I think a big part of the mediocre sales is related to the use-cases that most iPad users have which seems to mostly be watching videos, browsing the internet, reading etc. Any 2 or 3 generation old iPad will do this fine with very little reason to upgrade. It doesn't have anything near comparable to the upgrade path that a lot of phone users who seem very eager to upgrade to a better camera/battery/etc.

The iPad is a 20 BILLION dollar a year business. Let's not get crazy on "mediocre" sales, this is one of the most popular product line of all companies combined. Did not get as high as some people were expecting but this is far from mediocre.

Source: https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/01/fun-with-charts-a-decade-...

Of course, you can only call it mediocre when comparing to the standout product lines. On it's own it's still a successful product. People have such high expectations for every one of their lines that some merely succeeding quietly is questioned. Says a lot about their success as a business.

> Let's not get crazy on "mediocre" sales

If I've got a product whose sales were falling 5 out of the past 6 years, and whose current sales are 30%+ down from a peak of 6 years ago, I'm pretty worried about it.

Is growth required for success?

I expect the iPad, lacking any new revolutionary functionality, to reach a steady state of (new customer + replacement rate) sales that is some percentage of its peak, pre-saturation sales. If replacement rate is every 4-5 years, this may be below 30% of peak.

This won't mean it isn't successful, just recognizing that existing users don't need to upgrade every year.

Thank you. We need to stop thinking of growth as a reasonable metric for wellbeing or relevance of products. When a new product is introduced, certainly, looking how the market reacts is interesting. But many years down the line, things should stabilise. Does your (metaphorical) baker round the corner grow yoy? And yet, somehow their bread is still good, and they have no problem surviving, except when a company with far too much capital just bulldozes in, for example by selling under local market prices.

/rant over

Growth is what the shareholders care about, and capital always rules, even at the expense of anything else.

Exactly. If it were not for the OS, the hardware seems to be a lot more capable than casual entertainment. These use cases simply don't push the hardware to its limits.

My iPad must be 4 or 5 years old and seems perfectly capable of pretty much everything I use it for (videos from various sources), lightweight web browsing, looking at pictures, browsing Ordnance Survey maps...

Only reason I would upgrade is if I break it (unlikely as I don't take it outside very often) or when iOS upgrades stop (which is what happened to two previous iPads I have in a drawer somewhere).

He meant UX and feature-wise capable, not hardware-wise.

He's right, if the OS itself was more advanced, than even if the same people who own iPads now wouldn't be interested in using those features other than their regular media consumption, it would still open up a new market for the iPad (new target audience). But with its current limitations, it can't do that.

For doing this sort of thing, most people can get by with a Kindle Fire, which are constantly on sale for $30-40. They are not anywhere near as good as an iPad, but for pure consumption they are more than adequate.

I literally have no idea how any newbie will know how to use the iPad via the array of gestures to show the dock, go home, switch apps, move an app over another, move them side-by-side, know that you can use mutliple fingers on the keyboard to use it as a cursor pad.

I used to think the meaningless icons with zero text or popup hints were bad (they are!) and the zero differentiation between a UI item and ordinary text (a button or link just looks like ordinary text, so you have to fumble around with the UI to guess what you can press; horrible flatness) was bad, but the inability to discover gestures other than behaving like a 2-year old with their first "feeling/textures" toy is the worst.

It just isn't obvious.

So we need to add multitasking controls directly to the visible UI. That means they could be accidentally triggered much more easily, so we'd need to do that in a clear and obvious way that isn't confusing, doesn't lead to accidental triggering and is easy and obvious to get out of. Also they need to be unobtrusive and minimise the impact on the display of applications and content.

Clearly having obscure gestures trigger functionality isn't ideal, but are the alternatives actually better, or even viable?

I do agree with Gruber, the current gestures and behaviours are awkward. I can think of some alternatives that might help. One would be to run your primary app, then have a Control Center widget activate a multitasking layout, then it display the home screen as an overlay, so you can choose any app to go into the 'second slot' of the chosen layout. That may well come with negative tradeoffs, but at least the app selection/launch process would be familiar. There may be things that can be done.

However there are no magic wands here. Getting rid of gestures sound great, but then what do you replace them with?

A single gesture from one side of the screen, in the style of the Windows 8 charms? A set of buttons (side-by-side, floating, switch foreground/background floating etc).

Or put it on the dock. One gesture to learn - show the dock, multitasking actions.

> The worst thing is that the forced over-simplification of the UI features did not make it easier to use for beginners. I can see many people (including myself) struggling. So we have been forced into a "compromise" with all the downside, but none of the upside.

I wholly disagree, at least at the beginning. When the original iPad was released, I remember seeing multiple viral videos of two-year-olds being given iPads and instantly figuring out how to use them. At the time, this was surprising.

I think we've forgotten just how simple iOS was in the Steve Jobs era. You had a grid of objects, and when you tapped an opbject, your device became that object until you transformed it back with the home button. There was no control center, no notification center, and no app switcher—even when Apple added "multitasking" in iOS 4, it took the form of a little bar, not a new view.

I'm not ready to say Apple should get rid of Notification Center, because it's pretty darn useful. But I would like a single kill switch in Settings which turns all these features off. Then I could enable it for my grandmother.

The iPad, for its part, should be simpler than the iPhone, because simplicity is the iPad's reason for existence. Laptops exist because they are (and continue to be) the most efficient way to get things done. The iPhone exists because it's a relatively capable device that fits in your pocket.

And the iPad exists so you can browse the web and watch Netflix in a focused and leisurely way. iPads also make these tasks accessible for people who are not familiar with computing and will be more comfortable a simpler environment.

By attempting to make the iPad as capable as a laptop, Apple is taking away the iPad's very real original use-case in service of a use-cases for which the iPad is inherently ill-suited. And for what? To compete with a class of product which Apple already makes?

2010 iPads were great at what they did, and 2010 Macs were great at what they did. I legitimately don't understand why 2020 Apple is now on a mission to conflate these two product lines. Even if Apple succeeds at making the iPad as capable as a Mac, what will all their work have accomplished?

Side note: the physical Home button that brought the device into a well-defined state was a godsend for new users. I observed this with both my parents and my grandparents: whenever they got "lost" somewhere, the fact that they could always press that button (and don't have to look for it! it's always in the same place, it's not auto-hide etc) and get to a familiar place, made things a lot easier. Oftentimes they'd use it in lieu of other, faster ways of getting from here to there - but I figured it's more important that they can get there.

I have to disagree - the ipad shouldn't be simpler than the iPhone - it should be binary: simpler for the grandparents, powerful enough to compete against a surface. When I travel, I'm only taking 1 big screen. The ipad should replace my laptop for trips where I don't have to work a bunch.

> simpler for the grandparents, powerful enough to compete against a surface.

The UI of a 2010 iPad could replace your laptop on trips. If you just need a device to occasionally keep tabs on email and review photos and bring up websites, the iPad has always been great for that.

If you need to do anything more intense, the one device you bring really should be a laptop, especially as we become able to engineer laptops that are increasingly small and light.

I don't think it's possible to develop a UI that is both as capable as a traditional computer and as simple and intuitive as early versions of iOS. The more actions you add, the harder any action is to discover.

The surface comes pretty close.

The surface is just a "standard" computer in a different form factor. It has both the utility of a standard computer and the complexity that comes with it.

I would love an OS X tablet, and I'm looking into making a Hackintosh one (it can be done). But it's not going to be an iPad, just like an iPad in a laptop case isn't a laptop.

>> people who are not familiar with computing

It's pretty amusing that IOS and Android are likely the reason that it's the year 2020 and "people who are not familiar with computing" still exist.

Spot on. I've been using an iPad Pro for 3 years now I use it every day and I love it but I still can't reliably get two apps to sit side-by side on the screen.

I just got an iPad Pro and I agree this gesture is awkward. Plus, some apps seem to not support it at all, so it’ll silently fail when one of those apps is on either side.

Maybe if I used the feature more. But the only time I use it is with a somewhat older large iPad that I sometimes use for drawing but which mostly sits in my kitchen to display recipes. I can never remember the right incantations when I try to do the split screen thing. And don't even try on the smaller iPad I use day to day.

> The worst thing is that the forced over-simplification of the UI features did not make it easier to use for beginners.

I believe Gruber argues completely the opposite: that the recent changes to add features like split screen make it more confusing (e.g. the example of his mother getting stuck in the split screen and calling him). He continues in the very article we comment here (emphasis mine):

"if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. Which is to say, now that iPadOS has its own name, I wish I could install the iPhone’s one-app-on-screen-at-a-time, no-drag-and-drop iOS on my iPad Pro. I’d do it in a heartbeat and be much happier for it."

And I think that should be a configurable accessibility option: to have UI completely discoverable and non-stuckable, even if some "so-called-Pro" features need more steps (or can't be implemented). Or even better and safer: that should be the default, with "advanced" shortcuts as an opt-in option.

The interface should by default to never bring users to the point where they can remain "stuck" in some mode from which they can't get out.

Steve Jobs understood that that 100% "discoverability" and "non stuckiness" must be the default UI, that's why Gruber would like to switch back to that older ideal.

And Steve Jobs was old enough to learn that much earlier: that the "modes" are bad and that good UI doesn't require one to do some magic to switch between them, as it can be summarized in the joke: "How to Quit Vim and Exit the VI Editor — the most popular Stack Overflow question -- and I'm using vi last two years because I can't figure out how to exit it."

Even these "visual" UI changes that made the UI more "Ive-conform" (removing buttons and having only text) made the UI more confusing for anybody not trained and retrained. The back "button" in the apps was drawn as a button when Jobs controlled the UI. Then it got to be switched to just the < sign, which those who don't frequently use the UI never understand to be anything more than a meaningless symbol on the screen.

"if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. Which is to say, now that iPadOS has its own name, I wish I could install the iPhone’s one-app-on-screen-at-a-time, no-drag-and-drop iOS on my iPad Pro. I’d do it in a heartbeat and be much happier for it."

Weirdly there is just a setting and it is strange that Gruber doesn’t know about it.

Settings->HomeScreen & Dock->Multitasking->Allow Multiple Apps

“Drag applications from the Dock or Home screen to create Split View and Slide Over apps. Swipe from the right edge to reveal your last Slide Over app.”

I like multiple apps except for in Safari, where I semi-regularly accidentally activate slide-over by dragging a link when I'm trying to scroll a page. Getting out of this mode is a pain in the ass, because AFAIK, you have to drag the slide over into split-screen mode before in order to close it.

Anyway, in desperation I turned off multi-tasking, but it doesn't disable the drag-link-to-create-slide-over-behavior. Instead it becomes even worse because the dragged link replaces the previous window. Even worse, you can't click the Back button to get back where you were. Doubly-even-worse, Safari's history is and has been broken for a long time... not every link you've visited is in the history, titles don't match the page you were on, etc.

Anyway, whatever the hell Apple did to Safari as part of iPad OS... I hate it.

edit: I didn't realize there was a slide-over-switcher you can activate and then from there swipe-up to kill the slide-over you don't want. Still a PITA. https://www.imore.com/how-use-slide-over-and-split-view-ipad...

Not just Steve Jobs: the development of the Apple Newton (arguably the precursor to the iPad) was in part led by Larry "NO MODES" Tesler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler http://www.nomodes.com/

Here is Larry's 1981 BYTE article about modes, complete with a "DON'T MODE ME IN" T-shirt made by a mutual friend:

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08/page/n103/...

Thank you. It's a big article, it starts on the page 90 and ends on 147(!) there. Also, the article is from 1981 and Tesler already works for Apple, as seen on the first page.

To compare with the article date, Apple Lisa was released January 19, 1983 (and, by the way, Macintosh January 1984, iPhone January 2007, iPad January 2010 -- Jobs certainly had a system).

Yes! Thanks!

"Primary inventor of modeless editing and cut, copy, paste."

http://www.nomodes.com/Larry_Tesler_Consulting/CV_files/NOMO...

Since cca 1973.

Reference: doi:10.1145/2212877.2212896

+1 I still haven’t figured out how to get split screen reliably and every time. But I don’t find a need for split screen either. A few times, I tried I had to google how to get split screen then I gave up. Also, sometime I automagically get split screen and can’t figure out how to get rid of it. Usually land up just closing apps in split screen and restarting apps.

Two extremely useful use cases of mine:

- drawing in Procreate with reference material in the split.

- learning a song by singing + playing it on the guitar with chords and lyrics displayed, with it playing in Music† at the same time (on repeat + seek readily accessible)††

† I find it infuriating that no other music app than Music has considered split a possibility.

†† I'm aware there's a "Play" thing in Ultimate Guitar but it's absolute crap, playing a YouTube version that often doesn't match, obscures the sheet with a PIP, and is terrible to make repeat/seek. This is a perfect use case of functional composability using split screen.

I use my iPad Pro in splitscreen almost exclusively. Probably because I mainly use it for notetaking and research, instead of as just an entertainment device. That said, the usability of multitasking has for some reason become far worse on iPads since iOS 11 and I'm still waiting for them to do anything to improve it. I still can't believe it's in the state it is now, years later.

Is this the 13" or the 11" version you have?

13"

I think if you find a compelling use case for it, you will figure it out :-)

I scan physical books to PDFs and read them as Quicklook from Files. Now, these books sometimes refer to other parts within the same book. So I almost always split the same book into 75:25 split. The smaller section section to move between the book/chapters, the larger section for focusing on.

I find this almost TWMish way of windowing actually helps me focus better than on the full MacOS.

Another use case. I write code on iPad(yes... I do), no.. not production code but something I am trying to figure out or learn. I code it in Pythonista (I have read about PyTo but don't need it just yet). If Python won't cut it then I type it out in Buffer Editor. Now I maintain an index of my code snippets in Numbers sheets to keep track of stuff. This time 50:50 split between the two and it works.

Most important use case, hand written notes. And with an App, searchable hand written notes.

On the iPad Pro, recently I found out it's possible to hook up a RaspberryPI as well for some more heavy lifting (but I guess by that point I would just not bother and bring a laptop)

And I have tried non Apple solution as well. A cheap Win 10 tablet followed by Surface Pro 6. With the Surface Pro I wouldn't need the RaspberryPI. In theory, it is the most comprehensive mobile platform and should do all of the above I have mentioned. However, the overall experience with that form factor and the clunkyness of Win10 as a touch based or tablet based OS spoiled it for me. I returned the Surface Pro.

Even with all it's limitations which I had to train myself to get around, iPad Pro is still the better mobile computing experience.

I dream that some day Apple will make a Thinkpad Yoga type device which will be running a full MacOS but will support the Apple Pencil and touch screen. OR an alternative dream is for Surface Pro to become less clunky in use as a tablet device.

Wait - how does a Raspberry Pi help you here? Do you ssh into it from the iPad? How do you connect to it physically?

I love and use split screen all the time on my iPad for a variety of use cases. Even though I love the feature and find it really useful all of the UI constraints related to it are totally true. I would never want the feature removed, but the existing UI for it is beyond maddening.

I code in one terminal app and look at documentation on the second. I watch videos in the full screen and browse twitter using the slide in option. I love the multitasking tbh

> And Steve Jobs was old enough to learn that much earlier: that the "modes" are bad and that good UI doesn't require one to do some magic to switch between them, as it can be summarized in the joke: "How to Quit Vim and Exit the VI Editor — the most popular Stack Overflow question -- and I'm using vi last two years because I can't figure out how to exit it."

The more a software do, the less it's user friendly... You can't really compare Vi, a text editor that need training to master by technician, and the IpadOS. They are not made for the same people.

The File, Edit, etc menus on macOS are much more clear interface than most applications I've used on the iPad.

macOS is undeniably more powerful - It's the truck versus the sports car in the analogy.

But macOS is much much more straightforward and easy to use. I have far fewer things that I just have to memorize.

I would argue that vi(m) is more user-friendly by being more upfront about its learning curve.

Vi(m) favors “easy to use” over “easy to learn” - which is the right tradeoff for a tool that one can use for hours a day for decades.

Though I always liked the line, “Vi is user-friendly - it’s just picky about who its friends are”.

(BTW, “ZZ” is usually the right answer to quitting/exiting - still funny to see, decades on, people teaching “:wq<return>”.)

Thank you. I just learned I've been exiting vim wrong for years.

I think that is different from being “user friendly”, where “user friendly” means “the UI for this application is as intuitive as we could make it do that a wide range of nontechnical users are able to comfortably use this application with a minimum of formal instruction.”

> it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents)

Sounds intriguing. How would I go about copying the PDFs that are currently on my Linux PC onto it, though?

I use Nextcloud[1], a self-hosted, platform-agnostic file sharing / personal cloud app. It's FOSS and is super easy to set up through Docker.

Whatever file I put onto it is available on iOS, Android, a browser and WebDAV. It also supports camera upload.

Germany recently switched to Nextcloud[2] to share data between agencies and as a privacy-respecting alternative to G Suite / MS.

When I upload a .doc to the platform my iPhone can open it within the app. Same for PDFs.

[1] https://nextcloud.com

[2] https://nextcloud.com/blog/german-federal-administration-rel...

I love that all the proposed solutions here totally suck. If the iPad would just work as a USB flash drive, all these convoluted transfer methods wouldn't be necessary.

"Suck" is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Between "plug the iPad into the computer and drag files from your computer onto a folder that's on the iPad's drive" and "drag files from your computer onto a folder that automatically syncs to the iPad," I count one less step in the second approach, but I guess YMMV.

The included "Files" app in iOS/iPadOS 13 can mount SMB shares.

Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, a USB cable, a USB drive...

Classic solution is email it to yourself.

> a USB drive

For a moment I thought this was going to be the solution, but then I looked into it and it turns out that you need an external power supply even for a flash drive.

Pass them through an intermediary, such as Google Drive?

I use Readdle PDF Expert (or the free Documents), which syncs entire directories from Dropbox, both ways.