4 ms·

I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazin

I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazines, surf the Web, and watch videos. And for that it’s arguably better than a laptop. At least I find myself using it for those things much more.

nradov 3y ago
Right, but the inability to do serious software development is an arbitrary limit imposed by Apple. The hardware is quite capable, but the vendor has decided that we need to use multiple different devices. It's their platform and they can do what they like with it, but as a customer those artificial limitations rankle.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  They’d have to do something more than just throw XCode on it for it to be in any way usable without full on keyboard and mouse, which would cut against what they’re trying to do. So there is some justification beyond just market segmentation.
  - diffeomorphism 3y ago
    Why? Having xcode usable just with (their 350€+) keyboard seems perfectly acceptable.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      For the same reason they deliberately made iphone apps look bad -- they want applications designed to work with the device to make it a good experience and not applications designed for something else shoehorned in. I see some real wisdom in this approach considering how poor some of the alternative experiences are. Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?
      - wiseowise 3y ago
        > Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach? Right now it’s inferior not-a-laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach and people still buy it.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        Not really. It’s instead a different device offering an experience that doesn’t require a keyboard or mouse at all.
        wiseowise 3y ago
        Why would it become worse if they add support for keyboard and mouse on top of it?
        emodendroket 3y ago
        It does offer support for a keyboard and a mouse but what you're proposing is adding features or programs that would only work (or at least only work well) with a keyboard and a mouse, which would be a pretty big departure from the current design of the device.
        wiseowise 3y ago
        If they don’t take anything from general experience, why do you care? Core of the system will still be touch oriented.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        I am contesting the idea that it's possible to compromise the design philosophy that had guided it up till now and NOT "take anything from the general experience."
      - diffeomorphism 3y ago
makeitdouble 3y ago
You still hit weird limits. Perhaps the M1 is a better value proposition now, but with the A series transcoding videos was choppy at best, and you'd have to choose to "share" them to VLC every damn time. Youtube playback would stop everytime another video starts playing somewhere (additional fun when it's just a video ad that actually had no sound in the first place). SMB file management is still an afterthought, so you end up needing a plex server dealing with all the complexity the iPad can't deal with. Browsing is the same, outside of the Safari limitation, extensions are few and tab management a pain in general. For books and magazine it's kinda the same. It works fine for light use. It becomes frustrating if it's something you actually care about. In the end, I realized I actually care less about visual polish and more about having complete functionalities, at the price of dealing with Windows and managing a computer instead of an appliance.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I believe you but in the end I use it a lot more than my laptop despite its limitations and generally don’t want to try and do the things you’re talking about with it (I’d probably be sitting at my desk with my real computer if I wanted to).

nradov 3y ago

Right, but the inability to do serious software development is an arbitrary limit imposed by Apple. The hardware is quite capable, but the vendor has decided that we need to use multiple different devices. It's their platform and they can do what they like with it, but as a customer those artificial limitations rankle.

emodendroket 3y ago
They’d have to do something more than just throw XCode on it for it to be in any way usable without full on keyboard and mouse, which would cut against what they’re trying to do. So there is some justification beyond just market segmentation.
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  Why? Having xcode usable just with (their 350€+) keyboard seems perfectly acceptable.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    For the same reason they deliberately made iphone apps look bad -- they want applications designed to work with the device to make it a good experience and not applications designed for something else shoehorned in. I see some real wisdom in this approach considering how poor some of the alternative experiences are. Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?
    - wiseowise 3y ago
      > Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach? Right now it’s inferior not-a-laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach and people still buy it.
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        Not really. It’s instead a different device offering an experience that doesn’t require a keyboard or mouse at all.
        wiseowise 3y ago
        Why would it become worse if they add support for keyboard and mouse on top of it?
        emodendroket 3y ago
        It does offer support for a keyboard and a mouse but what you're proposing is adding features or programs that would only work (or at least only work well) with a keyboard and a mouse, which would be a pretty big departure from the current design of the device.
        wiseowise 3y ago
        If they don’t take anything from general experience, why do you care? Core of the system will still be touch oriented.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        I am contesting the idea that it's possible to compromise the design philosophy that had guided it up till now and NOT "take anything from the general experience."
    - diffeomorphism 3y ago

makeitdouble 3y ago

You still hit weird limits. Perhaps the M1 is a better value proposition now, but with the A series transcoding videos was choppy at best, and you'd have to choose to "share" them to VLC every damn time. Youtube playback would stop everytime another video starts playing somewhere (additional fun when it's just a video ad that actually had no sound in the first place). SMB file management is still an afterthought, so you end up needing a plex server dealing with all the complexity the iPad can't deal with. Browsing is the same, outside of the Safari limitation, extensions are few and tab management a pain in general. For books and magazine it's kinda the same. It works fine for light use. It becomes frustrating if it's something you actually care about. In the end, I realized I actually care less about visual polish and more about having complete functionalities, at the price of dealing with Windows and managing a computer instead of an appliance.

emodendroket 3y ago
I believe you but in the end I use it a lot more than my laptop despite its limitations and generally don’t want to try and do the things you’re talking about with it (I’d probably be sitting at my desk with my real computer if I wanted to).