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MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

craigmod.com

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Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#41

Post by paulcole »

steveBK123 wrote: post #37
christophilus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I’ve never understood the demand for a touchscreen on a laptop. All of my non-Mac laptops have touchscreens, and I basically never use the touch feature except by accident (e.g. a kid pointing and asking a question and causing some code to highlight).

I think the best use cases of iPad are basically bifurcated into: 1) Consumption device People reading, scrolling, watching videos. Nice on the sofa, in bed, whatever. Also this use case has a lot of older users driven by eyesight issues that make a bigger slightly further screen interface better. Also very intuitive to young children (funny how often this elderly/youth overlap rears its head). 2) Creative (not produ…

> not productivity/coding!

You don’t think a non-artist, non-coder can be productive on an iPad?

Some jobs are heavily writing, reading, email/messaging, meetings, etc. Feel link those people can do quite well with an iPad, no?

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#42

Post by troupo »

benoau wrote: post #31
troupo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other? Yes, yes they would. You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. And not, for example, shitty lazy port of mobile apps to MacOS

> You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. Or you would just have a void where that hypothetical software could be, and this is what actually happened to the iPad (and AVP).

iPad could run iOS software since forever. Did it help iPad?

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#43

Post by cyberpunk »

tomaskafka wrote: post #33
cyberpunk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s got a bunch of decent ssh clients; I use mine quite often for this. With a hdmi capture thingy it’s also the display for a bunch of my rpis when they don’t boot etc.. Totally doable for travel debugging.

Yes, but what I meant was to have an IDE, where I could run and debug the stack, and deploy when happy. Technically totally doable, just give me a VS Code + local Linux container (Apple Silicon is great at virtualization) to which it can tunnel. In practice, impossible with Apple's limitations.

Ah fair enough, mostly i’m living in tmux/vim for those scenarios. Real dev work I’d want an IDE too, but seeing the Jetbrains splash on my holidays would ruin my holidays.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#44

Post by MSFT_Edging »

commieneko wrote: post #23

This person nails it. The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or…

> Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback.

I can try:

There's variation, paper to paper, pen to pen, pencil to pencil, they each present slightly differently. Write with a ballpoint on some receipt paper, then write with a fountain pen on some smooth, low absorbancy paper, then whip out one of those green engineering notebooks with a mechanical pencil.

For each task with a physical writing utensil and paper, you get a distinct experience that connects you physically to the task.

Once actually writing, there's a sense of finality, even the erasable pencil leaves a mark. Your movements have consequence.

Then there's the persistence. A piece of paper doesn't timeout to the lock screen. It's there, all the time, using zero energy to continue to exist. You can prop it up on your desk and forget about it until you need to reference it. If you're constantly going between two pages, you can lay them side-by-side without reducing their size.

I've always found writing/drawing on a tablet to be frustrating. It feels like I'm looking down at a notebook through a toilet paper tube, like I can never see the full picture. I used a wacom tablet with a chromebook and Xournal for years to take class notes. Something about disconnecting the stylus from the screen fixed those frustrations for me, like it took the expectations of paper away and provided the expectations of a pointing device.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#45

Post by paultopia »

Hard disagree. The iPad is a fantastic mac replacement for many purposes. I use the iPad Pro w/ the “magic keyboard” case for working essentially whenever I’m not physically in home or office in similar ways that I do my Mac, for two really big reasons:

(1) The (11-inch) size is fantastic: you get enough screen real estate to see what you’re reading and writing, but it still fits into an arbitrarily small bag and is light enough that you can comfortably walk around all day with it. The death of the original tiny MacBook Air was a huge fail for apple

(2) CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY FOR GOD’S SAKE CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY. Yes, you can always hotspot your phone, however, that’s still not nearly so reliable as a device with its own connectivity, some providers still limit bandwidth there, plus the last thing I need is extra battery drain on my phone when I’m already stressed about it.

TBF, if Apple ever brought back the original MacBook Air with modern specs and with a cellular chip, I would just take gigantic buckets full of money and throw them in the general direction of Cupertino until I got one, like, instantly. And there are definitely still compromises—-as an academic, I’ve been meaning to just write a command line front end to zotero and fling it onto a digital ocean server or something, because its iPad app is so godawful. But on the whole, I still reach for my iPad much much much more than my MacBook, for those two killer features.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#46

Post by znpy »

elboru wrote: post #36
hbbio wrote: post #17

The elephant in the room is something else. iPhones need desktop mode. Your apps, your data. USB-C screen + Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Running like iPadOS or even macOS.

Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years. I still dream of the day when my computer lives on my wrist, and I just have a few dummy screens in different formats that can connect to it so I can consume media or be productive.

> Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years.

the thing that annoys me is that pretty much everybody in the industry with a decent amount of understanding has known for more than a decade this was absolutely feasible.

and the most infuriating this is that i know for a fact it's not being done purely for a matter of product fragmentation.

the macbook neo is living proof that we could give people a single device (iphone 17 pro/pro max) and have that do pretty much everything. get in the office, hook your phone to a display via usb-c, start working. unplug your phone (which now is fully charged) and go home.

we could have dumb laptop-shaped terminals where we plug our phones, and get a larger display and a keyboard. or tablet-shaped "terminals". or desktop docks at home.

how cool would it be to leave for the office with just your company phone in your pocket ?

but we wouldn't need three separate devices: an iphone, an ipad and a macbook.

something similar would likely also apply to the android world, if android os developers could get their shit together and get a decent implementation working (android occasionally re-launches this, and it usually sucks again).

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#48

Post by steveBK123 »

paulcole wrote: post #41
steveBK123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best use cases of iPad are basically bifurcated into: 1) Consumption device People reading, scrolling, watching videos. Nice on the sofa, in bed, whatever. Also this use case has a lot of older users driven by eyesight issues that make a bigger slightly further screen interface better. Also very intuitive to young children (funny how often this elderly/youth overlap rears its head). 2) Creative (not produ…

> not productivity/coding! You don’t think a non-artist, non-coder can be productive on an iPad? Some jobs are heavily writing, reading, email/messaging, meetings, etc. Feel link those people can do quite well with an iPad, no?

Typing is subpar next to a Mac so by the time you put the case on it and are in similar size/weight class, for same/MORE money .. why bother with iPad ?

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#49

Post by rchaud »

elboru wrote: post #36
hbbio wrote: post #17

The elephant in the room is something else. iPhones need desktop mode. Your apps, your data. USB-C screen + Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Running like iPadOS or even macOS.

Back in 2011, when Motorola released a phone that could do something similar, I was sure that was going to be the future. It’s been 15 years. I still dream of the day when my computer lives on my wrist, and I just have a few dummy screens in different formats that can connect to it so I can consume media or be productive.

Samsung, Motorola and Huawei have had this for years. Samsung DeX is probably the most popular desktop environment of its type, and has been available for 9 years. Plenty of people use it (like myself), but it's too niche of a use case for the masses.

The 2011 Motorola Atrix came with a proprietary dock to connect to. Modern desktop environments can use the USB-C 3.2 DP ports on the phone to provide video out. Lapdock shells are widely available online.

Re: MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be

#50

Post by endemic »

christophilus wrote: post #30
steveBK123 wrote: post #21

I've used Mac for 20 years and iPad on&off for 10 years.. largely I agree with Craig. Touch on MacOS is basically useless, you won't realize this until you try using an iPad like a MacBook for an extended period of time. Reaching up from keyboard/trackpad to touch the screen quickly gets fatiguing. It is not ergonomic. The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd…

This is why I’ve never understood the demand for a touchscreen on a laptop. All of my non-Mac laptops have touchscreens, and I basically never use the touch feature except by accident (e.g. a kid pointing and asking a question and causing some code to highlight).

> demand for a touchscreen on a laptop

My take is that consumers didn't want this; it was manufacturers trying to "add value" or sell something new. Same as the recent "AI PC" craze.

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