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But I think you didn’t answer my question. How exactly to make it a better product? What is a better product? There are tablets that can do those kinds of work

But I think you didn’t answer my question. How exactly to make it a better product? What is a better product? There are tablets that can do those kinds of work better, but is it a better product? As an end user, we definitely would be think of “best product for me”, a population of size 1. And even if we expand that to include “people like me”, often the population is still very small. I really wish there’s a market to make things best for this smaller bubble of population around me, but for the product to exist and thriving it has to be commercially successful. Also the smaller the volume the more expensive it is. (Eg like the VR computer that runs Linux which is still in development, that thing is in a price range that many people would have want one don’t think it’s worth that amount of money.) There’s a lot of complaints on how dumb the iPad is since day 1, but no one has convinced me yet their vision is indeed better than Apple’s (which not only includes features sets, form factor, UX, etc but also how the mass market would adopts that and make the whole ecosystem thriving.)

nextos 3y ago
> How exactly to make it a better product? What is a better product? I meant a better product for programmers. There are lots of discussions on HN about this topic, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36530607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36530607. In short, it would be great to be able to code locally with less limitations. Surface Go et al. are pretty good for this purpose. The iPad isn't. I realize it is a niche market. Or maybe not? Lot's of K-12 students use iPads.
- KolenCh 3y ago
  Right, that’s what I understood and I have been trying to achieve that for years. I have made my peace to buy and bring both. But if I have to pick one most of the time I’d pick the MacBook Pro. My point above is addressing this kind of needs. As a programmer one would of course think that having that extra capability would be a strictly more capable device. But that kind of thinking is missing the big picture. The limitation Apple put in place enforces a certain level of quality, and also the direction developers are working towards, etc. I.e. to maximize the expected value of the utility function over the whole population, the expected value over a subset of the population can be lower, and in this case is lower. And I can’t blame Apple to choose the mass than me (and the small bubble around me). That’s what I’d do too if I want to make a great product that people love (note that if “I want to make a great product that programmers love”, then the optimization would be different.

nextos 3y ago

> How exactly to make it a better product? What is a better product? I meant a better product for programmers. There are lots of discussions on HN about this topic, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36530607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36530607. In short, it would be great to be able to code locally with less limitations. Surface Go et al. are pretty good for this purpose. The iPad isn't. I realize it is a niche market. Or maybe not? Lot's of K-12 students use iPads.

KolenCh 3y ago
Right, that’s what I understood and I have been trying to achieve that for years. I have made my peace to buy and bring both. But if I have to pick one most of the time I’d pick the MacBook Pro. My point above is addressing this kind of needs. As a programmer one would of course think that having that extra capability would be a strictly more capable device. But that kind of thinking is missing the big picture. The limitation Apple put in place enforces a certain level of quality, and also the direction developers are working towards, etc. I.e. to maximize the expected value of the utility function over the whole population, the expected value over a subset of the population can be lower, and in this case is lower. And I can’t blame Apple to choose the mass than me (and the small bubble around me). That’s what I’d do too if I want to make a great product that people love (note that if “I want to make a great product that programmers love”, then the optimization would be different.