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iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

techcrunch.com

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Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#101

Post by stereo »

bennyg wrote: post #55
notadoc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for? Why is it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way? iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the loc…

3D touch on the keyboard to move the cursor around makes up for every grievance I ever had about it to begin with.

On my jailbroken SE, I can just drag my finger around the keyboard for that. No 3D touch needed.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#102

Post by rhencke »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #84
rhencke wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia's a funny thing though. Remember the 'bomb' dialog box with the reset button that didn't always work? Cooperative multitasking allowing apps to lock the computer? ...I miss it, too.

Very much. Having Tetris and MacWrite Pro open simultaneously would cause a bomb, every time. It genuinely did wonders for my productivity. I remember System 7.1 most for its purity of interface. Everything from 7.5 onwards seemed to be bolting on more bells and whistles in a faintly uncoordinated fashion, and OS X has continued that. 7.0/7.1 were simple, efficient and fast. Much of the featuritis in the last 25 year…

If you hide the toolbar in the OS X finder, you can get Spatial Finder back (!). When the toolbar is hidden, double-clicking folders springs them open to new windows, and folder windows remember their position after closing them.

If you turn on the Status Bar, when the toolbar is hidden, it hops up to the top of the window. Just like the old days. sniff

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#103

Post by canuckintime »

hendersoon wrote: post #49
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Windows 10 tablet (well, a "2-in-1" since it came with a keyboard using a Surface-style connector), and it seems to behave reasonably as both a tablet and laptop. It's certainly more integrated than my experience has been with other OSs on tablets: Android doesn't do well as a laptop, nor does iOS; Windows 10 is a desktop operating system, and works reasonably as a tablet. (I don't like Windows 10 for other…

My take is this. Win8 was actually an excellent tablet OS, but compromised, deliberately compromised in many cases, its desktop experience to get there. In sharp contrast Win10 took the opposite approach-- it is markedly less pleasant to use exclusively with touch, but a great desktop with mouse+keyboard. They didn't /try/ to compromise touch, but they didn't put much effort into it either.

I wouldn't say the desktop experience was 'compromised'. 'Depreciated' (i.e. made legacy) or 'encapsulated' would be the description I'd use.

Consider how the transition from command-line interfaces to GUI was made. Even today you can open up the Command Prompt in Windows (or Terminal in OSX) and run legacy MS Dos apps. Well Balmer saw Jobs heralding the iPad as the future of computing, the launch lines, and the early spectacular growth and he freaked out. So, following the old interface transition playbook, Win8 was designed as a touch-first UI and then the desktop UI was squirreled away as an app (and the command prompt inside that desktop app ― inception). Win8 was an excellent tablet/touch designed OS and also purists could configure Win8 to bypass the touch stuff and skip straight to the desktop at launch... however Balmer had made a bad bet.

In the broader picture, the future of computers hasn't turned out to be touch tablets. The iPad peaked and the traditional laptop formfactor is still going strong. So Balmer's bet on a touch first Windows wasn't worth it. Moreover the execution was lacking. While Win8 was an excellently designed touch/tablet OS, it was not fully implemented so there were many leaky abstractions back to the desktop interface. Most notably there were many settings that could not be configured in the touch/tablet interface ― the system would randomly throw the user into the desktop app ― and all the Microsoft Office apps (except One Note) could only be used in the desktop interface. There was no way to completely disable the desktop app and hand over a Win8 tablet that worked exactly as an iPad.

Win10 went back to the drawing board and presents touch and desktop UI as complementary options side-by-side instead of a touch-first UI. That unfortunately meant removing some of the system wide Win8 touch designs that didn't quite work well with mouse+keyboard.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#104

Post by walterbell »

0xCMP wrote: post #45

I think I'm going to sell my existing 9.7" to get the new 10.5" to get a bit more space to work with on this new version of iOS. I can't wait until I can really use iOS the way I use my mac. Which at this point really is based on either mobileOrg getting better or some app coming out where I can easily manage a rich personal knowledge base/wiki on the iPad.

Have you looked at Scrivener on Mac/iOS? Used by writers doing research.

http://2doapp.com on iOS/Mac has robust WebDAV sync and can handle large databases.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#105

Post by tambourine_man »

pvinis wrote: post #89
tambourine_man wrote: post #87

If Adobe releases its Creative Suite and Apple decides the iPad is big enough to run Xcode, the Mac is in trouble. And I think that's fine, even being a die hard Mac user with 30 years of usage under my belt. The hardware is simply amazing and the software is finally coming of age.

I don't know about Adobe stuff, but Xcode on the iPad is not so simple. First, the iPad has to be powerful enough to do fast compilations etc. But even if we give it that, it is a looooong way from being used as a computer. How are you going to use Xcode when you don't have Finder, a terminal with a compiler? I don't know if I would like to use an iPad for that anyway, even if all the currently existing problems were…

>First, the iPad has to be powerful enough to do fast compilations etc.

It already is, and has been for a while. The iPad Pro is faster than the MacBook Air and is approaching the MacBook Pro.

>How are you going to use Xcode when you don't have Finder Files.app++

>a terminal with a compiler When I mean Xcode, I mean the whole package with LLVM, Bash, Brew and a Terminal emulator. Apple is already allowing “programming environments”[1] in the App Store. I can see a Dev Mode that allows you to fork and do all the things we are used to.

[1]http://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/articles/2017...

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#106

Post by tambourine_man »

ggpsv wrote: post #91
tambourine_man wrote: post #87

If Adobe releases its Creative Suite and Apple decides the iPad is big enough to run Xcode, the Mac is in trouble. And I think that's fine, even being a die hard Mac user with 30 years of usage under my belt. The hardware is simply amazing and the software is finally coming of age.

Honestly, I see very little appeal in working with iOS as a professional software developer. Both from a form-factor to OS perspective, I'd feel very limited and would not be as productive as I can be with a Mac or PC.

Yes, but I imagine using a physical keyboard while coding on iOS. I think I'll always prefer a mouse for a lot of things, but who knows.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#107

Post by grogenaut »

lol the discussion at the bottom of the article is about why macos isn't on ipad, reminds me of when people said it was impossible to put macos on x86. My $.02 is that macos has a lot of bloated garbage hanging around and iOS is likely more slim for the task. However I'm sure it's got it's own garbage after 10 years.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#108

Post by eric_cc »

notadoc wrote: post #44
wildmusings wrote: post #6

It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.

Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for? Why is it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way? iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the loc…

> Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch

I think you may need to find yourself a new crowd to roll with. 3D Touch becomes pretty intuitive after just a few hours of playing with a 3D Touch enabled device. It especially shines on the Apple Watch but it's also fantastic on the iPhone. Sadly, it's missing from iPad.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#109

Post by aphextron »

notadoc wrote: post #44
wildmusings wrote: post #6

It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.

Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for? Why is it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way? iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the loc…

>at is it for? Why is it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way?

3D touch is totally different, and better than a long press. With a long press, you're stuck waiting on an animation to finish to continue with what you want to do. With 3D touch, you are able to instantly get to the menu you want.

I can admit that discover-ability is an issue, but this should be solvable by UX designers embracing the feature and highlighting when it would be useful to users.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#110

Post by jlarocco »

eric_cc wrote: post #108
notadoc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for? Why is it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way? iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the loc…

> Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch I think you may need to find yourself a new crowd to roll with. 3D Touch becomes pretty intuitive after just a few hours of playing with a 3D Touch enabled device. It especially shines on the Apple Watch but it's also fantastic on the iPhone. Sadly, it's missing from iPad.

If I have to play with it for a few hours before it makes sense, then it's too complicated and confusing.

I have better things to do than train myself to use a phone.

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