I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig.
Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.
The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.
Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.
From the perspective of someone with a touchscreen windows device, I agree. I rarely used the touchscreen not because it wasnt useful, but because it was unwieldy on windows.
I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
All this to say simply shoehorning touch on a mac is a pretty bad idea simply because the hardware, in its current iteration, is not there. I wonder if they'll release a "macbook touch" thats more akin to a surface for their touch interface.
> I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
I have a work Lenovo Yoga and have a similar experience with the 2-in-1. I actually appreciate that I can fold the keyboard all the way back under and use it as a tablet. I'll sometimes use that for doing document reviews on the couch. I've also used it folded, hmmm, 290 degrees or so as a touch interface for some monitoring software. Windows seems to have some APIs that will report to applications when it switches into tablet mode and applications that auto-switch their UI to have bigger buttons etc are quite appreciated.
This is why I’ve never understood the demand for a touchscreen on a laptop. All of my non-Mac laptops have touchscreens, and I basically never use the touch feature except by accident (e.g. a kid pointing and asking a question and causing some code to highlight).
For me it's vision and physical ergonomics. The GUI and mouse did great things for computing, but were never strictly safe from an ergonomic standpoint, and I see a lot of people walking around with carpal tunnel braces. Especially CAD operators and computer programmers.
After trying it out roughly every year, Ubuntu finally seems to have fairly transparent touch screen support, and I've given up on Windows. At a comfortable reading distance, with the laptop actually on my lap (as I'm typing now), I can reach out and touch the screen more easily and comfortably than manipulating the trackpad.
Getting good at this didn't happen overnight, and its behavior isn't identical to my Android or Apple tablets.
Precise cursor positioning is hit or miss, but it is with the mouse too. In either case, I usually get as close as I can, and then move the cursor with the arrow keys. Precise mouse work also gives me eyestrain headaches.
I can only do limited programming on the laptop anyway because the screen is too small. It could be that I'm a freak because I fall into the divide in between how people "should" use laptops and tablets. The programmers do think I'm a freak.
I think the best use cases of iPad are basically bifurcated into:
1) Consumption device
People reading, scrolling, watching videos. Nice on the sofa, in bed, whatever. Also this use case has a lot of older users driven by eyesight issues that make a bigger slightly further screen interface better. Also very intuitive to young children (funny how often this elderly/youth overlap rears its head).
Typing is subpar next to a Mac so by the time you put the case on it and are in similar size/weight class, for same/MORE money .. why bother with iPad ?
The single purpose nature of the iPad makes it pretty good for quite a few tasks. I find it much easier to stay focused. I’m not saying that justifies the cost, but seeing as I have one anyway, it’s what I use for a lot of my writing like tasks.
Of course, you can now multi window in iPadOS but the experience is awful enough that I don’t.
There's no pen input on a Mac, it's only really usable in one orientation and so sucks for reading more than a page or two of a PDF. Tablets are WAY more flexible in form factor. Apple unfortunately cripples the software, but I'd rather have a device that's 100% better at pen input and bunch of tasks that's 30% worse at typing.
How do you mean? The entire iPad? Well this sucks because now you're carrying around an entire laptop and a tablet. Or do you mean using a pen with the Mac? Then it would need fundamental changes to use it well. Using a pen on a traditional laptop sucks more than a touchscreen on a traditional laptop. You need a really really good hinge to have it not be impacted by your arm, or you're forced to awkwardly hover and use minimal pressure. Bare minimum they'd have to add a 180 degree hinge so it can lie flat, or really a 360 one ideally.
With a tablet you get more freedom, not every task needs a real keyboard and sometimes even if it does it's better not attached to the device in wrong orientation.
Because it can do both. That may not be valuable to everyone, but it is a beneficial feature for many people. Also, Apple's keyboard case has a fantastic keyboard and trackpad that is a pleasure to type on.
Touch on standard laptops really doesn't make any sense. At most it should be a BTO option, not something that comes stock. That capacitative sensing capability doesn't come for free after all (and not just in terms of monetary costs) and users who know that they'll never use it shouldn't have to pay for it.
I was one of those requests. I have used 2in1s since college because I like the flexibility in positioning that 2in1s provide that regular laptops rarely or never do. The ability to open them to nearly 180 degrees when I'm using them on a surface that is low relative to me, I also like to hook up a second portable monitor and keyboard/mouse and fold it into a tent shape to provide more room. I use "tablet mode" for reading due to the smaller footprint (this is especially useful on public transit), but with the right desktop (Fedora Gnome for me) the rest of the laptop is relatively comfortable to use in tablet mode as well. When the Framework 12 was announced I immediately snatched one up and it has been excellent so far at all of these.
I will concede, though, that for a regular laptop without 2in1 functionality, I am a little confused at the value proposal. Maybe someone wants a comfortable pinch and zoom experience?
It was one of those basic things Jobs was right about years ago when people were clamouring for it. Holding your arm out to a laptop screen is tiring and pointless. If only they'd stuck with his other bit os wisdom that phone screens should be small enough to use one handed.
What we need is a single MacOS that can run an iOS-like touchscreen launcher and dumbed-down 'apps' while operating via touchscreen, but with a keyboard+mouse connected switches back to 'productivity mode', exposing the full power of MacOS.
MacOS can basically do this already, running iOS software on Macs. It's just a matter of choosing to unlock the potential of modern iPad hardware, putting the same OS on iPads and Macbooks. Full software compatibility. iPads that can be more than locked-down toys.
But would Apple ever give up the control and App Store revenue that locked-down devices provide?
Strong disagree. I gave up my Macbook for an iPad + (Mini + Jump). I do a fair amount of penciling and consumption, but most of my time is booping around in the window environment with the Magic Keyboard case. Emails, YouTube, WhatsApp, Obsidian, Remoting into more capable machines, sometimes I touch the screen, most times I'm using the trackpad or a mouse.
You're one of the (relatively) few who found the iPad useful for getting actual work done. There are others like you, just not that many. (I tried and failed to make the iPad + Magic Keyboard my only machine.)
The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
I suggest that you watch people in cafes, offices, and libraries (especially young people) use Windows-based touchscreen-equipped laptops. There's nothing that "sucks" or is "useless" about having the additional option of a touch interface on a laptop.
You don't even have to use it! There is zero downside to having a touch input on a laptop. As a component it has essentially invisible cost or negative tradeoff in any way. You still have a keyboard and mouse. It is helpful to have for little things. Examples below:
- Resizing photos with pinch zoom
- Scrolling smoothly through PDFs
- Hitting OK on a dialog box
- Making a digital signature
- Hell, macOS runs a good amount of iPhone and iPad apps that were designed for a touch screen, so we could add "using iOS apps" to the list.
- Using handwriting to take notes...much nicer to be able to draw diagrams versus being limited to text only (in a 2-in-1 form factor on a device with pen support)
Apple just hasn't made the 2-in-1 device format that a very large percentage of Windows laptops are sold with, the kind with a folding hinge. Perhaps this is because they have had Tim Cook's operations mindset so long. They don't really care that it's a device that 1/3 of users will enjoy. They couldn't even keep selling the iPhone mini even though a device that sells 5% of the iPhone's volume is still an incredibly successful device. They just want to make as few SKUs as possible to maintain profit margins, not to deliver innovative tech that at least some customers want and enjoy.
> The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
Did they do it when Apple offered the touch bar? Or did annoying nerds complain so much that Apple finally removed this pretty cool feature?
Anybody who thinks about it for a few minutes will realize that any touch interface on a laptop has to be on the bottom part and not on the screen to be great. The touch bar was an attempt, and could have been very useful. Maybe having the entire keyboard be a touch interface could be something, like BlackBerry did?
Touchscreens suck for text manipulation. The keyboard and the mouse are the superior input devices for wrangling characters and words and lines and paragraphs.
The author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very happy with a MacBook Neo instead (but they could have just been using a MacBook Air the whole time).
The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”, and it’s an amazing tool for digital artists and anyone who does lots of hand annotation work. So really overall a product that’s found its niche, and when I see grandpas and grandmas and students at my local cafe using their iPad their hands are effectively swooping and swiping in a finger ballet.
I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air), and for some reason that induces some sort of frustration in them and they feel like things somehow shouldn’t be that way. I guess I get it, the iPad hardware is pretty slick. But yeah, your work makes you a MacBook person, not an iPad person, that’s just how it is. (Apple should make an 11” MacBook again though).
> iPad apps should be weird as hell, unlike anything you find on a desktop operating system […] The iPad should be a highly-focused touch playground. Weird as hell, one-of-a-kind apps
I don’t know what this obsession with “weird apps” is, but 99.9% of people don’t care about “weird apps” and so that’s not enough to justify a whole device category (and you can find weird apps on all platforms anyways).
> The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”
> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air)
Couldn't agree more. I am that person. I spent months deliberating before buying an 11" iPad (with keyboard). Used it for a week for the novelty. But the keyboard, trackpad, and multi-tasking is so janky compared to my Mac that it's sat in a cupboard ever since.
The MacBook Air is so quick and light that it's always just as convenient to get the MacBook out instead.
And that's not even for 'techie' tasks. Basic note-taking, researching, and simple spreadsheets are all easier on the Mac. The only time I reach for the iPad is if I want to watch a video and my girlfriend is already using the TV.
That being said, the iPad mini is a perfect companion if you do want an iPad but already have a decent MacBook. Such a great form-factor and doesn't pretend to be a laptop replacement.
I’ve tried three or four times over the decades to make an iPad “work” and have never found anything to “do” with it that doesn’t quickly get subsumed by my phone (more easily available) or my laptop (better typing etc).
It always ends up playing videos or the kids playing some silly game.
Mine never got used and I've bought 4 of them (I'm an idiot). First time they were relatively new. 2nd time I got a Pro thinking the pencil would make me use it for drawing. 3rd time was to read comics. Latest time was someone recommending to put on a treadmill at the gym for a movie.
In all cases, I used them 2-3 times and then never touched them again. Obviously some people love them. My mom loves and uses hers. I edit text too much and the select, copy and paste on touch screens is attrocious even today.
i got an ipad mini cause i thought the pencil was cool. it's neat, tablets are always over idealized i think. had big dreams of using it to note take in meetings lol good joke my adhd cursed self will never reread a note.
so it's mostly a desk weight now. besides pencil input, there isn't anything i'd do on it that i wouldn't prefer doing on my laptop. i absolutely can't stand typing on ipads.
For things like drawing (Procreate and co), editing images and even videos on the go, using it with a MIDI keyboard and AU plugins for gigs, reading ebooks, watching a movie in bed, etc its way better than both the Mac and the iPhone.
Paired with a BT keyboard, for niche stuff like focus writing apps (closer to fancy typewriter with no distractions than a full laptop or phone) it's also great.
The difference for me has been the Apple Pencil. Now I don’t view the iPad as trying to replicate the mouse and keyboard experience, because it’s something different. For notes, brainstorming, research ideas—something where I don’t want a keyboard—the iPad with Pencil has been excellent.
Indeed - and given LLM's have made the 'command line' great again and voice isn't appropriate in every scenario ( far too public ), hard to see how text input isn't critical.
> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad
I think if the hardware differences really mattered Sidecar wouldn't exist, Mac wouldn't run iOS apps, iPhone wouldn't stream to Mac, and the AVP wouldn't stream/run apps from both platforms.
Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?
> Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?
Yes, yes they would. You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. And not, for example, shitty lazy port of mobile apps to MacOS
Compared to a hypothetical scenario where developers care to build iPad apps? No.
I don't think the availability of iPhone apps on iPad is what derailed development of iPad apps either, practically all the ROI building software for Apple hardware comes from impulse spending on the iPhone and even with 500+ million iPads in circulation today it doesn't come close.
iPad was sabotaged by Apple themselves, as they never figured out how to position it, and what capabilities to give it.
Multi-tasking? Half-assed. Keyboard and mouse support? Half-assed. OS capabilities beyond iOS on a laptop-like device? Non-existent. This was additionally hamstrung by "just check a checkbox, and a half-assed port of your app will run on iPad".
We've now seen the same play out with MacOS: why bother creating an actual app when you can just run a mobile app? Even Apple's first-party apps do this now.
I totally agree. I had to choose and chose a macbook air. Love that little machine! Then, when I had saved up enough, I got myself the ipad (13") for reading ttrpg pdfs.
The two machines solve totally different problems. I never bothered to get the keyboard for the ipad - because typing is something i do on the macbook air. The ipad is incredible for reading pdfs that are meant to be letter/a4 sized.
Graffiti is not possible without a stylus, or at the very least is vastly less effective.
Android and iOS are both "finger first" interfaces. You can use a stylus, but you don't have to. And everything is designed around finger-fatness. Icons, gestures, on-screen keyboard.
I much prefer the stylus. You only need to see artist that paint and do sculpting with Wacom displays to see that this has a much better potential than finger-based touch. The latter is ok for light consumption, but for not so much for productivity.
My dream is having an “app” on ipadOS that switches out userland from ipadOS to macOS when launched. Let them be two silos, containers, VMs, whatever.
Only allow “Mac mode” if you have a keyboard and monitor attached. Hell, automatically “sleep” it if you undock. Make it unapologetically keyboard-and-mouse first.
One UI for keyboard/mouse. A second UI for touch. One device that can do it all. That’s the dream.
I feel like we’ve had a few ham fisted attempts over the years at this, and Apple could actually pull it off. I get that it probably won’t happen though.
Touch and mouse are two very distinct forms of input that need to be kept separate. Every convertible Windows laptop I have ever used has convinced me of that.
Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. You can flick your wrist to select any target the size of a grain of rice on a 32" screen. Touch interfaces require larger targets because fingertips are larger than a cursor point, and also require smaller screens because your arm now has to move the entire length of the screen, which is slow and tiring.
Where touchscreens excel is tactile experiences, things that mice cannot replicate. Multi-touch, pressure sensitivity, pen angle. Sweeping motions are difficult to control with a mouse. Manipulating multiple analog controls is nigh-impossible with a mouse.
When an app tries to accommodate both input styles, it inevitably ends up catering to one style or the other, unless two separate interfaces are built. And because a touchscreen laptop can be touched or have the mouse moved at any given time, it's not really possible to switch between the two input styles seamlessly.
I would really enjoy having a device that is capable of both, since the iPad has a gorgeous screen, a great form factor, and a lot of killer uses. But it can't cannibalize mouse interfaces or we wind up with the direction that MacOS is going.
There is nothing wrong with having a keyboard connected to a touch device per se, but the gross arm motion required to move between the touchscreen and the keyboard, and the awkward angle the keyboard puts the touchscreen at sort of nukes the usefulness of the touchscreen. And again, jumping in text is the sort of small target action that mice excel at.
> Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. ...
There's exactly one feature of touch interfaces that can be incredibly input-information dense, easily rivaling the mouse, and that's swiping gestures with 1-to-1 fluid animation for feedback. Usually seen with pie menus and the like. Drag and drop, the mouse equivalent, is extremely clunky - and mouse gestures that don't even involve clicking even more so.
The surface pro argues otherwise. Using Lightroom classic on the Pro is largely best done from the keyboard, but there are certain workflows where using the touchscreen or a stylus is much better than a touchpad. The fact that it's limited doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.
I want the same mode, but on iOS! Imagine carrying nothing but the phone in your pocket, sitting down at your desk, plugging your phone into the monitor, which has your keyboard and mouse docked, and you have a full development environment.
iPads have M-series chips in them that support hardware virtualisation. But Apple goes out of its way to disable the hypervisor for its iOS/iPadOS builds[1]. All they have to do is stop doing that and allow apps to make use of the virtualisation APIs. UTM hypervisor already exists in App Store, so Apple is clearly not against the principle of it. As soon as that happens, running macOS (or Linux) will become elementary.
No? Android has the same interface regardless, it just scales a little with a bigger screen. Samsung did separate silos with Dex, but that's their own thing.
Maybe they only ever get Samsung devices. Dex is almost a decade old.
A desktop mode was recently added for base Android tho. And you could always mod your Android device to open termux when you connected an external monitor, that sort of thing.
I agree except for the monitor attached part. There’s so reason my iPad Pro with that expensive keyboard and trackpad can’t run macOS. I had such dreams
Of using it as a laptop replacement and all it’s ended up being is a very expensive portable monitor.
I like what the iPad is and it just doesn’t make sense to have a keyboard and mouse with it. Let’s leave the tablets as is and use laptops for serious typing.
People write out books on their phones. There's no need to be so rigid in the distinction between the types of device.
But I do agree with the original point that everyone has failed to make a unified interface for both modes and a distinct switch would be better until they can converge from real world learned lessons.
Cool, I think they're pointless slabs of wasted material. If I could run macOS on a macbook neo so should I be able to on an iPad, and it would make it a useful device because I do not have to spend all my time inside a terminal app to make it useful.
I remember the days of custom launchers on Android. Truly futuristic single-finger optimised interfaces that are long since dead.
My favourite was a “pie” launcher that would spawn wherever pressed in an anime/minority report futurism style. It was incredibly easy to use.
But, instead everyone settled on the rows or icons launchers and widgets. Very boring.
I feel like iPadOS could have tried to push the envelope a bit but they wanted mass market appeal, and nothing is simpler than pushing a big icon I guess. :shrug:
I sign this essay. Apple has apparently multiple opposing goals for the iPadOS:
1. Make it powerful enough so that it can be sold as equivalent to macOS
2. Keep it locked like iOS, to be sold as secure alternative to computer for your parents and kids (which rules out all the workflow customization pros need)
3. Don’t make it powerful enough for people to stop buying Macs (Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever)
The intersection of these is an empty set.
I use my 2018 Pro as a great browser and YouTube machine, with zero intent to upgrade until the above situation changes. It’s useless for anything else, and even if I got M4 powerhouse, I wouldn’t be able to take it as a single machine for holiday for emergency Weathergraph hotfix or server debugging.
It’s got a bunch of decent ssh clients; I use mine quite often for this. With a hdmi capture thingy it’s also the display for a bunch of my rpis when they don’t boot etc..
VS Code online supports tunnels, or you can run your own "code-server" (OSS VS Code bundled in a docker container).
I daily drive VS Code remote SSH and had a (honestly inexplicable) thing for Chromebooks for a while. Before the included Linux environment let me install "real" VS Code, these options worked well for me.
Ah fair enough, mostly i’m living in tmux/vim for those scenarios. Real dev work I’d want an IDE too, but seeing the Jetbrains splash on my holidays would ruin my holidays.
I don't want to see it either, but as I run my app business, I much prefer being able to fix the issue if it happens, without taking my $2000+ MBP for a two week road trip full of sand and dirt.
>>Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever
In which case they already failed because I still see no reason to replace my M1 iPad Pro, it just powers through anything I throw at it including games.
While plenty about the iPad situation sucks, my biggest gripe is the discontinuation of the Smart Keyboard Folio. This was the one that only had a keyboard, no trackpad, but could fold all the way back, which the Magic Keyboard (with trackpad) cannot. The Smart Keyboard Folio was just the perfect form factor: there when you need it, discretely out of the way when you didn’t. And when you were using it, the iPad was perfectly balanced to sit on your lap even in cramped circumstances, which the Magic Keyboard is most definitely not.
Sure, get rid of the Magic Keyboard with its unnecessary trackpad. But bring back the Smart Keyboard Folio. It was a delight.
The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or write with a pen, ever, then I'm at a loss to explain it.
But it's there nonetheless.
We've got a long way to go to really understand UI and UX. A long, long way.
Now, please excuse me while I go and tap dance about architecture for a bit...
There's variation, paper to paper, pen to pen, pencil to pencil, they each present slightly differently. Write with a ballpoint on some receipt paper, then write with a fountain pen on some smooth, low absorbancy paper, then whip out one of those green engineering notebooks with a mechanical pencil.
For each task with a physical writing utensil and paper, you get a distinct experience that connects you physically to the task.
Once actually writing, there's a sense of finality, even the erasable pencil leaves a mark. Your movements have consequence.
Then there's the persistence. A piece of paper doesn't timeout to the lock screen. It's there, all the time, using zero energy to continue to exist. You can prop it up on your desk and forget about it until you need to reference it. If you're constantly going between two pages, you can lay them side-by-side without reducing their size.
I've always found writing/drawing on a tablet to be frustrating. It feels like I'm looking down at a notebook through a toilet paper tube, like I can never see the full picture. I used a wacom tablet with a chromebook and Xournal for years to take class notes. Something about disconnecting the stylus from the screen fixed those frustrations for me, like it took the expectations of paper away and provided the expectations of a pointing device.
> Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means.
Modern Mac trackpads don’t really click, they vibrate upon sensing a certain amount of force, and the sensory illusion is good enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.
I’m only suggesting this tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps there’ll come a time when the Apple Pencil can micro-vibrate in such a way that is so convincing it will make you feel as if you’re dragging it on paper with configurable roughness.
Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years.
I still dream of the day when my computer lives on my wrist, and I just have a few dummy screens in different formats that can connect to it so I can consume media or be productive.
Samsung, Motorola and Huawei have had this for years. Samsung DeX is probably the most popular desktop environment of its type, and has been available for 9 years. Plenty of people use it (like myself), but it's too niche of a use case for the masses.
The 2011 Motorola Atrix came with a proprietary dock to connect to. Modern desktop environments can use the USB-C 3.2 DP ports on the phone to provide video out. Lapdock shells are widely available online.
The thing is, Samsung DEX works great but I've never met anyone who has heard of it even among people who have owned nothing but Samsung phones forever. Samsung just sucks at advertising the feature. They should sell a bundle of phone + portable USB-C screen + Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and the thing would sell pretty well I would imagine. But right now no one even knows this exists.
The product is perfectly fine as it is. The way I see it, if it's being advertised, it's being monetized behind the scenes. That changes incentives and usually makes the product experience worse. All it has to be is a window manager that supports standard desktop KB shortcuts (CTRL-C, ALT+Tab, etc.)
DeX is not a fork. It is a UI layer on the phone that activates when you connect to a USB-C display. There is no difference between doing something on your phone and on DeX.
I wonder what you consider serious work then, because as a developer I think Visual Studio is the most "serious" developer environment there is, and I'd take it over any linux or Mac based setup.
Think about it like this: Would you manage a fortune in crypto on Windows? I wouldn't, because I just wouldn't even trust my environment at first. And for Visual Studio, I would solely run it in a firewalled VM.
MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints which makes it insecure by default. There is also serious privacy concerns, basic one would be that telemetry sends all HWID of devices by default, so if you share a USB stick with a friend, you two are automatically correlated in MS database, not really my cup of tea.
Not a big fan of an OS asking for an ID indirectly (via mandatory phone number) as well, mandatory MS account at install time (except if you tamper with the ISO, yeah sure)
>Think about it like this: Would you manage a fortune in crypto on Windows? I wouldn't
Most banks on the planet manage trillions on Windows, so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by dying on this hill. Just because you wouldn't do something doesn't make you knowledgeable or right about that.
>MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints.
I wonder how all those companies, banks and governments manage to keep MS workers out of their work data.
Any MS workers here that can answer what are you guys doing with all that customer data you look at all day instead of coding?
It's starting to realize now though, USB-C providing power and display, emulation allowing for x86 software. We're not far away from a Steam/Proton type scenario where you just run whatever you want on your phone's desktop mode, the most powerful Android phones are already doing this!
My Librem 5 phone runs desktop GNU/Linux and can be used with a screen and keyboard with no restrictions. Unlike Android, it doesn't run mobile apps on a big screen but full desktop apps. See: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
> Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years.
the thing that annoys me is that pretty much everybody in the industry with a decent amount of understanding has known for more than a decade this was absolutely feasible.
and the most infuriating this is that i know for a fact it's not being done purely for a matter of product fragmentation.
the macbook neo is living proof that we could give people a single device (iphone 17 pro/pro max) and have that do pretty much everything. get in the office, hook your phone to a display via usb-c, start working. unplug your phone (which now is fully charged) and go home.
we could have dumb laptop-shaped terminals where we plug our phones, and get a larger display and a keyboard. or tablet-shaped "terminals". or desktop docks at home.
how cool would it be to leave for the office with just your company phone in your pocket ?
but we wouldn't need three separate devices: an iphone, an ipad and a macbook.
something similar would likely also apply to the android world, if android os developers could get their shit together and get a decent implementation working (android occasionally re-launches this, and it usually sucks again).
No real person wants that. A bunch of hackers want it, so that they can try it a couple of times as a fun side project and then never use it again in their life.
That said, I guess to everyone born after 2000 a PC is considered kaputt if it does not have touch input.
Even my 1994 gf tries to touch every display to see if it is directly usable, or needs an obscure pointer to be moved and click to be found either on keys or tap or press.
The iPad + keyboard combo is typically as heavy or even heavier than a laptop. It's certainly more expensive and restrictive. I have agree with the author's thesis here
I kind of disagree. I always wished apple could copy Microsoft Surface Go and Surface Book.
I would still use macbook for most things but I did use my surface go more often for (deep) work than now my ipad pro (which is better for consumption).
Surface Go in app mode was not as good as ipad and many apps lacking but it shined if I had to to more work/research and I didn't have laptop with me.
I would just love to have something like even smaller size Macbook Neo where I can unplug screen and then would behave like iPad consumption device.
Right now I hate keeping everything synced in apple ecosystem so I usually even won't bother to use ipad while in train or plane.
I just want a notebook the size and weight of a 10" ipad pro that I can run desktop software on. The Macbook Neo is 12" and weighs 1.23kg which is light but not "forget you have it in your bag" light.
It's frustating knowing that the ipad _could_ run mac os but won't due to intentional market segmentation by Apple.
I was using an old (2nd or 3nd Gen) Surface Pro for several months doing this, and apart from it being Windows based (ugh) it was pretty good. Until I dropped the thing. o_O
I have a Surface Book now, that I put Linux on for a while (bad idea, super flaky with Surface Linux). I'd probably recommend the Surface Pro again over the Surface Book, and just put up with Windows (ugh x2). Using the AtlasOS variant at least, so less crappy compared to stock Windows.
This is the what everyone that says they want Xcode in an iPad actually means. They don’t want an iPad at all, they want a super portable Mac. Every single complaint around iPadOS is from someone trying to use it like a Mac.
I do wish Apple would make an 11” Mac just so people would stop complaining about the iPad lol.
It's definitely not ideal but the top model surface go 2 can be gotten for under $120 at this stage and will be somewhat usable for that with Linux installed
I imagine the surface go 4 with an n200 is probably a good bit better but several times the price; assuming it can run Linux
They don’t even make the 10in pro anymore. The 11pro is 1lb but the keyboard case your inevitably also going to want is another 1.3lbs.. so you’re back at 1kg total, and worse than a MacBook neo for MacBook like uses.
Hard disagree. The iPad is a fantastic mac replacement for many purposes. I use the iPad Pro w/ the “magic keyboard” case for working essentially whenever I’m not physically in home or office in similar ways that I do my Mac, for two really big reasons:
(1) The (11-inch) size is fantastic: you get enough screen real estate to see what you’re reading and writing, but it still fits into an arbitrarily small bag and is light enough that you can comfortably walk around all day with it. The death of the original tiny MacBook Air was a huge fail for apple
(2) CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY FOR GOD’S SAKE CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY. Yes, you can always hotspot your phone, however, that’s still not nearly so reliable as a device with its own connectivity, some providers still limit bandwidth there, plus the last thing I need is extra battery drain on my phone when I’m already stressed about it.
TBF, if Apple ever brought back the original MacBook Air with modern specs and with a cellular chip, I would just take gigantic buckets full of money and throw them in the general direction of Cupertino until I got one, like, instantly. And there are definitely still compromises—-as an academic, I’ve been meaning to just write a command line front end to zotero and fling it onto a digital ocean server or something, because its iPad app is so godawful. But on the whole, I still reach for my iPad much much much more than my MacBook, for those two killer features.
It really depends how frequently one is outside. I have had many laptops with cell chips and sim slot but never bothered to pay for a sim when I could just tether my smartphone connection, even when using the train. I usually plug the phone to the laptop if I need to charge the phone.
I don't use it (or need it) myself, but when I was working for a sporting equipment manufacturer a number of years ago, every salesman had a cellular dongle for their laptop. We had to remind them they had direct ethernet connections when they were in the office.
Fun fact, I once bought a reconditionned laptop and the sim card of the previous owner was still on the slot. More interestingly I could use it to connect to the mobile network for at least 2 years without even knowing the PIN (and having reinstalled to linux).
Do people really not use it? I use my iPad cellular all the time. Constantly.
One of these days I'm going to buy one of those old MS Surfaces with cellular and stick Linux on it. But for the installation/drivers hassles I'd have already done so.
The surface laptops have ended up being good laptops and mediocre/bad tablets IMO. While technically the same on the surface, there is something about the dedicated UX of an iPad that makes it a completely different experience in reality.
If you replace an iPad you bought for $350 a year ago with a $600 surface, it will be a markedly worse experience as a tablet. Nothing has yet combined the two without comprimise - you either get a device which is a bad laptop and a good tablet, or a bad tablet and a good laptop.
> encumbered only by increasingly slower animations or boneheaded notifications or apps stealing focus as they spin themselves up
> Instead, go into a three year period of major OS refactoring. Speed above all.
I cannot understand why a slow mac is acceptable at any level at all. The icons need a second to load in the applications drawer! Jobs would have thrown this thing across the room at the first MVP demo
The part that makes ipadOS feels like a toy is Apple’s iron grip in “App Store only” app delivery. The thing has so much power, but to do anything useful, you gotta play by Apple’s rules. All that dream of quirky, useful, innovative ipadOS leveraging apps would show up if they relinquished that software control and let indie or otherwise apps get there without the Apple Tax both in money and rules.
Would the iPad still be that days long, cohesive device is another story.. it Apple cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Audio apps on the iPad show that this isn’t the case. The iPad has an incredible amount of amazing audio apps that simply don’t exist and/or are much cheaper than on other platforms. Some of that is due to the great audio performance from day one but a lot of it can be chalked up to the lack of piracy. There are a seemingly endless number of synths, effects, sequencers, etc. in the App Store. It’s a relative ghost town in the Android world. Both Mac and Windows are better environments for DAW work but the plug ins are uniformly (usually much) more expensive.
The console approach to software distribution is good for developers and in this case leads to better software for consumers.
The iPad's Audio Unit applications unfortunately pale in comparison to even simple desktop plugins. You won't find any Vital or Serum-killers on the App Store, and you definitely won't find software like full-fat Spectrasonics or the U-He instruments. The iPad can do some audio work, but once you stop using it as a digital 8-track or a MIDI machine, you are instantly outclassed by even a $300 Windows laptop running Reaper or Pro Tools.
The iPad excels in performance. Like I said, if you're using a DAW a regular computer is better. The fact remains that audio apps for the iPad are plentiful and cheap. The App Store only approach has made the iPad a more attractive target than Android by a mile. The iPad apps are also screaming deals.
Your comment summarizes the people's inability to appreciate the iPad on its own terms. "You can't run Pro Tools!" is such a silly complaint. Moog, Waldorf, Arturia, Roland, Akai, Eventide, etc etc etc they are all on the App Store and work very well by touch. There are of course a ton of indie apps as well. No, they may not be as "powerful" as some of the ones you mentioned but they are designed to work in a different way than the computer plugins do. And they are priced much much cheaper. Use a computer for computer workflows, use the iPad for things that it does better.
This is a cop-out argument, though. I own an iPad, I know that it handles virtual MIDI and recording fine. So does my smartphone! It does not have world-class plugins for synthesis, recording or even performance if we're being honest with ourselves. Without velocity sensitivity or aftertouch, it's already less expressive than a $200 keyboard.
> Use a computer for computer workflows, use the iPad for things that it does better.
The iPad is a computer. I could be using the iPad for both but Apple won't let me, so now I have another cruddy MIDI controller that doesn't run Bitwig.
I disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I want Apple to open up devices like the iPad. But I can think of few apps that would transform the iPad from “toy” to “serious” that are blocked by the policy. That transformation is largely blocked by the OS UI.
Well they removed the virtualization framework and prohibit apps from using JIT, so you can't just have a "macOS" app (or Ubuntu, Windows etc).
They ban apps from downloading and executing code except for educational purposes - in fact very recently this has manifested in banning apps that use AI to build and publish apps - but it has always prevented VSCode and the like, at best you can have something SSH'd into something else. This also affects software that is extendable through plugins and addons.
Buried in here is the very nice idea of an AI dividend for CLI users - as we keep designing interfaces for LLMs directly, those interfaces are text-oriented, and afford us a look at a future with the command line being central.
I like that. My recent tools are mostly AI first, and therefore CLI first. I’ve been toying with adding JSON modes to them, and this is undeniably useful, but I think I’ll keep JSON under flags; it’s a way to prioritize human users as well.
I don't actually think this is true. I think the issue is that the CLI is a much better paradigm if you're going to operate with text and text based commands.
LLMs excel at text, text is incredibly powerful in a cli environment.
It's not just that there's no GUI alternative, it's that the GUI itself is a bad affordance.
The only GUIs that even sort of successfully play in this space solve it by having a GUI that basically just embeds a CLI (see - all the vscode editors, antigravity, etc..).
The only thing I’d push back on is the weird and wacky iPad apps - our brains and fingers need some consistency in UI, doesn’t mean it can be fun though!
Can someone who personally knows John Ternus please send this essay to him? And can they do it immediately? (...and tell him to implement this business plan)
This article makes me very, very strongly want Bryce 3D for iPad.
Everything about using that app was about trying to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the screen. Now you can. Its user interface was nonsenical at the time. Now a spherical marble is sensible. Tap an object, then tap and hold; use other hand to operate the three-axis arrow control bar that swells up out of the interface into easy to touch controls. When you let go, they pop with a little spray of tri-color paint and a few speckles get left on the user interface.
Seriously, we have done almost nothing with what’s possible because everything is either Word, Letterpress, Tabletop Simulator, or cross-platform port. Meanwhile there’s an engine in there powerful enough to run Bryce with realtime rendering, but everyone wants to emulate a sheet of paper rather than letting me do the most basic things.
We could have painting with a pen and controlling z-depth with a hand at the same time. Path snap to collision avoidance margins on a slider. Negative margins and a setting to define collision handling: do you materials simulate two oils colliding at their spline velocity? Do they intersperse and blend like translucent colored sand? How far after the intersection does the aftertint continue in the brush stream?
Instead, we have, courtesy of AI, U-turned the industry all the way back to text adventure games with sentient potatoes.
Moment of Inspiration seems the most promising 3D modeling option --- done by the former lead developer of Rhinoceros 3D it's probably what I'm going to break down and buy if crash-and-burn on my current attempt to learn Alibre Atom 3D.
This makes me think of the interface for one handed touch screen typing that was used in the movie version of Ended’s game; it stuck with me as an example of a more touch friendly flexible input mechanism that really challenged how I thought about interfaces. Someone made an open source implementation of it but half the battle is getting these idioms to take root. I wish Apple would experiment more with novel touch interfaces in the way the article describes.
I think this touch-only idea would be more viable if we had far better haptic feedback from screens. All the fancy gestures and fluidic UI don't help when your only means of interaction is pushing against an unresponsive pane of glass. Maybe something better just isn't possible, but I'd love to see Apple push things forward in this area.
Am I the only person who likes the concept of "Sidebar" and using an iPad (often w/ an Apple Pencil) as a second display on a Mac?
Let me do that w/ a MacBook Neo and iPad Air pair which look as if they belong together and which fit nicely into a bag and afford me the option of taking only the iPad Air and Apple Pencil when I want to travel light, and maybe I'll come back to the fold (the last thing I bought from Apple was Mac OS X Public Beta, before that it was OpenSTEP 4.2, and the last thing Apple made which I truly liked wholeheartedly was Snow Leopard).
Oh yeah, make the Apple Pencil work on an iPhone....
Instead, these days, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360 (two of them, panic-bought a spare when I though the line was being discontinued, it's now up to a Book 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (replacing a first-gen unit) and a Wacom One display connected to a MacBook (purchased by an employer) and more Wacom styluses than I can easily count....
The high watermark of my graphical computing experience was using an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint w/ FutureWave SmartSketch when mobile, and a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ --- I've tried pretty much every thing in-between since, but when things were finally getting better, Microsoft did Fall Creator's Update and everything came crashing down....
I'd really like for Apple to make a device trifecta which I would actually be willing to buy.
So I agree the iPad range is more complicated than it needs to be but I'm not as enthralled by the Macbook Neo as the author.
For one thing, a base iPad is US$349. Sure you need a keyboard too but it is less than $599. And the core of the Macbook Neo is a previous generation iPhone chip whereas the latest iPad has an M14.
If anything, a better melding of these product lines looka a lot more like the Huawei Mate Book Fold [1].
My biggest issue with Apple's current lineup is actually Face ID. I dearly love my iPad Air because it's about the last Apple device I own that still uses Touch ID.
Nobody will change my mind about Face ID. It's terrible. I'm fine if others want to use it. But please just put Touch ID on the button like the iPad Air on every device, particularly the iPhone.
Face ID terrible for visually impaired people who have to look closer at the screen. This is a common cause for Face ID failures where you have to move the device away from your face for it to work. And you rack up false posiitves this way. Apple is way too zealous with how many false negatives force a passcode entry. I know in the Touch ID entry I barely have to use my passcode. With my current iPhone I have to use it many times a day.
And then Face ID just fails all the time in low light conditions such that you have to light up your face with an external light to make it work. The iPad's screen light by itself isn't enough.
So much for "seamless".
So if you solved this problem there's no real reason to separate the iPad Pro and iPad Air lines.
> And then Face ID just fails all the time in low light conditions such that you have to light up your face with an external light to make it work. The iPad's screen light by itself isn't enough.
I've managed to unlock my iPhone in a pitch-dark bedroom just fine, for many years now.
It uses infrared dots, not visible light, unlike some of the Android implementations.
> You’d think that Apple would have seen the launch of the M1 as a clear moment to maximally delineate between MacBooks and iPad.
It's been a long-term goal of Apple for the iPad to eclipse and replace the Mac, in the same way the Mac eclipsed and replaced the Apple ][. Or the Lisa[0]. In fact, I would not be surprised if it turned out a driving goal of the Apple Silicon transition was just to make the Mac more like an iPad so that they'd consume less engineering resources to release.
That, of course, backfired, because Apple suddenly started releasing actually compelling laptops again. Oops! But the original design intent is clear: the Mac is a legacy platform. I mean, app developers don't even pay 30% on it. Apple doesn't design platforms like macOS anymore, due to a combination of toxic max-security[1] and not wanting to be embarrassed by third-parties out-innovating them on their own turf.
This is where I start to disagree with the author, though. The clear separation between mouse software and finger software was a mandate from Steve Jobs intended primarily to force developers to make apps that are finger-friendly. But nothing prohibits you from writing software that respects both modes of input. Furthermore, the only clear path for the iPad is for it to become more like a Mac.
The problem is that Apple also wants to obfuscate the issue by pretending like the capability gap has been met with better windowing. The real problem are all the things Apple considers non-negotiable: i.e. there are going to be apps that will never fit into Apple's sandboxing restrictions, and apps whose economies of production do not afford handing off 30% of revenues in commission to Apple. Whether or not those apps happen to let you plug in a keyboard and mouse into a tablet is a different question.
But at the same time, of course the tablet should support a mouse if you plug it in, and of course if I plug in a touchscreen into a laptop that should work too.
[0] TBH, you develop apps for the iPad in the same way early Mac apps were developed on a Lisa.
I see a lot of people in the comments wanting to use iOS on a laptop, or connecting a mouse and keyboard to an iPad/iPhone. I don't know what the point would be. For anything that is not purely content consumption, a regular laptop is superior to a tablet, phone, or touchscreen generally. What use case other than "it's cool" do you actually expect to use this for?
I keep wanting to buy an iPad, but I create more than I consume, and it's a pointless device for creators (except maybe for drawing/illustration). I have no idea why someone would want a touchscreen and iOS on a Macbook Neo. If you're trying to do something other than passively consume content, a Macbook Neo is a better device than an iPad and does not need a touchscreen.
"Almost anything that doesn’t involve the Apple Pencil (Procreate being one of the true killer apps, the app that may have sold more iPads to creative professionals than anything else) could be done better on a MacBook. Even email feels better on a MacBook.
"Today, they sit in the corner. iPadOS simply isn’t an environment for most “serious” work."
You sound ridiculous.
Half of your argument evolves around your distorted view of "serious work".
What do you consider serious work?
I analyse satellite pictures from conflict zones on my M1 Pro iPad while smoking a blunt, on my back, on a blanket in the park, right now, and probably get paid by the hour more than you make in a day. I can ENHANCE with the power of my fingers as gradually as I need on a 13" screen, not being limited by tiny touchpad space or getting a stiff neck. Try the same with a MacBook.
I’d call that serious work.
My GF put her MacBook away and does Music via Creator Studio on her iPad Pro since it released, mobile and in a creative setting without disruption by her phone, or the necessity of a table, because the iPad got Cellular, and she can live comfortably from it. She’s actually working right now on the other side of the tree.
Not serious work either I guess.
My brother is taking photos of government officials during their travels, and works on iPad Pro exclusively during shoots. It’s much nicer to discuss and touch up photos with an official on an iPad than holding your MacBook in their face like an early 2000s playboy photographer.
Not serious work either I guess.
I frequently visit the Parliament in my country. A lot of the legislation knowledge work is done on iPads. By people who rather chill with the Parliament visitors in the sunlight, thanks to nanotexture, having a chat with them, without looking unapproachable behind a laptop screen or balancing a MacBook on their knees. iPads invite social interactions and make you approachable. MacBooks put up a wall.
Not serious work either I guess.
They are more mobile. I can basically sit down everywhere and get serious work done without looking like a MacBook Moron with an external screen battleship setup and an extra mouse.
My brother’s wife is using the LiDAR sensor inside the iPad Pro for her interior design work. She can do everything on one device. Where’s the LiDAR in the MacBook?
Guess that is not serious work either.
It has GPS, good luck navigating to the next gas station from the middle of nowhere when your phone dies with your MacBook. Guess you’ll just point it at the sky and yell Connect!.
If you travel for work iPad can be a lifesaver.
My lawyer does most work on his iPad Pro.
If you read and annotate documents for a living, why the hell would you do it on a MacBook?
I know people in construction who only use iPad and get work done. Not everyone is a writer, or photographer, or walker.
It’s not the iPad or iPadOS that is limited in a way that doesn’t let you do "serious work".
It’s actually your mental ability to come up with better solutions. Don't blame Apple for being unflexible and dumber than most smart people choosing the right tool for the right job in the place they want to be, rather than being tied to an office or a wall outlet or relying on a phone with a lot smaller battery than an iPad, and their laptop.
The pencil is just another plus. If coding is your way to do serious work, yeah you’re kinda fucked on iPad but there are millions of people who get serious work done on their iPad and then use it recreationally laying on the couch or sitting in the bus where MacBooks look silly and are uncomfortable.
I grow tired of the MacBook Neo gloating and almost like a light version of bragging in articles like this. It's coded as a critique of the iPad but it feels a lot more like "I'm typing this on a MacBook Neo and it's oh soo amazing!"
Apple is essentially selling the modern version of the eMac, and I would say the Neo is almost as bad of a purchase as that product. The real selling point of the device is that it's newly in box with a warranty. If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better. Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
The Neo situation is the equivalent of buying a brand new $500 Acer machine versus buying a $500 eBay ThinkPad T14 or something like that. You'll get a much better laptop by buying a used laptop versus buying that brand new Acer.
The same story goes for the MacBook Neo. It'll be successful in sales, and it's a nice machine in a lot of ways, but it's one of the most overhyped devices of our present times.
It will go down in history as a device like the iPhone 5C. Save a few bucks now, but pay for it in the near future with the kind of performance you're actually getting from it. Even basic casual tasks will chug in the very near future.
Apple is selling a device that is approximately equivalent to the $1000 laptop they were selling 5 years ago and we are acting like this is a revolutionary product. And, by the way, it's not a $500 product unless you can use the education store. It's actually $600, or $700 if you are buying a configuration that actually makes some level of sense and has enough storage. $700 will buy you a 16GB/512GB MacBook Air M2, a much better machine (better screen, battery, speakers, processor, keyboard, trackpad, I/O, etc).
> If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better.
A huge percentage of the population (at least in the US) is completely unwilling to buy any used consumer products. For some it is the ick factor, for others it is fear of being scammed.
> Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
Is this really a better alternative if it stops getting macOS updates several years sooner? I wouldn’t buy an 8gb laptop, but they are fine for many use cases.
It seems like macOS updates have a lot more to do with underlying hardware and specs than year of release alone.
Going back to the iPhone 5C example, that phone lost updates much earlier than the 5S released the same year because it didn’t support 64-bit processors.
There are also a number of Intel and PowerPC systems that weren’t supported long due to architecture transitions.
I could very easily imagine a future version of macOS only being available on systems that shipped with 16GB of RAM.
Although on the other hand, I think Apple decides on support based on userbase as well. I imagine if they find a device is barely used or don’t sell well in the first place they would perhaps be more likely to drop support.
The Mac Neo is a great product for a large percentage of people out there who wanted to get a Mac that is well made and affordable it is very usable for the overwhelming majority of non tech people that want to use a personal computer today. Most of the tech sites were skeptical still are but thank goodness Apple didn’t listen to them.
The same applies to the iPad. It is fine the way it is if I personally wanted a laptop, I would’ve bought one but my preference is a desktop computer.
I don’t sit around wishing every laptop computer was a desktop computer nor do I want an iPad to be a laptop or even a desktop computer it is what it is had purchase, if you don’t like it just buy what you want, the Neo appears to be a hit, so it appears that Apple knows what they’re doing again.
I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig. Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.
The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.
Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.
From the perspective of someone with a touchscreen windows device, I agree. I rarely used the touchscreen not because it wasnt useful, but because it was unwieldy on windows.
I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
All this to say simply shoehorning touch on a mac is a pretty bad idea simply because the hardware, in its current iteration, is not there. I wonder if they'll release a "macbook touch" thats more akin to a surface for their touch interface.
> I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
I have a work Lenovo Yoga and have a similar experience with the 2-in-1. I actually appreciate that I can fold the keyboard all the way back under and use it as a tablet. I'll sometimes use that for doing document reviews on the couch. I've also used it folded, hmmm, 290 degrees or so as a touch interface for some monitoring software. Windows seems to have some APIs that will report to applications when it switches into tablet mode and applications that auto-switch their UI to have bigger buttons etc are quite appreciated.
This is why I’ve never understood the demand for a touchscreen on a laptop. All of my non-Mac laptops have touchscreens, and I basically never use the touch feature except by accident (e.g. a kid pointing and asking a question and causing some code to highlight).
For me it's vision and physical ergonomics. The GUI and mouse did great things for computing, but were never strictly safe from an ergonomic standpoint, and I see a lot of people walking around with carpal tunnel braces. Especially CAD operators and computer programmers.
After trying it out roughly every year, Ubuntu finally seems to have fairly transparent touch screen support, and I've given up on Windows. At a comfortable reading distance, with the laptop actually on my lap (as I'm typing now), I can reach out and touch the screen more easily and comfortably than manipulating the trackpad.
Getting good at this didn't happen overnight, and its behavior isn't identical to my Android or Apple tablets.
Precise cursor positioning is hit or miss, but it is with the mouse too. In either case, I usually get as close as I can, and then move the cursor with the arrow keys. Precise mouse work also gives me eyestrain headaches.
I can only do limited programming on the laptop anyway because the screen is too small. It could be that I'm a freak because I fall into the divide in between how people "should" use laptops and tablets. The programmers do think I'm a freak.
I think the best use cases of iPad are basically bifurcated into:
1) Consumption device People reading, scrolling, watching videos. Nice on the sofa, in bed, whatever. Also this use case has a lot of older users driven by eyesight issues that make a bigger slightly further screen interface better. Also very intuitive to young children (funny how often this elderly/youth overlap rears its head).
2) Creative (not productivity/coding!) device Artists needing pencil & touch interface for precise tactile writing/drawing/editing
> not productivity/coding!
You don’t think a non-artist, non-coder can be productive on an iPad?
Some jobs are heavily writing, reading, email/messaging, meetings, etc. Feel link those people can do quite well with an iPad, no?
Typing is subpar next to a Mac so by the time you put the case on it and are in similar size/weight class, for same/MORE money .. why bother with iPad ?
The single purpose nature of the iPad makes it pretty good for quite a few tasks. I find it much easier to stay focused. I’m not saying that justifies the cost, but seeing as I have one anyway, it’s what I use for a lot of my writing like tasks.
Of course, you can now multi window in iPadOS but the experience is awful enough that I don’t.
Typing on a Mac is also subpar: I use one mechanical keyboard that can easily switch between Mac and iPad. Same typing experience on both.
There's no pen input on a Mac, it's only really usable in one orientation and so sucks for reading more than a page or two of a PDF. Tablets are WAY more flexible in form factor. Apple unfortunately cripples the software, but I'd rather have a device that's 100% better at pen input and bunch of tasks that's 30% worse at typing.
Instead of doing creative work on the iPad, it should really be used as an input device for the mac.
How do you mean? The entire iPad? Well this sucks because now you're carrying around an entire laptop and a tablet. Or do you mean using a pen with the Mac? Then it would need fundamental changes to use it well. Using a pen on a traditional laptop sucks more than a touchscreen on a traditional laptop. You need a really really good hinge to have it not be impacted by your arm, or you're forced to awkwardly hover and use minimal pressure. Bare minimum they'd have to add a 180 degree hinge so it can lie flat, or really a 360 one ideally.
With a tablet you get more freedom, not every task needs a real keyboard and sometimes even if it does it's better not attached to the device in wrong orientation.
Because it can do both. That may not be valuable to everyone, but it is a beneficial feature for many people. Also, Apple's keyboard case has a fantastic keyboard and trackpad that is a pleasure to type on.
It’s not subpar, it’s just different. I find it to be relaxing to be productive on my iPad for a lot of work tasks.
Why would I want to touch a computer when I’m at home when I can use my iPad? Computers aren’t relaxing or fun to use.
> Computers aren’t relaxing or fun to use
[citation needed]
Touch on standard laptops really doesn't make any sense. At most it should be a BTO option, not something that comes stock. That capacitative sensing capability doesn't come for free after all (and not just in terms of monetary costs) and users who know that they'll never use it shouldn't have to pay for it.
> demand for a touchscreen on a laptop
My take is that consumers didn't want this; it was manufacturers trying to "add value" or sell something new. Same as the recent "AI PC" craze.
I don’t think so. It was one of the most requested features for the Framework 13 for some reason.
I was one of those requests. I have used 2in1s since college because I like the flexibility in positioning that 2in1s provide that regular laptops rarely or never do. The ability to open them to nearly 180 degrees when I'm using them on a surface that is low relative to me, I also like to hook up a second portable monitor and keyboard/mouse and fold it into a tent shape to provide more room. I use "tablet mode" for reading due to the smaller footprint (this is especially useful on public transit), but with the right desktop (Fedora Gnome for me) the rest of the laptop is relatively comfortable to use in tablet mode as well. When the Framework 12 was announced I immediately snatched one up and it has been excellent so far at all of these.
I will concede, though, that for a regular laptop without 2in1 functionality, I am a little confused at the value proposal. Maybe someone wants a comfortable pinch and zoom experience?
this. it took me 2 years to notice my T14s even had a touchscreen
its useless
flexes too much to actually use it
It was one of those basic things Jobs was right about years ago when people were clamouring for it. Holding your arm out to a laptop screen is tiring and pointless. If only they'd stuck with his other bit os wisdom that phone screens should be small enough to use one handed.
What we need is a single MacOS that can run an iOS-like touchscreen launcher and dumbed-down 'apps' while operating via touchscreen, but with a keyboard+mouse connected switches back to 'productivity mode', exposing the full power of MacOS.
MacOS can basically do this already, running iOS software on Macs. It's just a matter of choosing to unlock the potential of modern iPad hardware, putting the same OS on iPads and Macbooks. Full software compatibility. iPads that can be more than locked-down toys.
But would Apple ever give up the control and App Store revenue that locked-down devices provide?
> Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.
"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee." -- Yahtzee Crowshaw
We figured out that light pens were an abomination for ergonomics back in the 1980s.
Strong disagree. I gave up my Macbook for an iPad + (Mini + Jump). I do a fair amount of penciling and consumption, but most of my time is booping around in the window environment with the Magic Keyboard case. Emails, YouTube, WhatsApp, Obsidian, Remoting into more capable machines, sometimes I touch the screen, most times I'm using the trackpad or a mouse.
You're one of the (relatively) few who found the iPad useful for getting actual work done. There are others like you, just not that many. (I tried and failed to make the iPad + Magic Keyboard my only machine.)
There are at least two of us!
The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
I suggest that you watch people in cafes, offices, and libraries (especially young people) use Windows-based touchscreen-equipped laptops. There's nothing that "sucks" or is "useless" about having the additional option of a touch interface on a laptop.
You don't even have to use it! There is zero downside to having a touch input on a laptop. As a component it has essentially invisible cost or negative tradeoff in any way. You still have a keyboard and mouse. It is helpful to have for little things. Examples below:
- Resizing photos with pinch zoom
- Scrolling smoothly through PDFs
- Hitting OK on a dialog box
- Making a digital signature
- Hell, macOS runs a good amount of iPhone and iPad apps that were designed for a touch screen, so we could add "using iOS apps" to the list.
- Using handwriting to take notes...much nicer to be able to draw diagrams versus being limited to text only (in a 2-in-1 form factor on a device with pen support)
Apple just hasn't made the 2-in-1 device format that a very large percentage of Windows laptops are sold with, the kind with a folding hinge. Perhaps this is because they have had Tim Cook's operations mindset so long. They don't really care that it's a device that 1/3 of users will enjoy. They couldn't even keep selling the iPhone mini even though a device that sells 5% of the iPhone's volume is still an incredibly successful device. They just want to make as few SKUs as possible to maintain profit margins, not to deliver innovative tech that at least some customers want and enjoy.
> The truth is that the moment Apple offers a touch screen on macOS, the Mac cult faithful will hail the day as a breakthrough in innovation.
Did they do it when Apple offered the touch bar? Or did annoying nerds complain so much that Apple finally removed this pretty cool feature?
Anybody who thinks about it for a few minutes will realize that any touch interface on a laptop has to be on the bottom part and not on the screen to be great. The touch bar was an attempt, and could have been very useful. Maybe having the entire keyboard be a touch interface could be something, like BlackBerry did?
Touchscreens suck for text manipulation. The keyboard and the mouse are the superior input devices for wrangling characters and words and lines and paragraphs.
The author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very happy with a MacBook Neo instead (but they could have just been using a MacBook Air the whole time).
The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”, and it’s an amazing tool for digital artists and anyone who does lots of hand annotation work. So really overall a product that’s found its niche, and when I see grandpas and grandmas and students at my local cafe using their iPad their hands are effectively swooping and swiping in a finger ballet.
I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air), and for some reason that induces some sort of frustration in them and they feel like things somehow shouldn’t be that way. I guess I get it, the iPad hardware is pretty slick. But yeah, your work makes you a MacBook person, not an iPad person, that’s just how it is. (Apple should make an 11” MacBook again though).
> iPad apps should be weird as hell, unlike anything you find on a desktop operating system […] The iPad should be a highly-focused touch playground. Weird as hell, one-of-a-kind apps
I don’t know what this obsession with “weird apps” is, but 99.9% of people don’t care about “weird apps” and so that’s not enough to justify a whole device category (and you can find weird apps on all platforms anyways).
> The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”
> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air)
Couldn't agree more. I am that person. I spent months deliberating before buying an 11" iPad (with keyboard). Used it for a week for the novelty. But the keyboard, trackpad, and multi-tasking is so janky compared to my Mac that it's sat in a cupboard ever since.
The MacBook Air is so quick and light that it's always just as convenient to get the MacBook out instead.
And that's not even for 'techie' tasks. Basic note-taking, researching, and simple spreadsheets are all easier on the Mac. The only time I reach for the iPad is if I want to watch a video and my girlfriend is already using the TV.
That being said, the iPad mini is a perfect companion if you do want an iPad but already have a decent MacBook. Such a great form-factor and doesn't pretend to be a laptop replacement.
I’ve tried three or four times over the decades to make an iPad “work” and have never found anything to “do” with it that doesn’t quickly get subsumed by my phone (more easily available) or my laptop (better typing etc).
It always ends up playing videos or the kids playing some silly game.
Mine never got used and I've bought 4 of them (I'm an idiot). First time they were relatively new. 2nd time I got a Pro thinking the pencil would make me use it for drawing. 3rd time was to read comics. Latest time was someone recommending to put on a treadmill at the gym for a movie.
In all cases, I used them 2-3 times and then never touched them again. Obviously some people love them. My mom loves and uses hers. I edit text too much and the select, copy and paste on touch screens is attrocious even today.
i got an ipad mini cause i thought the pencil was cool. it's neat, tablets are always over idealized i think. had big dreams of using it to note take in meetings lol good joke my adhd cursed self will never reread a note.
so it's mostly a desk weight now. besides pencil input, there isn't anything i'd do on it that i wouldn't prefer doing on my laptop. i absolutely can't stand typing on ipads.
Depends on what you do.
For things like drawing (Procreate and co), editing images and even videos on the go, using it with a MIDI keyboard and AU plugins for gigs, reading ebooks, watching a movie in bed, etc its way better than both the Mac and the iPhone.
Paired with a BT keyboard, for niche stuff like focus writing apps (closer to fancy typewriter with no distractions than a full laptop or phone) it's also great.
The difference for me has been the Apple Pencil. Now I don’t view the iPad as trying to replicate the mouse and keyboard experience, because it’s something different. For notes, brainstorming, research ideas—something where I don’t want a keyboard—the iPad with Pencil has been excellent.
>Touchscreens suck for text manipulation.
Indeed - and given LLM's have made the 'command line' great again and voice isn't appropriate in every scenario ( far too public ), hard to see how text input isn't critical.
> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad
I think if the hardware differences really mattered Sidecar wouldn't exist, Mac wouldn't run iOS apps, iPhone wouldn't stream to Mac, and the AVP wouldn't stream/run apps from both platforms.
Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?
> Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?
Yes, yes they would. You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. And not, for example, shitty lazy port of mobile apps to MacOS
> You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device.
Or you would just have a void where that hypothetical software could be, and this is what actually happened to the iPad (and AVP).
iPad could run iOS software since forever. Did it help iPad?
Compared to having even less software? Yes.
Compared to a hypothetical scenario where developers care to build iPad apps? No.
I don't think the availability of iPhone apps on iPad is what derailed development of iPad apps either, practically all the ROI building software for Apple hardware comes from impulse spending on the iPhone and even with 500+ million iPads in circulation today it doesn't come close.
iPad was sabotaged by Apple themselves, as they never figured out how to position it, and what capabilities to give it.
Multi-tasking? Half-assed. Keyboard and mouse support? Half-assed. OS capabilities beyond iOS on a laptop-like device? Non-existent. This was additionally hamstrung by "just check a checkbox, and a half-assed port of your app will run on iPad".
We've now seen the same play out with MacOS: why bother creating an actual app when you can just run a mobile app? Even Apple's first-party apps do this now.
I totally agree. I had to choose and chose a macbook air. Love that little machine! Then, when I had saved up enough, I got myself the ipad (13") for reading ttrpg pdfs.
The two machines solve totally different problems. I never bothered to get the keyboard for the ipad - because typing is something i do on the macbook air. The ipad is incredible for reading pdfs that are meant to be letter/a4 sized.
> Touchscreens suck for text manipulation.
Works fine with gestural input a.k.a. the old Graffiti format, originally from Palm.
That worked with a stylus rather than fingertip input.
The stylus has a finer point-resolution than a finger, making for more effective touch actions.
I do miss my old PalmOS devices....
Plenty of tablets and touchscreens support stylus input though, including Apple Pencil.
That wasn't my point.
Graffiti is not possible without a stylus, or at the very least is vastly less effective.
Android and iOS are both "finger first" interfaces. You can use a stylus, but you don't have to. And everything is designed around finger-fatness. Icons, gestures, on-screen keyboard.
I much prefer the stylus. You only need to see artist that paint and do sculpting with Wacom displays to see that this has a much better potential than finger-based touch. The latter is ok for light consumption, but for not so much for productivity.
My dream is having an “app” on ipadOS that switches out userland from ipadOS to macOS when launched. Let them be two silos, containers, VMs, whatever.
Only allow “Mac mode” if you have a keyboard and monitor attached. Hell, automatically “sleep” it if you undock. Make it unapologetically keyboard-and-mouse first.
One UI for keyboard/mouse. A second UI for touch. One device that can do it all. That’s the dream.
I feel like we’ve had a few ham fisted attempts over the years at this, and Apple could actually pull it off. I get that it probably won’t happen though.
Touch and mouse are two very distinct forms of input that need to be kept separate. Every convertible Windows laptop I have ever used has convinced me of that.
Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. You can flick your wrist to select any target the size of a grain of rice on a 32" screen. Touch interfaces require larger targets because fingertips are larger than a cursor point, and also require smaller screens because your arm now has to move the entire length of the screen, which is slow and tiring.
Where touchscreens excel is tactile experiences, things that mice cannot replicate. Multi-touch, pressure sensitivity, pen angle. Sweeping motions are difficult to control with a mouse. Manipulating multiple analog controls is nigh-impossible with a mouse.
When an app tries to accommodate both input styles, it inevitably ends up catering to one style or the other, unless two separate interfaces are built. And because a touchscreen laptop can be touched or have the mouse moved at any given time, it's not really possible to switch between the two input styles seamlessly.
I would really enjoy having a device that is capable of both, since the iPad has a gorgeous screen, a great form factor, and a lot of killer uses. But it can't cannibalize mouse interfaces or we wind up with the direction that MacOS is going.
There is nothing wrong with having a keyboard connected to a touch device per se, but the gross arm motion required to move between the touchscreen and the keyboard, and the awkward angle the keyboard puts the touchscreen at sort of nukes the usefulness of the touchscreen. And again, jumping in text is the sort of small target action that mice excel at.
> Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. ...
There's exactly one feature of touch interfaces that can be incredibly input-information dense, easily rivaling the mouse, and that's swiping gestures with 1-to-1 fluid animation for feedback. Usually seen with pie menus and the like. Drag and drop, the mouse equivalent, is extremely clunky - and mouse gestures that don't even involve clicking even more so.
The surface pro argues otherwise. Using Lightroom classic on the Pro is largely best done from the keyboard, but there are certain workflows where using the touchscreen or a stylus is much better than a touchpad. The fact that it's limited doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.
> Every convertible Windows laptop I have ever used has convinced me of that.
This is a very strange conclusion considering everything is a webpage/webapp nowadays which are designed to be operated by big fat fingers.
/s but...
Someone did this by hacking an iPad with a "MacBook" keyboard - https://www.macstories.net/stories/macpad-how-i-created-the-...
I want the same mode, but on iOS! Imagine carrying nothing but the phone in your pocket, sitting down at your desk, plugging your phone into the monitor, which has your keyboard and mouse docked, and you have a full development environment.
iPads have M-series chips in them that support hardware virtualisation. But Apple goes out of its way to disable the hypervisor for its iOS/iPadOS builds[1]. All they have to do is stop doing that and allow apps to make use of the virtualisation APIs. UTM hypervisor already exists in App Store, so Apple is clearly not against the principle of it. As soon as that happens, running macOS (or Linux) will become elementary.
[1] https://x.com/utmapp/status/1708907045314035986
The closest thing I’ve seen to this is steamdeck with desktop mode and steam mode.
(this is how android has always worked)
No? Android has the same interface regardless, it just scales a little with a bigger screen. Samsung did separate silos with Dex, but that's their own thing.
Maybe they only ever get Samsung devices. Dex is almost a decade old.
A desktop mode was recently added for base Android tho. And you could always mod your Android device to open termux when you connected an external monitor, that sort of thing.
Really? I feel like android doesn't change at all with a keyboard, and doesn't support half the keyboard shortcuts you can use on iPad.
I agree except for the monitor attached part. There’s so reason my iPad Pro with that expensive keyboard and trackpad can’t run macOS. I had such dreams Of using it as a laptop replacement and all it’s ended up being is a very expensive portable monitor.
I like what the iPad is and it just doesn’t make sense to have a keyboard and mouse with it. Let’s leave the tablets as is and use laptops for serious typing.
People write out books on their phones. There's no need to be so rigid in the distinction between the types of device.
But I do agree with the original point that everyone has failed to make a unified interface for both modes and a distinct switch would be better until they can converge from real world learned lessons.
Apple will never make a product like that though.
Cool, I think they're pointless slabs of wasted material. If I could run macOS on a macbook neo so should I be able to on an iPad, and it would make it a useful device because I do not have to spend all my time inside a terminal app to make it useful.
Cool, I don't. iPads are so useful for drawing, and I hate having to use a terminal app on an iPad.
Different horses for different courses.
I remember the days of custom launchers on Android. Truly futuristic single-finger optimised interfaces that are long since dead.
My favourite was a “pie” launcher that would spawn wherever pressed in an anime/minority report futurism style. It was incredibly easy to use.
But, instead everyone settled on the rows or icons launchers and widgets. Very boring.
I feel like iPadOS could have tried to push the envelope a bit but they wanted mass market appeal, and nothing is simpler than pushing a big icon I guess. :shrug:
You could give pre iOS 7 devices to grandmothers and monkeys and they could use it. That was nice.
Nowadays, I don’t know all the gestures and things you can do on an iPad despite watching every Apple Keynote.
There still is a pie launcher, quite active and popular it seems. Not an anime style though. https://github.com/markusfisch/PieLauncher
Now I'm curious of what does this pie launcher looks like. It would be so cool if you could provide a picture or the name of it!
I sign this essay. Apple has apparently multiple opposing goals for the iPadOS:
1. Make it powerful enough so that it can be sold as equivalent to macOS
2. Keep it locked like iOS, to be sold as secure alternative to computer for your parents and kids (which rules out all the workflow customization pros need)
3. Don’t make it powerful enough for people to stop buying Macs (Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever)
The intersection of these is an empty set.
I use my 2018 Pro as a great browser and YouTube machine, with zero intent to upgrade until the above situation changes. It’s useless for anything else, and even if I got M4 powerhouse, I wouldn’t be able to take it as a single machine for holiday for emergency Weathergraph hotfix or server debugging.
It’s got a bunch of decent ssh clients; I use mine quite often for this. With a hdmi capture thingy it’s also the display for a bunch of my rpis when they don’t boot etc..
Totally doable for travel debugging.
Yes, but what I meant was to have an IDE, where I could run and debug the stack, and deploy when happy.
Technically totally doable, just give me a VS Code + local Linux container (Apple Silicon is great at virtualization) to which it can tunnel.
In practice, impossible with Apple's limitations.
VS Code online supports tunnels, or you can run your own "code-server" (OSS VS Code bundled in a docker container).
I daily drive VS Code remote SSH and had a (honestly inexplicable) thing for Chromebooks for a while. Before the included Linux environment let me install "real" VS Code, these options worked well for me.
Ah fair enough, mostly i’m living in tmux/vim for those scenarios. Real dev work I’d want an IDE too, but seeing the Jetbrains splash on my holidays would ruin my holidays.
I don't want to see it either, but as I run my app business, I much prefer being able to fix the issue if it happens, without taking my $2000+ MBP for a two week road trip full of sand and dirt.
The iPad is really good for digital art.
Neither I, nor Craig has any issue with that :).
>>Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever
In which case they already failed because I still see no reason to replace my M1 iPad Pro, it just powers through anything I throw at it including games.
While plenty about the iPad situation sucks, my biggest gripe is the discontinuation of the Smart Keyboard Folio. This was the one that only had a keyboard, no trackpad, but could fold all the way back, which the Magic Keyboard (with trackpad) cannot. The Smart Keyboard Folio was just the perfect form factor: there when you need it, discretely out of the way when you didn’t. And when you were using it, the iPad was perfectly balanced to sit on your lap even in cramped circumstances, which the Magic Keyboard is most definitely not.
Sure, get rid of the Magic Keyboard with its unnecessary trackpad. But bring back the Smart Keyboard Folio. It was a delight.
This person nails it.
The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or write with a pen, ever, then I'm at a loss to explain it.
But it's there nonetheless.
We've got a long way to go to really understand UI and UX. A long, long way.
Now, please excuse me while I go and tap dance about architecture for a bit...
> Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback.
I can try:
There's variation, paper to paper, pen to pen, pencil to pencil, they each present slightly differently. Write with a ballpoint on some receipt paper, then write with a fountain pen on some smooth, low absorbancy paper, then whip out one of those green engineering notebooks with a mechanical pencil.
For each task with a physical writing utensil and paper, you get a distinct experience that connects you physically to the task.
Once actually writing, there's a sense of finality, even the erasable pencil leaves a mark. Your movements have consequence.
Then there's the persistence. A piece of paper doesn't timeout to the lock screen. It's there, all the time, using zero energy to continue to exist. You can prop it up on your desk and forget about it until you need to reference it. If you're constantly going between two pages, you can lay them side-by-side without reducing their size.
I've always found writing/drawing on a tablet to be frustrating. It feels like I'm looking down at a notebook through a toilet paper tube, like I can never see the full picture. I used a wacom tablet with a chromebook and Xournal for years to take class notes. Something about disconnecting the stylus from the screen fixed those frustrations for me, like it took the expectations of paper away and provided the expectations of a pointing device.
> Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means.
Modern Mac trackpads don’t really click, they vibrate upon sensing a certain amount of force, and the sensory illusion is good enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.
I’m only suggesting this tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps there’ll come a time when the Apple Pencil can micro-vibrate in such a way that is so convincing it will make you feel as if you’re dragging it on paper with configurable roughness.
The Neo does have true tactile feedback, but you're correct for the other MacBooks.
The elephant in the room is something else.
iPhones need desktop mode. Your apps, your data. USB-C screen + Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Running like iPadOS or even macOS.
Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years.
I still dream of the day when my computer lives on my wrist, and I just have a few dummy screens in different formats that can connect to it so I can consume media or be productive.
Samsung, Motorola and Huawei have had this for years. Samsung DeX is probably the most popular desktop environment of its type, and has been available for 9 years. Plenty of people use it (like myself), but it's too niche of a use case for the masses.
The 2011 Motorola Atrix came with a proprietary dock to connect to. Modern desktop environments can use the USB-C 3.2 DP ports on the phone to provide video out. Lapdock shells are widely available online.
The thing is, Samsung DEX works great but I've never met anyone who has heard of it even among people who have owned nothing but Samsung phones forever. Samsung just sucks at advertising the feature. They should sell a bundle of phone + portable USB-C screen + Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and the thing would sell pretty well I would imagine. But right now no one even knows this exists.
The product is perfectly fine as it is. The way I see it, if it's being advertised, it's being monetized behind the scenes. That changes incentives and usually makes the product experience worse. All it has to be is a window manager that supports standard desktop KB shortcuts (CTRL-C, ALT+Tab, etc.)
I also wouldn't feel safe using Samsung forks for work related stuff where security is very sensitive.
DeX is not a fork. It is a UI layer on the phone that activates when you connect to a USB-C display. There is no difference between doing something on your phone and on DeX.
Yeah I meant the Android forks.
So you mean you wouldn't feel safe using a Samsung phone period.
Absolutely, the same way as I wouldn't trust Windows for serious work.
I wonder what you consider serious work then, because as a developer I think Visual Studio is the most "serious" developer environment there is, and I'd take it over any linux or Mac based setup.
Think about it like this: Would you manage a fortune in crypto on Windows? I wouldn't, because I just wouldn't even trust my environment at first. And for Visual Studio, I would solely run it in a firewalled VM.
MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints which makes it insecure by default. There is also serious privacy concerns, basic one would be that telemetry sends all HWID of devices by default, so if you share a USB stick with a friend, you two are automatically correlated in MS database, not really my cup of tea.
Not a big fan of an OS asking for an ID indirectly (via mandatory phone number) as well, mandatory MS account at install time (except if you tamper with the ISO, yeah sure)
>Think about it like this: Would you manage a fortune in crypto on Windows? I wouldn't
Most banks on the planet manage trillions on Windows, so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by dying on this hill. Just because you wouldn't do something doesn't make you knowledgeable or right about that.
>MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints.
I wonder how all those companies, banks and governments manage to keep MS workers out of their work data.
Any MS workers here that can answer what are you guys doing with all that customer data you look at all day instead of coding?
Pour one out for Samsung Knox
I also think a lot of people actually prefer having a separation of devices.
It's starting to realize now though, USB-C providing power and display, emulation allowing for x86 software. We're not far away from a Steam/Proton type scenario where you just run whatever you want on your phone's desktop mode, the most powerful Android phones are already doing this!
With smart glasses too, another potential Apple product.
My Librem 5 phone runs desktop GNU/Linux and can be used with a screen and keyboard with no restrictions. Unlike Android, it doesn't run mobile apps on a big screen but full desktop apps. See: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
> Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years.
the thing that annoys me is that pretty much everybody in the industry with a decent amount of understanding has known for more than a decade this was absolutely feasible.
and the most infuriating this is that i know for a fact it's not being done purely for a matter of product fragmentation.
the macbook neo is living proof that we could give people a single device (iphone 17 pro/pro max) and have that do pretty much everything. get in the office, hook your phone to a display via usb-c, start working. unplug your phone (which now is fully charged) and go home.
we could have dumb laptop-shaped terminals where we plug our phones, and get a larger display and a keyboard. or tablet-shaped "terminals". or desktop docks at home.
how cool would it be to leave for the office with just your company phone in your pocket ?
but we wouldn't need three separate devices: an iphone, an ipad and a macbook.
something similar would likely also apply to the android world, if android os developers could get their shit together and get a decent implementation working (android occasionally re-launches this, and it usually sucks again).
No real person wants that. A bunch of hackers want it, so that they can try it a couple of times as a fun side project and then never use it again in their life.
> No more keyboards or mouse support for iPads.
Pretty sure there are students at Uni using iPads with keyboard. It's smaller form factor than a laptop.
But heavier than a clamshell laptop.
And just barely smaller than netbooks.
That said, I guess to everyone born after 2000 a PC is considered kaputt if it does not have touch input.
Even my 1994 gf tries to touch every display to see if it is directly usable, or needs an obscure pointer to be moved and click to be found either on keys or tap or press.
The iPad + keyboard combo is typically as heavy or even heavier than a laptop. It's certainly more expensive and restrictive. I have agree with the author's thesis here
I kind of disagree. I always wished apple could copy Microsoft Surface Go and Surface Book.
I would still use macbook for most things but I did use my surface go more often for (deep) work than now my ipad pro (which is better for consumption).
Surface Go in app mode was not as good as ipad and many apps lacking but it shined if I had to to more work/research and I didn't have laptop with me.
I would just love to have something like even smaller size Macbook Neo where I can unplug screen and then would behave like iPad consumption device.
Right now I hate keeping everything synced in apple ecosystem so I usually even won't bother to use ipad while in train or plane.
Apple iPad Pro can copy the unification of ChromeOS+Android on Arm (ex-Apple Qualcomm) laptops from Dell, Lenovo, HP.
I just want a notebook the size and weight of a 10" ipad pro that I can run desktop software on. The Macbook Neo is 12" and weighs 1.23kg which is light but not "forget you have it in your bag" light.
It's frustating knowing that the ipad _could_ run mac os but won't due to intentional market segmentation by Apple.
I still have a 12” Macbook, and it feels much more lighter than it actually is.
I like my MBA, but it could be shrunk. Without the wedge it’s much more easier, too.
I was using an old (2nd or 3nd Gen) Surface Pro for several months doing this, and apart from it being Windows based (ugh) it was pretty good. Until I dropped the thing. o_O
I have a Surface Book now, that I put Linux on for a while (bad idea, super flaky with Surface Linux). I'd probably recommend the Surface Pro again over the Surface Book, and just put up with Windows (ugh x2). Using the AtlasOS variant at least, so less crappy compared to stock Windows.
This is the what everyone that says they want Xcode in an iPad actually means. They don’t want an iPad at all, they want a super portable Mac. Every single complaint around iPadOS is from someone trying to use it like a Mac.
I do wish Apple would make an 11” Mac just so people would stop complaining about the iPad lol.
It's definitely not ideal but the top model surface go 2 can be gotten for under $120 at this stage and will be somewhat usable for that with Linux installed
I imagine the surface go 4 with an n200 is probably a good bit better but several times the price; assuming it can run Linux
They don’t even make the 10in pro anymore. The 11pro is 1lb but the keyboard case your inevitably also going to want is another 1.3lbs.. so you’re back at 1kg total, and worse than a MacBook neo for MacBook like uses.
The trouble is that would mean adding touch to macOS. Judging by what happened with Windows and Gnome I suspect that would be regressive.
Hard disagree. The iPad is a fantastic mac replacement for many purposes. I use the iPad Pro w/ the “magic keyboard” case for working essentially whenever I’m not physically in home or office in similar ways that I do my Mac, for two really big reasons:
(1) The (11-inch) size is fantastic: you get enough screen real estate to see what you’re reading and writing, but it still fits into an arbitrarily small bag and is light enough that you can comfortably walk around all day with it. The death of the original tiny MacBook Air was a huge fail for apple
(2) CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY FOR GOD’S SAKE CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY. Yes, you can always hotspot your phone, however, that’s still not nearly so reliable as a device with its own connectivity, some providers still limit bandwidth there, plus the last thing I need is extra battery drain on my phone when I’m already stressed about it.
TBF, if Apple ever brought back the original MacBook Air with modern specs and with a cellular chip, I would just take gigantic buckets full of money and throw them in the general direction of Cupertino until I got one, like, instantly. And there are definitely still compromises—-as an academic, I’ve been meaning to just write a command line front end to zotero and fling it onto a digital ocean server or something, because its iPad app is so godawful. But on the whole, I still reach for my iPad much much much more than my MacBook, for those two killer features.
It really depends how frequently one is outside. I have had many laptops with cell chips and sim slot but never bothered to pay for a sim when I could just tether my smartphone connection, even when using the train. I usually plug the phone to the laptop if I need to charge the phone.
I finally found someone who uses the cellular feature in laptops! I always wondered who the hell that was for, now I know at least one person.
I don't use it (or need it) myself, but when I was working for a sporting equipment manufacturer a number of years ago, every salesman had a cellular dongle for their laptop. We had to remind them they had direct ethernet connections when they were in the office.
Fun fact, I once bought a reconditionned laptop and the sim card of the previous owner was still on the slot. More interestingly I could use it to connect to the mobile network for at least 2 years without even knowing the PIN (and having reinstalled to linux).
Do people really not use it? I use my iPad cellular all the time. Constantly.
One of these days I'm going to buy one of those old MS Surfaces with cellular and stick Linux on it. But for the installation/drivers hassles I'd have already done so.
Microsoft and PC makers have long shown how the iPad should be,with Surface and 2-1 devices, Apple naturally wants to rather sell two devices.
The surface laptops have ended up being good laptops and mediocre/bad tablets IMO. While technically the same on the surface, there is something about the dedicated UX of an iPad that makes it a completely different experience in reality.
If you replace an iPad you bought for $350 a year ago with a $600 surface, it will be a markedly worse experience as a tablet. Nothing has yet combined the two without comprimise - you either get a device which is a bad laptop and a good tablet, or a bad tablet and a good laptop.
The reason being how Microsoft messed up the whole UWP delivery.
Still, I rather have the compromise in Windows, and Android DEX land, than carrying two devices, with Apple margins.
> encumbered only by increasingly slower animations or boneheaded notifications or apps stealing focus as they spin themselves up
> Instead, go into a three year period of major OS refactoring. Speed above all.
I cannot understand why a slow mac is acceptable at any level at all. The icons need a second to load in the applications drawer! Jobs would have thrown this thing across the room at the first MVP demo
The part that makes ipadOS feels like a toy is Apple’s iron grip in “App Store only” app delivery. The thing has so much power, but to do anything useful, you gotta play by Apple’s rules. All that dream of quirky, useful, innovative ipadOS leveraging apps would show up if they relinquished that software control and let indie or otherwise apps get there without the Apple Tax both in money and rules.
Would the iPad still be that days long, cohesive device is another story.. it Apple cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Audio apps on the iPad show that this isn’t the case. The iPad has an incredible amount of amazing audio apps that simply don’t exist and/or are much cheaper than on other platforms. Some of that is due to the great audio performance from day one but a lot of it can be chalked up to the lack of piracy. There are a seemingly endless number of synths, effects, sequencers, etc. in the App Store. It’s a relative ghost town in the Android world. Both Mac and Windows are better environments for DAW work but the plug ins are uniformly (usually much) more expensive.
The console approach to software distribution is good for developers and in this case leads to better software for consumers.
The iPad's Audio Unit applications unfortunately pale in comparison to even simple desktop plugins. You won't find any Vital or Serum-killers on the App Store, and you definitely won't find software like full-fat Spectrasonics or the U-He instruments. The iPad can do some audio work, but once you stop using it as a digital 8-track or a MIDI machine, you are instantly outclassed by even a $300 Windows laptop running Reaper or Pro Tools.
The iPad excels in performance. Like I said, if you're using a DAW a regular computer is better. The fact remains that audio apps for the iPad are plentiful and cheap. The App Store only approach has made the iPad a more attractive target than Android by a mile. The iPad apps are also screaming deals.
Your comment summarizes the people's inability to appreciate the iPad on its own terms. "You can't run Pro Tools!" is such a silly complaint. Moog, Waldorf, Arturia, Roland, Akai, Eventide, etc etc etc they are all on the App Store and work very well by touch. There are of course a ton of indie apps as well. No, they may not be as "powerful" as some of the ones you mentioned but they are designed to work in a different way than the computer plugins do. And they are priced much much cheaper. Use a computer for computer workflows, use the iPad for things that it does better.
This is a cop-out argument, though. I own an iPad, I know that it handles virtual MIDI and recording fine. So does my smartphone! It does not have world-class plugins for synthesis, recording or even performance if we're being honest with ourselves. Without velocity sensitivity or aftertouch, it's already less expressive than a $200 keyboard.
> Use a computer for computer workflows, use the iPad for things that it does better.
The iPad is a computer. I could be using the iPad for both but Apple won't let me, so now I have another cruddy MIDI controller that doesn't run Bitwig.
I disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I want Apple to open up devices like the iPad. But I can think of few apps that would transform the iPad from “toy” to “serious” that are blocked by the policy. That transformation is largely blocked by the OS UI.
Well they removed the virtualization framework and prohibit apps from using JIT, so you can't just have a "macOS" app (or Ubuntu, Windows etc).
They ban apps from downloading and executing code except for educational purposes - in fact very recently this has manifested in banning apps that use AI to build and publish apps - but it has always prevented VSCode and the like, at best you can have something SSH'd into something else. This also affects software that is extendable through plugins and addons.
I use an ipad pro with the keyboard/trackpad case daily.
I find the combo of keyboard, pointer, touch, and pencil interfaces very useful.
The touch interface is even useful sometimes when remoted in to a desktop.
The biggest thing wrong with ipads (and the reason I’ll probably never upgrade this old 2018 model) is the lack of macos.
It seems the author conflates "pro work" and "work with text". For many people it is true, for many others it is not.
Buried in here is the very nice idea of an AI dividend for CLI users - as we keep designing interfaces for LLMs directly, those interfaces are text-oriented, and afford us a look at a future with the command line being central.
I like that. My recent tools are mostly AI first, and therefore CLI first. I’ve been toying with adding JSON modes to them, and this is undeniably useful, but I think I’ll keep JSON under flags; it’s a way to prioritize human users as well.
That is only because there is no viable platform to build similar gui-based tooling on
I don't actually think this is true. I think the issue is that the CLI is a much better paradigm if you're going to operate with text and text based commands.
LLMs excel at text, text is incredibly powerful in a cli environment.
It's not just that there's no GUI alternative, it's that the GUI itself is a bad affordance.
The only GUIs that even sort of successfully play in this space solve it by having a GUI that basically just embeds a CLI (see - all the vscode editors, antigravity, etc..).
The only thing I’d push back on is the weird and wacky iPad apps - our brains and fingers need some consistency in UI, doesn’t mean it can be fun though!
Can someone who personally knows John Ternus please send this essay to him? And can they do it immediately? (...and tell him to implement this business plan)
This article makes me very, very strongly want Bryce 3D for iPad.
Everything about using that app was about trying to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the screen. Now you can. Its user interface was nonsenical at the time. Now a spherical marble is sensible. Tap an object, then tap and hold; use other hand to operate the three-axis arrow control bar that swells up out of the interface into easy to touch controls. When you let go, they pop with a little spray of tri-color paint and a few speckles get left on the user interface.
Seriously, we have done almost nothing with what’s possible because everything is either Word, Letterpress, Tabletop Simulator, or cross-platform port. Meanwhile there’s an engine in there powerful enough to run Bryce with realtime rendering, but everyone wants to emulate a sheet of paper rather than letting me do the most basic things.
We could have painting with a pen and controlling z-depth with a hand at the same time. Path snap to collision avoidance margins on a slider. Negative margins and a setting to define collision handling: do you materials simulate two oils colliding at their spline velocity? Do they intersperse and blend like translucent colored sand? How far after the intersection does the aftertint continue in the brush stream?
Instead, we have, courtesy of AI, U-turned the industry all the way back to text adventure games with sentient potatoes.
Sigh.
Moment of Inspiration seems the most promising 3D modeling option --- done by the former lead developer of Rhinoceros 3D it's probably what I'm going to break down and buy if crash-and-burn on my current attempt to learn Alibre Atom 3D.
I strongly disagree that the Neo is a small machine. I want the 12” MacBook back.
This makes me think of the interface for one handed touch screen typing that was used in the movie version of Ended’s game; it stuck with me as an example of a more touch friendly flexible input mechanism that really challenged how I thought about interfaces. Someone made an open source implementation of it but half the battle is getting these idioms to take root. I wish Apple would experiment more with novel touch interfaces in the way the article describes.
I think this touch-only idea would be more viable if we had far better haptic feedback from screens. All the fancy gestures and fluidic UI don't help when your only means of interaction is pushing against an unresponsive pane of glass. Maybe something better just isn't possible, but I'd love to see Apple push things forward in this area.
Add an iPad mini esque screen on the trackpad of a MacBook.
Trackpad of a 16 inch MacBook Pro is humongous anyways.
Add a touchscreen display to the trackpad, and give it iPad OS
Apple hardware reached its pinnacle with the 11-inch MacBook Air. I miss it terribly.
Y'all look at as a paradigm shift. The rest of the world just wants to touch the screen when it makes sense.
We trained billions of humans to touch the screen.
> What does an LLM-first macOS look like?
Like a product I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.
iPads could be great for elederly users. But the lack of remote support option caused me to switch my dad back to a MacBook.
No thank you to no windowing on ipad, I like having one app up for references and another for my drawing program :)
Am I the only person who likes the concept of "Sidebar" and using an iPad (often w/ an Apple Pencil) as a second display on a Mac?
Let me do that w/ a MacBook Neo and iPad Air pair which look as if they belong together and which fit nicely into a bag and afford me the option of taking only the iPad Air and Apple Pencil when I want to travel light, and maybe I'll come back to the fold (the last thing I bought from Apple was Mac OS X Public Beta, before that it was OpenSTEP 4.2, and the last thing Apple made which I truly liked wholeheartedly was Snow Leopard).
Oh yeah, make the Apple Pencil work on an iPhone....
Instead, these days, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360 (two of them, panic-bought a spare when I though the line was being discontinued, it's now up to a Book 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (replacing a first-gen unit) and a Wacom One display connected to a MacBook (purchased by an employer) and more Wacom styluses than I can easily count....
The high watermark of my graphical computing experience was using an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint w/ FutureWave SmartSketch when mobile, and a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ --- I've tried pretty much every thing in-between since, but when things were finally getting better, Microsoft did Fall Creator's Update and everything came crashing down....
I'd really like for Apple to make a device trifecta which I would actually be willing to buy.
So I agree the iPad range is more complicated than it needs to be but I'm not as enthralled by the Macbook Neo as the author.
For one thing, a base iPad is US$349. Sure you need a keyboard too but it is less than $599. And the core of the Macbook Neo is a previous generation iPhone chip whereas the latest iPad has an M14.
If anything, a better melding of these product lines looka a lot more like the Huawei Mate Book Fold [1].
My biggest issue with Apple's current lineup is actually Face ID. I dearly love my iPad Air because it's about the last Apple device I own that still uses Touch ID.
Nobody will change my mind about Face ID. It's terrible. I'm fine if others want to use it. But please just put Touch ID on the button like the iPad Air on every device, particularly the iPhone.
Face ID terrible for visually impaired people who have to look closer at the screen. This is a common cause for Face ID failures where you have to move the device away from your face for it to work. And you rack up false posiitves this way. Apple is way too zealous with how many false negatives force a passcode entry. I know in the Touch ID entry I barely have to use my passcode. With my current iPhone I have to use it many times a day.
And then Face ID just fails all the time in low light conditions such that you have to light up your face with an external light to make it work. The iPad's screen light by itself isn't enough.
So much for "seamless".
So if you solved this problem there's no real reason to separate the iPad Pro and iPad Air lines.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvXZQ4Tv-pY
> And then Face ID just fails all the time in low light conditions such that you have to light up your face with an external light to make it work. The iPad's screen light by itself isn't enough.
I've managed to unlock my iPhone in a pitch-dark bedroom just fine, for many years now.
It uses infrared dots, not visible light, unlike some of the Android implementations.
> You’d think that Apple would have seen the launch of the M1 as a clear moment to maximally delineate between MacBooks and iPad.
It's been a long-term goal of Apple for the iPad to eclipse and replace the Mac, in the same way the Mac eclipsed and replaced the Apple ][. Or the Lisa[0]. In fact, I would not be surprised if it turned out a driving goal of the Apple Silicon transition was just to make the Mac more like an iPad so that they'd consume less engineering resources to release.
That, of course, backfired, because Apple suddenly started releasing actually compelling laptops again. Oops! But the original design intent is clear: the Mac is a legacy platform. I mean, app developers don't even pay 30% on it. Apple doesn't design platforms like macOS anymore, due to a combination of toxic max-security[1] and not wanting to be embarrassed by third-parties out-innovating them on their own turf.
This is where I start to disagree with the author, though. The clear separation between mouse software and finger software was a mandate from Steve Jobs intended primarily to force developers to make apps that are finger-friendly. But nothing prohibits you from writing software that respects both modes of input. Furthermore, the only clear path for the iPad is for it to become more like a Mac.
The problem is that Apple also wants to obfuscate the issue by pretending like the capability gap has been met with better windowing. The real problem are all the things Apple considers non-negotiable: i.e. there are going to be apps that will never fit into Apple's sandboxing restrictions, and apps whose economies of production do not afford handing off 30% of revenues in commission to Apple. Whether or not those apps happen to let you plug in a keyboard and mouse into a tablet is a different question.
But at the same time, of course the tablet should support a mouse if you plug it in, and of course if I plug in a touchscreen into a laptop that should work too.
[0] TBH, you develop apps for the iPad in the same way early Mac apps were developed on a Lisa.
[1] I am stealing this term from tom7.
I see a lot of people in the comments wanting to use iOS on a laptop, or connecting a mouse and keyboard to an iPad/iPhone. I don't know what the point would be. For anything that is not purely content consumption, a regular laptop is superior to a tablet, phone, or touchscreen generally. What use case other than "it's cool" do you actually expect to use this for?
I keep wanting to buy an iPad, but I create more than I consume, and it's a pointless device for creators (except maybe for drawing/illustration). I have no idea why someone would want a touchscreen and iOS on a Macbook Neo. If you're trying to do something other than passively consume content, a Macbook Neo is a better device than an iPad and does not need a touchscreen.
iPads with a keyboard are superior for older people who need a more simple and secure operating system to:
- Read and write e-mails
- Read and write documents
- Do their banking
- Connect with friends through social media
- Look up a recipe or find gardening information
- Book hotels, book flights, book restaurants.
- Check maps.
That's hundreds of millions of customers.
Coming soon! The rumored Macbook Ultra may have a touchscreen.
Love having a touchscreen laptop, though I'm annoyed that Apple will lock it behind a $5k price tag for now.
For people that say, the iPad should be fingers only. No.
I love to do math on the iPad. I like to also draw on the iPad.
A pencil is necessary.
"Almost anything that doesn’t involve the Apple Pencil (Procreate being one of the true killer apps, the app that may have sold more iPads to creative professionals than anything else) could be done better on a MacBook. Even email feels better on a MacBook.
"Today, they sit in the corner. iPadOS simply isn’t an environment for most “serious” work."
You sound ridiculous.
Half of your argument evolves around your distorted view of "serious work".
What do you consider serious work?
I analyse satellite pictures from conflict zones on my M1 Pro iPad while smoking a blunt, on my back, on a blanket in the park, right now, and probably get paid by the hour more than you make in a day. I can ENHANCE with the power of my fingers as gradually as I need on a 13" screen, not being limited by tiny touchpad space or getting a stiff neck. Try the same with a MacBook.
I’d call that serious work.
My GF put her MacBook away and does Music via Creator Studio on her iPad Pro since it released, mobile and in a creative setting without disruption by her phone, or the necessity of a table, because the iPad got Cellular, and she can live comfortably from it. She’s actually working right now on the other side of the tree.
Not serious work either I guess.
My brother is taking photos of government officials during their travels, and works on iPad Pro exclusively during shoots. It’s much nicer to discuss and touch up photos with an official on an iPad than holding your MacBook in their face like an early 2000s playboy photographer.
Not serious work either I guess.
I frequently visit the Parliament in my country. A lot of the legislation knowledge work is done on iPads. By people who rather chill with the Parliament visitors in the sunlight, thanks to nanotexture, having a chat with them, without looking unapproachable behind a laptop screen or balancing a MacBook on their knees. iPads invite social interactions and make you approachable. MacBooks put up a wall.
Not serious work either I guess.
They are more mobile. I can basically sit down everywhere and get serious work done without looking like a MacBook Moron with an external screen battleship setup and an extra mouse.
My brother’s wife is using the LiDAR sensor inside the iPad Pro for her interior design work. She can do everything on one device. Where’s the LiDAR in the MacBook?
Guess that is not serious work either.
It has GPS, good luck navigating to the next gas station from the middle of nowhere when your phone dies with your MacBook. Guess you’ll just point it at the sky and yell Connect!.
If you travel for work iPad can be a lifesaver.
My lawyer does most work on his iPad Pro. If you read and annotate documents for a living, why the hell would you do it on a MacBook?
I know people in construction who only use iPad and get work done. Not everyone is a writer, or photographer, or walker.
It’s not the iPad or iPadOS that is limited in a way that doesn’t let you do "serious work".
It’s actually your mental ability to come up with better solutions. Don't blame Apple for being unflexible and dumber than most smart people choosing the right tool for the right job in the place they want to be, rather than being tied to an office or a wall outlet or relying on a phone with a lot smaller battery than an iPad, and their laptop.
The pencil is just another plus. If coding is your way to do serious work, yeah you’re kinda fucked on iPad but there are millions of people who get serious work done on their iPad and then use it recreationally laying on the couch or sitting in the bus where MacBooks look silly and are uncomfortable.
I grow tired of the MacBook Neo gloating and almost like a light version of bragging in articles like this. It's coded as a critique of the iPad but it feels a lot more like "I'm typing this on a MacBook Neo and it's oh soo amazing!"
Apple is essentially selling the modern version of the eMac, and I would say the Neo is almost as bad of a purchase as that product. The real selling point of the device is that it's newly in box with a warranty. If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better. Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
The Neo situation is the equivalent of buying a brand new $500 Acer machine versus buying a $500 eBay ThinkPad T14 or something like that. You'll get a much better laptop by buying a used laptop versus buying that brand new Acer.
The same story goes for the MacBook Neo. It'll be successful in sales, and it's a nice machine in a lot of ways, but it's one of the most overhyped devices of our present times.
It will go down in history as a device like the iPhone 5C. Save a few bucks now, but pay for it in the near future with the kind of performance you're actually getting from it. Even basic casual tasks will chug in the very near future.
Apple is selling a device that is approximately equivalent to the $1000 laptop they were selling 5 years ago and we are acting like this is a revolutionary product. And, by the way, it's not a $500 product unless you can use the education store. It's actually $600, or $700 if you are buying a configuration that actually makes some level of sense and has enough storage. $700 will buy you a 16GB/512GB MacBook Air M2, a much better machine (better screen, battery, speakers, processor, keyboard, trackpad, I/O, etc).
> If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better.
A huge percentage of the population (at least in the US) is completely unwilling to buy any used consumer products. For some it is the ick factor, for others it is fear of being scammed.
> Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
Is this really a better alternative if it stops getting macOS updates several years sooner? I wouldn’t buy an 8gb laptop, but they are fine for many use cases.
It seems like macOS updates have a lot more to do with underlying hardware and specs than year of release alone.
Going back to the iPhone 5C example, that phone lost updates much earlier than the 5S released the same year because it didn’t support 64-bit processors.
There are also a number of Intel and PowerPC systems that weren’t supported long due to architecture transitions.
I could very easily imagine a future version of macOS only being available on systems that shipped with 16GB of RAM.
Although on the other hand, I think Apple decides on support based on userbase as well. I imagine if they find a device is barely used or don’t sell well in the first place they would perhaps be more likely to drop support.
The Mac Neo is a great product for a large percentage of people out there who wanted to get a Mac that is well made and affordable it is very usable for the overwhelming majority of non tech people that want to use a personal computer today. Most of the tech sites were skeptical still are but thank goodness Apple didn’t listen to them.
The same applies to the iPad. It is fine the way it is if I personally wanted a laptop, I would’ve bought one but my preference is a desktop computer.
I don’t sit around wishing every laptop computer was a desktop computer nor do I want an iPad to be a laptop or even a desktop computer it is what it is had purchase, if you don’t like it just buy what you want, the Neo appears to be a hit, so it appears that Apple knows what they’re doing again.
And yet, still no touch screen.