The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

Post by jghn » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #64

gnicholas wrote: post #25

Gruber is right that the iPad hasn't revolutionized an industry like the Mac or iPhone. But the iPad was launched smack in the middle of the iPhone and the Mac, not in the middle of a green field. The iPhone had competition below it, from feature phones and Blackberrys. But there was nothing above it. Similarly, the Mac was launched into a very nascent market, where there were competitors (PCs), but it wasn't facing…

The iPad arguably succeeded because it wasn’t a convertible. However, now, especially given big phones, it feels as if some sort of tablet/laptop convergence will eventually be the future.

Post by jeromegv » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #139

scarface74 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were the case, do you think Microsoft and Adobe spent money on development of Office and Photoshop foolishly? The iPad Pros are credited with stopping the slide of iPad revenues - along with all of the accessories.

Honestly I think companies are (mostly) wasting their money porting desktop software to iPads. There's going to be niches where it makes perfect sense, but Office for the iPad is going to be a waste of money. Home users don't need it, business have laptops and desktop for those things, and Word is a poor note taking app of field work. To be fair I believe that the iPad is a poor note taking platform in general. For s…

Post by johnwalkr » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

TrickyRick wrote: post #110

e_proxus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite pet peeve is trying to edit URLs in the address bar in Safari. Just trying to get the cursor to the end of the address field a an error prone chore. Often the text is select and there’s no way to unselect it. Then of course it doesn’t help when you want to remove some components of the URL that Safari helpfully autocompletes back to the URL you jus visited.

Force touching on the keyboard gives your finger control over the cursor more like a touch pad on a computer. It works really well on the iPhone, not sure if it's available on iPad. But yet again, one of those feature you just have to know about to use.

Post by johnwalkr » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #56

jonplackett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so much worse as of ios13 - which was somehow meant to make text selection better, but for me made it so much less consistent. I really feel like this should be a solvable problem though. It can’t be that complicated to select text reliably.

This has been such a pet hate for years on systems with a mouse as well as iPhone iOS, that I assume it is nigh impossible to select text reliably and conveniently, for some unexplored reason or other. It's always the case that I can get a selection backwards up to the first letter but missing it, or including the first letter and some extra junk from the lines before, but not simply up to and including the first let…

Post by have_faith » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #166

have_faith wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of the mediocre sales is related to the use-cases that most iPad users have which seems to mostly be watching videos, browsing the internet, reading etc. Any 2 or 3 generation old iPad will do this fine with very little reason to upgrade. It doesn't have anything near comparable to the upgrade path that a lot of phone users who seem very eager to upgrade to a better camera/battery/etc.

The iPad is a 20 BILLION dollar a year business. Let's not get crazy on "mediocre" sales, this is one of the most popular product line of all companies combined. Did not get as high as some people were expecting but this is far from mediocre. Source: https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/01/fun-with-charts-a-decade-...