"It's Apple's fault that nobody has made an all-in-one podcast production app for the iPad."
This sounds like an excellent opportunity for someone.
Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
221–230 of 630 posts
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screen Mirroring is possible, but it has to be a little creative. iPad is super handy but I'm not sure a laptop has turn by turn nav, maybe it could via an emulator.
> maybe it could via an emulator As a programmer with serious mobile experience I fully understand it. But it sound a bit crazy that a powerful and more superior (and open! In both hard and sometimes soft - if with an opensource OS) platform need so _emulate_ an embedded one (mobile, usually at least partially proprietary one) to provide turn-by-turn nav: what appears to be a first-order need of anyone in the modern…
I used to have a pink netbook that ran Microsoft Streets and Trips that I used together with a Bluetooth GPS. I had a power adapter that plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car and also a line in cable for the stereo. I could play music with Windows Media Player and have turn-by-turn directions work flawlessly. It was particularly good for road trips with a navigator in the passenger's seat as it had a great user interface for managing large numbers of points of interest and making routes that hit multiple points. It was the best satnav I ever had.
I remember the time I was heading south from Syracuse in an area notorious for state police speedtraps when I had pulled alongsides a greyhound and my son had logged into the WiFi on board the bus. The bus driver got pissed at us and got up to 95 mph to shake us. I gave up first but I figured he'd have a lot more to lose from getting a ticket than I would.
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#223When the iPad first came out, people knocked it as "a big iPod touch". But…maybe that wasn't a bad thing? I feel like the iPad, despite alllll the efforts to seemingly make it a pro device, is an iPhone, but bigger. It's great for messages, browsing Facebook, and watching video, and that's just fine. Because that serves a lot of people's needs, and trying to add in a bunch more stuff just overloads the touch interfac…
The ipad is the perfect device for old people. You can't mess it up, it's extremely simple to use, has a long life span, etc. The users do not care that they can not host a webserver on it because it prevents their bank account being drained after they click the wrong advert.
I know someone who lives in a trailer in the boonies whose only window on the internet is an Amazon Fire Tablet.
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go. I can't plug my macbook into a car to use maps or play mus…
Screen Mirroring is possible, but it has to be a little creative. iPad is super handy but I'm not sure a laptop has turn by turn nav, maybe it could via an emulator.
Long before mobile smart phones, truckers were using apps like copilot gps on their offline laptop for just this. I used to have it on a laptop for install work I did. In fact, I continued using it in areas with no cell coverage. Another app I used was Microsoft Streets and Trips. In 2006, they added a GPS version that did turn by turn nav.
That said, the point still stands. I did some searching, and Streets and Trips are discontinued. Copilot was bought by Trimble and AFAIK, you can only get the mobile app versions (they still have offline support). I think their truck fleet software will still run on laptops, but are sold as part of a bulk purchase.
I did find MapFactor, which I've never used, as being something that will work on Windows and Linux (via wine) and it provides real-time GPS navigation.
https://www.mapfactor.com/en/products/navigation-software-st...
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#225I used to carry a big desktop replacement but now I think different and carry an iPad. I use it as a terminal for a better windows computer than the one I used to lug around. I use two (2) applications for productivity: Safari to run web applications and the RDP client for everything else. I think different. Instead of getting an expensive special-purpose keyboard, I have my choice of any compact Bluetooth keyboard a…
I've been tempted to try this for a while.
How do you find this in practice?
For example, do you have random connection errors, or latency issues?
And have you tried connecting from another country? Or are you always physically close to the main device?
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#226I've never understood the attraction of the iPad for travel with any hint of work. Today's modern laptops, whether a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or the typical corporate 14-inch Lenovo, take up so little room and weight that it's hard to imagine giving up a real keyboard simply so you can carry a few extra pair of underwear that, in today's modern fabrics, can be carried in the pocket of a laptop sleeve anyway. Heck, e…
>> Here I sit at my mother’s dining room table, typing on a MacBook Air. Something has changed in my approach to travel, and I’m trying to understand just what it is…
> I just don't get it.
Here I sit far from any WiFi, doing the same on an iPad Pro with the same "real keyboard" backlit magic keyboard with a smaller but just fine touchpad, a charging cord dock port, an inset hinge taking less room on an airline tray table; and of course the 120hz 2732x2048 264ppi touch screen with 1600nits brightness; connected by eSIM to my 4G and 5G carriers of choice but not really caring because I also have 2TB of local SSD built in.
I guess I have a very different approach to travel.
I don't have to be at my mother's dining room table. I don't have to get my Verizon JetPack (I own the top model fast enough to act as backup uplink for a small office in an emergency, but then I'm carrying two things, not one).
I can shed the keyboard and just read my Kindle, or take notes with feel of paper like my Remarkable 2 thanks to having installed the Paperlike™ screen protector while fresh out of the box.
I can present on a second screen, or drag multiple different app windows to a 6K monitor.
I can use it days in a row without having any idea where a power pack is, fast charge it from any 30W USB-C, and slow charge it from, well, anything. Same port works with most any USB-C dock, and any Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Lying in a hotel bed watching Netflix in HDR with speakers is no way to use a laptop. The iPad 12.9 at arm's length -- no awkward keyboard to weigh you down or cramp your style -- is a larger apparent screen size than a 75" TV, and looks better than most of them too.
All the tools most anyone needs are there. Office suite, Affinity suite, VSCode via blink code (same tool for mosh/ssh), Obsidian notes for personal KB, GoodNotes for handwritten ... even Kagi Orion if I need Firefox and Chrome extensions.
Same form factor for travel, same form factor for the boardroom, and more specs than really anyone needs: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/
And nobody's offended when you're using it. Nobody says "no laptops please".
Does everything, goes everywhere, all at once.
. . .
> even when my trip combines business and personal, it's no challenge at all to carry two laptops--my own, and the company's, in the same attache
TL;DR: For business or personal, iPad Pro w/ Magic Keyboard is no challenge at all to carry no laptops, in no attache, with no WiFi. And no inspections from TSA.
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#227The key sentence here is: > This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done). Apple (since Lisa/Mac, after Apple II, which had an open architecture) likes appliances and to control the user experience, so the iPad is "more Apple" than Macs are. Whenever I am waiti…
Well that or one or more of those are work devices. I’m not going to do all my personal stuff on a work-provided machine so I’ll still bring my iPad along.
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go. I can't plug my macbook into a car to use maps or play mus…
I had my "single device for everything" experience with the original Galaxy Note. I would plug in a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and use it as a computer (it required a special OTG USB to HDMI adapter). It connected to my car. It had a big enough screen to be a mobile Tv. It was fun for sketching with the included pressure sensitive pencil. I had a game-controller that it could click into, making it into a handheld g…
Do-it-all devices tend to not really satisfy in anything. I got a Lenovo Yoga that was meant to be “convertible” between laptop and tablet and I never really did use it anywhere near as much as the technically much less powerful iPad Air I bought after.
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#229The key sentence here is: > This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done). Apple (since Lisa/Mac, after Apple II, which had an open architecture) likes appliances and to control the user experience, so the iPad is "more Apple" than Macs are. Whenever I am waiti…
Foldable iPhone Plus could probably narrow it down to two but I've also seen people go with ipad mini + apple watch + airpods where the duties of the phone split between the iPad/watch.
Re: Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPad is a much better tablet than the Surface. The art and note apps are incomparably better. The ebook reader apps too. iPad OS is limited, but it's fine for reading, writing and sketching. It's good to do that on a separate device that is not connected to work stuff. I can bring my iPad in the bedroom because it's just a fancy book. Windows is also far too needy for this sort of device. I returned my Surface af…
It comes down what you actually want to do. My time spent on the iPad was defined by what I couldn't do, and it was extremely frustrating, I ended up not doing it instead of go getting the laptop from across the house. Windows is not refined nor optimized for tablet use by any measure, but it actually does the job, instead of showing a cute and extremely refined middle finger half the time. The breaking point for me…
I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazines, surf the Web, and watch videos. And for that it’s arguably better than a laptop. At least I find myself using it for those things much more.