The only reason that "iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work" is because Apple chooses to limit them.
I have a laptop which I only rarely use as a laptop - it moves between being connected to external monitor/keyboard/mouse in an office to being connected to external monitor/keyboard/mouse at home. I could get an iPad with a faster processor (my laptop is a few years old), that could connect to the same peripherals. The only reason it couldn't replace my laptop is because I can't run the same software on it.
Now, I understand why this is so. MacOS (or any other desktop OS) would not work at all well on a tablet interface, it would take a lot of work to make it work well, and those changes would make it less well suited to desktop use. Look at Windows 8, when Microsoft tried moving their desktop OS towards something that could also work on a tablet (or phone), and how unpopular those changes were. But that doesn't mean I have to like it (or wish iPads weren't so locked down, so I could run a different OS anyway even if Apple wouldn't support it).
They don’t because it would hurt macbook sales.
Apple is the only major notebook manufacturer which still doesn't offer touch on any of their notebooks.
Yes, Windows 8 was a failure, but Windows 10 and 11 are successful products and they are also built around touch + m&k.
GNOME and KDE on Linux also support touch input.
Take a look at this device:
https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-2025/
In terms of practicality, ergonomics etc., I think it's a much better proposition than either a MacBook or an iPad.
Yeh I think there's this weird stigma that stuck after Windows 8 was a bit iffy but 8.1 was fine.
I preferred Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 (and MUCH preferred it to 11) because at least it still had all the old core Windows control panel stuff under the hood. Windows 10 feels like a way more awkward mismash of things because they seem to have simply just taken a bunch of stuff away.
The zillions of different UI paradigms smooshed together started in Win8 but Win10 is where they really seemed to pile it on.
Anyway, I'm not a Mac user. But I absolutely see why they want to keep touch interface separate from keyboard & mouse. It's hard.
7 started the regression in earnest, especially in the GUI.
They also started obscuring the color-scheme editor, the eventual removal of which was a major blunder. By the time people finally realized that inverse color schemes are dumb, the color-scheme editor was gone and they had to wait for Microsoft and everyone else to implement hard-coded "dark mode" all over the place.
From Windows 3.1 through XP, I had simply created a "dark mode" color scheme at the system level; all properly-written applications inherited the system color scheme in Windows. Such an obvious, useful mechanism that Microsoft "forgot" and Apple to this day has never learned.
Even '90s Unix GUIs let you set up a color scheme, if I remember correctly.
But how they handle touch input is not one of them.
Is that a feature people actually use? My last laptop had it, but I eventually disabled it in the BIOS because I never really used it, except by accident. I didn't find it comfortable holding my arm out at that angle, and I didn't like having all the fingerprints on my screen.
The reason why it didn't work for microsoft is because adobe, valve, and aren't going to whatever framework just because microsoft wants them to. But in the linux world you can just fork and fix. Even apple has a lot of leverage to force developers to act in a certain way if they want that app store $$$.
Obviously the hardware isn't all there yet in the open source world (the pinephones are pretty underpowered), but in terms of software all of the right stuff is there. And don't tell me the UX is too complicated for new users. Gnome's design is literally a ripoff of MacOS and KDE's interface is pretty much Windows.
And I don’t even use KDE (but I still like it and it was my first DE on Linux like 20 years ago).
Two totally seperate UIs that can run at the same time, a desktop one and a phone one.. it worked shockingly well imho.
Maybe an additional case where you can use the tablet as an extra screen, but honestly that could probably manifest as an app in the mobile UI.
What happened?
(I've seen them. Thought that they were pretty cool as hardware, pity about the OS. I'm not aware of what's transpired, though obviously it hasn't dominated the mobile/tablet market.)
I would love to be able to run a linux VM on my iPad though, it would make travel so much simpler for me. I know there are hacks to get it going with UTM etc. but there are too many compromises for my use case.
I also don't really disagree with your basic point. And I don't write it off (just) to Apple wants to sell more hardware. A lot of people like essentially a plus-sized iPhone and don't want a laptop. Probably hard to believe for many people on this forum but I heard people at work tell me that they have kids that don't want a laptop and are fine with just using their phones, much less a tablet.
Microsoft really tried to converge the different form factors from an operating system perspective and it never really clicked with people. Would I like a device that really a converged a 13-14" laptop and a tablet in the same general size range? Probably, in part because I wouldn't travel by air with both. But I don't think we're really there today outside of very casual tablet use outside of a browser or watching media.
Have the iPad run macOS, but instead of the desktop, always show LaunchPad, and force the use of Stage Manager or full screen apps. Have developers optimize their full screen view for touch. That’s basically the iPadOS experience without the limits.
It's ground-up a super efficient, wonderful media consumption platform. It's really good for media consumption, like so much so it's kind of a problem. So I think the metaphor still fits, in that sure the ebike has a crazy engine but the tires don't have the contact patch to make the engine nearly as useful.
The problem is the UI is absolute trash for real work. I'm sorry, I know you can bolt stuff onto it to kinda usable, brilliant minds are doing their best, but I absolutely want to chuck the device across the room doing the most trivial work on it.
They could make it into MacOS, they don't, and they won't because they make way more money on these devices when they're used for media consumption.
here's a nickel to buy a real computer, as they say
That’s their choice to make. As consumers it’s on us to make the right choices. What the author wants is a laptop not an iPad if they want a general purpose computing device
The article is just a way to poke the giant that is Apple just like we used to when we wrote Micro$oft
Which involves more like this, so that consumers can recognize kinds of dissatisfaction and share that it exists, rightly or wrongly.
Folks downvoting my comment are effectively saying “no I think everything thing should do everything. It has a CPU that can run MacOS then it should! Open up the os, let me do whatever I want. Let me impose my thoughts on a private company. Rawr!”
When instead just don’t buy the iPad if that’s what you want. The MacBook Air is what you want. Or… adapt your computing to use the iPad as it was designed.
The spoon doesn’t bend you bend ;-)
Apple is one of the largest computer companies and sells some of the fastest hardware on the market, yet it's totally gimped by their market segmentation. That space could easily be occupied by a different kind of company.
iPads are a waste of silicon. Yes, I do know better than the consumer.
The iPad Pro was designed to compete with the Surface Pro and it simultaneously does and doesn't. Anybody who expects more than a tablet with pen input will be disappointed or frustrated eventually.
I wish my iPads were more like laptops. But I’m not Tim Cook and I bought one anyway. So I didn’t vote with my wallet and I don’t have enough money to buy enough shares to vote with my money.
What I can do is buy something more appropriate or even something else entirely like a Surface.
> the formerly beefcake Landcruiser went from a beastly guzzling v8 in 2021 to a weaker v6 in 2022-2023, and now, in 2024, a weak 2.4L supercharged 4-cyl sipper.
For what it's worth, the previous generation LC200 also sold with a gasoline V6 in the Middle East, producing a whopping 240 HP, which was later increased to 271 HP.
The I4 engine in the Prado (sold as the Land Cruiser in the US) is more powerful than the V6 it replaces.
Microsoft has since abandoned essential practices that make GUIs work, in addition to abandoning taste and organization. Windows is a sorry shitshow of defective design and defective function.
My first job in 1990, we had a load of PCs running DOS, and one Mac with a GUI and which also played sound and could read laserdisks (as I recall). Changing the error sound to "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" never got old.
Windows 95 just about got to feature parity with the Mac 5 years later. It was really nice, but not exactly massively innovative.
I didn’t know anything about PCs, having grown up with Apple, but every Mac I’d used had sound and graphics, so I told him as far as I could tell it was all marketing crap.
Never occurred to me that PCs couldn’t do multimedia out of the box.
Where MS actually did groundbreaking UI/UX work was in the 00s, ironically for most things not Windows - Media Center, Xbox 360, Zune/WP.
And of course they had to ruin it with botched product management and their bulldozing Metro/UWP everywhere strategy. The Windows 8.1 UX on a tablet was actually pretty good. Too bad it a) sucked on everything else, b) app integration was spotty due to relegating Win32 to second class.
I had friends who worked on the UX team for 8 and they reported general malfeasance all around. Microsoft was very scarred that tabled were going to take over the world (that was common wisdom in the trade presses at the time) and iPad sales used to be absurdly high. Win8 was the result of a scared company that needed to release something.
I think it’s fair to say an iPad Pro and a MacBook Air should be capable of similar-ish things, and that iPadOS could have way more “power” features. Eg a terminal app to start with. But I’m not sure iPad Pros can really replace MacBook Pros.
Just software. Kinda odd, given how much more interest there is in iOS app development than in Mac OS app development; but it is what it is.
If the rumored convergence of Android and ChromeOS happens soon on Chromebooks, including support for Debian Linux terminal VM, then iPads will finally have real competition from touch-screen Chromebooks with both desktop & mobile UX.
An artist who draws might consider iPads to be serious drawing devices.
I agree that early third-party styli were a pain - I used various Jot versions, which were better than nothing but not great.
But the Apple pencil + Procreate is actually great, and a fulfillment of the iPad's original promise in the drawing space.
The core issue is the hobbling of promising hardware because it doesn't fit the platform owner's vision.
I often see a sound engineer with an iPad on music gigs. The form factor allows you to walk around the room and adjust the sound easily to tame resonances and such.
It’s not so good for typing text or programming, but where it makes sense to have a portable slab of screen that works reliably there is probably an app that does it.
None of the machines I do the work that pays my salary exceed those specs. Apart from the 16GB of RAM none of my work machines meet any of the other specs.
If Apple would let me plug a couple of HDMI screens and a keyboard and mouse into a iPad, and let me run macOS (or even Linux) on it, it'd be a more capable development machine that any I've ever used.
<-Somewhere between these
two.
.
.
Recycle
--
Redundant consumption is not a virtue.
Because it's marketed as an e-bike, shaped like an e-bike, and sold in the e-bike section of the store. If Apple put that e-bike engine into a land cruiser, then you could drive it like a land cruiser, but that seems like a weird expectation to have after you bought it.
Video conferencing work: iPad + Center Stage unmatched for portability, audio quality, integrated cellular modem.
Writing work: iPad with hardware keyboard and single app mode for distraction-free writing, ergonomic screen mount.
SSH work: iPad has unmatched HiDPI 4:3 screen real estate
Video editing work: Lumafusion usability with M4 rendering speed, $30 one-time fee unlike subscription alternatives.
3D planning or design: vertical industry apps for iPad Pro Lidar sensor that is absent from competing tablets.
After Apple enables hypervisor API for Linux VMs on iPad, Lenovo sidecar budget can be redirected to larger iPad storage.
But only a few people really benefit from a full featured Toyota land cruiser. The value added of additional features not available in more affordable cars (or transport options) is low relative to the cost of other uses of the same cash.
Given the ability to make a trade off for a cheaper option that meets the core transport needs without paying the premium for the features they won’t really use (or the user doesn’t value for the price they have to pay), most would probably go for the cheaper option (rapid transit or smaller more fuel efficient car).
Same can be said for many features on laptops not already found on tablets.
I’m not sure if you’re referring to software engineering specifically or all workflows that require computers, but I don’t think it’s that silly for most other professions to use tablets more once they provide more specialised workflows.
For example, I recently went back to university and I find it easier to do revision on my iPad using the pen tool, the second best option is pen and paper but that has limitations, the 3rd is computer but that has input limitations.
It may not include everyone, but I don’t think it’s so silly to think iPads and tablets will play a more prominent role in the Office in the future. That said it’s possible this will never include software engineers due to the workflow being highly dependent on features that may never be available on iPads or tablets.
[edit] non-office-workers, I mean.
To be fair, "theregister" is a big hint that you're going to be opening unsubstantiated clickbait 50% of the time (rising to 90% if it's relating to Apple.)
(Also Pesce has been banging the "ipads should be computers" drum for a while - e.g. https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/23/apples_got_a_good_thi...)
I think Toyota should remove the limiter."
I thought it could sure handle that use case, I quickly checked there was a figma app. I was expecting some quirks.
A day later I returned it. Turns out that figma app for iPad can only "view" designs, not create them!
I feel like there's a very narrow market for iPads. I'm surprised they still sell.
1. Turn them into toys 2. Break them 3. Lose them
Gargantuan waste of money that does nothing to advance education.
Recording math notes or diagrams with a keyboard just sucks, and a phone is too small.
There's stuff for more expressive creative raster art with procreate, I think the capacity is there to deliver a good experience here but the first one to do it will have to solve a few problems relating into a more professional workflow and take on quite a bit of risk seeing as the consumer base (most companies) probably don't issue iPads to their employees. There's very little incentive to this when their consumer is content with existing tools.
At the risk of invoking no true Scotsman, I think you need to define 'real' work.
It just didn’t work. There are so many constraints and it’s not just the software but the fact it has only one screen. I need about 4-5 iPads to be equivalent and that’s not even remotely practical or possible.
This is notably not unique to the iPad. No tablet would be good for this work.
As for the generic computing stuff it’s not even good for consuming content - the screen is too shiny. If you add a keyboard case to it you might as well buy a MacBook Air.
But are they? Because of the hardware, or because of the restricted operating system?
Most of my work is connecting to other things. With modern devices, it's not as much the hardware, as it is the restricted operating system and closed ecosystem that would limit me. That, and maybe my eyesight...
Almost always stated by nerds who are unable to fathom people do things with devices they don’t.
I know people running their entire business from iPads. Last I looked running a business is real work.
How that article sounds. I don't care how fancy they make them, iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work.