It comes down what you actually want to do. My time spent on the iPad was defined by what I couldn't do, and it was extremely frustrating, I ended up not doing it instead of go getting the laptop from across the house.

Windows is not refined nor optimized for tablet use by any measure, but it actually does the job, instead of showing a cute and extremely refined middle finger half the time.

The breaking point for me was the reader apps, where I'd have a file and just no way to read it, short of taking 10 min on a desktop to somewhat convert it to what the iPad can handle (see below). Since they're also in a pissing match with Amazon, the reading experience is just subpar. What's the point of a simple and elegant interface if I'm still babysitting what's going in there and have to constantly think about work-arounds that also end up clunky and broken ?

> Art and note apps

Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version. Same for One-note, obsidian etc., there's no lack of them on Windows while it was a fresh market on the iPad.

> ebook reader apps

I think iBooks is the only reader you don't get (is there a web version ? I have no idea).

Granted I buy most of my books on kindle, the in-browser reader works well enough (in the end, I'm full screen turning pages, so makes no difference). I'd argue getting the read the book straight from the page I bought them is pretty great.

I didn't bother with the android subsystem version but it would be an option if there is any limitation on the web part. I also have a bunch of old ebooks and scans from way before there were stores, and of course they were better handled by the windows apps (at some point I was using CloudReader on iOS, and it just disappeared).

I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazines, surf the Web, and watch videos. And for that it’s arguably better than a laptop. At least I find myself using it for those things much more.

Right, but the inability to do serious software development is an arbitrary limit imposed by Apple. The hardware is quite capable, but the vendor has decided that we need to use multiple different devices. It's their platform and they can do what they like with it, but as a customer those artificial limitations rankle.

They’d have to do something more than just throw XCode on it for it to be in any way usable without full on keyboard and mouse, which would cut against what they’re trying to do. So there is some justification beyond just market segmentation.

Why? Having xcode usable just with (their 350€+) keyboard seems perfectly acceptable.

For the same reason they deliberately made iphone apps look bad -- they want applications designed to work with the device to make it a good experience and not applications designed for something else shoehorned in. I see some real wisdom in this approach considering how poor some of the alternative experiences are. Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?

> Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?

Right now it’s inferior not-a-laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach and people still buy it.

Not really. It’s instead a different device offering an experience that doesn’t require a keyboard or mouse at all.

Why would it become worse if they add support for keyboard and mouse on top of it?

It does offer support for a keyboard and a mouse but what you're proposing is adding features or programs that would only work (or at least only work well) with a keyboard and a mouse, which would be a pretty big departure from the current design of the device.

If they don’t take anything from general experience, why do you care? Core of the system will still be touch oriented.

I am contesting the idea that it's possible to compromise the design philosophy that had guided it up till now and NOT "take anything from the general experience."

> Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?

For the same reason you carry an "inferior" camera, pda, navigation system, cellphone with very short battery life and undersized movie screen: a smartphone does all that okay-ishly. Or why ultrabooks are vastly more popular than gaming laptops. Convenience and form factor trump "inferior" all the time.

If you have to use the keyboard for certain tasks and so basically must always keep it attached to one it’s now heavier and more awkward than a MacBook Air. So you’re making my point here.

You still hit weird limits. Perhaps the M1 is a better value proposition now, but with the A series transcoding videos was choppy at best, and you'd have to choose to "share" them to VLC every damn time.

Youtube playback would stop everytime another video starts playing somewhere (additional fun when it's just a video ad that actually had no sound in the first place).

SMB file management is still an afterthought, so you end up needing a plex server dealing with all the complexity the iPad can't deal with.

Browsing is the same, outside of the Safari limitation, extensions are few and tab management a pain in general.

For books and magazine it's kinda the same. It works fine for light use. It becomes frustrating if it's something you actually care about.

In the end, I realized I actually care less about visual polish and more about having complete functionalities, at the price of dealing with Windows and managing a computer instead of an appliance.

I believe you but in the end I use it a lot more than my laptop despite its limitations and generally don’t want to try and do the things you’re talking about with it (I’d probably be sitting at my desk with my real computer if I wanted to).

> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version

This is what made me sell the Surface. I wanted to replace a paper notebook I bring everywhere. What I got was tiny buttons, menus, and a save dialog every time I wanted to close the app. My drawings were not drawings in a sketchbook, but files I had to manually sort and access on a filesystem.

After spending a whole day installing updates and turning off ads and tracking, I couldn't just unwind and doodle. The Surface constantly reminded me that I was operating a computer, not drawing.

> ebooks

The in-browser reader is not a replacement for an offline book reader. This tablet is offline most of the time.

> obsidian

I want to write and doodle, not edit markdown files. Otherwise I'd have no use for a tablet. This tablet replaces a paper notebook.

My surface is a whiteboarding tool.

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/sketchpal/9MVT92NRF5...

Does a pretty good job

Sketchable literally works on the "my drawings are a sketchbook" idea. Apps like CSP on iOS use the file save dialogs too.

For what it’s worth, you can have ishell installed, put the file you want to convert into its drive, download almost any x86 binary to convert it, and you can use it, all from your ipad.

Sure, not the most convenient way, but there is no replacing something like pandoc.

> > Art and note apps

> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version

Speaking of those, does the Pencil still feel somewhat half baked for Apple? The display front panels on iPads aren't "optimized" for pens, like, given rigidity and texturing for front panels. I don't own the iPad kit nor am I a digital artist, but the Pencil as a physical object almost feels like poking acrylic panel with laundry hangars, and most third party feeling among all third party pens. and I didn't understand how they could sell it as a serious thing.

Ironically, whatever the other advantages of the Surface Pro as a tablet, it's so hampered by physical dimensions for reading to make the rest of the question moot. I had a SP3 for 6 years as a primary laptop, but it was not a good offering for reading. Maybe more recent ones have improved the aspect ratio, weight and distribution, and bezels.

That's just software, though. In a decent ecosystem you would be able to run any software you want on any device you want.

Oftentimes being able to run whatever you want makes it harder to provide a cohesive, consistent experience that’s pleasant to use. Look at X vs. Mac or even Windows to see what I mean. The inconsistency of that experience has imo been a major factor holding back desktop Linux (notably, locked-down Linux-derived environments seem to do fine).

the two aren't mutually exclusive, apple can give the consistent experience and also have an "okay, you're the owner of this device, you make the rules, not Steve Jobs" setting that isn't as beautiful but also doesn't try to boss around the user

The other competitors have just as much tracking, just windows makes it more transparent to opt in (to some of it), so it's more visible.

Incomparably better? Nebo on Windows is more or less the same as the iOS version, ditto apps like Liquidtext and Noteshelf. Plus there's full fat OneNote and MS Journal which I like.

For art apps, Procreate is very good but it's still kinda limited. Windows has the full Photoshop, CSP, Art Rage etc. experiences.

And with WSA you can just grab the Android versions of Kindle or whatever.

And is really respectful of the user to artificially kneecap a device from doing tasks?

> The iPad is a much better tablet than the Surface

but useless as a computer?

I needed to apply for a visa -It can't even handle that simple task!

Like all I had to do, is collaste togesther a few dozen documents (bank statements, utility bills, etc.), merge all them into PDfs and organise pages cronologically. Couldn't even do that.

whats the point of having a great processor in an iPad if it's all wasted.

This is a deal braker for me, handling official documents is a normal thing normal people have to do every day.

That's the point. I tried unifying those devices and couldn't. Now I carry both.

That sounds odd. Even without installing any apps from the AppStore it can do that.

Open the PDF (or print the webpage to PDF if needed), tap to insert other PDFs into that one (so assembling / merging the documents).

Drag any pages into the order you want, save the file.

What’s missing?

>but useless as a computer?

LOLNO. Many, many people use an iPad as their primary or only nonphone computer.

Sounds like you had a tool chain problem, not an iPad problem.