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Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

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Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#91

Post by stetrain »

mrcwinn wrote: post #89

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more. Save yourself some trav…

A 12.9” iPad Pro with the keyboard case is more expensive than the equivalent 13” MacBook Pro.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#92

Post by tammer »

These types of articles come out periodically and annoy me quite a bit. iPadOS has been my interface to the digital world for going on 6 years. Here are the things I do exclusively via an iPad Pro:

  * administer a dozen HPC clusters
  * perform all the digital tasks required of a non-profit board member
  * learn/read, communicate, consume media, photo edit and all the other normal life things one does on a computer nowadays
It’s true that I don’t have a podcast. But I think I’m in the majority of computer users there! I’ll also say that I have had to accept some limits or look for workarounds in the past, but the big additions of file downloads, safari compatibility modes and finally stage manager have effectively taken care of those.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#93

Post by hotnfresh »

gtvwill wrote: post #63
dmonitor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much. I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.

Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.

> Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really.

A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#94

Post by gtvwill »

nomel wrote: post #76
gtvwill wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.

> they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience. [1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus... edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?

Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.

Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#95

Post by rollcat »

mrcwinn wrote: post #89

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more. Save yourself some trav…

I think the real world use cases for an iPad are slightly broader, but not by much. My partner uses one to make digital art; it also has a relatively decent camera, some apps for video/audio production (like Final Cut/Logic), it's also better than a phone at being an SSH terminal... But the creative applications end somewhere around right there.

It's an appliance. An appliance with mind-boggingly awesome specs - if it were a computer - but it's just that, an appliance closer in spirit to a microwave than to a PC. Treat it as such, and it will be one of the best appliances you'll ever own; but to expect it to be a computer is to set oneself up to be disappointed.

I'm more than happy with it for what it is, but don't mistake it for what it's not.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#96

Post by gizajob »

madeofpalk wrote: post #85
gizajob wrote: post #80

I wrote a 160,000 word book this year on an iPad Air with smart keyboard (I find how the pro keyboard doesn't fold all the way back to allow holding the iPad landscape too big of an annoyance to buy one). I think it's a brilliant device, and while limited, does do some things better than the Mac - annotating PDFs and ebooks with the Pencil being one of them. Also nice to hold a document one is working on in landscape…

Like all things Apple, iPad is great if you only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for. The moment you start to be beyond that slightly it completely falls apart. Contrast it to a more general computer running macOS or Windows, which does a poorer job at what iPad does best, but it has a much longer tail where the complexity ramps up linearly, compared to the hockey stick of iOS.

At the same time though, limited tools can lead to creativity. I know we're in the company of coders with complex workflows, but using and understanding a limited tool well to the point where you can max it out can be better than living with a "long tail" of untapped power and productivity. Strange though, how the iPad is ostensibly a much better device given the touchscreen and keyboard (and now pencil) and yet remains somehow less useful than a MacBook. Might also be an issue of perception that the iPad can't do certain things well, when it almost can. From a user standpoint, having a device that really is like an appliance that never blinks or goes wrong is pretty brilliant. Windows has let me down on that front too many times for too many years, and now the only time I use it I live in a web browser 99.9% of the time (in a university library)...

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#97

Post by paxys »

mrcwinn wrote: post #89

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more. Save yourself some trav…

A basic iPad as a reasonably priced (~$300-$500) media consumption device is fantastic. The problem is that's not what Apple is selling it as anymore. Look up all their advertising from the last few years and they barely even acknowledge that price point. Instead you will see all the "Pro" models, fancy accessories, M1/M2 chips, LiDAR, terabytes of storage and prices eclipsing that of mid-range MacBooks. Everyone I know who ate up the advertising and bought $1500+ iPads as a primary or secondary productivity device is now regretting it as they either lay unused or are glorified Netflix and Facebook tablets.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#98

Post by iainmerrick »

mrcwinn wrote: post #89

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more. Save yourself some trav…

Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”

If that were the case, they’d be making much more money from laptops than from iPads, right?

If they were making just as much money from iPads, though, it would make sense to make the iPad as good as possible. Cannibalizing Mac sales wouldn’t be a big deal.

Per the Six Colors breakdown of Apple’s financial results (https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/08/charts-apple-q3-2023-resu...) Macs and iPads accounted for 8% and 7% of their revenue.

The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning.

They’ve gone back on plenty of things Steve Jobs said (in many cases, Jobs himself was the one who did it).

I don’t think they have a religious objection to making the iPad useful, as you seem to be saying; I think they think they are making it useful, that the current design (including its limitations) is the best compromise.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#99

Post by gizajob »

stetrain wrote: post #91
mrcwinn wrote: post #89

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more. Save yourself some trav…

A 12.9” iPad Pro with the keyboard case is more expensive than the equivalent 13” MacBook Pro.

The horror of Apple's pricing structure. Has annoyed me to the point where I've abandoned purchasing anything on several occasions.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#100

Post by [deleted] »

mrcwinn wrote: post #89

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more. Save yourself some trav…

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