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The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

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Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#261

Post by derg »

johnwalkr wrote: post #175
TrickyRick wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I am actually kind of annoyed they removed the force touch on newer iphones. I used it so often on my keyboard.

The tradeoff was a 4-hour longer battery so there was probably more gained than lost there but the usable area to move the cursor shrunk considerably (to a long touch on the spacebar only) and makes it harder to use.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#262

Post by rusk »

theshrike79 wrote: post #196
rusk wrote: post #38

Any chance we could get a Ctrl-F type function? I'm enjoying the mental training of learning to scan text for keywords myself, but from time to time this is a feature that I miss ...

Or just press Command-F on the keyboard =)

not if you're using the touchscreen as god intended

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#263

Post by throw0101a »

ksec wrote: post #228
qmmmur wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me recount an experience I heard second hand of a researcher developing user interfaces for research tools. Keep in mind the target audiences are people with PhD's and who have to comb through lots of data in order to do their job. They struggled with _double click_ as a concept. How fast, not moving the mouse in-between clicks etc, etc. Some people are really virginial when it comes to anything other than doing…

I would have thought Double Click was something "Death would take care of it" [1] by now, so may be not. I remember twenty years ago teaching my parents double click, they then spend years on computer and they still cant understand it. They have 4 modes in their mental model, Left Click, Right Click, and Double Click on both Left and Right. They dont understand when to use which. A lot of nerds / geeks/ tech people t…

> I would have thought Double Click was something "Death would take care of it" [1] by now, so may be not.

Wasn't this one of the reasons why Solitaire was included with Windows 3: to teach people about using a mouse?

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#264

Post by derg »

selectodude wrote: post #255
cma wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, for all the pride they take in the "it just works" and their "simpler" UI, they certainly love to hide useful features and just not tell you about them upfront.

Yeah, you can read and play around with the phone to learn but something simple like cursor and text adjustment should be priority no. 1 in terms of alerting the user that a function actually exists.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#265

Post by kbutler »

Someone wrote: post #207
cactus2093 wrote: post #126

Good points in the article. I also find the model names weirdly confusing, how did the iPad become the smaller, less powerful variant when the Air still exists? They did this with MacBooks too, though I think the tiny one may be discontinued now. And why is the iPad peripheral system such a mess? The released the pencil 2 which is a significant usability improvement and had every indication of replacing the pencil 1,…

”but that was years ago and they keep releasing new pencil 1 only devices” Apple doesn’t really release new budget devices; the case may change, but once technology has advanced enough to release an improved top-end device and parts prices for the existing product have fallen enough, they package the parts of the former top-end device in a new lower-priced device.

That turns out not to be true.

The newer low-end models have various changes from the previous high-end models, including case changes, but also other hardware. The original low-end iPhone SE had the plastic case with the hardware of the 5-something - but a smaller display. The iPad mini had the guts of an iPad 2, except it was a smaller device, requiring a new motherboard and display, and it had a better camera, too.

Similarly, the 2017 iPad was closest to the iPad Air 2, just a bit thicker with more battery, but it also had a new CPU and brighter display.

That pattern of component upgrades and size changes continues, and as the GP mentioned, Pencil 2 support (magnets and charging) hasn't trickled down to any non-pro devices yet, in spite of new releases to those non-pro devices.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#266

Post by acolumb »

amelius wrote: post #239
jwr wrote: 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?

I use Nextcloud[1], a self-hosted, platform-agnostic file sharing / personal cloud app. It's FOSS and is super easy to set up through Docker.

Whatever file I put onto it is available on iOS, Android, a browser and WebDAV. It also supports camera upload.

Germany recently switched to Nextcloud[2] to share data between agencies and as a privacy-respecting alternative to G Suite / MS.

When I upload a .doc to the platform my iPhone can open it within the app. Same for PDFs.

[1] https://nextcloud.com

[2] https://nextcloud.com/blog/german-federal-administration-rel...

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#267

Post by ryandrake »

slantyyz wrote: post #249
apexalpha wrote: post #143

This is excellent. My grandma (89) uses an iPad and iPhone. She can use both these devices exactly because of the simplicity mentioned in the article. 1. Open app by tapping it. 2. Close it by tapping the physical button. (rip) That's it. And that's why my grandma can use it. The first and only device she comfortably uses to this day. People in our (tech) communities tend to overestimate a users ability with technolo…

I'm kinda jealous of your experience. My dad (early 80s) struggles with tech in general, including the iPad and iPhone. Many in his peer group use touchscreen devices with fewer issues. This is what I noticed from trying to teach him how to use the interfaces: 1 - He refuses to mentally process what the icons represent and ignores the text label below them. I thought switching them to Chinese would help, but he'd str…

The "Address Book" vs. "Contacts" one is a good example. The one that hits some of the non-techies I know is "Drive". More than a handful of people I know still confuse it with Maps. They are going to drive to the next town over, and want directions, so obviously they look for Google Drive.

I'd guess 99% of the population associates the word "Drive" with cars and driving, and 1% associates it with "internal storage" yet what did we geeks decide?

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#268

Post by gdubs »

Can’t believe it’s been 10 years. The iPad launched my app development career. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) bought the first generation iPad for me so that I could finish developing an app. I felt that I had missed the wave with iPhone apps, and the iPad was a new opportunity. The result was Polychord.

From day 1, the iPad was a great format for music making. But it’s fun to look back and remember that back then it didn’t have MIDI, and Audiobus would be some time to follow.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#269

Post by Fiahil »

I completely agree with this article. The iPad hardware is absolutely wonderful, it's light, gorgeous and powerful. I got the latest iPad pro to watch Netflix in bed and it fills that purpose completely.

However, the OS running on the machine is bad. Very bad. The multitasking is horrifying. The Files app is unusable (especially if you want to access your files from an FTP server). You have to use your finger to select a textbox on the screen before you can use your physical keyboard. Copy/Paste between apps is a nightmare (mostly because of the really poor multitasking). Sharing your screen via Airplay is useless except for demoes (doesn't match the target monitor resolution, nor transform the iPad into a giant touchpad). It doesn't support multiple icloud/gmail accounts (if you want to share it with your SO). I can use a terminal and SSH to my raspberry pi, but I can't use git, bash, node, python, go or rust on it...

Just let met install MacOs instead, it can't be worse.

PS: even having a console-only ubuntu VM would make me happy at this point.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#270

Post by caconym_ »

For me the biggest gap between the iPad and a general purpose computer is the lack of a sensible, simple filesystem abstraction, and the pile of janky and inconsistent UI bullshit they apparently think can replace it. My iPad Pro is great for drawing and writing and browsing the web and watching video content, which are the things I bought it for, but when I use it I don't feel in control of my data.

It's really sad, because I love it as a computing device and the missing pieces are totally arbitrary. It could offer the same user experience it offers now while still giving me the tools I need to have it replace my laptops and desktops.

I bought my mom an iPad in 2012 and she is still (!) using it. She loves it. But she has an iMac too, which as far as I can tell she mostly uses to—you guessed it—manage files. Or, at least, that's the only part of her workflow that can't be hosted on the iPad. 8 years later, that's still the case.

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