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Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

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Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to run Windows software, buy a Windows machine. If the applications you depend on require iOS, buy an iPad. The Surface Pro and iPad Pro is where you'll see the whole "app gap" story inverted. The Surface will have "all the apps" (apps in this case meaning all existing Win32 applications and Enterprise software) and iOS trying to play catch up through partnerships like their one with IBM.

lol not going to happen. Did you see Microsoft on stage? MS can't really survive long term without iOS right now and they now it. Very soon iOS apps will match and/or exceed most desktop apps.

How many offices are using iPads as their workstations?

>Very soon iOS apps will match and/or exceed most desktop apps.

I expected that to be true, but we're coming up on 10 years of the Apple App Store and I'm still waiting.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#672
post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird part for me is that everyone I know who tried an iPad for getting work done (ie: PROfessionals) gave up on it. iOS is simply not geared towards productivity nor content creation, it is a consumption device. The surface pro is the exact opposite, it is a machine that works for getting shit done on the go (for some people, not all obviously).

I got a Surface Pro 3 almost exclusively for using OneNote on it. It's pretty great for that, but having Windows in the way was sometimes annoying. The Surface is capable of a lot more than I do with it, but I have my MacBook for everything that isn't handwriting. The iPad Pro is exactly what I wanted - a device for writing down notes, sketching designs, and doing so seamlessly without the "bloat" of a full OS in the…

I think this is the angle of attack that Apple is taking here. They want to catch up to the handwriting and sketching abilities of Surface, but they don't want a hybrid OS.

In a lot of ways the Surface is a laptop with a detachable keyboard and the OS and eco system is still based on that. Apple wants their eco system to develop from a clean touch OS base into productivity areas. Having said that, they are really lagging in this area and the momentum has shifted well away from iPads in the business world.

The Surface might beat the iPad pro, but I do wonder if the either will be the future of productivity compared with a laptop and a tablet.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#673
post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most annoying bit related to getting real work done on iOS is how long it takes to switch apps. Switching from one app to the other should be 1 click if you want to get serious work done. This is how windows and the surface work. 1 click. A taskbar at the bottom. It works. The current iOS takes 2 clicks, a swipe, and a tap. Unacceptable for multiasking. Now that iIOS has multitasking it changes in an important wa…

It's a bit of a hidden feature, but for 4 years, iOS has had multitasking gestures. http://www.macworld.com/article/1163019/ios_5_new_gestures.h... If you swipe with four fingers to the left or right, you can move between your two most recent apps. Hopefully iOS9 will make "multi-tasking" even easier.

*On iPad. This gesture does nothing on my iPhone 5s running iOS 9.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#674
post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the key part is what target audience and use-cases are they optimizing for with each device. Do they want to create an experience that's so simple to use that they're enjoyed by both kids and non-technical grand parents, that's optimized for the most common everyday tasks, e.g browsing the web, shopping, reading news, books, taking photos, finding driving directions, writing emails, etc. Or do they want to offer a…

I like how "multiple windows" is suddenly considered an advanced feature. You're confusing simplicity with ease of use. Adding a layer of indirection over the intrinsic file system is not simple, and even ease of use is debatable, since it creates an impedance mismatch by definition. Nor is there any reason to consider this a zero-sum game. Having advanced features does not deprive the common user of their comfort, a…

> I'm of course not the target audience for iPads, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking they're anything but a toy.

iPads have been getting a lot of productivity improvements lately, however many have decided they're just a toy and in doing so have been rather blind to their advance. To just name one, extensions allow inter-app handoff and are quite powerful at this point and well received by iOS devs and power users. Extensions solve the document transfer use case discussed in this subthread, and they don't invoke cognitive load around filesystems. I'm hoping we can use 3d Touch to trigger them from the share button to further improve their efficiency. But that's cool, lets all keep dragging files around with a mouse or typing in terminal and wait where did I save that file I was just working on again?

Another way to think about this is with iOS, Apple is going down the list from most common to least common use cases for end users, whereas over the last several decades with CLI and then WIMP interfaces, traditional PC devs have been going up the list of use cases from most dev-oriented to most end user. Nothing wrong with the results of the latter for development, but it turns out there's a lot more end users than there are devs, and an exposed filesystem is a sacred cow of that the latter approach that can be solved in more than one way for the end user.

> It takes something much more serious for a new computer generation to usurp its predecessor

Mainframe guys said the exact same thing about minicomputers.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#675
post #24

It is interesting comparing Microsoft and Apple's convertible tablet strategy. Microsoft's devices use the full OS and are basically laptops first and tablets second while Apple is doing the opposite. If this is truly designed to be "Pro" as in enterprise , I think Microsoft's strategy is going to lead to more productive and therefore better enterprise devices. EDIT: And after the price is revealed the scales tip a l…

The risk with Microsoft's approach is that companies will think "our Windows app runs fine on Surface" and invest little on making their application work great on Surface because they form a small part of the market. The risk with Apple's approach is that companies will think "it's too much work to make a custom UI for such a small market". I guess time will tell who wins this. Possibly, things will go like they went…

It's interesting to note that the Surface 3 diverges from the Surface 2 and RT in that it has an x86 processor. I think this may be a concession that bringing developers over to write WinRT applications is an uphill battle, and the device marketplace is not going to stand still and wait for that to happen.

"Our Windows app runs fine on Surface" is a better story than "Our Windows app doesn't run on Surface at all".

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#676
post #439
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's primary focus is on UX simplicity and Customers couldn't care less how it's implemented behind the scenes, they just want to get stuff done, find the Word document they were working on or see the Photo or Video they just took. The less Customers have to know about how technology works the happier they are, and the more successful Apple is.

Say you're composing an e-mail and you want to attach a Word doc you downloaded - how do you do that on an iPad?

In iOS9 you tap on a blank area of the message then select 'add attachment' to browse for the file. It supports iCloud Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, and presumably any other apps that support the cloud storage APIs introduced last year in iOS8. Alternatively you can use the traditional method of exporting a file from an app into Mail.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that most servers in business environments are Linux-based, not Windows-based. It's significantly cheaper to spin up CentOS licenses for cost centers.

Shipments of Windows servers has been dominating for years - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2469469/network-softwar...

Those statistics are old and useless. How many linux servers are "sold" before use?

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#678

The announcements today just make me hang my head in chagrin. I love Apple products. Both my wife and I only use Macbooks, we have multiple iPads, iPods, and a second generation Apple TV. I look at this iPad Pro though and I see a totally useless device. For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air. If you want a tablet form factor then you would be better served buying…

> For a device at that size, weight, and cost you would be better served buying an Macbook Air.

For some people's needs sure. I think that's why Apple sells the MacBook / MacBook Air?

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#679
post #552
post #47

Predicted by a 3 year old comic: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COenroJWEAAjLoi.jpg:large

The weird part for me is that everyone I know who tried an iPad for getting work done (ie: PROfessionals) gave up on it. iOS is simply not geared towards productivity nor content creation, it is a consumption device. The surface pro is the exact opposite, it is a machine that works for getting shit done on the go (for some people, not all obviously).

I use my iPad for content creation every day and it's fantastic.

Editorial is perfect for writing and blogging.

Procreate is awesome for painting(of course it's not PS+Wacom, but it is surprisingly good).

I can use Recorder to record audio for my videos.

And Pinnacle Studio is a surprisingly awesome for editing videos.

Maybe they don't exactly compete with pro tools available for mac and pc, but they are amazing. And Pinnacle/Procreate totally crush everything available on Linux(for my purposes).

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