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Apple finally, finally delivers a personal computer for the masses. Techies nitpick every aspect of its OS because it wasn't made for them.

marban 2y ago
I think the current personal computer for the masses is a cheap Android phone that's halfway deprecated the moment you unpack it.
- bitwize 2y ago
  Or a previous-gen iPad, which will be less deprecated than the cheap Android phone.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Until the apps you depend on force you into an os you can't upgrade into. Its crazy like there are still security updates and devs will pull the plug, and twist the knife cutting off api access for their old software.
    - cjk2 2y ago
      My mother has a 9 year old iPhone. All the apps she use still work on it. And it's still getting security patches!
      - kjkjadksj 2y ago
        Social media (snapchat especially) and rideshare apps are the biggest offenders in my experience. I tried to get an uber on this phone and it wouldn't let me use the old uber version already on it, and wouldn't pull a newer one from the app store from the iOS limitation. I guess they have a mobile website but I didn't think of that, just called a lyft instead.
idle_zealot 2y ago
As things stand the iPad is less a personal computer and more an app slate. It's a device designed to project other people's computing experiences onto a screen. The essence of personal computing is that personal part; building your workflows and experience to suit your preferences and needs. That's what this blog post is asking for, at least in part. The rest of the asks are in the vein of "make this not broken please". E: I'm not saying that people are wrong to like it as an app slate. Maybe that's what most people want. I just want to distinguish it from a personal computer, which is a tool that lets users write and run applications of their choosing.
- quitit 2y ago
  The iPad is mirroring the development of the original personal computer. Bit by bit more tasks can be done on it as well as some new ones that aren't suited to traditional PCs. Just like we see today with phones, laptops, desktops, mainframes and the like - there are already people who can do all of their computing on just one device. As for the complaints, everything is fair game, but most of the complaints about the iPad seem to be rooted in what it can't do in comparison to a laptop computer, or more specifically macOS. This is often given with the flimsy validation that the product is labelled "pro". However it seems clear that it has "pro" in the title because it's far more capable than other iPads, not because it is peers to the Mac Pro computer. I also think it's borderline absurd to base an argument on marketing nomenclature. (Especially as there is an iPhone Pro, Airpods Pro etc.) It seems clear (to me), that in order to make a thin, light, and performant device, that some compromises would need to be made - otherwise why aren't the laptops similarly thin and light. A cursory review of the specs between an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro tell the story in better detail. Perhaps one day iPads will have limitless background processing functionality, but there should be no expectation that the iPad of the day would match the functionality of the laptop or desktop of the day.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    > some compromises would need to be made That doesn't seem to make sense though, as the iPad Pro hardware is completely able to do what the err... macOS-wanters er... want. It's the software side (OS mostly) completely blocking forward progress.
mikestew 2y ago
Apple might have delivered a personal computer for the masses, but I don't think it looks like a $1000 tablet that needs $300 worth of add-ons (such as a keyboard) to be used as a personal computer. I'm not sure who the iPad Pro is supposed to be for, but it ain't "the masses".
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  $350 for the key board, $180 for the pencil. I really would love to have the best screen on the planet, heck yes, but with the you-probably-want-this upsells (nano screen along with it's mandatory storage upgrades) this is a $2500 setup. Adding insult to injury is iPadOS existing at such an infantile proto-computing level, as detailed here & elsewhere (ex, yesterday's blog, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40349347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40349347).
kcb 2y ago
The iPad pro?
kjkjadksj 2y ago
I believe thats the $899 macbook air
batmanthehorse 2y ago
Yes, I think some of the items here are reasonable but some of them (like full virtualization of desktop OS) don’t fit the iPad model. Just get a Mac at that point.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  Full virtualization would be fantastic for doing web development on iPad. Imagine if iSH didn't have to do the threaded code ROP dance and could just have a full performance ARM64 Linux distro sitting inside of itself.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  Why would virtualization not fit the iPad model? It's all about isolating apps from each other and from the system, and ensuring that no mucking around can render the system inoperable. Virtualization is the perfect solution to enabling legacy or technical workflows on such a device without compromising the core OS.
  - fl0ki 2y ago
    Any app can be evicted from memory at any time, requiring a full restart. The VM could be terminated with zero notice, aborting the OS kernel and leaving the filesystem in an arbitrary state. There is no swap on iOS / iPadOS but even if there was you wouldn't want it burning out your soldered-on storage chip. If the answer is that this VM program is the only one that never gets killed under memory pressure, bear in mind most iPads still have only 8G RAM so the OS will have to get even less than that, not leaving very much for any workflows on either the host or guest from that point on. Even that is still less capable than macOS on the same 8G RAM because at least macOS can use swap. It's egregious that you can still buy laptops with 8G RAM today, but at least all of that is available to the OS all the time, it doesn't just abort under memory pressure, and it can swap. Virtualization may make more sense with a different host or guest platform, but in this particular combination, memory will always be a problem. The lack of swap compounds that further. (I'm not sure about memory compression in iOS but you can't exactly rely on that for already-compressed data) Even if the host and guest share memory to avoid the hard cutoff, there still needs to be a way for the iPad to free up memory on demand, given that it cannot use swap.
TillE 2y ago
The $349 iPad is a fantastic tablet computer for mainstream users. I'm sure they sell a zillion of them. It's not really clear who the iPad Pro is for, aside from people who want to watch videos on the best screen.
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
  For digital art, the iPad Pro beats the socks off pretty much everything else, apparently.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    A Windows convertible such as the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 has at least as varied an application library, and the advantage of a real file system, and the possibility of scripting, and a stylus which doesn't need to be kept charged up.
  - icehawk 2y ago
    Having used Wacoms for years before trying things like the Surface Pro and then settling on iPad? The iPad 100% beats every other tablet I've used. How well the iPad / Apple Pencil work for drawing very much adds color to posts here berating the iPads for being a content consumption device.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  I believe that they are going to try hard for artists and creative folks via apps such as Procreate. https://procreate.com/ipad https://procreate.com/ipad
- fl0ki 2y ago
  > people who want to watch videos on the best screen. Guilty. I bought the first M1 12.9" iPad Pro not because of the M1, but because of the miniLED. Now I have a superb screen anywhere I want it, without worrying about damage like I would with a laptop.
Sir_Twist 2y ago
I don’t consider myself a very technical person, but (anecdata incoming) for everyone I know, the iPad is inadequate as a personal computer. It is great as an individual media consumption device, but beyond that its capacity is limited at best and nonexistent at worst. Multi - user support, especially for families with kids sharing the “family iPad”, is not supported. A student exporting a video for a school project in iMovie in the background isn’t supported; the app must remain in the foreground at all times. Obviously downloading games from Steam / Epic isn’t (currently) possible. All of these are normal things non-technical people expect out of a “real” computer. Of course, I could very well be wrong, and I am open to evidence to the contrary. But, for what it’s worth, I have never personally known anyone who has taken the iPad seriously beyond the most basic computational needs.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  I find it terribly annoying that for years I've almost been able to use an iPad instead of a computer on personal trips. The lack of background app support in particular pushes it over the edge into not quite usable for that, even for cases where I don't need anything else like extensive multitasking or secondary app stores like Steam.
jimbokun 2y ago
I don't think it's just the techies. iPad is Apple's least popular hardware line, behind both iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods (maybe still more popular than Apple TV). Seems like it's not made for anyone in particular. Need a powerful device to take with you everywhere, mainly used for communication and consuming media, buy an iPhone. Want a device for doing actual work, buy a Mac. iPad Pro now has Apple's most powerful processor, but nowhere close to being able to do the job of a less powerful Mac due to software limitations.
- glhaynes 2y ago
  I don't think this is right — Mac revenue is slightly higher than iPad but surely Mac ASP is much higher than iPad ASP so I believe iPad unit sales are quite a bit higher than those of the Mac.
thefz 2y ago
Do you consider personal a computer with very limited access to its filesystem? It's a content consuming device as it has always been.

marban 2y ago

I think the current personal computer for the masses is a cheap Android phone that's halfway deprecated the moment you unpack it.

bitwize 2y ago
Or a previous-gen iPad, which will be less deprecated than the cheap Android phone.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Until the apps you depend on force you into an os you can't upgrade into. Its crazy like there are still security updates and devs will pull the plug, and twist the knife cutting off api access for their old software.
  - cjk2 2y ago
    My mother has a 9 year old iPhone. All the apps she use still work on it. And it's still getting security patches!
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Social media (snapchat especially) and rideshare apps are the biggest offenders in my experience. I tried to get an uber on this phone and it wouldn't let me use the old uber version already on it, and wouldn't pull a newer one from the app store from the iOS limitation. I guess they have a mobile website but I didn't think of that, just called a lyft instead.

idle_zealot 2y ago

As things stand the iPad is less a personal computer and more an app slate. It's a device designed to project other people's computing experiences onto a screen. The essence of personal computing is that personal part; building your workflows and experience to suit your preferences and needs. That's what this blog post is asking for, at least in part. The rest of the asks are in the vein of "make this not broken please". E: I'm not saying that people are wrong to like it as an app slate. Maybe that's what most people want. I just want to distinguish it from a personal computer, which is a tool that lets users write and run applications of their choosing.

quitit 2y ago
The iPad is mirroring the development of the original personal computer. Bit by bit more tasks can be done on it as well as some new ones that aren't suited to traditional PCs. Just like we see today with phones, laptops, desktops, mainframes and the like - there are already people who can do all of their computing on just one device. As for the complaints, everything is fair game, but most of the complaints about the iPad seem to be rooted in what it can't do in comparison to a laptop computer, or more specifically macOS. This is often given with the flimsy validation that the product is labelled "pro". However it seems clear that it has "pro" in the title because it's far more capable than other iPads, not because it is peers to the Mac Pro computer. I also think it's borderline absurd to base an argument on marketing nomenclature. (Especially as there is an iPhone Pro, Airpods Pro etc.) It seems clear (to me), that in order to make a thin, light, and performant device, that some compromises would need to be made - otherwise why aren't the laptops similarly thin and light. A cursory review of the specs between an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro tell the story in better detail. Perhaps one day iPads will have limitless background processing functionality, but there should be no expectation that the iPad of the day would match the functionality of the laptop or desktop of the day.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > some compromises would need to be made That doesn't seem to make sense though, as the iPad Pro hardware is completely able to do what the err... macOS-wanters er... want. It's the software side (OS mostly) completely blocking forward progress.

mikestew 2y ago

Apple might have delivered a personal computer for the masses, but I don't think it looks like a $1000 tablet that needs $300 worth of add-ons (such as a keyboard) to be used as a personal computer. I'm not sure who the iPad Pro is supposed to be for, but it ain't "the masses".

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
$350 for the key board, $180 for the pencil. I really would love to have the best screen on the planet, heck yes, but with the you-probably-want-this upsells (nano screen along with it's mandatory storage upgrades) this is a $2500 setup. Adding insult to injury is iPadOS existing at such an infantile proto-computing level, as detailed here & elsewhere (ex, yesterday's blog, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40349347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40349347).

kcb 2y ago

The iPad pro?

kjkjadksj 2y ago

I believe thats the $899 macbook air

batmanthehorse 2y ago

Yes, I think some of the items here are reasonable but some of them (like full virtualization of desktop OS) don’t fit the iPad model. Just get a Mac at that point.

kmeisthax 2y ago
Full virtualization would be fantastic for doing web development on iPad. Imagine if iSH didn't have to do the threaded code ROP dance and could just have a full performance ARM64 Linux distro sitting inside of itself.
idle_zealot 2y ago
Why would virtualization not fit the iPad model? It's all about isolating apps from each other and from the system, and ensuring that no mucking around can render the system inoperable. Virtualization is the perfect solution to enabling legacy or technical workflows on such a device without compromising the core OS.
- fl0ki 2y ago
  Any app can be evicted from memory at any time, requiring a full restart. The VM could be terminated with zero notice, aborting the OS kernel and leaving the filesystem in an arbitrary state. There is no swap on iOS / iPadOS but even if there was you wouldn't want it burning out your soldered-on storage chip. If the answer is that this VM program is the only one that never gets killed under memory pressure, bear in mind most iPads still have only 8G RAM so the OS will have to get even less than that, not leaving very much for any workflows on either the host or guest from that point on. Even that is still less capable than macOS on the same 8G RAM because at least macOS can use swap. It's egregious that you can still buy laptops with 8G RAM today, but at least all of that is available to the OS all the time, it doesn't just abort under memory pressure, and it can swap. Virtualization may make more sense with a different host or guest platform, but in this particular combination, memory will always be a problem. The lack of swap compounds that further. (I'm not sure about memory compression in iOS but you can't exactly rely on that for already-compressed data) Even if the host and guest share memory to avoid the hard cutoff, there still needs to be a way for the iPad to free up memory on demand, given that it cannot use swap.

TillE 2y ago

The $349 iPad is a fantastic tablet computer for mainstream users. I'm sure they sell a zillion of them. It's not really clear who the iPad Pro is for, aside from people who want to watch videos on the best screen.

fullspectrumdev 2y ago
For digital art, the iPad Pro beats the socks off pretty much everything else, apparently.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  A Windows convertible such as the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 has at least as varied an application library, and the advantage of a real file system, and the possibility of scripting, and a stylus which doesn't need to be kept charged up.
- icehawk 2y ago
  Having used Wacoms for years before trying things like the Surface Pro and then settling on iPad? The iPad 100% beats every other tablet I've used. How well the iPad / Apple Pencil work for drawing very much adds color to posts here berating the iPads for being a content consumption device.
WillAdams 2y ago
I believe that they are going to try hard for artists and creative folks via apps such as Procreate. https://procreate.com/ipad https://procreate.com/ipad
fl0ki 2y ago
> people who want to watch videos on the best screen. Guilty. I bought the first M1 12.9" iPad Pro not because of the M1, but because of the miniLED. Now I have a superb screen anywhere I want it, without worrying about damage like I would with a laptop.

Sir_Twist 2y ago

I don’t consider myself a very technical person, but (anecdata incoming) for everyone I know, the iPad is inadequate as a personal computer. It is great as an individual media consumption device, but beyond that its capacity is limited at best and nonexistent at worst. Multi - user support, especially for families with kids sharing the “family iPad”, is not supported. A student exporting a video for a school project in iMovie in the background isn’t supported; the app must remain in the foreground at all times. Obviously downloading games from Steam / Epic isn’t (currently) possible. All of these are normal things non-technical people expect out of a “real” computer. Of course, I could very well be wrong, and I am open to evidence to the contrary. But, for what it’s worth, I have never personally known anyone who has taken the iPad seriously beyond the most basic computational needs.

crooked-v 2y ago
I find it terribly annoying that for years I've almost been able to use an iPad instead of a computer on personal trips. The lack of background app support in particular pushes it over the edge into not quite usable for that, even for cases where I don't need anything else like extensive multitasking or secondary app stores like Steam.

jimbokun 2y ago

I don't think it's just the techies. iPad is Apple's least popular hardware line, behind both iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods (maybe still more popular than Apple TV). Seems like it's not made for anyone in particular. Need a powerful device to take with you everywhere, mainly used for communication and consuming media, buy an iPhone. Want a device for doing actual work, buy a Mac. iPad Pro now has Apple's most powerful processor, but nowhere close to being able to do the job of a less powerful Mac due to software limitations.

glhaynes 2y ago
I don't think this is right — Mac revenue is slightly higher than iPad but surely Mac ASP is much higher than iPad ASP so I believe iPad unit sales are quite a bit higher than those of the Mac.

thefz 2y ago

Do you consider personal a computer with very limited access to its filesystem? It's a content consuming device as it has always been.