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Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by emodendroket on Thursday June 14, 2018 @01:25PM (#17313398)
It's hard to imagine when there is still, like, active PC gaming communities and PCs are so important to office work.

I remember seeing a lot of this take when people were buying up iPads, but I think there are real limitations -- tablets are just not really good for doing work.

Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by peatmoss on Thursday June 14, 2018 @01:34PM (#17313512)
I very much hope you are right and I am wrong. The iPad Pro seems to be trying to mitigate some of those issues—at least for the growing segment of the populace who’d prefer to do everything on their phone.

I don’t like where Apple is going, but I can easily see a Macbook a generation or two out whose software is more iOS than macOS, and whose character is pretty locked-down / appified.

Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by cutler on Thursday June 14, 2018 @02:50PM (#17314307)
Nah, Mac OS dev tools are far too *nix-based. That's assuming Apple values its developer base.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by scarface74 on Thursday June 14, 2018 @02:15PM (#17313971)
Tablets are perfectly capable of doing work - tablet operating systems on the other hand....

If Apple would just add support for pointing devices and if they would allow access to arbitrary files stored on USB devices via the Files app, the iPad could serve the needs of most people.

Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by emodendroket on Thursday June 14, 2018 @02:16PM (#17313980)
So basically if they turned it into a laptop
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by scarface74 on Thursday June 14, 2018 @02:25PM (#17314078)
Yes. But with a much more consumer friendly OS. It would be easier to add laptop capabilities seamlessly to iOS than touch screen capabilities to OS X.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by emodendroket on Thursday June 14, 2018 @02:34PM (#17314151)
I don't see how you figure. Windows 8/10 does the latter and it works fine. Yes, controls in applications not designed for touch interaction don't work well without a mouse and keyboard, but again, I contend that a keyboard and mouse are much more suitable for productive work.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by scarface74 on Thursday June 14, 2018 @02:56PM (#17314356)
Windows 8/10 don't "work fine" as a touch screen OS. Most programs people use everyday still use menus that are not optimized for touch and there is still a special "tablet mode". Even parts of the OS itself are not geared fortouch.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by emodendroket on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:19PM (#17314540)
If you aim to replace office productivity apps you're going to run into the exact same problem
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by scarface74 on Thursday June 14, 2018 @04:18PM (#17314997)
There is already both Microsoft Office for the iPad and Apple's iWork suite.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by emodendroket on Thursday June 14, 2018 @04:23PM (#17315035)
Yes, and they provide a fraction of the functionality.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by scarface74 on Thursday June 14, 2018 @04:59PM (#17315298)
The question is how many people use the missing functionality? Also, office development is not static. MS is continuing to add functionality and with the better scriptability coming with iOS 12, iOS will get more powerful.
Re:On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware by emodendroket on Thursday June 14, 2018 @06:41PM (#17316052)
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

Nobody uses all of the esoteric features of Office, but most people use at least a few.