experience.
forrestthewoods 3y ago
I would also accept an iPad that can dual-boot into macOS when using a Magic Keyboard. The fact that they don’t allow this is absurd. They basically charge $1500 for macOS. I’d probably pay that to let my iPad dual boot if they’d let me!
hinkley 3y ago
iPad with a power connector on the side where the cover attaches, and a macbook the exact size of an iPad with no screen, just a remote desktop on the iPad. Either data over the charging port, or low throughput over Bluetooth 5 (when is 6 due?)
bgoldste 3y ago
And now it’s mine too…
willio58 3y ago
As long as it didn't sacrifice the user experience both devices currently have I'd be on board!
gizajob 3y ago
I'm amazed the two haven't converged yet. I've no doubt apple have lurking in their labs a "double iPad" with a "screen" and a second screen where the keyboard now lives, running a version of iOS-like MacOS. Would love that device and think it'll emerge eventually.
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  I don't think they'll converge, I see Apple eventually using its Vision product line to supplant traditional rectangular slab based devices.
  - gizajob 3y ago
    Yeah does seem like it’ll go that way. Not sure I want to spend the day “goggled in” (as Neal Stephenson would say) - I may already be an old timer and want to use external devices (my first computer had 48kb of memory). But no doubt I’ll be engoggled at some point in the not too distant future. Plus for the time being, there doesn’t seem to be a way of plugging in external peripherals to the Vision, so we’re stuck with the same problem of not being able to reasonably use pro audio interfaces and suchlike, same as the iPad.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Why would they willingly create a device where people can buy one instead of two?
  - gizajob 3y ago
    I think there’s probably benefits to be had in terms of interface without having a fixed typing keyboard. Logic and Final Cut for example, could be hugely improved by this.
- walthamstow 3y ago
  That device exists, I saw it being reviewed on The Verge recently https://www.theverge.com/23794761/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review https://www.theverge.com/23794761/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review
toasted-subs 3y ago
The iPad I have has effectively become a second screen for my MacBook as a with a walcom tablet. It's too heavy to read from.
- crimsontech 3y ago
  I mostly use the iPad for reading, ebooks, pdfs, saved web articles, HN, etc. I initially got the biggest iPad but it was certainly too heavy to hold like a book and read comfortably. I switched to an iPad mini which was perfect for reading everything but PDFs, the problem is I read a lot of PDFs. I currently use an 11” and take the cover off to read with it, I find it to be the right trade off between size and weight for me.
  - LTL_FTC 3y ago
    I just traded in my 12in pro for this reason. However, I think a MacBook Air may be a better reading device because it will prop up the display at whatever angle you need it to be for comfortable reading, while remaining ultra portable or easily resting it on your lap or chest (if you like reading lying down).

timestretch 3y ago

They want to sell you two devices, and a monthly subscription to iCloud to interoperate between them.

dmonitor 3y ago
I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much. I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.
- gtvwill 3y ago
  Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    You are just speculating - having a 2 in 1 device is not as easy as “osx on an iPad” or “iOS on a Mac” Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice
    - hu3 3y ago
      > Until the m1 is was 100% not possible. Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could) https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Spooky23 3y ago
        Sure, and they don’t sell particularly well. That whole segment of the Microsoft ecosystem is a dusty corner that doesn’t get a lot of respect. Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.
      - katbyte 3y ago
        different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood. ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
    - afavour 3y ago
      Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it. (before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
      - katbyte 3y ago
  - nomel 3y ago
    > they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience. [1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus-pc-in-the-enterprise/ https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus... edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?
    - gtvwill 3y ago
      Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
      - nomel 3y ago
        As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do. > made all their software offerings over the last 20 What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection. The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party. > they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now. > plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer. I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    > Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
    - zakki 3y ago
      The problem is most other devices are cheaper so no complaint for the shit-show. With Apple’s prices, I want more.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  > I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. "They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."
paulcole 3y ago
Yeah, this is why they’ve pushed so hard for people to carry both iPhones and iPods.
nomel 3y ago
What is this in reference to? I have an iPad and a MacBook. I don't pay a subscription. I usually use Microsoft OneDrive, so I can sync between/to my non apple devices, though I usually just use airdrop. Are you referring to extra cloud storage? edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?
- zeven7 3y ago
  I haven't owned an Apple device in 10 years, but I think they're talking about iCloud.
  - nomel 3y ago
    I don't understand. There's no iCloud subscription to enable all the cross-device interoperability. The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.
giobox 3y ago
And in the case of the iPad, try to sell you them individually for each family member... It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  You can if you're a school! https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/edua714f0cdx/web https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/e... The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member. For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others. EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I've heard that the multi user feature for schools is pretty skin deep and that it basically just acts as an auth for apps which store all data remotely. Not at all something you could just drop on regular consumers.
- behnamoh 3y ago
  The thing is: I can't even do media consumptions and web browsing on iPad. Browsing the web without uBlock and a few other extensions is a battle I'm not willing to fight. And so many video codecs not supported on iPad makes it unusable for media consumption. And have you tried opening your videos in other apps? Guess what? The file gets copied to the other app, meaning that now you have two versions of the same movie/whatever. The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
  - mattl 3y ago

hhh 3y ago

The iPad pro is basically this, but just needs to be able to swap when you hook up the Magic Keyboard.

oflannabhra 3y ago
It doesn’t offer macOS. My whole point is that when I have a keyboard I don’t want to be touching a screen, and I want the power and freedom macOS offers to be able to do productive work. I also want iPadOS for other types of interaction, like reading or watching, or drawing.
- hhh 3y ago
  By 'It just needs to swap' I mean to be able to swap into MacOS (when you hook up the magic keyboard)
  - oflannabhra 3y ago
    Oh, then yeah! This is exactly what I would like. I don’t care about the particulars of the hardware that enables such an experience.

TillE 3y ago

The problem with a convertible MacBook is that you'd have to move the battery to behind the display, at which point you're really just making an iPad that can be attached to a keyboard dock and run macOS. I think the latter is a plausible evolution of the iPad Pro.

novok 3y ago
Or they can leave it in the body and give it a 360 hinge
oflannabhra 3y ago
Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct, from the hardware to the software, and that mixing the two is confusing and a bad experience. I happen to agree with them, but I would love to be able to switch between the two. macOS is powerful, but adding touch to it would actually be terrible. Switching between those modes and input paradigms, while maintaining some level of context would be a really great experience.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  > Apple’s big philosophy is that the interaction paradigm should be distinct They're allowing iPad and iOS apps on the macs, so it doesn't seem so clear cut. Feels more like they don't have a clear incentive to push further when people keep buying both products.
  - oflannabhra 3y ago
    Yes, but not touch.
- isametry 3y ago
  That might have been their philosophy once, but important people who believed that seem to be gone now, because basically every piece of software that gets touched on the Mac now resembles an unloved offspring of their touch platforms. See examples: Control Center, Share Sheet, Notifications, the entirety of the new System Settings app…

blackaspen 3y ago

This. Or a Yoga style fold-over in an 11" formfactor. I picked up an X13s (the ARM one) for travel. It's not perfect -- one thing I like about iOS is that the airline apps are kind of required for IFE, but, my X13s weighs the same as my iPad Pro with a keyboard and can do much more. Trying to use Google Slides or Docs on the iPad is a poor experience.

forrestthewoods 3y ago

I would also accept an iPad that can dual-boot into macOS when using a Magic Keyboard. The fact that they don’t allow this is absurd. They basically charge $1500 for macOS. I’d probably pay that to let my iPad dual boot if they’d let me!

hinkley 3y ago

iPad with a power connector on the side where the cover attaches, and a macbook the exact size of an iPad with no screen, just a remote desktop on the iPad. Either data over the charging port, or low throughput over Bluetooth 5 (when is 6 due?)

bgoldste 3y ago

And now it’s mine too…

willio58 3y ago

As long as it didn't sacrifice the user experience both devices currently have I'd be on board!

gizajob 3y ago

I'm amazed the two haven't converged yet. I've no doubt apple have lurking in their labs a "double iPad" with a "screen" and a second screen where the keyboard now lives, running a version of iOS-like MacOS. Would love that device and think it'll emerge eventually.

satvikpendem 3y ago
I don't think they'll converge, I see Apple eventually using its Vision product line to supplant traditional rectangular slab based devices.
- gizajob 3y ago
  Yeah does seem like it’ll go that way. Not sure I want to spend the day “goggled in” (as Neal Stephenson would say) - I may already be an old timer and want to use external devices (my first computer had 48kb of memory). But no doubt I’ll be engoggled at some point in the not too distant future. Plus for the time being, there doesn’t seem to be a way of plugging in external peripherals to the Vision, so we’re stuck with the same problem of not being able to reasonably use pro audio interfaces and suchlike, same as the iPad.
bdcravens 3y ago
Why would they willingly create a device where people can buy one instead of two?
- gizajob 3y ago
  I think there’s probably benefits to be had in terms of interface without having a fixed typing keyboard. Logic and Final Cut for example, could be hugely improved by this.
walthamstow 3y ago
That device exists, I saw it being reviewed on The Verge recently https://www.theverge.com/23794761/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review https://www.theverge.com/23794761/lenovo-yoga-book-9i-review

toasted-subs 3y ago

The iPad I have has effectively become a second screen for my MacBook as a with a walcom tablet. It's too heavy to read from.

crimsontech 3y ago
I mostly use the iPad for reading, ebooks, pdfs, saved web articles, HN, etc. I initially got the biggest iPad but it was certainly too heavy to hold like a book and read comfortably. I switched to an iPad mini which was perfect for reading everything but PDFs, the problem is I read a lot of PDFs. I currently use an 11” and take the cover off to read with it, I find it to be the right trade off between size and weight for me.
- LTL_FTC 3y ago
  I just traded in my 12in pro for this reason. However, I think a MacBook Air may be a better reading device because it will prop up the display at whatever angle you need it to be for comfortable reading, while remaining ultra portable or easily resting it on your lap or chest (if you like reading lying down).