> “Developers will always surprise us, they will come up with use cases for us."

Well, they did. iPads are now replacing POS registers and kiosks. Although a part of me dies when I see iPad Pros being used for this, because it’s so powerful and capable yet being used as a big touch monitor.

I used to work for a company developing a POS system for the iPad (not Vend).

One of the main drawcards of using an iPad or other tablet for a POS kiosk is that they're significantly cheaper than an actual designed for purpose touch screen. Those big bulky touch screens are incredibly expensive, especially for what they are, they can cost up to $2000 and still only come with an i3 and 8 GB of RAM.

Same for musicians: many of us have an iPad for displaying scores due the superiority of the screen legibility in varying environments, and app support. I use mine almost exclusively for piano scores - I couldn't live without it. Doubling as a Netflix host on flights is a bonus.

Definitely, but I like to write on my scores which I can’t do on my iPad.

The big iPad Pro made a difference here too. The older iPads so t get enough music on the screen.

> but I like to write on my scores which I can’t do on my iPad.

What? Annotating scores is a main use for me. I do it constantly. It's something the ipad is great at.

What program do you use? Do you have an iPad that supports a pencil? How is it?

I use https://forscore.co/ . Only very old iPads don't support pencil, I believe.

Not sure about the app, but newer iPads support Apple Pencil. It's a bit expensive, but definitely worth it.

Yeah, one of the primary uses of my iPad was learning to read music.

We have an iPad pro at work & a piece of me dies thinking that such a powerful device will never run anything but iOS.

You realize that one of the reasons the device feels so powerful is that it runs iOS. A 5x specified Mac Pro doesn’t have the feel of the iPad.

Lets not get caught up unduly, any light OS would perform as well on the hardware, there's no magic between iOS and the ipad hardware.

The level of polish and integration between hardware and software with Apple is almost “magical” imho. Or at least very praiseworthy.

Compared to typical Windows laptop trackpads or most Android phones’ janky scrolling, Apple does a much better job getting better performance out of their hardware.

An iPad Pro doesn’t feel powerful, but if you compare its specs to a 10-year-old PC, it should.

I'm sure taking on Windows CE was exactly what was meant by that quote :p

At least it's better than underpowered devices in the same role. Cheap Chinese devices with 7-year-old versions of Android are still floating around in kiosks globally.

I still remember people saying that the iPad was just going to be a big iPhone and what is the point?

I NEVER understood this. I was one of those people that was immediately excited about the iPad. Being able to lay back in bed and casually browse the web, read magazines, watch movies, play games? On something with a decently large screen, decent battery life and something that wasn't bulky? PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY!!!!

It really surprises me to hear that there wasn't much excitement inside Apple for it. I now have the first generation of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and it's just about always in my bag with me.

I do think it's a shame you can't really develop apps ON the device. I'm glad the OS is getting more capable with the direction they're taking, so who knows? We might get Xcode one day :)

I use an old shitty netbook for this. I prefer that to my Nexus ... 7? tablet for three primary reasons.

The screen naturally holds itself at whatever angle I set it. If I'm just casually watching a video in bed, I can put my hands back under the covers where it's warm.

It has a keyboard. So the other half of the time, when I'm interacting with the machine in a meaningful way, input is way easier.

There's an entire other world of stuff to do with a full fledged OS. Programming, Steam games, the works, it's all there.

I haven't bought another tablet. It's not really better at anything than my phone.

I had the 2012 nexus 7 when I was in school and I loved it. Used it all the time for just about everything including insane use cases like programming. Then I got my first phone in about 2014 and didn't really have much of a use for the n7. Its just like a phone only slightly bigger but less portable and no 4g. Since then I haven't been interested in a new tablet and it looks like the entire Android tablet scene died.

Its a real shame the android tablet ecosystem has all but died. Android is better these days then its ever been. Highly customizable, you can use the firefox browser with uBlock origin, excellent 3rd party password manager support(much better then iPad). You also have a really nice open-source app eco system. Apps like Termux make it possible for me to basically do my DevOps job from anywhere in the world with a portable folding keyboard. Android functionality is awesome these days compared to iOS. Even the split screen functionality on my Pixel 2 is great compared to my iPad.

I think the problem is that even the best tablet is worse than a cheap shitty netbook. Shitty netbooks can be had for $200. The fancy shmancy backwards folding ones, (into a tablet form factor) aren't that much more.

You know what's better than termux? OpenSSH, tmux, a proper term, a proper tiling WM, in X.org. Or Wayland or screen if that's your thing I don't judge.

Termux is just a linux container, it has OpenSSH, and tmux. Yes I agree that a full linux workstation is better then an android phone, but sometimes I like to go out with friends and family and I might still be on call for work, and I really dont want to have to carry around a bulky laptop. Termux is just an extremely nice thing to have on an android phone and there is no legit officially sanctioned method of doing these things on iPad other then iSH which isnt even fully in the app store yet, its only on testflight.

I completely agree with you. A really good drawing surface with Pencil, handwritten notes + handwriting recogniser, a distraction-free writing environment with a keyboard cover, comic book reader, ebook reader* and light as heck? Also, a display of that quality for that price? Oh yes.

*Reading O’Reilly Safari books only works well on the iPad, I’ve found. Ever since they killed Kindle downloads. In any case, most technical books look better on the iPad anyway.

The apps are still a bit limiting. Eg some bank apps still assume you’re using a phone, but iPadOS’s desktop-like browser does help. What’s more irritating is that some apps, like Gmail, still don’t allow attaching documents from Files. But I suspect they’ll catch up.

Don't get me started on Google! Hangouts, for whatever reason, never got iOS multitasking support like being able to use it in a side panel (and if I recall correctly, the multitasking features got to iOS long before Google started abandoning Hangouts or whatever they're doing with it now). Though to be fair, I really think Apple should have found a way to do this without a requirement from app developers. I don't think it's an impossible task - just look at what Samsung DeX can do on Android without explicit support from existing apps (even if it isn't perfect,).

Somepeople definitely love the device. It depends on what these things mean to you. My iPhone is fine for reading for me. Paperback novels aren't as large as ipads. The column width in a print magazine and newspaper isn't as large as an ipad, it's about as wide as my iphone screen. Text wrap is important for comfortable reading. Therefore, in my eyes, having something larger than it needs to be to actually read is a waste.

Similarly, the web isn't any better on an ipad vs. an iphone; its the same mobile website but with more white space to fill the scale.

I could never stand gaming on a touch screen device, personally. I know people play fortnight on their phones these days, but I can't stand the lack of tactile response with virtual thumb sticks and the fact you have to block the screen with your thumbs to do anything at all. Games tailored to the device, like tap tap revenge, were fun but only for 10 minute spurts.

I get the merit of having a 12" light weight screen that connects to the internet, but apple hasn't sold me on the utility to make it worth dropping the couple hundred bucks, especially when my phone does it all while also being a phone.

There’s no Xcode (yet), but there’s a growing number of coding apps available for iPad and even iPhone. My all-time favourite is Codea, which is a Lua game development environment that exports to Xcode so you can publish your games to the App Store.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/id439571171

"just going to be a big iPhone (...) lay back in bed and casually browse the web, read magazines, watch movies, play games? On something with a decently large screen" -- isn't that just a big iPhone, then? Especially now that the iPhones are fairly large themselves, and mobile layouts are almost universal. I have an iPad, but I've never really found a good use for it. Web browsing, reading, and watching videos I find more comfortable on a phone (or a Kindle) I can hold in one hand. The form factor of the iPad combined with its touch screen means I can never find a comfortable way of holding it long-term.

To me the big draw of the iPad is that it combines the simplicity of a phone OS with a screen that can render large fonts and still be usable. That's great for people with poor eyesight, like my grandparents, who can fit only a few words at a time onto a 5" phone display and who find the Windows interface frustrating (being full of small buttons, accidentally-pressed keyboard shortcuts, things minimizing to the tray, and multiple windows containing multiple tabs). As someone lucky enough to have escaped that problem so far the iPad exists in a strange halfway point between a laptop (large, powerful, keyboard-equipped, capable of running and doing anything) and a phone (comfortable, portable, long-lasting) that's never quite right for the job.

Admittedly I've never used the Pencil which I imagine can be quite nifty.

Eh, I'm still not particularly excited about iPads or tablets in general. Tablets are awkward, to the point that I prefer:

- my phone for casual reading and watching (6" max) - my Kindle for longer reading sessions - my laptop for mobile productivity and gaming - my desktop for serious work/gaming

We mostly use our tablets to distract our kids, especially for long road trips. My wife has started using a tablet for drawing in lieu of a desktop drawing tablet, but that's about as close to "real" use of a tablet that we have.

It works out really well for some people, but I just don't see it.

If you own multiple tablets in addition to a Kindle, a laptop and a desktop computer, I’d say you are significantly more excited about tablets than the average tablet user.

> I do think it's a shame you can't really develop apps ON the device

I'm happy you can't. My old boss was so cheap he asked our head developer if this was possible, instead of having to buy me a Macbook.

Xcode is too expense for iPad by minimal hardware requirements.

Animation CPU should be good for dev apps too

https://twitter.com/acpustudio

What a strange mindset. I’ve used compilers on the original iPhone itself. My main computer is a core 2 duo MacBook from 09 and the latest Xcode runs fine

I tried XCode on iPad via remote desktop several years ago. UI is unusable on iPad, too small elements, please check screenshot:

https://acpul.tumblr.com/image/116464494150

About hardware, I used multiple configurations from Snow Leopard and XCode grows to godzilla while years. Xcode eat all free space on my Macbook Pro'18 256G and can crash randomly, lost iPad connection, etc. I don't want to see this on my iPad. I have mac for XCode.

PS: In same words, mac for more serious work, iPad for more creative and less serious work.

From Gruber you get that "this thing will never flourish outside of the niche markets its found itself in"? That's far from what he was trying to say.

From his concluding paragraph: "[G]reat though it is in so many ways, overall [the iPad] has fallen so far short of the grand potential it showed on day one. To reach that potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced. . . "

How you get "never flourish outside of niche markets" from that, I have no idea.

Kids love iPads/tablets - more than just for education. They love fortnite on them, they love youtube on them. A 3 year old can use an iPad. Sure - they can use phones too, but tablets will be the first computer for kids for a long time, until they start to reach for phablets when they are teenagers (or, as a society, we reject screen time below a certain age)

As someone who grew up with real computers it really hurts and saddens me to read this.

Kids also love sugar but it damages their brains and bodies.

this so called niche product produced $6B in one quarter or about $24B a year, which constitute a fortune 500 (global) company!

so give me a nice, niche product company any day!

https://fortune.com/global500/2019/search/

My mother had been vowing to learn to use a computer for more than a decade before the iPad. Of course she was never able to turn one on. But when she had an iPad she just kept using it.

This is something I've noticed. People in my life who don't "work" with computers—as in their primary use for a computer is to consume media—love their iPads.

They're pretty ubiquitous in aviation! I started flying helicopters a couple years ago and almost every pilot I know has one loaded with ForeFlight that they use both for mission planning and then strap to their knee for the flight. The flight school I went to even includes a new Mini in their PPL course. They give a pilot a ton of functionality that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replicate with certified avionics.

I was excited when the iPad was first released, bought one, and to my surprise I found I didn't have any regular use for it, and sold it.

I still think they're very cool devices—in particular the latest iPad Pros are gorgeous—I just wish I had some use for them that wasn't already covered by my computer, phone, or TV.

I've seriously considered making my iPad my only mobile device. The lines are blurred by having a large phone, though.

The 11" is so great for reading, my poor kindle only gets attention when I see the big dead battery image on it :(

I just recently bought a used iPad that still got the iPadOS update and what I noticed is very ambivalent.

PRO: - The device is light, has a nice screen and good sound. I can use it to read documents that need color, watch videos and browse the web all in one device with acceptable performance - The battery has enough capacity for the pad to work for days without recharging - You can use pencil 1 as an input device (I would not have bought one without support for pencil)

CON: - While apps like browsers (Safari, Firefox) look like the desktop versions they are just poor copies without the full potential. Without Add-On's my browsing experience is very limited in comparison to the experience on my computer - No Adobe Suite like many people wanted it while you can run Apps like the real PS on a surface - No native terminal, seriously? I live in a terminal and e.g. consume news via newsbeuter - Support for USB thumbdrives and mouse have just been added recently while competitors allowed much easier access much earlier. This "walled garden" feeling diminishes the experience a lot for me. I hoped for the iPad to be more like "a real PC/Mac" and this is one of the major reasons I never bought an early model or a new one.

My dream iPad would be more like macOS because as someone coming from Linux it feels already "walled" enough for my taste.

I have another major concern but that is based on the evidence about consumption, climate change etc. and of course Apple itself can probably not do much about it (can they?): What happens to the device when it is obsolete (e.g. no major OS updates and security patches)? It would be really awesome if they would open up to after market solutions to reduce waste and keep their products running so one can install linux on it.

I know this is a wild dream in a world that is driven by maximizing profit. Let dreamers be dreamers ;)

> as someone coming from Linux it feels already "walled" enough for my taste

Not criticizing at all, genuinely curious: what do you want to accomplish on an iPad that is prevented by the walled garden?

Not OP, but I also have some quarrels there.

For example, I can—to my knowledge—not use my preferred keyboard layout [0] on an external keyboard. NEO does not come built-in and I haven't found any way to add new layouts except by replacing built-in ones on a jailbroken device.

This more or less kills the device for me that requires any significant amount of writing, including tasks it would otherwise be perfectly suitable for, such as replying to a bunch of emails, brainstorming some ideas, or writing reports.

I also wish it were a more capable development machine without resorting to hacks such as ssh-ing into a server or accessing VSCode through the browser. I previously had a Surface 3 and for some light work on the go it was good enough, but I cannot be bothered to replicate my setup using a mixture of apps that might work now, but break when some requirement changes.

All that said, I'd buy another iPad if this one broke. It's by far the best digital writing experience I've ever had and even if I only use it for note taking, it's still money well-spent to me. But it could be so much more.

[0] https://neo-layout.org/

For the keyboard layout, a solution could be to have a programmable keyboard.

Ok this feeling especially comes from the following disadvantages:

- iOS/iPadOS AppStore vs. macOS AppStore + ability to install apps from the web (I can't even compile FOSS apps on my own without owning a mac + 100$/year dev licence - this is a real shit show for me!)

- mostly paid & stripped down terminal apps vs. a real native terminal (and of course just installing iTerm2 because you can do so on a mac)

- no "real" apps like on a desktop machine. As I mentioned in my CON's I would love to use a real browser like Firefox including Add-On's because the web is unusable in many cases without blocking and filtering all the evil scripts people use to make some extra money. Also I would like to use the Adobe products (photoshop, illustrator etc.) and not the stripped down (and from what I heard also bad) pseudo-apps. Finally I have a device that could replace things like a Wacom Tablet connected to your computer but that opportunity was missed. Very sad.

- no up- or downgrades as you please because Apple likes to force you to go to / stay on certain versions of their OS on the mobile devices to "motivate" you to buy new ones once in a while when they need more revenue.

- no free choice of OS. My MBP runs macOS and linux and if I would need it I could just install windows as well (uagh!).

There is much more to this but I think the issues mentioned should be enough to draw a clear picture of the paternalism Apple treats it's users of the mobile devices with. I don't like this at all and it was THE deal breaker that prevented me from ever buying a new iPad.

If they get worse as the MBP's do, I would also take care and probably never buy a new model and instead stick to an old one that is a combination of some "freedom" (the max. level Apple allows you to do anything with it), enough quality (good product, not too many beta-experiments) and stability (software is new enough not to be dangerous to use).

I agree with a lot of your comments, but just FYI, you can do a couple of those things:

> (I can't even compile FOSS apps on my own without owning a mac + 100$/year dev licence - this is a real shit show for me!)

You do need a Mac, but you can build FOSS apps and deploy them to your own iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV with a free developer account. You only need the paid license to distribute them to others.

> Finally I have a device that could replace things like a Wacom Tablet connected to your computer but that opportunity was missed.

There have been apps that support this for a while, but this is now a built-in iOS/macOS feature called "Sidecar".

I am afraid I also need to pay 100$ for the license to use certain features because if an app uses them I cannot even compile.

Recently I tried to compile blink[0] without a paid account and failed miserably.

Yes they also did a great job with sidecar which will only work if you at least own a recent mac. Also it does not work with the iPad Air 2 because they decided it is too old. It is the same story again: Apple softly forcing it's customers to upgrade - nice experience...

[0]: https://github.com/blinksh/blink

The best use case that I have found for an iPad for is that of a “personal computer,” that is, a computer that is entirely personal without any business.

Use the “Pro” laptop only for professional work and coding, and use the iPad only for anything else that falls into that “personal” categories of newsletters, mail, shopping, gaming, entertainment.

As a traveling remoter, that radical separation of two contexts has brought a great peace of mind.

You can surely sit back comfortably with your iPad for personal stuff, while work asks for you sitting seriously on a desk with your laptop: no blurry lines.

So in my opinion, that “curious” category that falls in-between “mobile” and “laptop” is nothing more than “personal computing” itself!

Isn’t it what that “revolution” has been all about, anyway?

Thanks you for iPad v1. iPad hardware has made possible Animation CPU software. I'm developer and I love iPad as development tool. iThink future for iPad is comming soon...

https://twitter.com/acpustudio

Amazing how much better vision Jobs had than anyone. From your comment looks like the entire senior team at Apple were nonbelievers.