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"The success of this kickstarter project shows that there's no real use case for tablets except [...]" I would like to point out, in a non-flamewar-inducing ma

"The success of this kickstarter project shows that there's no real use case for tablets except [...]" I would like to point out, in a non-flamewar-inducing manner, that your assertion above has some severe logical flaws. For example, the success of McDonalds does not show that there's no real use case for healthy food.. At best it shows that Kickstarter is doing very well and some people dislike the iPad on-screen keyboard enough to part with money for the option of having a real one occasionally. Keep in mind you can optionally put a keyboard on an iPad, but you certainly can't remove one from a Macbook!

homosaur 14y ago
That's two posts in a row that began with a disclaimer to avoid downvotes. Not that I blame you since I'll probably be downvoted for pointing that out. Ahhhhhhhh HN. You actually have a very good point about not being able to remove the Macbook keyboard. That clearly has to be a focus of Apple R&D in the future, to make an iPad like device that runs full MacOS and is convertible to usage with and without keyboard. We cannot be far off that, multicore iPads with fancy graphics can't be more than... what, a year away?
- lloeki 14y ago
  > make an iPad like device that runs full MacOS iOS is designed for touch, OSX is designed for pointer. What you describe is Windows 7/8 and I think this is a mistake. I'd rather have iPad/iOS evolve to allow more things that we take for granted in OSX. Thinks like: - possibility to tell what's my default web browser, mail client, whatever. - possibility for apps to schedule time- and resource-limited tasks (e.g for Sparrow to poll IMAP without need for push+giving my credentials to a third party) and maybe ability to deny that possibility to the app (similar to location). - a full-blown local Unix access so I can run zsh/vim/tmux/python/ssh/whatever, even if it's jailed in a sandbox/chroot. - full keyboard navigation when a hardware keyboard is plugged in (e.g cmd-tab to work for switching apps instead of reaching for the home-button+screen is so obvious). This gap is today filled for me by my MacBook Pro, and for others by connecting remotely to various machines via iSSH/Prompt. There's no technical reason not to do it on an iPad 3. But I'd like, say two to five years from now, to have such a shapeshifting device that I'd carry everywhere. It looks like I would be interested in an Android tablet, but Android really is not there yet at the core (and by far, for a multitude of reasons), while iOS simply nailed it, deeply.
lloeki 14y ago
> some people dislike the iPad on-screen keyboard enough to part with money for the option of having a real one occasionally (emphasis mine). And it's the key. The use case of my iPad is that it's simply brilliant when there's no need for a keyboard, and for those cases where there's a need to input text but the soft keyboard is more than enough of a compromise compared to all others advantages. For those same cases my MacBook simply feels like a hack. I won't argue that there's no room for improvement in various areas on iOS because there is, but I'm sick of hearing that "iPads are useless and that's it".

homosaur 14y ago

That's two posts in a row that began with a disclaimer to avoid downvotes. Not that I blame you since I'll probably be downvoted for pointing that out. Ahhhhhhhh HN. You actually have a very good point about not being able to remove the Macbook keyboard. That clearly has to be a focus of Apple R&D in the future, to make an iPad like device that runs full MacOS and is convertible to usage with and without keyboard. We cannot be far off that, multicore iPads with fancy graphics can't be more than... what, a year away?

lloeki 14y ago
> make an iPad like device that runs full MacOS iOS is designed for touch, OSX is designed for pointer. What you describe is Windows 7/8 and I think this is a mistake. I'd rather have iPad/iOS evolve to allow more things that we take for granted in OSX. Thinks like: - possibility to tell what's my default web browser, mail client, whatever. - possibility for apps to schedule time- and resource-limited tasks (e.g for Sparrow to poll IMAP without need for push+giving my credentials to a third party) and maybe ability to deny that possibility to the app (similar to location). - a full-blown local Unix access so I can run zsh/vim/tmux/python/ssh/whatever, even if it's jailed in a sandbox/chroot. - full keyboard navigation when a hardware keyboard is plugged in (e.g cmd-tab to work for switching apps instead of reaching for the home-button+screen is so obvious). This gap is today filled for me by my MacBook Pro, and for others by connecting remotely to various machines via iSSH/Prompt. There's no technical reason not to do it on an iPad 3. But I'd like, say two to five years from now, to have such a shapeshifting device that I'd carry everywhere. It looks like I would be interested in an Android tablet, but Android really is not there yet at the core (and by far, for a multitude of reasons), while iOS simply nailed it, deeply.

lloeki 14y ago

> some people dislike the iPad on-screen keyboard enough to part with money for the option of having a real one occasionally (emphasis mine). And it's the key. The use case of my iPad is that it's simply brilliant when there's no need for a keyboard, and for those cases where there's a need to input text but the soft keyboard is more than enough of a compromise compared to all others advantages. For those same cases my MacBook simply feels like a hack. I won't argue that there's no room for improvement in various areas on iOS because there is, but I'm sick of hearing that "iPads are useless and that's it".