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iPads aren't setup for "serious work" out of the box. There's a whole community who have developed workarounds and apps for serious work on it, but it prioritiz

iPads aren't setup for "serious work" out of the box. There's a whole community who have developed workarounds and apps for serious work on it, but it prioritizes being "grandma proof" over a serious work machine from the get go.

idle_zealot 3y ago
My Grandma has an iPad. Every time I visit we end up sitting down for hours reviewing how to do things in various apps and switch between them. The system constantly hide navigation control, moves things around in response to scrolling, and requires precise swipes or taps on flat or near-invisible controls to reveal information or get around. Watching her try to use iPadOS is always useful in keeping myself grounded in terms of UI design. Suffice to say that the thing is not at all Grandma-proof. And sure, at least there aren't tens of sketchy toolbars doing god-knows-what each time she opens Safari, but there are tens of sketchy-looking games and apps installed on the 4th home screen that she doesn't want or use, and opening any immediately throws up full-screen autoplaying ads with audio before letting her into some cheap sudoku implementation. I don't want to hear this "walled garden keeps you safe" nonsense; there are plenty of scams on the App Store.
deergomoo 3y ago
> but it prioritizes being "grandma proof" over a serious work machine from the get go Which is kind of absurd considering they sell a device called "iPad Pro" which costs as much as their entry-level laptops, which are—by and large—enormously more capable, despite sharing the same internals. I appreciate the iPad as a computer for people who aren't interested in computers (my mum has been happily iPad-only for years now), and I recognise that I have a degree of saltiness because I'm a software developer and the "Pro" in "iPad Pro" seems far more geared to artists and other creative professions, but it's a terrible shame there's no way to take the training wheels off what is otherwise a fantastic ultraportable computer. My MacBook Pro is a great computer that I like a lot, but the only reason I even need it is because my iPad is incapable of doing anything I need for development, and the ~15% of dev I do away from my desk is still important to me. If I could do some casual noodling or prototyping work on my iPad with a keyboard, I could have just bought a desktop Mac instead.

idle_zealot 3y ago

My Grandma has an iPad. Every time I visit we end up sitting down for hours reviewing how to do things in various apps and switch between them. The system constantly hide navigation control, moves things around in response to scrolling, and requires precise swipes or taps on flat or near-invisible controls to reveal information or get around. Watching her try to use iPadOS is always useful in keeping myself grounded in terms of UI design. Suffice to say that the thing is not at all Grandma-proof. And sure, at least there aren't tens of sketchy toolbars doing god-knows-what each time she opens Safari, but there are tens of sketchy-looking games and apps installed on the 4th home screen that she doesn't want or use, and opening any immediately throws up full-screen autoplaying ads with audio before letting her into some cheap sudoku implementation. I don't want to hear this "walled garden keeps you safe" nonsense; there are plenty of scams on the App Store.

deergomoo 3y ago

> but it prioritizes being "grandma proof" over a serious work machine from the get go Which is kind of absurd considering they sell a device called "iPad Pro" which costs as much as their entry-level laptops, which are—by and large—enormously more capable, despite sharing the same internals. I appreciate the iPad as a computer for people who aren't interested in computers (my mum has been happily iPad-only for years now), and I recognise that I have a degree of saltiness because I'm a software developer and the "Pro" in "iPad Pro" seems far more geared to artists and other creative professions, but it's a terrible shame there's no way to take the training wheels off what is otherwise a fantastic ultraportable computer. My MacBook Pro is a great computer that I like a lot, but the only reason I even need it is because my iPad is incapable of doing anything I need for development, and the ~15% of dev I do away from my desk is still important to me. If I could do some casual noodling or prototyping work on my iPad with a keyboard, I could have just bought a desktop Mac instead.