Those things the ipad can't do are largely niche (now that working with files is well supported), and are solvable limitations. The software problem on the surface pro is pervasive and unsolvable. They've done their best, but you can't make every piece of software written for Windows suddenly not require the precision of a mouse or suddenly support navigational gestures.
I had a surface book 2, but got rid of it in favor of an ipad pro after using one for a while. I have a desktop that I use for gaming, but I would have that either way for the sheer power of it.
The only thing that the ipad can't do well that I'd use it for is programming. This is not a dealbreaker for me, as I don't like programming on the go anyway, and if I really needed to then I can remote into a desktop to do it.
* Software development, with the best will in the world, isn't really possible on it.
* No quick ways to open up multiple windows, alt-tab between them, snap them side by side etc.
* No mouse support (Admittedly, I tried them a while back, but by all accounts, the mouse support until this update was still bolted on).
* Shitty af file system (Admittedly another thing that is moving in the right direction).
* Woeful stand. The previous folio was a joke, especially at it's price. It was unstable, lacked a trackpad, and personally, I hated the typing feel.
It was all rather disappointing, because I was so tempted by it. A sub-1 kg setup that one could pack in one's bag and forget, with a proper aspect ratio, with touch support, with great battery life, with the Apple quality etc.
Could've been great, but isn't there yet.
Software development doesn't feel niche to me. It feels like it should be possible to publish a usable, high quality iPad app using nothing but an iPad.
I'm not saying everyone should be able to build a large application, but you shouldn't be stopped from building things on it, otherwise how will you even get started?
Computers that stop you from inspecting them and learning how they work build a moat between the users and developers of the system. That's the opposite of what I think we should be encouraging.
I am a heavy user of Cellular connectivity with my iPad Pro. It is my go to device on the road and while travelling, open it up and it just works. It runs a long time on a charge and it has apps that respond quickly for movies, reading, browsing, mapping, and note taking (all things I do while traveling).
The Surface Pro is where I do development (generally in WSL2 these days) once I've arrived somewhere that there is free WiFi and access to AC power. I will typically use it with a USB device or two as well (such as flash drives, wireless connections, and embedded development boards) Its ability to drive a couple of 2K screens and give me a "full up" developer experience is appreciated.
I sketch more on my iPad even though I like the drawing "feel" of the Surface Pro better. The SP feels "clunky" when I try to use it in tablet mode.
When I use them together its generally the iPad for reference materials and background music while I'm writing code on the SP.
And iPads have been outselling Macs on a unit basis for a decade, so even people who buy iPads don't seem to find them suitable for general office/school-type work (as opposed to use as specialty terminals carried by inspectors or mounted on fast food counters).
Some combination of form factor and iOS's "you'll only hurt yourself with tools, so we've replaced them with lots of fun ways to buy entertainment" design ethos has so far failed to make iPad the computer replacement that Apple always claims it is. Instead, it's more of a personal entertainment center.
It's also a bit better than a laptop for digging in and highlighting reading material.
I would not use it as my main PC, though, that's for sure. The apps just aren't there yet.
Web browsing on the ipad pro with a keyboard cover although is pretty good!
Techy use cases like building and running "custom" code are unsupported on a more fundamental level, but I'd call that a special case. Slightly more concerning is how tightly locked-down the app store is.
I agree that Tablet Mode in Windows isn't as good as iOS on iPad. On the other hand, I just want to carry with me one mobile computer/tablet, not two.
Developer tools are an obvious weak point, but FWIW I sold my Surface to buy an iPad Pro a few years ago and I'm happier with this. Considering an upgrade from 2016 model (9.7" with lightning) to the new ones.
It wouldn't work as my only computer, but I have a much beefier desktop for gaming and whatever workloads the iPad isn't suited for. That list of workloads is getting smaller and smaller though.
And it's not just external storage devices. It was always such a mess.
E.x. with the Camera connection kit on the iPad Pro:
- My Canon 5D worked
- Go Pro cameras did not work
- My external card readers didn't work (which could take the cards from the GoPro), sounds like maybe they fixed this
I could go on and on, Apple chips away a little by little at what works and what doesn't work. But meanwhile life goes on with OSX and Windows where everything just works. I used the iPad Pro for 2-3 years.. stuff just improves glacially on the iPad, that's the issue, they fix like one or two things in a year and you still have a list of 25 things that are a PITA.
Some of this stuff with USB-C is tough. There's no way I'm going to buy a new $3000+ camera to get USB-C for example.
I tried to aggressively go Type C exclusively starting in 2017 and have pretty much been there for about 18 months. There are two devices that need an adaptor which I simply glued onto the cable, but then again a lot of devices have gone completely wireless.
People had the same problem with the 30-pin to lightning transition, ADB to USB type A, the super messy VGA->various kinds of DVI and DisplayPort -> (mostly) HDMI and the like. They've been worth it in the end.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UUBS0SS
Or if you want to use a card reader, you get one that plugs into a USB-C port and toss it in the bag with the iPad, just like you would with a USB-A card reader and a Surface.
I don't know about the GoPro since I don't have one, but if it's a normal filesystem they ought to show up in the Files app as well.
Since you already have a USB-C MacBook Pro in sounds like either the cable or the reader would work on both devices.
EDIT: slightly outdated from iPadOS Beta 5, but this blog reports that the Files app shows RAW files and can preview them, but doesn't generate thumbnail icons. Not sure whether this is still the case https://numericcitizen.me/2019/08/01/browsing-raw-images-in-...
Does the iPad not support HFS+ and Apple File System?
It's pretty similar to Mac; I believe the supported systems are HFS+, APFS, FAT, and exFAT.
But NTFS is not supported at all (macOS can read but not write) and encrypted drives aren't supported (macOS supports read/write).
It works well with about anything on the iPhone - although some devices require a powered lightning cable.
On iPad, the same devices will all work, but it's a lot fussier about what powered lightning cable you use.
For example - I have a USB-C to lightning cable and a USB-PD charger. If I use those with the camera connection kit, my iPhone will access any USB storage device I've connected. It won't work on the iPad. But if use a USB-A to lightning cable to a 2 amp power supply, the same devices work fine on the ipad. go figure.
Wish they’d just change everything to USB-C, but with them releasing new accessories regularly that charge with lightning, it doesn’t feel likely. Most recently PowerBeats 4 a couple of days ago.
I’ve been using a succession of iPads as my main computing platforms since the first iteration was released ten years ago. Initial releases were a bit of a compromise, but the arrival of multitasking, multi-view, and filesystem access (latterly with iPadOS) have come a long way towards ensuring that I have nothing to miss. The addition of native support for an in-built trackpad further accentuates this trend.
Sure, I cannot develop or compile natively on the iPad, but that is something I do very rarely.
[EDIT: Spelling error corrected in ‘arrival’.]
Do you worry about iOS's overaggressive autocorrect?
(I'm just kidding, I know people are actually pretty close to as fast and accurate on mobile vs. desktop/laptop: https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/typing37k/)
The alternative explanation, which has far fewer moving parts and doesn't require an assumption of bad faith, is that the Mac App Store was obvious after the iOS Store success, and so was a major push in security/sandboxing beyond chmod -R 600.
It's five years since SIP was introduced, and none of the dire predictions were correct. The mechanism to disable it has not changed even incrementally. But almost no one bothers to disable it because it doesn't actually stop you from doing anything, while it does seem to be effective at stopping malware.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about but sure.
Apple was hoping they'd introduce the MacStore everyone would flock to it in droves. Unfortunately the revenue sharing scheme and onerous requirements and restrictions put upon the Developers have made it an undesirable distribution mechanism for anything that isn't given away free.
Apple's improvements to MacOS have all been about locking down and protecting the user because for years they claimed it was immune to malware and virus right up until the problem was too big to ignore. The past few releases of MacOS have been reminiscent of Windows Vista.
Apple would love to lock the platform down to be like iOS but the users have spoken with a resounding "f*ck you". So instead they're gradually developing a competing platform that is build from the ground up to be the unprivileged walled garden with a big ass toll booth at ever point of entry.
And you're sitting here taking the Apple approach of deny deny deny right up until you switch and say "it's better this way".
They work in Linux because they're open package repos, we can add our own tress/signatures in and can have a lot of control over them. App stores are bastardizations of this concept. They offer some additional security for the non-tech user (maybe? It's questionable) but it also makes your devices not your own.
It’s not questionable at all, the App Store has been a cornerstone of the iOS security model for years. You can look at how many millions of Android users are constantly infected because it turns out that most people have zero concept of when to trust a third party or not.
Either way Apple does let you run your own apps if you jump through some hoops with MDM and Xcode and whatnot. So it’s not completely locked down either.
It’s locked down enough that I feel comfortable that the average user would be secure and taken care of when using iOS.
It's pretty questionable. The most obvious reason iOS has better security than Android is because iOS has far better sandboxing than Android.
I don't necessarily dismiss claims that moderation reduces malware, but I am at least skeptical of those claims. I haven't seen compelling statistics that moderation on the scale of the iOS App Store has specifically made an impact beyond banning a few high-publicity, wildly bad actors. The evidence I have seen suggests that moderation is likely not a scalable solution to malware.
More to the point, what we do know pretty conclusively is that app stores on their own are not a magic bullet. We can look at Windows, Chrome, and Android and see that app stores don't automatically improve security.
I think you can make a strong case that iOS shows why having a locked down OS in general helps -- the restrictions around the filesystem in particular close off entire classes of malware. But I think it's mostly conjecture to try and separate the App Store from those other improvements and credit it in specific.
1. The application developer creates a manifest that lists the privileges the app wants, and includes it as part of the code-signing request;
2. Apple’s App Store review team audits the application more thoroughly according to the privileges it has claimed;
3. Apple only code-signs the app bundle if the app stays on the strait-and-narrow;
4. The OS (through Gatekeeper) enforces the content of a code-signed app bundle, and therefore makes any included capability manifest immutable (in the sense that, if you change it, Gatekeeper considers the app considered and won’t start it);
5. The OS (through the capabilities system) enforces the restrictions from any included capabilities manifest on any high-level framework calls.
Note that there’s no actual linkage going on between code-signing and the capabilities manifest, in a way you’d expect from e.g. a Docker image. There’s no real “application sandbox” here. There’s just an Apple signature on the app bundle, telling you Apple saw this app as-is and approved it; and then, separately, an entirely optional opt-in capabilities system for which an app can claim any capabilities it wants.
If you take Apple out of the picture as a central signer, then 1. apps could claim any capabilities they liked, and nobody could tell them different (this is more like Android, where installing something presents you with a list of the capabilities it claims); but more importantly, 2. apps wouldn’t even need to use the capability system at all. Like I said, it’s opt-in; regular binaries run on macOS (and iOS!) just fine without living in an app-bundle with a paired capabilities manifest.
So, the whole security model of iOS (and macOS under Gatekeeper strict mode) comes down to “Apple verifies that apps are doing the right thing at some point.” Without that, there’s pretty much no sandboxing on either OS beyond what little you get from BSD user privileges and Mach port ACLs.
When people talk about app store moderation, they're talking about a moderation team deciding which apps are abusive and which ones aren't. They're not talking about the underlying mechanism of, "there's a system that verifies an app doesn't violate its manifest."
The relevant part of the app store that people in this thread are talking about are the decisions about, "should a specific app that asks for location permissions be allowed on the store?" Code signing doesn't have anything to do with that decision. It's an implementation detail. The important part is not "Facebook is signed to a specific manifest", it's "Facebook's app will be rejected if it's submitted with a manifest that asks for privileges that aren't consumer-friendly."
The decision about which apps are allowed on the store is the part of the App Store that's relevant. When people question whether or not app stores improve security, what they're asking is, "does a centralized malware filter improve security?"
You could have a Gatekeeper model that worked the exact same way as Android, where the Manifest was required and the user confirmed the Manifest. Even in that world, Apple's sandboxing would still be better than Android's, because the capabilities Apple offers in the manifest are more intelligently split up, and can be granted in more limited degrees.
The question is whether Apple's security stats are due to moderation, or largely due to having a better set of permissions. I strongly maintain that there is not enough clear data for anyone to claim that the moderation is objectively the main contributor to those stats.
And that's really the only claim that djsumdog was ever making -- that it's questionable whether every company adding an app store to every platform is actually going to make most people safer.
The only reason anyone bothers with the finickyness of capabilities manifests in the first place, is that Apple forces developers to take exactly the capabilities they need, and rejects apps that ask for more than they need, or ask for capabilities that are too coarse-grained for what they need. Without Apple there to do that human-intelligence-complete task of determining whether an app “needs” the permissions it’s asking for, devs would have a much simpler incentive: to avoid work (and “you must re-approve this app” prompts) by just using as far-reaching of capabilities claims as they can. Just as Android-ecosystem apps do today!
And so you’d have iOS malware that simply asks for permission to rootkit you and then rootkits you (just like on Android), and it wouldn’t look out of place, since everything would ask for those same permissions. (Yes, system-equivalent capabilities like that exist in iOS. Apple doesn’t issue them to third parties, but they exist for the sake of system apps. Without a curator, nothing would stop any random app from putting those root-kit-y capabilities in its list, and then socially engineering people into thinking they were sensible things for said app to need.)
tl;dr: The security of an ecosystem doesn’t just come from its mechanics, but also its economics. If nobody has any reason to “only claim what they need”, then why would they? Right now, Apple (and their rejection of apps that are too coarse-grained in their capabilities requests) is that reason.
That's a reasonable question that at first glance seems to have an obvious answer.
And yet, the web works. The web works brilliantly -- the web isn't perfect by any metric, but it is still almost objectively the most secure general-user computing platform that we have today. There are a lot of reasons for that, including just locking down capabilities in general, but where permissions are specifically concerned:
- The current permissions model that platforms including iOS are moving towards is granting permissions piece-meal post-install. Asking for lots of permissions up-front looks a lot more skeezy in this world, which reduces user trust. I particularly respect that iOS pops up reminders of what permissions you've granted apps, I think that's a brilliant UX move, and I wish other platforms would copy it.
- The more sophisticated model that Firefox/Chrome are starting to play with (and that I suspect more platforms are going to adopt in the future) is that apps can't ask for permissions directly, users need to grant them themselves by going out of their way, which helps cut down on people mindlessly clicking OK on everything that pops up and introduces a UX/development cost for apps that want to enable tons of permissions, because they now need to explain to users what to click on.
- The really sophisticated model that people are looking into for stuff like filesystem access is that the app never knows whether or not a permission was granted. If it asks for location, it gets an incorrect answer. If it asks for access to your media files, it gets a blank folder with nothing in it. Under this model, the app is completely isolated by default, and never knows how many permissions the user has granted it, so it never knows whether or not to ask for more of them.
So this is one of those questions that intuitively points towards moderation, but in practice we're starting to learn that with good UX there are a lot of ways to teach ordinary people to be safe, and there are a lot of ways to restrict apps without encouraging users to circumvent those restrictions.
Of course, I don't think it's impossible that app store moderation helps security. I mean, certainly moderation helps on some level. I suspect it doesn't help as much as people assume, just based on what moderation looks like across the entire industry right now. But I'm not going to die on that hill.
I just don't think people should blanketly assume that's the case. MacOS also has a better security track record than Windows even when you're not running Gatekeeper apps, and even though MacOS doesn't force apps to go through a moderator. Any user can bypass Gatekeeper, but through a combination of multiple factors, MacOS still has less malware than Windows/Android.
People look at iOS and Android and make very strong claims based on two environments that are substantially different on multiple security axes: in terms of sandboxing, in terms of market share, in terms of userbase demographics. There's a lot of stuff at play here, and there are multiple ways that platforms (including iOS) are trying to create the economics you're talking about. Even iOS is not all-in on moderation, even iOS is trying to train its users at least to some degree to think about their own security.
This model has benefits, but it also has a major downside: if the app doesn't know it doesn't have privileges, it can't inform the user of that fact. The user has to realize on their own that the reason their search for a local bakery returned something on the other side of the country is that they forgot to enable location permissions.
I've yet to see evidence that those stores actively review apps in the way that Apple does. You never see articles like "my app was rejected from the Chrome store". It's less about having a store and more about having a decent review process.
In any case, there are no silver bullets in security. Not one.
iOS and iPadOS pretty much are.
Even the difference between wacom/graphics tablet and iPad with the pencil is almost night and day, no lag or parallax on the iPads is a huge draw card.
For an illustrator, the iPad is a perfect (digital) tool.
https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays
Have you used a Cintiq much? Would be interested in a comparison of that vs the iPad Pro's. :)
Meanwhile the portability of the ipad and apps like procreate have made the ipad a very compelling tool for artists.
Most professional digital artists I know of use both a large cintiq in studio and an ipad.
There are a trillion comparisons on youtube. Also a contender (but a smaller size) is the ipad air 3 which also has a bonded glass display.
Here we go again with this 'real work' nonsense.
What counts as 'real work' to you? A friend of a mine is a barrister and uses an iPad pro to take and use notes. He's definitely doing 'real work' just fine on his iPad.
And if real work is just taking notes, then I think you really need to question whether an iPad Pro is the right choice among the iPad lineup.
Even though Wolfram has not (yet? hope always dies last!) released a version of Mathematica for the iPad (meaning, a frontend notebook coupled to an actual onboard computing kernel) they have released a client for “Wolfram Online” (often referred to as “Cloud Mathematica”) offering. This isn’t quite what I would like, as there’s a significant range of circumstances where I cannot rely on network access (such as when flying) but for most other situations it suits the purpose.
Other mathematics-inclined apps allow even greater range of onboard functionality (Pythonista, MathSudio spring to mind).
Upshot: one can most definitely do significant amounts of data analysis on an iPad.
Which is way I had to switch back from OpenBSD (which doesn’t run it) and Linux (which until today’s update, didn’t have HiDPI support) back to Mac OS.
I wouldn't use an iPad for this though. The shell's are all a compromise and I'm waiting for a great e-ink display so I can remote from a park / beach / patio.
This argument pops up regularly on HN and it's always the same - it's all people talking past each other. One half is saying "iPads don't cover as many use cases as laptops" and the other half is saying "but look, my specific anecdotal use case is covered". You're not even disagreeing with each other, just missing the point.
That's how a barrister does part of their work.
When I develop software I'm 'just writing a program'. But I'm not - I'm forming a mental model of what I want to do and working out how to express it.
You can make any job sound silly by reducing it to its constitutive actions.
The original argument for tablet computers in the first place was that sometimes you don't need a full-fledged computer, so you pocket $400-500 and get something cheap instead that's a limited but still quality device. And I think that would still be true with the iPad Pro. You want something that's closer to a full computer, with a real keyboard, but you still want to pocket some money.
Except... the pricing is awful.
It's like they designed a product for a real niche, and then stopped thinking about that niche as soon as they got out of the design phase and started working on implementation.
As a point of comparison, even if you hate Windows with a passion, you can get the new Macbook Air they just announced for basically the same exact cost as an iPad Pro + keyboard, and that comes with a full-featured OS. Is a Macbook Air as portable? Maybe not, but it's still pretty darn portable.
You're giving up the pencil, but you're getting a better OS on a computer with better specs. But I guess if you're a digital artist, and you prefer the iPad pencil over the Surface pen or Wacom tablets, and having a full OS doesn't matter for you -- this might be exciting. That seems like it would be a narrow demographic, but what do I know? I'm sure it'll sell well.
Of all the product lines Apple has, the iPad is their product line with the most flexible pricing. Everything from the $250 base model up to the iPad Pro at $1000 ($1,350 with the keyboard). If you don't need the iPad Pro, there are three other models below that.
Even their highest priced iPads aren't very expensive. If you are a business buying a computer, it's less than one week's wages for the most expensive iPad.
> It's like they designed a product for a real niche
You have this almost exactly the opposite. The iPad is the mainstream product and the PC is the niche product. The overwhelming majority of people can do everything they need on the iPad. It's the niche users (Developers, Video Editors, etc) who require the additional flexibility a PC offers.
> you can get the new Macbook Air they just announced for basically the same exact cost as an iPad Pro + keyboard, and that comes with a full-featured OS.
Fundamentally, you get a MacBook (or Windows/ Linux) if you need the flexibility of having a desktop PC. A lot of people prefer the simplicity iPadOS offers.
Also, it's not just the most expensive iPad Pro versus the least expensive Mac. If you don't need the pencil or the nicer keyboard, you could get the iPad Air or the base iPad for significantly less.
> but you're getting a better OS on a computer with better specs.
You are confusing more flexible for better. The two operating systems target different purposes. For a lot of people the iPad OS is the better experience. Also, I haven't seen the benchmarks yet, but I suspect that like with the prior generation, this iPad Pro is significantly faster than the base MacBook Air.
It really comes down to form factor and OS.
The iPad Pro is expensive, but “Pro” implies you want a device that can do things which are useful to professionals.
As a developer, I am better served by an actual MBP for work and a cheap iPad for less-productive tasks, but not everyone is a developer.
Quite simply, a lot of the software I want/need is only on iOS. And while, yes, it's more expensive, the cost difference is a drop in the bucket.
If I was still a starving college student, I'd care. But as a professional, I care more about time than saving literally penny I can.
But, somehow, that's not "real work", apparently.
From what I was able to gleam from similar comments over the last few months, I guess "real work" mostly involves regularly swapping hardware components, overclocking the CPU, daisy-chaining a dozen USB devices, micromanaging kernel compile flags, automating the micromanagement of kernel compile flags, aggregating optimisation metrics in a dashboard, running benchmarks, upgrading npm/homebrew/gem/go packages on a daily basis, and reorganising keyboard layout.
But even running a decent terminal requires purchasing an app and setting up mosh on the other side. There's no Esc in their keyboards. There are too many roadblocks and glitches.
I wish I could buy an iPad and simply open a terminal and ssh to my machine of choice.
Right now, it's much easier to buy a Surface Go / Pro. And these run Linux natively really well.
Because if they did, they wouldn't make some of the silly comments I've seen here.
The device literally has the form factor of a thick notebook when folded inside its robust Logitech keyboard case, connects to the internet over 4G (if no WiFi is available), and is a perfect work environment.
Lots of use cases in many of these professions. In particular, there are a lot of professional artists/ illustrators have switched to the iPad. I also know there is an active community of iPad accessories and software for musicians.
Also, while many of the above mentioned professionals can't move their entire workflow to the iPad, quite of few of them have already moved big portions of their workflows to the iPad.
This isn't a zero sum game. For a lot of professionals there is room in their toolbox for multiple computers.
Not, prevention of minority use cases.
un-prevention, of sorts.
Also, is it that hard for a giant of Apple's size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS?
Apple's customers are the >1 billion user install base it has for iOS and more broadly the Apple ecosystem.
Developers will develop great desktop and mobile software because that's the way to reach the incredibly valuable install base where consumer spend is 2x+ that of competing platforms.
You don't win developers purely by giving them nice developer features. You win them by giving them something worth developing for. Part of that is a nice developer ecosystem, but that not enough on its own.
They don't care about those that use macOS as pretty Linux/BSD replacement.
Just like NeXT never did, UNIX compatibility was a means to bring UNIX software into the platform, that was all.
Of course it isn’t. And that tells you that it’s a deliberate decision not to, because it’s miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users.
Besides, it would be very confusing for users to have a terminal that can only connect to remote systems (which most people likely don’t have access to), because it’s rather improbable that Apple would choose to expose iPadOS through a shell.
Furthermore, the terminal could be simply running in a little Unix sandbox, like Termux, and that could be a great entry point for kids to lots of different interpreters to learn programming. Not exclusive to remote into other systems.
Even as a learning experience, why give (power)users the ability to acquaint themselves with a generic platform that is not tied to Apple’s own offerings? It makes no commercial or even pedagogical sense.
Try out iSH: https://ish.app It sounds like it’s what you want. Apple won’t be providing anything even remotely comparable for the foreseeable future, I’m sure.
We got disintermediated with the very first iPod. Remember "less space than a Nomad. Lame!"? That was very much the attitude of the crowd you are describing.
I distinctly remember a pry-my-keyboard-from-my-dead-hands attitude when the iPhone came out. It's only benevolence that stops me from constantly reminding the "power user" among my friends that his first reaction was "Not even a stylus?"
While this is true, it doesn't follow that every product they produce should serve developers first and foremost. The Mac is the computer I use for development. The iPad is the computer I prefer to use for photo editing/ sketching/ house planning/ and casual use. If I wasn't a developer professionally, I suspect the iPad would be my "Big" computer.
Even when you bundle the cost of both the probe and the iPad pro, it ended up being cheaper than the (much less portable) alternatives in the market.
As a programmer, I use my desktop.
It really depends what your work is. My iPad is my main mobile computer. I do have a desktop, but use the iPad heavily. At work at various meetings there are regularly 2 to 5 of use taking notes or referring to material on iPads. Some with pencils, others with keyboard cases.
Of course it’s not right for everyone, it just needs to be really good at the things it’s good for. That’s all. If a laptop or Surface works better for you that’s cool.
It probably seems absurd to imagine it would do that thing better than other places where I can do that thing, but it's probably 20 or 30% better at email than my other options.
And I do a LOT of email.
I keep an iPad Pro (with keyboard) to the left, and when I want to do email, I look left and do it there. That keeps me focused on my main windows.
I do think that it would be possible for someone to write an email client that is as efficient as the iOS Outlook app is, and maybe it already exists for non-Outlook, but in my current corporate environment the iPad pro is a lifesaver.
If you're not calling that "real work" I'm not sure what else to tell you.
iPads don't run iOS. ipadOS has changed quite a bit from iOS - they are not the same thing.
You can get something like an Asus Zenbook 13 for hundreds less, which has a real i7 CPU, supports much more software, has a dedicated GPU, etc. while weighing about the same and having about the same battery life.
There’s a lot of Apple superfans in the world, then…
You can do some things well on a iPad pro. But you can do anything on a Surface pro except run MacOS. Well I looked and it looks like some have installed MacOS or used vmware images.
MS has been doing this weird dance where they tried to smoosh two OSes together and created one bad OS. The absolute worst was when Windows 8 first came out, and I keep accidentally getting into tablet mode on my non-touch screen laptop.
Apple is taking the correct course which is to build a new OS from the ground up and adding power. MS made gigantic missteps by trying to force a windowing OS to support touch.
Both are somewhat meeting in the middle, and now Surfaces have gotten pretty decent, but they started out bad.
The other thing to remember is that people buy tablets for touch, and Surface Pros are pretty decent laptop replacements but still so-so as an actual tablet.
It would not ruin the iPad, it would ruin Apple's bottom line.
I don't think that would be a great experience, but if it made the iPad into a stronger competitor to Surface Pro and similar Windows convertibles, it might bring in enough new business to counteract any drop in Mac sales.
Apple has their Handoff feature for moving program state from one device to another, maybe that could be adapted for on-device handoff between a Mac and iPadOS version of the same software.
Which they probably will be because there are maybe three development shops that will spend any time thinking about how to make their Mac interface better optimized for a destktop OS.
Still not saying this is a good idea, but it's an idea. Wouldn't be surprised if Apple were exploring it internally.
But seriously If ipadOS doesn't at least allow for backwards compatibility with the software from MacOS. The iPad will never be a replacement for your Mac computer. It will only be an expensive surrogate.
The windowing OS vs Touch OS is definitely a good point. But here we are coming full circle to adding a track pad to a touch os. Sound like apple is a bit confused about what they're offering also. I can't imagine them ever making the ipadOS on par with the Mac operating system. Unless we can start running any type of code on it. It will be the handicapped device.
The Surface pros make great tablets when you ditch the windows app store and run android APK's on them instead.
In some sense, for many categories of use, the App Store hosts superior offerings to what the Mac App Store does. Panic and Omni offer extremely sophisticated applications that I use on a daily basis. Office is likewise almost on par with the desktop equivalents (for most users, I’m well aware of the limitations in macros and plugins and so forth).
Many developers seem to be taking a “Mobile First” approach these days, and that is driving wind into the iPad’s sails.
I really would be more prudent before dismissing it.
Windows 10 has a tablet mode, but it still sucks compared to Windows 8's "default mode". It is actually better to use tablets in regular, "windowing OS" mode than in Windows 10's tablet mode.
For me Windows 8 is an example showing one can make a decent mouse and tablet UI. Obviously it will be worse than the two, but at some point there is an advantage of having a common UI rather than specialized.
Do we think we'll see full blown MacOS/equivalent on iPads in the next 2-3 years?
As a frontend web developer, I would love for them to cover my use case. A native terminal and desktop browser tools in iPadOS would get me to ditch my MacBook Pro in a heartbeat.
Also, Sidecar works amazingly well. I have found myself using the iPad as a second monitor more and more often. It is seamless and hasn't crashed yet. I recently took both Macbook and iPad on a trip and was loving the second screen. And for Logic Pro X, the iPad can act as a remote to control instruments or settings with indiscernible latency.
Enter the iPad, which was built from the ground up as a touch interface. but now it looks like they're coming at it from a different directly....a touch interface incorporating mouse/touchpad support.
But, I'm for people using what they want to use. My use/need isn't the same.
How times change.
Google botched Android 3.0 (the first "Tablet" version of Android), and developers mostly didn't bother trying to adapt their apps for tablet screens.
If it hadn't been for Samsung pushing the boundaries with pressure-sensitive screens, pen input (2014 Galaxy Tab pro line), Linux on DeX, and SoC improvements, there wouldn't be an Android tablet market beyond the disposable 7" tabs people buy for their kids.
By the sounds of the usual complaints my use case is quite uncommon (really I need a fast, multithreaded easy-for-demos device for a specific code base the engine of which runs on Linux/MacOS/iOS). It seems Apple is selling a boatload of iPads so they seem to think that few people want to plug things in. That seems absurd when I talk to my friends, but, well, I'm sure the usage data they get from people (like me) who enable that is telling them otherwise.
As for the Surface: I've seen a couple and the hardware looks quite nice but in terms of weight and usability the MBA has been just fine. I often find myself using my current iPad to do something and then put it down and switch to the laptop. The use cases seem disjoint, partially due to the inherent limitations of each platform vs the other in certain regards, so over the years I've given up on thinking that a unified device would be worth it.
I notice people have commented that some of your objections to the iPad have subsequently been rectified, but the core issues IMHO still remain. Another way to put it is that you now can do many laptop-like things on the iPad but it would hardly be your first choice, especially when it's so easy to switch to another device more adapted to things like filesystem manipulation. But if it's the only device you happen to have on your person you aren't stuck. Maybe Surface can find a way over that hump.
I came real close to ditching my Mac + Wacom combo for a Surface + external keyboard for my art work a couple years ago, but there was a constant lag problem somewhere between my stylus motions and Illustrator that made it unusable, even after a month of regular attempts to find the one magic setting somewhere deep in the ten different control panels related to Windows' stylus drivers.
At release the Surface seemed ridiculous, adding touch and pen tools to a normal computer. Apple went the other way starting from scratch, touch only seemed the sensible choice.
Now year on year as Apple adds more and more laptop computer into the iPad and it's Mac line lacks any modern input flexibility it's starting to look absurd they went down this route and the Surface line is making more and more sense the further we go down this road.
You can do that now.
When I add up this new iPad in the minimum 128GB/Wifi/11" config this one is about $400 more than I paid for the Surface Pro + KB cover + MS Pen. (Which is i5/8GB/128GB/Wifi-only)
The Surface has been so much more useful due to it's "real" software ecosystem and ability to just plug devices & memory cards right into it. 4 years on it seems like this new iPad Pro is no better except for even slicker hardware + touchpad.
Not there for me till they fix the software and make it a lot easier to do real world tasks that require working with files on other pieces of hardware you have local.
Some of the use cases like traveling and doing photography or video on the road have just been so much easier with the Surface Pro. Even just doing things like downloading a spreadsheet from the bank. Maybe you can do that now but you couldn't when I had my iPad Pro. Safari wouldn't let you download a file and open it in the app of your choice. So even though Numbers (or Excel) would have been fine to do finances there was no way to get the files. If the bank had made it so the app could generate a spreadsheet and then let you share it with Numbers that would work, but those use cases never got enabled, and there were so many cases like that.