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Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

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Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#261

Post by leptons »

zarzavat wrote: post #233
deergomoo wrote: post #190

The iPad software has been lagging behind its hardware for so long now. My iPad and laptop both have an M1; the laptop has more RAM but they are effectively equally capable on paper. And yet, due to a series of entirely artificial restrictions, my iPad is useless for entire categories of applications. That power sits unavailable for me to ever utilise. I’m sure the iPad Pro can live up to its name if you’re an artist…

The problem is an organizational cultural problem at Apple itself: they are control freaks obsessed with putting the user first, but as with all extremists they take it too far, trying to obtain some “perfect” user experience, even when that hurts the user’s own interests! Apple sees developers and third party software as threats to the user, the only safe thing to do is to lock it all down. Apple also got addicted t…

Those are all the main reasons I don't choose Apple devices.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#262

Post by 8note »

nicbou wrote: post #247
makeitdouble wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It comes down what you actually want to do. My time spent on the iPad was defined by what I couldn't do, and it was extremely frustrating, I ended up not doing it instead of go getting the laptop from across the house. Windows is not refined nor optimized for tablet use by any measure, but it actually does the job, instead of showing a cute and extremely refined middle finger half the time. The breaking point for me…

> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version This is what made me sell the Surface. I wanted to replace a paper notebook I bring everywhere. What I got was tiny buttons, menus, and a save dialog every time I wanted to close the app. My drawings were not drawings in a sketchbook, but files I had to manually sort and access…

My surface is a whiteboarding tool.

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/sketchpal/9MVT92NRF5...

Does a pretty good job

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#263

Post by Robotbeat »

tmpX7dMeXU wrote: post #151
perardi wrote: post #6

When the iPad first came out, people knocked it as "a big iPod touch". But…maybe that wasn't a bad thing? I feel like the iPad, despite alllll the efforts to seemingly make it a pro device, is an iPhone, but bigger. It's great for messages, browsing Facebook, and watching video, and that's just fine. Because that serves a lot of people's needs, and trying to add in a bunch more stuff just overloads the touch interfac…

I remember when iPad came out, and I was younger and cared more for arguing online. This is one of the hills I time and time again chose to die on. The anti-Apple brigade was about at its most insufferable at that point in time. The ‘full Windows running on a tablet’ utopia has to this day neger eventuated to any mainstream degree. iPad as a larger iOS device was and is the right way forward. IPadOS’s inscrutable ‘po…

Surface Pro has definitely materialized.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#264

Post by mvdtnz »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #154
jll29 wrote: post #149

The key sentence here is: > This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done). Apple (since Lisa/Mac, after Apple II, which had an open architecture) likes appliances and to control the user experience, so the iPad is "more Apple" than Macs are. Whenever I am waiti…

> 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…

Maybe it's an American thing but I don't think I know a single person who owns or uses an ipad, with the exception of rich parents who use them exclusively to distract children. I certainly don't notice a lot of ipad users in airports or trains.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#265

Post by WWLink »

j45 wrote: post #196
hahajk wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the M1/M2 macs should be able to just run the iOS app. Not sure if it allows storing stuff. Or if netflix lets you run the ios app on a mac (probably not lol)

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#266

Post by WWLink »

PaulHoule wrote: post #242
esperent wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been tempted to try this for a while. How do you find this in practice? For example, do you have random connection errors, or latency issues? And have you tried connecting from another country? Or are you always physically close to the main device?

It's pretty reliable except when the power goes out at home or something like that. I use Tailscale to get around the NAT on the router. My big computer is behind an ADSL connection where the uplink is pretty slow. If I am changing windows it can take a few seconds for the window to update but once the window is up it is reasonably responsive to type into PyCharm. If I spun up a machine in us-east-2 and used it over…

Have you considered getting a virtual private server from someplace like digital ocean or MS Azure or whatever? You might find that preferable for something to RDP into.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#267

Post by jodrellblank »

vorpalhex wrote: post #2

I just left for a trip today and have a macbook I purchased three days ago along for the ride. Both the spouse and I were uncomfortable with only having ipads - and within 4 hours of landing it's already been the right call. It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.

> "A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail."

A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#268

Post by pico303 »

ginko wrote: post #258

This article explains why you can’t travel with only an iPad (and a phone presumably) but doesn’t seem to bother explaining why you can’t just travel with a small laptop and phone. What does the tablet add that makes it indispensable for travel? Just the media consumption? I never used a tablet for an extended amount of time so maybe I’m missing something here.

Agreed. I feel like in the next year or so my travel bag is going to boil down to a MacBook Air and a paperback book.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#269

Post by WWLink »

Robotbeat wrote: post #263
tmpX7dMeXU wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when iPad came out, and I was younger and cared more for arguing online. This is one of the hills I time and time again chose to die on. The anti-Apple brigade was about at its most insufferable at that point in time. The ‘full Windows running on a tablet’ utopia has to this day neger eventuated to any mainstream degree. iPad as a larger iOS device was and is the right way forward. IPadOS’s inscrutable ‘po…

Surface Pro has definitely materialized.

Before I begin: I own a first gen Surface Pro and have never purchased an iPad lol.

Now then, I think the problem with the Surface Pro was that it was perfect for that transitional period of time where the iPad made for a very awkward computer. Microsoft gave the Surface Pro USB ports, a slick magnetically attached keyboard, and the OS that let you run practically anything whether or not it made sense to do it on a tablet. Oh and you could draw on it!

The original iPad did NONE OF THAT. However, the current iPad does have a slick magnetic keyboard, a usb-c port, and you can draw on it with the apple pencil. Plus I think there are many more apps developed for iOS than there are for Windows - especially involving tablet use cases.

So I don't think the Surface Pro is really needed anymore. I'm not sure Microsoft is even interested in continuing to make them in the long run (but I may be wrong!)

The other thing - I keep saying this: MS isn't interested in consumers. They just aren't. Their primary interest is selling Office 365, Azure 365, AD hosting, etc to businesses. Windows and almost every other product they make seems to get more love and attention in controlling the users/administering the users/giving sysadmins the keys to control their loyal servants... than anything else... It really shows in the way they produce their products.

Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

#270

Post by emodendroket »

nradov wrote: post #253
emodendroket wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazines, surf the Web, and watch videos. And for that it’s arguably better than a laptop. At least I find myself using it for those things much more.

Right, but the inability to do serious software development is an arbitrary limit imposed by Apple. The hardware is quite capable, but the vendor has decided that we need to use multiple different devices. It's their platform and they can do what they like with it, but as a customer those artificial limitations rankle.

They’d have to do something more than just throw XCode on it for it to be in any way usable without full on keyboard and mouse, which would cut against what they’re trying to do. So there is some justification beyond just market segmentation.
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