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MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

craigmod.com

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Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#21

Post by steveBK123 »

I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig. Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic.

The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.

Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#22

Post by benoau »

gyomu wrote: post #2

Touchscreens suck for text manipulation. The keyboard and the mouse are the superior input devices for wrangling characters and words and lines and paragraphs. The author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very ha…

> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad

I think if the hardware differences really mattered Sidecar wouldn't exist, Mac wouldn't run iOS apps, iPhone wouldn't stream to Mac, and the AVP wouldn't stream/run apps from both platforms.

Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#23

Post by commieneko »

This person nails it.

The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or write with a pen, ever, then I'm at a loss to explain it.

But it's there nonetheless.

We've got a long way to go to really understand UI and UX. A long, long way.

Now, please excuse me while I go and tap dance about architecture for a bit...

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#24

Post by troupo »

benoau wrote: post #22
gyomu wrote: post #2

Touchscreens suck for text manipulation. The keyboard and the mouse are the superior input devices for wrangling characters and words and lines and paragraphs. The author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very ha…

> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad I think if the hardware differences really mattered Sidecar wouldn't exist, Mac wouldn't run iOS apps, iPhone wouldn't stream to Mac, and the AVP wouldn't stream/run apps from both platforms. Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?

> Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?

Yes, yes they would. You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. And not, for example, shitty lazy port of mobile apps to MacOS

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#25

Post by cyberpunk »

tomaskafka wrote: post #15

I sign this essay. Apple has apparently multiple opposing goals for the iPadOS: 1. Make it powerful enough so that it can be sold as equivalent to macOS 2. Keep it locked like iOS, to be sold as secure alternative to computer for your parents and kids (which rules out all the workflow customization pros need) 3. Don’t make it powerful enough for people to stop buying Macs (Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying…

It’s got a bunch of decent ssh clients; I use mine quite often for this. With a hdmi capture thingy it’s also the display for a bunch of my rpis when they don’t boot etc..

Totally doable for travel debugging.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#26

Post by oldacc240419 »

ginko wrote: post #6

I just want a notebook the size and weight of a 10" ipad pro that I can run desktop software on. The Macbook Neo is 12" and weighs 1.23kg which is light but not "forget you have it in your bag" light. It's frustating knowing that the ipad _could_ run mac os but won't due to intentional market segmentation by Apple.

It's definitely not ideal but the top model surface go 2 can be gotten for under $120 at this stage and will be somewhat usable for that with Linux installed

I imagine the surface go 4 with an n200 is probably a good bit better but several times the price; assuming it can run Linux

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#27

Post by WillAdams »

Am I the only person who likes the concept of "Sidebar" and using an iPad (often w/ an Apple Pencil) as a second display on a Mac?

Let me do that w/ a MacBook Neo and iPad Air pair which look as if they belong together and which fit nicely into a bag and afford me the option of taking only the iPad Air and Apple Pencil when I want to travel light, and maybe I'll come back to the fold (the last thing I bought from Apple was Mac OS X Public Beta, before that it was OpenSTEP 4.2, and the last thing Apple made which I truly liked wholeheartedly was Snow Leopard).

Oh yeah, make the Apple Pencil work on an iPhone....

Instead, these days, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360 (two of them, panic-bought a spare when I though the line was being discontinued, it's now up to a Book 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (replacing a first-gen unit) and a Wacom One display connected to a MacBook (purchased by an employer) and more Wacom styluses than I can easily count....

The high watermark of my graphical computing experience was using an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint w/ FutureWave SmartSketch when mobile, and a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ --- I've tried pretty much every thing in-between since, but when things were finally getting better, Microsoft did Fall Creator's Update and everything came crashing down....

I'd really like for Apple to make a device trifecta which I would actually be willing to buy.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#28

Post by WillAdams »

altairprime wrote: post #4

This article makes me very, very strongly want Bryce 3D for iPad. Everything about using that app was about trying to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the screen. Now you can. Its user interface was nonsenical at the time. Now a spherical marble is sensible. Tap an object, then tap and hold; use other hand to operate the three-axis arrow control bar that swells up out of the interface into easy to tou…

Moment of Inspiration seems the most promising 3D modeling option --- done by the former lead developer of Rhinoceros 3D it's probably what I'm going to break down and buy if crash-and-burn on my current attempt to learn Alibre Atom 3D.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#29

Post by latexr »

commieneko wrote: post #23

This person nails it. The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or…

> Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means.

Modern Mac trackpads don’t really click, they vibrate upon sensing a certain amount of force, and the sensory illusion is good enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.

I’m only suggesting this tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps there’ll come a time when the Apple Pencil can micro-vibrate in such a way that is so convincing it will make you feel as if you’re dragging it on paper with configurable roughness.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#30

Post by christophilus »

steveBK123 wrote: post #21

I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig. Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic. The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd…

This is why I’ve never understood the demand for a touchscreen on a laptop. All of my non-Mac laptops have touchscreens, and I basically never use the touch feature except by accident (e.g. a kid pointing and asking a question and causing some code to highlight).
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