Re:New iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner and trackpad support
by D13Fd on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @06:44PM
(#22622192)
The iPad is useful for certain things. If you're trying to share a document with another person and discuss it, it works much better on an iPad. Both people can hold it, scroll it, etc and it feels much less awkward than discussing things on a laptop.
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.
Re:New iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner and trackpad support
by SiVal on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:28PM
(#22624130)
I really don't think it's that "apps aren't there yet". The platform is more than a decade old and has an order of magnitude more apps and app development than the Mac ever had. I really think that the reason people who own Macs and iPads keep ignoring their iPads when planning to do real work is not that there hasn't been enough effort yet put into creating apps for iOS. It's that the form factor and OS were designed together for one-finger selection from a portable menu of amusements, not for plugging in a standard thumb drive and flexibly deploying a combination of ordinary work tools on a project folder full of productive work.
Re:New iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner and trackpad support
by novok on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:07AM
(#22624361)
There is also a lack of desktop OS features. I tried using my image management software, Mylio, and I had to keep the iPad pro on and unlocked for images to sync to the cloud, and it did it a lot slower than my 6 year old macbook pro. Same with SD card imports and other general multitasking tasks.
Web browsing on the ipad pro with a keyboard cover although is pretty good!
Re:New iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner and trackpad support
by dannyw on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:53PM
(#22623928)
My Surface works perfect for this. I just take the keyboard off and it's a tablet, with a lovely pen you can use to highlight.
Re:New iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner and trackpad support
by caconym_ on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @08:14PM
(#22622926)
The biggest problem is third-party software support. iPads are great right now for a lot of creative work, and in theory capable of a lot more in their current incarnation, but if you can only afford one computer and you know e.g. your history course next semester is going to force you to install IE6 and log in to some crusty web thing that relies on popups and embedded ActiveX controls (exaggerating, but you get the point), what are you going to buy? It's not really a choice at all, when you think about it.
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.
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.