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I don't understand this: Would they rather someone buy a Thinkpad and run Linux on it, than someone buy an iPad and run Linux on it? What's there to be scared

I don't understand this: Would they rather someone buy a Thinkpad and run Linux on it, than someone buy an iPad and run Linux on it? What's there to be scared of someone buying their own hardware?

derefr 2y ago
Apple would rather people buy an iPad and a cheaper Mac, e.g. a Macbook Air. And many of their customers do — despite only needing the Mac for one or two things. These customers, in my personal experience, mostly end up gravitating toward using the Mac more and the iPad less — despite often saying they enjoy using the iPad more. They try to use the iPad for more things, but when there's something they need to do on their laptop, they switch over to using it — and then forget to switch back. Eventually, they give up on the "iPad experiment", and the iPad sits there gathering dust. But they still did buy it. And likely have had it for long enough that they can't just return it. And they might even (probably mistakenly) think they'll pick it up again someday, maybe when a new iPadOS update makes it more functional and solves their pain-points. And that line of thinking makes Apple very, very happy. "Buying an iPad you don't end up using because you also bought a Mac" is a situation Apple emphatically does not want to help anyone avoid. In fact, they do everything they can in their advertising to subtly guide customers into bad expectations about iPadOS capabilities, so that they'll end up in that situation.
- colinng 2y ago
  Exactly what happened to me. These bastards planned that. That’s why they’re one of the richest companies in the world, because they knew how to trip their customers into buying shit they didn’t need to buy. And pricing RAM and Storage way, way out of proportion to the cost.
- nine_k 2y ago
  IPad is great for direct manipulation, such as drawing / painting / rearranging things visually. In this regard, it far outstrips any macbooks.
  - hobs 2y ago
    And outside of a very small portion of the user base, how much of most people's time is spent in those activities?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      And of those people, how many of them would prefer full-fat Photoshop on a Surface Pro or drawing tablet?
      - derefr 2y ago
        Not many; the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil Pro is considered by many to be the best-in-class drawing tablet. And the Surface Pro frankly sucks for digital illustration — it's far less responsive, with far less control. The next-best option after an iPad Pro is a Wacom pad plugged into a PC. Also, there's no point in using Photoshop for drawing on a tablet. (It's not impossible to use it for that, but it's not what I'd call a good experience.) You really want domain-specific digital-illustration software that puts the artist in direct control of brushes, color-mixing, and layers (either by direct-manipulation gestures, or in floating palettes, ring menus, etc); and then gets everything else out of the way (or doesn't include it at all.) You use such software to draw the things you want, as separate layer-groups or images — and then, when you're done, you throw those drawings into an app like Photoshop to clean them up, put them together, and otherwise transform your "drawings" into "artwork." If you're familiar with audio production: think of Photoshop as a DAW, and illustration as a performance. Even a solo musician doesn't touch their DAW while they're playing an instrument; the only thing they're touching is their instrument. Digital-illustration software is an instrument.
        talldayo 2y ago
        FWIW, I have both a Wacom and a Surface Pro on-hand right now. The Wacom tablet is great (unbeaten latency-wise) but the Surface Pro has an equally nice digitizer and a perfectly usable screen. I took notes on it for a few years before moving to markdown and typing everything. The point I'm trying to make is that this artificial product category distinction people want to illustrate doesn't exist. Both of these hardware platforms can do both tasks equally well; all Apple has to do is provide both and let their customers decide for themselves. As time goes on, it feels increasingly easy to reverse-engineer Apple's design philosophy: - Identify a problem (I need to install apps; I need a heartrate monitor; I want to draw on my Mac) - Design a best-path solution (What if there was an app for that? What if all your vitals were monitored? What if drawing was tactile?) - Take that solution and engineer it into an expensive auxiliary product (App Store/Developer Program; Apple Watch; Apple Pencil/iPad) - Deny competitors market access specifically so they can't fix self-imposed limitations (Still Apple refuses to sign benign apps; Apple Health is all-or-nothing without Apple Watch, competitors are scary and can't be trusted; touchscreen Macs are "impossible" and Apple Pencil can only be made by licensing our tech) Maybe I'm being too creative and optimistic, but are there not thousands of people on this site that would readily give up their Mac for an iPad with decent Linux support? The only person stopping people from having their cake and eating it too is Apple. And you know it's not because the iPad is in some way different from the Macbook and shouldn't have an open bootloader. It's because that would stop people from buying Macs. For the love of God, I hate Steve Jobs like the devil but I would probably go get a used iPad Pro if Apple announced they were publishing Linux drivers for it.
ssl-3 2y ago
They aren't all that scared of a small subset of geeks running Linux directly on their iPad and using that as a regular Linux-ey thing, I don't think. The number of people who want to do this is very small, and they don't expect any support for that. And that's not possible from the app store, anyway. But they've always been scared of emulators in the IOS app stores, and the reason for that seems to be a combination of things: 1. The user experience with emulators can be awful, which is a contrast to the "It Just Works" way of doing things with IOS. This doesn't jive with the image they sell, or that they wish to support. 2. By letting anyone run real software easily on an iPad, this cuts into their sales of MacBooks. This is obviously not in their interest, since they'd rather sell two machines instead of one machine.
- FLT8 2y ago
  I would have also thought: 3. It lets users get software on to the ipad without going through the App Store (thereby escaping apples ability to clip the ticket on the way through).
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  You forgot #3: By letting anyone run mouse software on iPad, they have to use a stylus to operate it, which made Steve Jobs mad at Microsoft's pen computing division back in 2001. I honestly believe this to be way more important of a reason to Apple than anything else. The point of making you buy two computers is not to get twice as much money out of you, it's to get app developers to port their apps over to UIKit and make you re-buy all your apps twice. I tried UTM SE a while back. Using it with the Magic Keyboard was almost the Real Deal Laptop Experience, but if I ever took my iPad out of its Magic Keyboard then I'd have to use some really annoying mouse and keyboard emulation to use the same software. Apple's the kind of company that will absolutely put guns to the heads of their users to force them to not have a bad computing experience.
- dmz73 2y ago
  1) Things don't "Just Work" with IOS. I regularly have to help people figure out how to connect their i* to work network, install 2FA apps, find missing 2FA notifications, find freshly installed app icons..."It Just Works" if you have done it 100s of times before and know what to do. 2) That is just plain and simple user hostile behavior that is not tolerated in case of any other company except Apple by Apple users.

I don't understand this: Would they rather someone buy a Thinkpad and run Linux on it, than someone buy an iPad and run Linux on it? What's there to be scared of someone buying their own hardware?

derefr 2y ago

Apple would rather people buy an iPad and a cheaper Mac, e.g. a Macbook Air. And many of their customers do — despite only needing the Mac for one or two things. These customers, in my personal experience, mostly end up gravitating toward using the Mac more and the iPad less — despite often saying they enjoy using the iPad more. They try to use the iPad for more things, but when there's something they need to do on their laptop, they switch over to using it — and then forget to switch back. Eventually, they give up on the "iPad experiment", and the iPad sits there gathering dust. But they still did buy it. And likely have had it for long enough that they can't just return it. And they might even (probably mistakenly) think they'll pick it up again someday, maybe when a new iPadOS update makes it more functional and solves their pain-points. And that line of thinking makes Apple very, very happy. "Buying an iPad you don't end up using because you also bought a Mac" is a situation Apple emphatically does not want to help anyone avoid. In fact, they do everything they can in their advertising to subtly guide customers into bad expectations about iPadOS capabilities, so that they'll end up in that situation.

colinng 2y ago
Exactly what happened to me. These bastards planned that. That’s why they’re one of the richest companies in the world, because they knew how to trip their customers into buying shit they didn’t need to buy. And pricing RAM and Storage way, way out of proportion to the cost.
nine_k 2y ago
IPad is great for direct manipulation, such as drawing / painting / rearranging things visually. In this regard, it far outstrips any macbooks.
- hobs 2y ago
  And outside of a very small portion of the user base, how much of most people's time is spent in those activities?
  - talldayo 2y ago
    And of those people, how many of them would prefer full-fat Photoshop on a Surface Pro or drawing tablet?
    - derefr 2y ago
      Not many; the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil Pro is considered by many to be the best-in-class drawing tablet. And the Surface Pro frankly sucks for digital illustration — it's far less responsive, with far less control. The next-best option after an iPad Pro is a Wacom pad plugged into a PC. Also, there's no point in using Photoshop for drawing on a tablet. (It's not impossible to use it for that, but it's not what I'd call a good experience.) You really want domain-specific digital-illustration software that puts the artist in direct control of brushes, color-mixing, and layers (either by direct-manipulation gestures, or in floating palettes, ring menus, etc); and then gets everything else out of the way (or doesn't include it at all.) You use such software to draw the things you want, as separate layer-groups or images — and then, when you're done, you throw those drawings into an app like Photoshop to clean them up, put them together, and otherwise transform your "drawings" into "artwork." If you're familiar with audio production: think of Photoshop as a DAW, and illustration as a performance. Even a solo musician doesn't touch their DAW while they're playing an instrument; the only thing they're touching is their instrument. Digital-illustration software is an instrument.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        FWIW, I have both a Wacom and a Surface Pro on-hand right now. The Wacom tablet is great (unbeaten latency-wise) but the Surface Pro has an equally nice digitizer and a perfectly usable screen. I took notes on it for a few years before moving to markdown and typing everything. The point I'm trying to make is that this artificial product category distinction people want to illustrate doesn't exist. Both of these hardware platforms can do both tasks equally well; all Apple has to do is provide both and let their customers decide for themselves. As time goes on, it feels increasingly easy to reverse-engineer Apple's design philosophy: - Identify a problem (I need to install apps; I need a heartrate monitor; I want to draw on my Mac) - Design a best-path solution (What if there was an app for that? What if all your vitals were monitored? What if drawing was tactile?) - Take that solution and engineer it into an expensive auxiliary product (App Store/Developer Program; Apple Watch; Apple Pencil/iPad) - Deny competitors market access specifically so they can't fix self-imposed limitations (Still Apple refuses to sign benign apps; Apple Health is all-or-nothing without Apple Watch, competitors are scary and can't be trusted; touchscreen Macs are "impossible" and Apple Pencil can only be made by licensing our tech) Maybe I'm being too creative and optimistic, but are there not thousands of people on this site that would readily give up their Mac for an iPad with decent Linux support? The only person stopping people from having their cake and eating it too is Apple. And you know it's not because the iPad is in some way different from the Macbook and shouldn't have an open bootloader. It's because that would stop people from buying Macs. For the love of God, I hate Steve Jobs like the devil but I would probably go get a used iPad Pro if Apple announced they were publishing Linux drivers for it.

ssl-3 2y ago

They aren't all that scared of a small subset of geeks running Linux directly on their iPad and using that as a regular Linux-ey thing, I don't think. The number of people who want to do this is very small, and they don't expect any support for that. And that's not possible from the app store, anyway. But they've always been scared of emulators in the IOS app stores, and the reason for that seems to be a combination of things: 1. The user experience with emulators can be awful, which is a contrast to the "It Just Works" way of doing things with IOS. This doesn't jive with the image they sell, or that they wish to support. 2. By letting anyone run real software easily on an iPad, this cuts into their sales of MacBooks. This is obviously not in their interest, since they'd rather sell two machines instead of one machine.

FLT8 2y ago
I would have also thought: 3. It lets users get software on to the ipad without going through the App Store (thereby escaping apples ability to clip the ticket on the way through).
kmeisthax 2y ago
You forgot #3: By letting anyone run mouse software on iPad, they have to use a stylus to operate it, which made Steve Jobs mad at Microsoft's pen computing division back in 2001. I honestly believe this to be way more important of a reason to Apple than anything else. The point of making you buy two computers is not to get twice as much money out of you, it's to get app developers to port their apps over to UIKit and make you re-buy all your apps twice. I tried UTM SE a while back. Using it with the Magic Keyboard was almost the Real Deal Laptop Experience, but if I ever took my iPad out of its Magic Keyboard then I'd have to use some really annoying mouse and keyboard emulation to use the same software. Apple's the kind of company that will absolutely put guns to the heads of their users to force them to not have a bad computing experience.
dmz73 2y ago
1) Things don't "Just Work" with IOS. I regularly have to help people figure out how to connect their i* to work network, install 2FA apps, find missing 2FA notifications, find freshly installed app icons..."It Just Works" if you have done it 100s of times before and know what to do. 2) That is just plain and simple user hostile behavior that is not tolerated in case of any other company except Apple by Apple users.