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Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

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Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And everyone else uses batteries because of Wacom patents. At least that was the case 5 years ago.

Oh, is that why? I thought current multi-touch technology interfered with the Wacom-style force sensor, but I could have imagined that.

From what I remember when I had a wacom tablet in the 90s and 2000s, the tech was something like RFID where the active tablet would read the passive puck and stylus and get sub millimeter accuracy from triangulation. This included tilt and angle of the stylus.

The stylus pressure and buttons was a sensor on the stylus that was sensed by the tablet.

The screen or surface didn't have any sensors.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite right. That article is about chip & pin only, and not about NFC. Apple made the business decision to build their own payments system and lock merchants in using Passbook, rather than use NFC, which is more open. When it comes to market adoption of hardware, typically the market leader gets picked up for adoption. By forcing their own version of mobile payments (passbook) and not allowing NFC, the mar…

That's not quite right either. Apple Pay does not require Apple-specific contactless payment terminals and will work with Visa's PayWave, MasterCard's PayPass, and American Express's ExpressPay terminals. So merchants are not "locked in" to passbook. The reason for Apple Pay success is that they worked with the companies in question so that the infrastructure was already in place when the phone was launched. I was in…

None of that was true in 2012 when Apple released Passbook. [1]

The only reason Apple has support for those now in 2015 is because merchants weren't falling for the walled-garden ploy. Apple has finally caught up with other forms of payment, which is why Apple was a major staller for NFC technology adoption.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944863/apple-reveals-full-line-up-of-pas...

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#693
post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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? How are those things innate to having a hierarchical file system? A straw man if I ever saw one. Mainframe guys said the exact same thing about minicomputers. And they were right. Minicomputers didn't take in definitively until they became self-hosting.

> How are those things innate to having a hierarchical file system? A straw man if I ever saw one.

Not innate to having an hfs, just innate to using one. Of course you could drag files around with your finger, or tap into subfolders, or use the keyboard, but those are not taking advantage of strengths of the platform. Meanwhile share sheet extensions are well suited to the modern paradigm of touch, social, and cloud, where the target of a file may or may not be a local filesystem or even an app in its strictest sense. This interface represents an alternative to finding files in folders when working between apps, which is where my comparison was directed.

Maybe I misunderstood and you're arguing that iOS doesn't have a hierarchical file system, but thats opposite of what you were complaining about (obfuscated file systems) earlier in this thread. lmk.

> And they were right. Minicomputers didn't take in definitively until they became self-hosting.

Minicomputers were still considered 'less serious' than the mainframes long after they stopped being terminals, and they were capable of far less. Unless I misunderstood and you're arguing that iPads have not yet reached some modern equivalence to self-hosting... and that equivalence must involve an exposed file system... because it must be able to bootstrap its own operating system...? Genuinely confused by this rebuttal, but open to hearing your ideas.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you just described is exactly how Apple killed NFC adoption. The lack of NFC, or even announcing plans for NFC, from Apple made it very difficult to develop anything useful for NFC. Without universal market share and with an uncertain future, NFC was avoided by many hardware developers who would have built anything useful. June 2012 was the hinging point because it was when NFC payments were just picking up stea…

What are you talking about? Passbook was never a payment system, it just had gift cards. Passbook isn't a payment system NOW. Apple Pay is, Passbook is just the app that shows users their credit cards.

Right, Passbook was Apple's first play at mobile payments. They were trying to build an app ecosystem that used credits to to make mobile payments. It was Apple's response to NFC which wasn't very good.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#695
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).

You're the wrong kind of user. I do end user architecture in a large enterprise, we ran into this with a lot of early adopters. People who are mobile (as in floating around an office or travel) whose job tasks are easily attributable to specific applications are very happy with iPads. Ideally, the number of applications they use every day on a traditional PC is less than 5. Examples: Sales, Executives, auditors, poli…

Have those users also used a surface pro or a chromebook? I'm wondering if they're just happy to have an extra tablet device or if they have a frame of reference.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#696
post #26

"Who knows more about productivity than Microsoft" ?

Audience gave Schiller the exact response he wanted (notice the silence and the delayed laughter). On paper it look like Apple is giving credit to Microsoft, but the subtext is: it's a joke, don't take the sentence too seriously, and Apple is still better at productivity.

Didn't think about that but now that you mention it, nice catch... heh totally true.

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#697
post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working Copy[1] is the first app I've seen to come along and really change the situation. A pretty glaring limitation of previous solutions was reliance on SSH for git control. Working Copy provides a great subset of git tools graphically. It's got a great editor, and lets you bounce files into any editor you please to be committed when appropriate. Coda[2] for iOS is also very compelling for a number of tasks, most…

Thanks. These tools are very nice. WorkingCopy looks seriously awesome. Will try it out. Like you mentioned there are lot of limitations on these tools and iOS itself. Would love to see local servers (is that even possible?) or other deployment strategies to test when access to desktop is not possible.

You might also want to talk a look at Dash (API Documentation Browser with over 150 docksets) and Dringend (IDE).

https://kapeli.com/dash_ios http://dringend.cc

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite right either. Apple Pay does not require Apple-specific contactless payment terminals and will work with Visa's PayWave, MasterCard's PayPass, and American Express's ExpressPay terminals. So merchants are not "locked in" to passbook. The reason for Apple Pay success is that they worked with the companies in question so that the infrastructure was already in place when the phone was launched. I was in…

None of that was true in 2012 when Apple released Passbook. [1] The only reason Apple has support for those now in 2015 is because merchants weren't falling for the walled-garden ploy. Apple has finally caught up with other forms of payment, which is why Apple was a major staller for NFC technology adoption. [1] http://gizmodo.com/5944863/apple-reveals-full-line-up-of-pas...

Um... your link doesn't refute parent. Passbook in 2012 was just an endpoint for things like boarding passes, tickets, and gift cards you bought elsewhere.

From related link [1]:

> There's no NFC in the new iPhone, but you'll be able to use your screen as a scannable gift card/plane ticket/voucher/etc. with Passbook, which creates a virtual bundle of all those annoying cards you cram into your wallet. Here's an ideal little scenario for you: a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, because you've got a $25 credit built right into your phone. Hand it to the cashier, beep, coffee, slurp, bye.

If you think this somehow stymied NFC... thats an incredible stretch. Before Apple was it the gift card mafia stopping NFC? Were merchants going to just throw away their perfectly usable POS machines... because technology?

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944514/all-the-best-new-features-of-ios-...

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#699

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…

This comment is exactly why HN won't never understand anything about Apple announcements. Highly technical folks, unable to get out of their technical bias, reprimanding the extremely successful decision makers of a successful company because they pretend to know the matter, while completely ignoring the real world scenarios that actually drive Apple products sales.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Unveils the iPad Pro

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple, the richest company on earth, can't afford a license, or what?

Beyond the issue of whether Wacom wants to license it in the first place, even if they did, it's probably a high per unit cost (Wacom is a premium-pricing sort of company), and it's in the tablet, not the pen. What percentage of purchasers will even want the pen? I'm guessing it'll be pretty low.

Depends on software support. I remember with WinXP tablet edition, it came with 'Windows Journal', which was good enough to take all my classnotes.
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