MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be • Hacker News Board

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#171

Post by carlosjobim » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:20 AM UTC

tristor wrote: post #96

I see a lot of people in the comments wanting to use iOS on a laptop, or connecting a mouse and keyboard to an iPad/iPhone. I don't know what the point would be. For anything that is not purely content consumption, a regular laptop is superior to a tablet, phone, or touchscreen generally. What use case other than "it's cool" do you actually expect to use this for? I keep wanting to buy an iPad, but I create more than…

iPads with a keyboard are superior for older people who need a more simple and secure operating system to:

- Read and write e-mails

- Read and write documents

- Do their banking

- Connect with friends through social media

- Look up a recipe or find gardening information

- Book hotels, book flights, book restaurants.

- Check maps.

That's hundreds of millions of customers.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#172

Post by taude » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 11:51 AM UTC

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…

100%, bringback the macbook air, but in a new form factor.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#173

Post by paulcole » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:50 PM UTC

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #146

chocochunks wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no pen input on a Mac, it's only really usable in one orientation and so sucks for reading more than a page or two of a PDF. Tablets are WAY more flexible in form factor. Apple unfortunately cripples the software, but I'd rather have a device that's 100% better at pen input and bunch of tasks that's 30% worse at typing.

Instead of doing creative work on the iPad, it should really be used as an input device for the mac.

Hear me out. Do the creative work on the iPad.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#174

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 12:51 PM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #134

dredmorbius wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't my point. Graffiti is not possible without a stylus, or at the very least is vastly less effective. Android and iOS are both "finger first" interfaces. You can use a stylus, but you don't have to. And everything is designed around finger-fatness. Icons, gestures, on-screen keyboard.

I much prefer the stylus. You only need to see artist that paint and do sculpting with Wacom displays to see that this has a much better potential than finger-based touch. The latter is ok for light consumption, but for not so much for productivity.

Stylus for pointing. Hard keyboard for serious text input, though Graffiti isn't bad, and is significantly preferable to a soft keyboard.

Finger input is more convenient, for very casual use. Stylus suffers from both loss of the stylus itself (particularly when these are integrated into storage on the device itself), and inconsistent sizing of styli, even by the same manufacturer and nominal device model and version.

For the latter, Motorola's Stylus Android phones retain the same model and version number while the stylus dimensions change sufficiently to make them incompatible. This may induce a certain level of frustration....

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#175

Post by ksec » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

The was the problem when Tim / Craig merge all OS under the same team, in the name of efficiency.

On the surface it makes sense. iOS, macOS, iPadOS, or even tvOS. They share largely the same code base and they could be developed together.

What Steve did at his time was clear differentiation. There is the iPhone Team, the Mac Team. And each have their own software and hardware. While some resources are shared and collaborated, they are structurally different. And has a very different focus.

Now it is merged, the OS and UI focus is also somewhat merged. And the focus is gone. The attention of detail dropped.

Time and time again, the idea and philosophy of one size fit all doesn't work. May be it never did. Both in Hardware, UI, and even Programming like Swift UI.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#176

Post by Closi » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #159

Closi wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surface laptops have ended up being good laptops and mediocre/bad tablets IMO. While technically the same on the surface, there is something about the dedicated UX of an iPad that makes it a completely different experience in reality. If you replace an iPad you bought for $350 a year ago with a $600 surface, it will be a markedly worse experience as a tablet. Nothing has yet combined the two without comprimise -…

The reason being how Microsoft messed up the whole UWP delivery. Still, I rather have the compromise in Windows, and Android DEX land, than carrying two devices, with Apple margins.

Considering you can pick up both a new Macbook Neo AND an iPad from Apple for $200 less than the price of the cheapest (non refurbished) Microsoft Surface you can get from Microsoft, I'm not fully sure the 'apple tax' still exists when comparing to a surface.

Microsoft Store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt... - $1,149

Apple Links: https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ - $599 https://www.apple.com/ipad-11/ - $349

I'm sure there are much cheaper places you can get a surface - but comparing MSRP to MSRP for the new models is a much plainer comparison, particularly as it's often difficult to see if you are looking at an older model with Windows PCs.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#177

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #176

pjmlp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason being how Microsoft messed up the whole UWP delivery. Still, I rather have the compromise in Windows, and Android DEX land, than carrying two devices, with Apple margins.

Considering you can pick up both a new Macbook Neo AND an iPad from Apple for $200 less than the price of the cheapest (non refurbished) Microsoft Surface you can get from Microsoft, I'm not fully sure the 'apple tax' still exists when comparing to a surface. Microsoft Store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt... - $1,149 Apple Links: https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ - $599 https://www.app…

Unlike Apple, Surface isn't the only option, it is only a beacon how PC hardware should look like.

Neo is a robbery for a 8 GB device, especially in Europe.

Besides you missed the part of carrying multiple devices.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#178

Post by exabrial » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

iPads are mainly toys, many years later.

Speaking from in-person experience only: I do see a few niche cases where people have used them professionally with success (a tattoo artist friend, a builder (frames houses)). I also played in a band that used multitracks on an iPad. This is the minority use cases for it.

The largest deployment I see for iPads is simply POS terminals. They're over-engineered for this purpose, and likely won't have software updates long enough for the lifespan of POS terminals the likes of WalMart however.

The second largest deployment I see is expensive entertainment devices for kids. They're given to them to keep them busy.

Netbooks were valuable years ago. It's a great paradigm. Apple initially had the Air to grab this market segment, but slowly drifted the Air into an expensive premium product.

The success of the Neo shows consumer demand is very strong in the segment.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#179

Post by Tagbert » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

Fwirt wrote: post #94

QuiEgo wrote: post #81

My dream is having an “app” on ipadOS that switches out userland from ipadOS to macOS when launched. Let them be two silos, containers, VMs, whatever. Only allow “Mac mode” if you have a keyboard and monitor attached. Hell, automatically “sleep” it if you undock. Make it unapologetically keyboard-and-mouse first. One UI for keyboard/mouse. A second UI for touch. One device that can do it all. That’s the dream. I feel…

Touch and mouse are two very distinct forms of input that need to be kept separate. Every convertible Windows laptop I have ever used has convinced me of that. Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. You can flick your wrist to select any target the size of a grain of rice on a 32" screen. T…

Touch and mouse are complementary inputs that must be included. Working on a Windows laptop with touch and an iPad with Magic Keyboard have convinced me of that.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that having touch means you only use touch. Same for a mouse/trackpad pointer. Each has strengths and weaknesses and it better at some tasks than others. The pointer is good for clicking on small UI elements or doing small movements. It suffers with larger movements across the screen. Touch is good for scrolling, zooming, tapping buttons, tabs, and sometimes links. It’s good for jumping around the screen and moving things.

The keyboard is a third input/control interface and can be even faster and more precise than the mouse pointer. When the mouse first came on the scene, people derided it as less efficient than a keyboard and complained that you had to move your fingers away from the keyboard to use one. They swore they would never use one.

Where these work best is a mix of input modes using different ones for different scenarios. Having a mix if broad and precise inputs means you don’t need to tailor the whole interface for just precision or just broad strokes. The interface can be designed to accommodate the presentation of information and let the choice of inputs be up to the user. A side benefit of having difference input modes is that your hands move in different ways for each. You are less subject to repetitive stress from doing the same hand motion for everything.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#180

Post by pixel_popping » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

joe_mamba wrote: post #91

pixel_popping wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it like this: Would you manage a fortune in crypto on Windows? I wouldn't, because I just wouldn't even trust my environment at first. And for Visual Studio, I would solely run it in a firewalled VM. MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints which makes it insecure by default. There is also serious privacy concerns, basic one would be that telemetry sends all HWID of devices by defa…

>Think about it like this: Would you manage a fortune in crypto on Windows? I wouldn't Most banks on the planet manage trillions on Windows, so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by dying on this hill. Just because you wouldn't do something doesn't make you knowledgeable or right about that. >MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints. I wonder how all those companies, banks and government…

I doubt workers stealing data (which is more frequent than you might think) will just openly post about it...

Do you really believe it's normal that banks are on Windows? Do you want governments, military and such to be on Windows, really? It's not a popularity contest, we know that most corpos do terrible choice about IT stuff (at least back then and now they are doomed).

It breach basic every security principles, we should be relying on cryptography and not human trust? Would you let your ISP inject a CA in your OS and just rely on the trust of their employees to not look at your traffic? you're building your security model on the assumption that a private corporation's employees won't abuse access they structurally have, you rely on faith which imo is plain wrong. But even, the privacy factor has not been addressed, you are alright with MS correlating your entire life, many wouldn't accept that.