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Unifying iPadOS and macOS

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Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#121

Post by jon-wood »

walterbell wrote: post #102
jon-wood wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming enough apps expose functionality through it, Shortcuts is the bridge between walled garden apps and UNIX pipelines, and Apple made a very clever move in making Shortcuts how Siri discovers functionality.

Is there a way to version-control shortcuts and import/export them between devices, especially for those unwilling to use iCloud and associated keyring upload and content scanning?

Not that I can see, but frankly if you’re not willing to use iCloud, give up on Apple devices because it’s what makes basically all the good stuff work. (This is not an invitation to get into yet another debate on recent events)

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#122

Post by flohofwoe »

emodendroket wrote: post #110
vladvasiliu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure how many users (outside of the ones who got used to it) want UNIX-like flexibility vs "give me an app that does everything I need". If the later group keeps getting larger the walled garden approach to apps might actually work. I think this is crux of the matter. Even outside the Apple ecosystem I see a tendency in people to not think about composing multiple tools but to look for an app that does eve…

It's hard to remember all the arguments for a passel of command line utils. Discoverablility is much better for a GUI, and only someone who wishes to do something unusual or specialized will chafe against the limitations.

UI discoverability has massively declined with the advent of touch UIs though. You can't hover a UI item to see what it does, and there's a lot of non-intuitive "magic swipes" and hidden UI elements in smartphone UIs which you just have to know about.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#123

Post by sixstringtheory »

emodendroket wrote: post #110
vladvasiliu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure how many users (outside of the ones who got used to it) want UNIX-like flexibility vs "give me an app that does everything I need". If the later group keeps getting larger the walled garden approach to apps might actually work. I think this is crux of the matter. Even outside the Apple ecosystem I see a tendency in people to not think about composing multiple tools but to look for an app that does eve…

It's hard to remember all the arguments for a passel of command line utils. Discoverablility is much better for a GUI, and only someone who wishes to do something unusual or specialized will chafe against the limitations.

Your argument applies to all kitchen sinks, regardless of whether they are considered one application like VSCode or an operating system withs collection of applications like Unix. Both still have all the capabilities for text editing, syntax highlighting, version control and executing scripts. You can spread complexity around in different ways but you can’t eliminate it.

Personally I find GUI discoverability to be like the hunt-and-peck model of typing, vs touch typing being CLI, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that touch typing and CLI go hand in hand: you never leave home row. You think about what you want to do and type the command, instead of looking through panels of icons or more exotically arranged buttons (which in the newest web apps, constantly jump around as the page lazily loads, new elements appear forcing layout changes, fonts load causing text reflow… I frequently tap the wrong menu item because what I really wanted got pushed down by a new appearing element as my finger approached the screen.)

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#124

Post by f6v »

adrusi wrote: post #114
flohofwoe wrote: post #4

It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual" vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes. It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved…

That's just it. The future is very likely most people using iPad-like devices. They will need some kind of keyboard, so I'm not sure it's going to be tablets mostly, but the software will resemble that of smartphones. But no desktop operating systems are well suited to being used primarily by professionals, not even Linux. The desktop paradigm is fine, but it was designed with the idea of making computers more access…

> But no desktop operating systems are well suited to being used primarily by professionals

I love macOS and I’m a professional. I mean, I get paid for what I do. I’m a professional, right?

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#125

Post by memetomancer »

I for one ain't bothered: It's clear to me that Apple needs tools to engineer these spectacular devices and there would be little or no sense to them designing away the power of MacOS and landing on a product range limited to simple consumption. Does anyone foresee a time where Apple migrates to something like Lenovo Laptops or Windows or some scraggly Linux desktop environment? Apple won't be losing these tools any time soon. At worst we might see dual mode macbooks that can be switched between MacOS and iOS paradigms.

Above and beyond that fairly self-evident conclusion, there is plenty of room for more sophisticated interaction with iOS devices that maintain the basic interface but also provide extremely sophisticated data manipulation capabilities. Perhaps even more powerfully than our beloved UNIX shells - think something like AI assisted voice interaction where you can easily state a pipeline verbally: "take results from A that contain N and modify them by X and then sort them by I and make a graph and paste it to my document". (e.g., grep | sed | sort | gnuplot | paste >> example.doc)

That sort of thing is potentially just a few iterations away and simultaneously more powerful and more useful than text mode pipes, if only for the fact that the user wouldn't be required to memorize thousands of cryptic flags/switches. The same interface could be used to string these directives together to form scripts and set jobs, etc.

This isn't meant to be a specific prediction, by the way, just one glimpse into the idea space. There are so many good ideas that people haven't had yet... it just staggers the mind to consider the potential. I'm just skimming the surface but surely there are so many ways to marry the insanely intuitive discoverability of something like iOS with the equally awesome power of the UNIX philosophy.

But it's up to us to find them, rather than get inflexible and grumbly and say it can't be done, or Apple is stupid, or whatever nonsense take you might jerk your knee towards ;)

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#126

Post by zepto »

flohofwoe wrote: post #4

It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual" vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes. It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved…

> The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes.

Very true.

> It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved inside an ecosystem that's optimized for passive media consumption and online shopping though.

Unix-like flexibility is also extremely insecure and easy to screw up.

It’s fairly obvious that the App Store ecosystem can and is becoming increasingly flexible. Things like shortcuts and safari extensions are obvious examples.

Unix-like flexibility will likely never come to iOS, nor should it, but it’s easy to imagine a steady drumbeat of easy to use managed points of flexibility that ultimately provide 80% of what people use Unix-flexibility for but without the insecurity or brittleness.

It’s not so easy to imagine how ease of use, security and robustness can be retrofitted to unix any other way.

Remember iOS is Unix. It’s just a matter of what they build for end users.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#127

Post by musesum »

linguae wrote: post #68
flohofwoe wrote: post #4

It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual" vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes. It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved…

I wholeheartedly agree; the app-centric model of today's desktop environments is the antithesis of the Smalltalk vision of composability. In an environment where everything is a live object, programmers can send messages to those objects. Thus, in the Smalltalk environment you end up with something even more powerful than Unix pipes and redirection. Now, Smalltalk provides the infrastructure for composability, but Sm…

> another way of looking at the cancellation of OpenDoc is that its success would have completely upended the software industry.

Ironically, that was the main interest of Brad Cox who, with Tom Love, created Objective-C, which was acquired by NeXT, and became the way forward for Apple.

In my experience, it is very hard to build a business around software objects. I spent a couple years trying to build an App around the Apple Watch. But, Apple only allows 3rd party complications. It is essentially a component. Apple recommends focusing on doing only one thing.

Moreover, as a component, you the developer often have less control over the UX. On the Apple Watch, when a user opens -say- Spotify on the iPhone, your app is kicked out.

So, a couple weeks ago, I decided to put the Apple Watch development on hold and do something else on the iPad.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#128

Post by hexe »

derefr wrote: post #119
hexe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want this, but not limited to only tablets. I want to own a single "pocket computer" and that's it, no more syncing, just a single device. I can drop it into a dock on my desk, that breaks out the I/O into a 30" display, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, and it activates the Mac desktop environment. Unplug from the dock, it pauses everything I'm doing on the desktop, and it goes back into my pocket and uses the touch s…

You mean like this: https://nexdock.com/samsung-dex-laptop/

Yeah, but have it power all the peripherals of a full desktop. It could hot swap by dropping it into a magnetic dock/cradle whenever you need to "do some work", and then pick it up and walk away and all the desktop peripherals go back into hibernation.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#129

Post by mohanmcgeek »

If the latest iPhone chip is as powerful as the Intel chip used in MacBooks, why shouldn't I be able to connect a hdmi to usb c cable to my phone and get a full MacOS machine on the external display? (Like Samsung dex does this or so did Ubuntu phone from 2014-15?)

Same question with Android phones and Chrome OS.

What's the technical challenge?

I feel the only reason Apple won't do it is because then instead of buying 2 to 3 devices, people would buy just one, which will hurt their revenue. (Doesn't explain why Google won't)

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#130

Post by adrusi »

f6v wrote: post #124
adrusi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just it. The future is very likely most people using iPad-like devices. They will need some kind of keyboard, so I'm not sure it's going to be tablets mostly, but the software will resemble that of smartphones. But no desktop operating systems are well suited to being used primarily by professionals, not even Linux. The desktop paradigm is fine, but it was designed with the idea of making computers more access…

> But no desktop operating systems are well suited to being used primarily by professionals I love macOS and I’m a professional. I mean, I get paid for what I do. I’m a professional, right?

Well it's roughly as good as your other two options, none of which are terrible. I'm not trying to insult the people who use.. literally any operating system available today.

But surely you can imagine ways that macOS could be better suited to your needs. Why (to give an example that's easy to explain briefly, not necessarily the most important one) are the various things you have open organized primarily by which application can open them, instead of which task they're relevant to? You can organize your browser tabs by task by using multiple windows, but why can't those windows hold anything relevant to the task they represent except browser tabs? Why can't you have your terminal and text editor grouped with your webpages? It's because less sophisticated users expect each window to belong to exactly one "application," and because software vendors assume that their job is to make self contained "applications," and not composable graphical components.

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