5 ms·

Nice Things that Apple doesn't let us have (on an iPad)

28 points by walterbell 2y ago

Fwirt 2y ago
Not to defend a multi-billion corporation that’s currently being raked over the coals for anti-competitive practices, but here’s the thing about all Apple products: Apple under and since Jobs has been all about selling appliances, not computers. A bicycle for the mind, but one that gets serviced at the bicycle dealership. And while technical users would love to use their devices as the general purpose computers that they are, that goes contrary to the device’s designated purpose. The iPad is not supposed to run desktop software because that’s not what it’s supposed to do. You don’t see a lot of complaints that you can’t play Doom on your smart fridge, but it’s the same thing, except for the fact that the iPad is such an awesome form factor and combination of hardware. But once it stops being an appliance, that opens it up to a whole class of support issues and usability problems that don’t affect it in its current state. As soon as you put a toggle in settings that says “yes, let me break things”, then you get YouTube videos that tell kids to go in and turn on the toggle so they can mod a game, or install some spyware, and break their iPad, and the one to bear the brunt of the blame for the iPad being broken is not the random YouTuber, but Apple, for allowing their product to break. That’s how the general public sees it. Apple is not a hardware company, or a software company, they are both. The two are tightly integrated. That is one of the best things about the entire Apple ecosystem, the amount of iron-fisted, high-walled control they exercise means that the level of integration between their devices is unmatched anywhere else in the industry. Break that bond, and a lot of the appeal in Apple products goes away because yes, the hardware is overpriced. But if you look at it from the standpoint of a product that is a tightly integrated bundle of hardware and software, and that you are paying for the software as well, when you compare it to a lot of the other commercial offerings out there it starts to look like not such a bad deal. All this is to say: if you don’t like it, then buy something else. Requiring jailbreaks is by design, not just because Apple is greedy or lazy, but because it completely changes the purpose and usage of their product to allow the installation of general-purpose software.
- arcanemachiner 2y ago
  > if you don’t like it, then buy something else I did, but someone convinced _them_ it was a good idea to take out the headphone jack and removable battery too. Many of Apple's decisions end up having a blast radius large enough to affect people who never buy their products.
- coderatlarge 2y ago
  I’m very aligned. I don’t love Apple , but I buy their hardware because of their vertical integration and closed systems. I get the argument that many eyes make bugs shallow , but if you want a tightly managed supply chain as a consumer , I don’t think you can do better than Apple in today’s market.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Very eloquently put. Freedom for you often means freedom for others, including those with bad intentions or a disinterest in maintaining your safety. The same philosophy applies to any ecosystem such as programming language design, package managers, app stores, etc… Maximum freedom is not always desirable because it invites in scammers and abusers of the commons.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Virtualization does not have a security/freedom tradeoff, as VMs have more isolation/security and more user freedom to install software. https://www.df-f.com/blog/ios17 https://www.df-f.com/blog/ios17
- yunohn 2y ago
  I mean you say all this, and then in every iPad keynote Apple hypes the performance for power users, content creators, photographers and videographers, and even gaming! Case in point, the latest iPad Pro has an M4 chip which no other Apple device has. The problem is Apple just don’t want to give any of those demographics the ability to run what they want - instead only what Apple thinks they should run.
  - 2y ago
ivanjermakov 2y ago
This is intentional. If Apple starts selling iPads as full fledged computers, who would buy macbooks anymore?
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  If Apple's AR headset is successful who will buy iPads and iPhones anymore? As a company you have to be the one making yourself obsolete all the time to innovate and survive, because if you don't, then other companies will. Fear of cannibalizing existing profitable products with new ones, is what killed Nokia, Kodak, SGI, Blackberry, Philips, etc. leaving them as husks leapfrogged by more brash competitors.
- silentsanctuary 2y ago
  If Apple starts selling iPhones as full fledged iTunes devices, who would buy iPods anymore? If Apple are losing a sale, they want to lose it to themselves. I'm not sure they'd be worried about being unable to extract more money from the customer, that's an area in which they seem flush with ideas (perhaps, an iPad Ultra with encrusted diamond frame?)
  - xerox13ster 2y ago
    The iPad ultra with the diamond encrusted frame is a great idea for those grandmothers who like to use their iPads as a cutting board, because then they could flip it over and sharpen their knife.
instagib 2y ago
why not look for a jailbreak capable iPad, iPhone, and a MacBook Air. There are places to find them. That should check most of the boxes. They want everyone to buy one of each thing in their store and they want to skew them so you buy a more expensive version each time until you only buy the top tier of each for reasons.
- dangus 2y ago
  If you’re willing to jailbreak why not just get an Android tablet? Because jailbreaking basically unlocks access to some pretty shitty hacky apps in an overall pretty shitty and unstable experience. Like, it’s cool, and I support the idea, but as a daily driver why not buy the OS that gives you more freedom in the first place?
  - instagib 2y ago
    It depends on the iteration that you’re jailbroken or on android. I’ve had bad build quality android experiences. I didn’t have many issues with a checkm8 jailbreak iPad and iphone or older jailbreaks. Most of the issues were solved with a 5% or 10% battery dead emulator screen off to keep me from losing my jailbreak. You then get to have features you want well before everyone else on the latest iOS and maintain high quality components of Apple with a very long update cycle. I’ve had iOS features that Apple removed. Much more freedom to do development on them too where more money is on iOS. New update breaks features with an app, roll back to any version you want instead of waiting for a fix.
- walterbell 2y ago
  > There are places to find them Other than eBay, any recommendations for an iPad with blobs for iOS 16.x with hypervisor framework?
  - instagib 2y ago
    https://old.reddit.com/r/JailbreakSwap/ https://old.reddit.com/r/JailbreakSwap/
weego 2y ago
It's perfectly OK for a company to release a product that isn't entirely open to all engineering aims. It's just a waste of oxygen constantly discussing this.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- walterbell 2y ago
  If Apple wants Pro developers to buy $10 Pi Zero to run Linux sidecar with $1000 Apple iPad Pro, the least they could do is sell $100 Pi Zero attachment* for $300 Magic Keyboard. Is it too much to ask Apple to give customers what they want for 900% markup? *or $100 Apple Linux VM sold in App Store Just take the money Apple, you can do it! Some hostages will pay the ransom for a Thin, Light, Linux, Apple VM. Even with EU sideloading, some will pay for Apple VMs.
- lhamil64 2y ago
  I mostly agree, but I do think it should be a requirement that the user can install an alternative operating system. On a desktop or laptop, if you dislike something about Windows or macOS, you can install Linux. On most Android devices, you can unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM. Granted, I wouldn't expect Apple to support a software issue after doing this but at least you could technically use your hardware for anything you want if you're dedicated enough.
sircastor 2y ago
I think part of the problem is that When the iPad was released, Apple (and Steve Jobs specifically) had a different vision of what the iPad was going to be. It wasn’t supposed to be an “everything” computer. It was supposed to be an appliance. I think if Steve had lived another decade (or longer) the Mac would be dead, wholesale replaced with iOS. iOS and iPasOS are very much the kind of managed environment that Steve preferred. He wanted to give users the whole package. If you could mess things up by getting to an error state or not know how to solve a problem, they failed. I am pleased that we didn’t go down that road. I think though, that is why the iPad is still not entirely sure what its role is in the lineup.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  No need to be this charitable. Apple knows perfectly they could converge the top of the tablet range and the Macbook. They do it more and more to cut cost on the bill of material. They don’t do it because they know it would lower their overall sales and the lack of competition doesn’t push them to do so. Why ship something better when you can keep selling both a tablet and a laptop?
  - walterbell 2y ago
    > Why ship something better when you can keep selling both a tablet and a laptop? Why be excellent when you can be mediocre? Someone at Apple must have the business imagination to monetize unscheduled customer demand for an existing product.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  Steve Jobs wanted to make the Mac an appliance too. It's part of why the 128K was kinda trash and had no internal expansion. It wasn't until he was forced out that they released the Mac II and SE and not being so fixated on being an appliance. Modern Apple is too addicted to low-effort high return App Store revenue and too worried about the iPad eating Mac sales to make it an actually good product instead of a nice one for niche workflows.
  - 2y ago
znpy 2y ago
Regarding: "A native terminal": the most infuriating thing to me is that when using a proper keyboard via bluetooth function keys (F1-F12) will just be ignored. I know they're useless in iOS but some applications use them when connected via ssh or via remote desktop. So annoying, so frustrating. More so because I know that Apple *intentionally* did this.

28 points by walterbell 2y ago

Not to defend a multi-billion corporation that’s currently being raked over the coals for anti-competitive practices, but here’s the thing about all Apple products: Apple under and since Jobs has been all about selling appliances, not computers. A bicycle for the mind, but one that gets serviced at the bicycle dealership. And while technical users would love to use their devices as the general purpose computers that they are, that goes contrary to the device’s designated purpose. The iPad is not supposed to run desktop software because that’s not what it’s supposed to do. You don’t see a lot of complaints that you can’t play Doom on your smart fridge, but it’s the same thing, except for the fact that the iPad is such an awesome form factor and combination of hardware. But once it stops being an appliance, that opens it up to a whole class of support issues and usability problems that don’t affect it in its current state. As soon as you put a toggle in settings that says “yes, let me break things”, then you get YouTube videos that tell kids to go in and turn on the toggle so they can mod a game, or install some spyware, and break their iPad, and the one to bear the brunt of the blame for the iPad being broken is not the random YouTuber, but Apple, for allowing their product to break. That’s how the general public sees it. Apple is not a hardware company, or a software company, they are both. The two are tightly integrated. That is one of the best things about the entire Apple ecosystem, the amount of iron-fisted, high-walled control they exercise means that the level of integration between their devices is unmatched anywhere else in the industry. Break that bond, and a lot of the appeal in Apple products goes away because yes, the hardware is overpriced. But if you look at it from the standpoint of a product that is a tightly integrated bundle of hardware and software, and that you are paying for the software as well, when you compare it to a lot of the other commercial offerings out there it starts to look like not such a bad deal. All this is to say: if you don’t like it, then buy something else. Requiring jailbreaks is by design, not just because Apple is greedy or lazy, but because it completely changes the purpose and usage of their product to allow the installation of general-purpose software.

arcanemachiner 2y ago
> if you don’t like it, then buy something else I did, but someone convinced _them_ it was a good idea to take out the headphone jack and removable battery too. Many of Apple's decisions end up having a blast radius large enough to affect people who never buy their products.
coderatlarge 2y ago
I’m very aligned. I don’t love Apple , but I buy their hardware because of their vertical integration and closed systems. I get the argument that many eyes make bugs shallow , but if you want a tightly managed supply chain as a consumer , I don’t think you can do better than Apple in today’s market.
jiggawatts 2y ago
Very eloquently put. Freedom for you often means freedom for others, including those with bad intentions or a disinterest in maintaining your safety. The same philosophy applies to any ecosystem such as programming language design, package managers, app stores, etc… Maximum freedom is not always desirable because it invites in scammers and abusers of the commons.
- walterbell 2y ago
  Virtualization does not have a security/freedom tradeoff, as VMs have more isolation/security and more user freedom to install software. https://www.df-f.com/blog/ios17 https://www.df-f.com/blog/ios17
yunohn 2y ago
I mean you say all this, and then in every iPad keynote Apple hypes the performance for power users, content creators, photographers and videographers, and even gaming! Case in point, the latest iPad Pro has an M4 chip which no other Apple device has. The problem is Apple just don’t want to give any of those demographics the ability to run what they want - instead only what Apple thinks they should run.
- 2y ago

ivanjermakov 2y ago

This is intentional. If Apple starts selling iPads as full fledged computers, who would buy macbooks anymore?

Rinzler89 2y ago
If Apple's AR headset is successful who will buy iPads and iPhones anymore? As a company you have to be the one making yourself obsolete all the time to innovate and survive, because if you don't, then other companies will. Fear of cannibalizing existing profitable products with new ones, is what killed Nokia, Kodak, SGI, Blackberry, Philips, etc. leaving them as husks leapfrogged by more brash competitors.
silentsanctuary 2y ago
If Apple starts selling iPhones as full fledged iTunes devices, who would buy iPods anymore? If Apple are losing a sale, they want to lose it to themselves. I'm not sure they'd be worried about being unable to extract more money from the customer, that's an area in which they seem flush with ideas (perhaps, an iPad Ultra with encrusted diamond frame?)
- xerox13ster 2y ago
  The iPad ultra with the diamond encrusted frame is a great idea for those grandmothers who like to use their iPads as a cutting board, because then they could flip it over and sharpen their knife.

instagib 2y ago

why not look for a jailbreak capable iPad, iPhone, and a MacBook Air. There are places to find them. That should check most of the boxes. They want everyone to buy one of each thing in their store and they want to skew them so you buy a more expensive version each time until you only buy the top tier of each for reasons.

dangus 2y ago
If you’re willing to jailbreak why not just get an Android tablet? Because jailbreaking basically unlocks access to some pretty shitty hacky apps in an overall pretty shitty and unstable experience. Like, it’s cool, and I support the idea, but as a daily driver why not buy the OS that gives you more freedom in the first place?
- instagib 2y ago
  It depends on the iteration that you’re jailbroken or on android. I’ve had bad build quality android experiences. I didn’t have many issues with a checkm8 jailbreak iPad and iphone or older jailbreaks. Most of the issues were solved with a 5% or 10% battery dead emulator screen off to keep me from losing my jailbreak. You then get to have features you want well before everyone else on the latest iOS and maintain high quality components of Apple with a very long update cycle. I’ve had iOS features that Apple removed. Much more freedom to do development on them too where more money is on iOS. New update breaks features with an app, roll back to any version you want instead of waiting for a fix.
walterbell 2y ago
> There are places to find them Other than eBay, any recommendations for an iPad with blobs for iOS 16.x with hypervisor framework?
- instagib 2y ago
  https://old.reddit.com/r/JailbreakSwap/ https://old.reddit.com/r/JailbreakSwap/

weego 2y ago

It's perfectly OK for a company to release a product that isn't entirely open to all engineering aims. It's just a waste of oxygen constantly discussing this.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
walterbell 2y ago
If Apple wants Pro developers to buy $10 Pi Zero to run Linux sidecar with $1000 Apple iPad Pro, the least they could do is sell $100 Pi Zero attachment* for $300 Magic Keyboard. Is it too much to ask Apple to give customers what they want for 900% markup? *or $100 Apple Linux VM sold in App Store Just take the money Apple, you can do it! Some hostages will pay the ransom for a Thin, Light, Linux, Apple VM. Even with EU sideloading, some will pay for Apple VMs.
lhamil64 2y ago
I mostly agree, but I do think it should be a requirement that the user can install an alternative operating system. On a desktop or laptop, if you dislike something about Windows or macOS, you can install Linux. On most Android devices, you can unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM. Granted, I wouldn't expect Apple to support a software issue after doing this but at least you could technically use your hardware for anything you want if you're dedicated enough.

sircastor 2y ago

I think part of the problem is that When the iPad was released, Apple (and Steve Jobs specifically) had a different vision of what the iPad was going to be. It wasn’t supposed to be an “everything” computer. It was supposed to be an appliance. I think if Steve had lived another decade (or longer) the Mac would be dead, wholesale replaced with iOS. iOS and iPasOS are very much the kind of managed environment that Steve preferred. He wanted to give users the whole package. If you could mess things up by getting to an error state or not know how to solve a problem, they failed. I am pleased that we didn’t go down that road. I think though, that is why the iPad is still not entirely sure what its role is in the lineup.

RandomThoughts3 2y ago
No need to be this charitable. Apple knows perfectly they could converge the top of the tablet range and the Macbook. They do it more and more to cut cost on the bill of material. They don’t do it because they know it would lower their overall sales and the lack of competition doesn’t push them to do so. Why ship something better when you can keep selling both a tablet and a laptop?
- walterbell 2y ago
  > Why ship something better when you can keep selling both a tablet and a laptop? Why be excellent when you can be mediocre? Someone at Apple must have the business imagination to monetize unscheduled customer demand for an existing product.
goosedragons 2y ago
Steve Jobs wanted to make the Mac an appliance too. It's part of why the 128K was kinda trash and had no internal expansion. It wasn't until he was forced out that they released the Mac II and SE and not being so fixated on being an appliance. Modern Apple is too addicted to low-effort high return App Store revenue and too worried about the iPad eating Mac sales to make it an actually good product instead of a nice one for niche workflows.
- 2y ago

znpy 2y ago

Regarding: "A native terminal": the most infuriating thing to me is that when using a proper keyboard via bluetooth function keys (F1-F12) will just be ignored. I know they're useless in iOS but some applications use them when connected via ssh or via remote desktop. So annoying, so frustrating. More so because I know that Apple *intentionally* did this.