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The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

daringfireball.net

251–260 of 617 posts

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docking to the side and charging magnetically doesn't just require magnetic charging hardware, it requires a redesign of the iPad to not have curved sides. So far that's only the 2018 iPad Pro. I had figured this would spread to the other iPads ASAP because of the Pencil 2, but they seem happy to drag it out for a couple of years.

Charging magnetically on the side of the host device is neat, but not required. A separate charging dock would work too.

I don't think that would be a good solution, you'd have yet another oddball charging widget and if you didn't bring it with you everywhere the battery would die and you couldn't recharge it.

If anything, I'd rather they put the charging hardware in the front bezel somewhere, since that's already flat. Not a good place for storage or for charging the pencil while the iPad is in use, but at least you wouldn't get stranded with a dead stylus and no charging gizmo.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#252
post #20

This is a very good take on the subject. I love the iPad, I use it all the time. It's an unbelievably good piece of hardware with a number of really good software applications. It is a surprisingly good thinking and note-taking tool, it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents), it is a great music workstation if you connect a MIDI keyboard and/or an external USB audio interface. Bu…

> it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents) Sounds intriguing. How would I go about copying the PDFs that are currently on my Linux PC onto it, though?

Pass them through an intermediary, such as Google Drive?

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#253
post #20

This is a very good take on the subject. I love the iPad, I use it all the time. It's an unbelievably good piece of hardware with a number of really good software applications. It is a surprisingly good thinking and note-taking tool, it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents), it is a great music workstation if you connect a MIDI keyboard and/or an external USB audio interface. Bu…

> it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents) Sounds intriguing. How would I go about copying the PDFs that are currently on my Linux PC onto it, though?

Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, a USB cable, a USB drive...

Classic solution is email it to yourself.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#254

> The iPad at 10 is, to me, a grave disappointment. The biggest disappointment to me is that I can't buy a Macbook that converts into a tablet. I've never owned a tablet, and my wife never replaced her 1st generation iPad, because there's just too much overlap between tablet and phone; and between tablet and laptop. And, as far as multitasking goes: When I do serious work that requires that kind of multitasking, I ne…

On the contrary, Apple is the only one who has this market figured out.

Ever see anyone at a coffee shop using a Surface Pro in tablet mode? I haven’t. That’s because the second you sit down to complete tasks for more than a minute or two you’ll want a keyboard at least if not a mouse, too.

In my view that eliminates productivity as a legitimate use for a tablet. There’s no way I’d prefer touching my screen to the kind of keyboard and trackpad you get on a MacBook Pro.

Next up, content consumption. As you mentioned, your phone covers this use case. I watch videos on the bus nearly every day and never desired a tablet. If you need that bigger screen, you’ve either already got a computer because you do productive work, or you buy a cheap tablet because you don’t need all the extra stuff a computer has, or you’ve got a bigger phone. Why would I watch content on a tablet when my laptop or TV can do that? A tablet doesn’t even stand itself up on my lap. I think only kids tolerate consuming content this way.

Finally, there’s the creative market. Apple has this nailed down with the iPad Pro. The only other reason to need a tablet over a phone or laptop is to do digital art. These are probably the only folks who need to buy two devices, but they’ve needed to buy expensive computer peripherals for ages.

So I think what you’re asking for is for someone to find the really tiny market who wants their tablet to do full computer stuff but doesn’t prefer a proper laptop computer, and then make special software modifications just for them like Microsoft did.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#255
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never available on iPad, and is no longer on newer iPhones. It's replaced by a long touch, but this cursor control function has disappeared.

It is on iPad, two-finger touch the scroll bar and it does it.

I hate how utterly undiscoverable stuff like this is. I use the force touch trackpad on my iPhone constantly and always wished it existed on the iPad.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#256

> The iPad at 10 is, to me, a grave disappointment. The biggest disappointment to me is that I can't buy a Macbook that converts into a tablet. I've never owned a tablet, and my wife never replaced her 1st generation iPad, because there's just too much overlap between tablet and phone; and between tablet and laptop. And, as far as multitasking goes: When I do serious work that requires that kind of multitasking, I ne…

There is a clear use case for the iPad, it just depends on if that use case justifies the price for an additional device.

The iPad is the best portable device for reading (besides a kindle), watching entertainment, or using an Apple Pencil.

Just because you don't have a use case for it, doesn't mean no one does.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#257

I bought my first and only tablet, an iPad, two years back. I havent't much used it since then. I bet it would be great for reading and watching videos, but the moment I want to type something, I just become needlessly irritated and switch back to my MacBook Pro. It's not just typing on a touch screen; that's awful, but then I bought a keyboard. But using the Dvorak layout, Scandinavian letters and Japanese input in…

Not to be funny, but I had almost 500 subscriptions to youtube channels. On desktop, Youtube made it deliberately hard to unsubscribe (it used to be easier), on ipad, the experience is much better. I also find netflix ux less crappy on ipad than on desktop.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#258

The tablet form-factor, battery-life, screen display, and wifi connectivity make it a potentially incredible tool -- yes, between a phone and a laptop, but also able to instantly convert between protrait and landscape modes, be tossed in a bag, propped up on a lap. With the addition of a folio-type keyboard and self-supporting tip-up mode, there's little the device cannot do from a set of basic laptop functionality.…

On #2, I've been really impressed with using ChromeOS's 'Linux Shell' I actually went out and bought a Chromebook Pixel LS and have been able to easily replace my work MacBook with it, love the 3:2 display and bits of the cleverness. Lenovo has a new tablet hybrid that might meet your needs. The Android App keyboard support sucks but the Linux stuff works great and for just content browsing and web work, Chrome OS comes pretty close to iPadOS or a Mac, it's very much a two headed monster of sorts.

The problem with competing with the iPad is just how hilariously advanced Apple is in the category of basic use. It's shocking really just how good the technical engineering side of their work is. The iPad Pro honest to goodness runs at 120 FPS with a less than 10ms pencil input response rate in a 6mm package with Core i7 Level CPU performance at ~$650. Microsoft can't currently match those numbers in a Windows based product, Google couldn't come close with the pixel Slate. Apple's $330 product outperforms the average laptop so doing something competitive in open source levels for under $200 is hard as heck to impossible just for things like 'open an app' and the bar is so high due to phones, people expect touch to compete with a $1000 phone (and rightfully so, they are great!).

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#259

> The iPad at 10 is, to me, a grave disappointment. The biggest disappointment to me is that I can't buy a Macbook that converts into a tablet. I've never owned a tablet, and my wife never replaced her 1st generation iPad, because there's just too much overlap between tablet and phone; and between tablet and laptop. And, as far as multitasking goes: When I do serious work that requires that kind of multitasking, I ne…

What's sad about this, is that iPad Pro has more than enough computational power to replace a laptop for almost all the tasks people use laptops for. Just using wireless peripherals or a dock should make the iPad Pro work for serious tasks just fine.

But as daringfireball explains, the problem is with the poorly thought out UI choices. It feels almost like the iPad is deliberately hobbled in many ways, but I think it's just poor management.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#260

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.

Doesn’t work on an iPad, which is where I want the feature the most. Also, force touch is no fine in newer model phones (because they screwed up the implementation in my opinion).
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