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Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

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Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#191

Post by [deleted] »

aeontech wrote: post #168
madeofpalk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

looks at beardyman's insane live music setup running a mix of open source and commercial software on a six iPad matrix deck I would argue that some form factors are better for some use cases, others for other use cases, and we are still figuring out how to best take advantage of each particular form factor. Despite how popular it seems to be, I think framing it as "it's bad for certain use cases because Apple is evil…

[deleted]

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#192

Post by squeaky-clean »

aeontech wrote: post #168
madeofpalk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

looks at beardyman's insane live music setup running a mix of open source and commercial software on a six iPad matrix deck I would argue that some form factors are better for some use cases, others for other use cases, and we are still figuring out how to best take advantage of each particular form factor. Despite how popular it seems to be, I think framing it as "it's bad for certain use cases because Apple is evil…

Beardyman still uses a laptop running Ableton as the central hub for his rig. It's 5 ipads and a laptop. The iPads are all just controllers.

You can see it in this short explanation video at the very start. And when he goes into the explanation, the very first thing he says is that the iPads control Ableton.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yp5ICEWmtuQ

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#193

Post by jmmv »

That’s why I like my Surface Go 2: it lets me carry a real OS in a tiny tablet form factor. I take it everywhere and it has been my only travel laptop for a couple of years. I have even done local Rust development while on flights.

If only it wasn’t so frigging slow… it’d be awesome.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#194

Post by zx8080 »

j45 wrote: post #187
pavel_lishin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go. I can't plug my macbook into a car to use maps or play mus…

Screen Mirroring is possible, but it has to be a little creative. iPad is super handy but I'm not sure a laptop has turn by turn nav, maybe it could via an emulator.

> maybe it could via an emulator

As a programmer with serious mobile experience I fully understand it. But it sound a bit crazy that a powerful and more superior (and open! In both hard and sometimes soft - if with an opensource OS) platform need so _emulate_ an embedded one (mobile, usually at least partially proprietary one) to provide turn-by-turn nav: what appears to be a first-order need of anyone in the modern world.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#195

Post by 38 »

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…

> with my little paddy

gross.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#196

Post by j45 »

hahajk wrote: post #164
pavel_lishin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go. I can't plug my macbook into a car to use maps or play mus…

More importantly for an airplane, you can't watch Netflix (or most streaming movies) offline on a laptop. Though I've never used a Surface, maybe you can do that with some kind of mobile app that runs on a hybrid thing.

Netflix seems to provide an app for Windows Laptops to watch titles offline.

Chromebooks here too.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/54816

MacOS is absent, but I'm sure it's not too far off using an Google Chromebook emulator with Google Play Store in UTM if it's a must.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#197

Post by j45 »

jmmv wrote: post #193

That’s why I like my Surface Go 2: it lets me carry a real OS in a tiny tablet form factor. I take it everywhere and it has been my only travel laptop for a couple of years. I have even done local Rust development while on flights. If only it wasn’t so frigging slow… it’d be awesome.

Its great to run linux too.

The 12" Macbook is a great contender too.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#198

Post by seltzered_ »

I waited over ten years for the iPad to mature, and ended up making a bigger jump away from the Apple ecosystem to a Tablet PC running linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm...

It isn't perfect, but it's made for a more ergonomic computing experience that replaced my need for a second monitor desk setup and while being a bit large can still use it for tablet experiences of reading papers and watching movies.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#199

Post by jacknews »

What' needed is a real computer, with a real OS, in tablet form-factor.

And then maybe a keyboard that can convert it into a laptop (extra battery in the k/b, friction hinges to adjust tablet angle, instead of a stand, which doesn't work on an actual lap), etc.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#200

Post by walterbell »

jdshaffer wrote: post #184

I've tried doing iPad-only several times, but I'm a bit of a digital packrat, a highly-organized packrat, though. So I really miss a solid File Manager. I know Android is much better at this, but the default "Files" app in iOS just sucks -- I feel like I have to bounce between three or four apps just to get something simple done. Has anyone found a reasonable way to manage files on iOS?

GoodReader has a classic file manager, sync to NAS/cloud and OS-independent encryption.
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