Live data from Hacker News

iPad Pro

apple.com

281–290 of 805 posts

Re: iPad Pro

#281

I bought an iPad Pro (12.9") in mid 2017, and am already seeing significant slowdown. With 4-5 apps open, it lags when trying to scroll the home screen. I frequently need to kill open apps by going into the app switcher. When I bought a new iPhone, the difference was night and day. I regularly leave 30+ apps open without worrying about lag. Not sure why the iPad Pro struggles so much with multitasking, but it's kind…

> I frequently need to kill open apps by going into the app switcher.

This doesn't help most of the time.

Re: iPad Pro

#282
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can program on an iPad already using interpreted languages such as Python and Lua. And you can SSH into other machines, run Git, and have a text editor already. The main issue with developing on an iPad is that it’s not easy to load unsigned, compiled code on it, and even if you do, there’s not much that the code can do because of the system sandbox.

I would have thought the main issue would be screen size. Don't developers like large screen real estate, being able to see documents side by side, or the code of your app, a browser rendering it and the debug tools inside the browser, and stackoverflow on the side?

It depends, mostly on preference, but also eyesight (and therefore, age).

My main dev machine is a 12” MBP. I have external monitors, but do quite a bit of work even on my 9.6” iPad. I spend 9% of my time in a terminal anyhow, and have good eyesight.

Re: iPad Pro

#283

I'm really impressed that they made a number of environmental friendly additions, though they haven't been played up as much: - LED display is mercury-free - No arsenic - No BFR or PVC etc.

This has been true of most of Apple's products for years. Generally they have a slide that summarizes this after every product announcement.

Re: iPad Pro

#284
post #18

The person who decided to make this scroll sideways instead of down when you scroll down, and not to scroll sideways when you scroll sideways should be put in stocks in the town square.

And the scrolling changes midway ...

Re: iPad Pro

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the only one. I also like a bit of a bezel or "chin" on my phones, because it makes holding the device with one hand for e.g. taking photos much more secure.

My 75 year old mom has real trouble trying to use her ipad mini, especially with taking pictures. Inevitably the left hand trying to hold the ipad has a thumb on the touch screen. Then when she tries to do anything else with right hand it is registered as a pinch. She also had a career in graphic design and now teaches oil/acrylic painting. I know from her, the art world likes frames. A bezel is not a bad thing.

Not to take away from the larger concern, but in your mother's case, perhaps a case with a significant border would help.

I suppose if there is not a ready-made one that suits, making /hacking one, the old-fashioned way or through 3D printing, would be an option.

One reason I put a case on every one of my cell phones, is to give me something more substantial to hold on to. The thin bodies and edges start to become a detriment; all the more so in that I have no interest in squeezing mine into the pocket of skinny jeans.

Re: iPad Pro

#286

Very impressive demos, but unfortunately the number of apps that can make full use of the increased power is still limited. A common complaint I saw during the presentation was the emphasis of the A12X for gaming, but Apple is still very bad at incentivizing developers to make games with premium experiences and prices (to say nothing of the lack of an official gaming controller!) Also, the new Apple Pencil will only…

>> (to say nothing of the lack of an official gaming controller!) Apple themselves does not publish an 'official' gaming controller, no, instead they offer a number of third-party controllers at a quite nice build quality at prices that are comparable to buying a new PS4/XBOX controller: https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all-accessories/toys-...

It's about developers having an install base to make games against. They need to ship a controller with an apple tv, otherwise gaming stays in the casual corner it usually is in iOS.

These iPads are more powerful than any nintendo switch, but nintendo has them beat because they have a dedicated gaming hardware ecosystem. I wish I could use my iPhone like I would a switch, but I can't because there isn't any serious games or first party hardware.

As a result, serious game devs target mobile last, if they do at all. I bought Transistor for my apple TV for example and asked for the first refund of an iOS app ever because it was an crashy mess. I played it on my PC instead.

Re: iPad Pro

#287

Still waiting on Xcode for the iPad "Pro"

Same. I was hoping we would see that. The Swift Playgrounds app really hasn’t gotten any love[1] since it was first introduced. You can actually import UIKit and the other frameworks and compile them on the iPad but this is pretty much undocumentated. The preview views are tremendously buggy (really the whole app is) and there is all sorts of hidden debug stuff running in the background[2] that slows down performance…

> The Swift Playgrounds app really hasn’t gotten any love[1] since it was first introduced.

The UI has been changed slightly.

> You can actually import UIKit and the other frameworks and compile them on the iPad but this is pretty much undocumentated.

Well, it's UIKit. You can just pull up the documentation at developer.apple.com.

> The preview views are tremendously buggy (really the whole app is) and there is all sorts of hidden debug stuff running in the background[2] that slows down performance.

The app is very buggy, but the debug stuff cannot be turned off because it's compiled into the code you write.

> Everything has to be in a single file so doing anything moderately complicated is a pain

No: you can add additional files to the "Sources" folder. This is how Apple's tutorial playgrounds work.

Re: iPad Pro

#288

Can someone more educated on the subject please explain to me what would be required to turn this into a proper development machine? I'm asking about what iOS changes would be needed, rather than opinions about the physical aspects of it like form factor.

You could use something like codeanywhere.com though from my experience we're still X years away from running IDEs in the cloud seamlessly

Re: iPad Pro

#290
post #97
post #21

That site is horrible. First it scrolls horizontally and then it switches to vertical towards the end. Why do "designers" have to reinvent simple things again and again? Is there nothing better to do?

I'd argue while the UX is questionable (panning the page right to left while the user scroll down), the website loads pretty fast, which is a good thing, and the scrolling is smooth. The page also weights less than 14 MB. Here is an example of horrible UX plus horrible loading time plus janky scrolling brought you by Google. 60 seconds after the page was open the content of the top of the page was still not done load…

I get horrible scrolling on the Apple one and smooth as butter on the Google one. This is Chrome on a 2013 MBP OSX Mojave. I will say that the Google one takes way too long to load things for sure.
Post reply on HN