211–217 of 217 posts
IOS will replace Mac OS, the writing has been on the wall for a while now, iOS is where the money comes in and where most usage is, and maintaining dual development apis is painful and costly. Apple doesn’t need to rush this process, but it is inevitable IMO, and is foreshadowed by actions like allowing iOS apps to run on macOS, moving Mac OS closer in UI to mobile, adding essentials like file handling to the mobile…
Hmm. Seems likely in a way, but I don't see how to square this with the professional crowd like software devs
I do think at some point they'll merge them though - maintaining two APIs which are distinct but incredibly similar is a waste of effort and confusing for developers.
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That's kind of the beauty of an iPad. It isn't for everyone. It hasn't been designed as a lowest-common-denominator type of device. There are a few things it's great at and those aren't necessarily the types of things a lot of people want. I have a 2018 iPad and it's easily my favorite computer to use. With a keyboard, it's lovely to write on. With the Pencil and Good Notes it's a fantastic note taking device. Get Pr…
iPad is the same iOS like iPhone, just with bigger screen. It's not a real device for work. There's no bash in iPad. There's no docker in iPad. There's no accessible filesystem in iPad. You can't connect arduino and program it with iPad. You can't install Java IDE and use it. It's infinitely far away from being usable. And making it usable means turning it into macOS. The only possible way for iPad to become slightly…
> The only possible way for iPad to become slightly useful is to provide a proper macOS in a some way.
Why would they do that? They already sell portable macOS machines.
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…
http://pchiusano.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-future-of-software...
And that culminated in
Essentially all code is pure functional and content addressable, meaning it’s inherently distributable and transferable (including closures). Like Smalltalk but with more use of modern programming language theory.
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The money and power within Apple have all gone to iOS over the last ten years, and developer interest is now overwhelmingly in iOS. That alone will dictate the direction of travel.
iPhones are apples leading revenue maker, but it’s closely followed by their services. Absorbing iOS into MacOS makes the most sense, they can sell devices that are iOSish only and then sell the premium dockable iPhones with MacOS. It also will help developers focus on a unified platform without alienating them with an entirely new tool suite.
You can now write an iOS app which runs on the desktop, and I suspect that's the direction Apple will promote - write once for iOS and it'll run anywhere, including Mac OS.
They'll obviously keep the brand Mac OS, as they do for iPad OS, but it would become the same OS as iOS once the SDKs are the same, the underlying OS is the same already (Darwin), and many frameworks are shared.
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Return it and get a MacBook for around the same price. I don’t understand the point of iPad Pros being so powerful when they can’t - y’know - run even Apple’s own Pro software. (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro) They’re mind-numbingly expensive toys, for sure.
They make a lot of sense for creatives. ProCreate, various image editing tools, even video editing... I know a lot of talented professionals who've switched over to iPad Pros for most of their work except 3D. A large part of that is the Apple Pencil and very low latency, but they appreciate every spec bump because it does help their type of work out.
I am a professional creative and use Apple’s software for that professional creativity, in the form of Logic Pro mainly as well as Final Cut.
The iPad’s offerings of GarageBand and iMovie are about as useful for me with the work I do as ProCreate vs. MS Paint.
No - the iPad isn’t good for ‘creatives’, it’s good for people who do digital visual art or design.
That’s...for creatives? On a pro level? Honestly it.
It is super shameful that Apple’s own Pro software won’t run on a device they are calling ‘Pro’.
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> I couldn't imagine trying to build an iOS app on an iPad, even an iPad Pro with a keyboard. Why not? The only officially-supported way to build iOS apps right now is using Xcode on a Mac. What would be the difference between using the Xcode app on a Mac or the Xcode app on an iPad with a keyboard?
The sheer number of on-screen controls in a single professional app Window present a problem when you have to make them all large enough to be a touch target.
Xcode for macOS isn't designed for that, but no reason xcode for iPadOS couldn't be.