The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#461

Post by HeWhoLurksLate » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #359

Terretta wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. I think Gruber’s dead wrong, and folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Aside from being able to turn his complaint off: To turn Multitasking features on or off, go to Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Multitasking then turn off Allow Multiple Apps if you don't want to use Slide Over or…

> folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Hell no. The iPad is a nice PDF reading machine with its retina display and the pencil is a joy to use but the device is barely usable for any text entry and don't support any real programming workflow. However some shortcomings can also be positive, in part…

Are you using a physical keyboard, or an on-screen one? The Windows touch keyboard isn't great either.

Not a very fair comparison.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#462

Post by derefr » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

koboll wrote: post #326

I do digital painting on the side, as a hobby. In that field, the iPad Pro, specifically the Procreate app, has been revolutionary -- every single famous digital illustrator, concept artist, and comics artist I follow on Instagram has one, and they post gorgeous work done on them regularly. It's the only tool that comes remotely close to challenging the gold standard workflow of Wacom tablet + Photoshop, and Wacom an…

> Hunting and tapping through menus on a touchscreen is, by nature, going to be slower then having your left hand ready to hit the undo command at a moment's notice.

I’ve seen DJs and other performance-artist using mixing software that actually spreads its control UX over several tablets. I wonder why no professional studio program has copied that?

(I’m not suggesting you’d need to own, like, five iPad Pros. More like one iPad Pro to draw on, and then a pile of random $100 Android tablets each showing one palette window.)

I think I did once see a demo where someone had a second iPad that acted entirely as an painter’s palette for the drawing on the primary iPad. And I mean “palette” literally: it was a canvas to smear and mix literal paint blobs around, with accurate optical results, which you could then sample with a brush tool, or take a cut of with a painting-knife tool.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#463

Post by mattkrause » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #437

tasogare wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Hell no. The iPad is a nice PDF reading machine with its retina display and the pencil is a joy to use but the device is barely usable for any text entry and don't support any real programming workflow. However some shortcomings can also be positive, in part…

You seem a little overconfident that it’s unusable for text entry or programming workflow. I type holes through the rubber keyboard skin in about 6 - 9 months I do so much text entry. Silk screened key caps are mostly gone by month 3.

That....doesn't seem like a feature!

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#464

Post by derefr » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #363

koboll wrote: post #326

I do digital painting on the side, as a hobby. In that field, the iPad Pro, specifically the Procreate app, has been revolutionary -- every single famous digital illustrator, concept artist, and comics artist I follow on Instagram has one, and they post gorgeous work done on them regularly. It's the only tool that comes remotely close to challenging the gold standard workflow of Wacom tablet + Photoshop, and Wacom an…

I'm curious why iPad Pro and not Surface, which from my (admittedly limited) use has always had digitizer responsiveness and functionality at the same level, with the benefit of also being a computer with all the normal software workflow and hotkeys.

From what I recall of the blogosphere reaction when the iPad Pro first came out, I think it having a 120Hz refresh rate had a lot to do with it. Not sure if the Surface has since caught up, but the generation of the Surface out at the iPad Pro’s release wasn’t nearly as responsive-feeling.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#465

Post by caconym_ » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #291

caconym_ wrote: post #270

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,…

I also own a Pro and it's a fantastic device dragged down by the OS. Apple should have made iPadOS from day one instead of forcing an oversized phone OS into a bigger form factor. We'll see how that turns out in a couple of years.

Yeah, I think "forking" iOS was a fine decision at this point but I really hope they make the aggressive product decisions that are really needed to turn it into a practical general-purpose machine for users who aren't just content consumers.

Also, I don't think they will. But I hope it anyway.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#466

Post by HeWhoLurksLate » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #437

tasogare wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Hell no. The iPad is a nice PDF reading machine with its retina display and the pencil is a joy to use but the device is barely usable for any text entry and don't support any real programming workflow. However some shortcomings can also be positive, in part…

You seem a little overconfident that it’s unusable for text entry or programming workflow. I type holes through the rubber keyboard skin in about 6 - 9 months I do so much text entry. Silk screened key caps are mostly gone by month 3.

Have you considered a mechanical keyboard? Those generally last a lot longer- like the switches are rated for something like 50 million presses, and if you get some good keycaps, you should be set for life.

r/mechanicalkeyboards is a good place to go for help, esp. if you check the wiki.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#467

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

AgloeDreams wrote: post #258

dredmorbius wrote: post #202

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 co…

The Lonovo Yoda (?) is one option I've looked at.

E-ink devices another. The Remarkable Tablet, updated to 128 GB - 1 TB storage, might work.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#468

Post by GranPC » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #455

simonh wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you’d be running unsigned, unreviewed binaries bypassing iOS controls directly on the CPU, which would be a security nightmare for iOS. This way it’s a completely emulated environment that’s isolated from the underlying system.

Running x86 binaries under software emulation, and forking off arbirary ARM binaries, aren’t the only two alternatives. You can do what Wine or gVisor does: run native-architecture code, but virtualize system calls as calls into the host binary.

You can't run arbitrary unsigned machine code on iOS. Interpreting it is the only solution.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#469

Post by Wowfunhappy » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

ashonalla wrote: post #446

mortenjorck wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was replaced in iOS 13 by a less comical, yet equally undiscoverable three-finger tap gesture. Considering that command-Z is not discoverable either, it’s not too bad, especially as there are undo/redo/clipboard buttons on the keyboard in most cases.

>> Considering that command-Z is not discoverable Traditionally, the keyboard shortcut for undo has been listed next to undo on the edit menu. That's pretty discoverable...

And it's brilliant.

Ever time you manually click edit → undo, you'll see the shortcut. It’s not invasive—it’s not some big popup that takes over the screen, or even a neon-colored tooltip that commands your attention—it’s just there, in the background, in case you happen to notice it. Maybe you’re not sure what it means at first, but if you keep seeing it every day, you just might try hitting the sequence of keys at some point...

The best UIs naturally help you progress from a basic user to an advanced user, without you even noticing it. I'm not saying the traditional desktop UI paradigm is the best that can ever possibly be done, but it has had 30 years of evolution at this point, and it's pretty darn strong.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#470

Post by octokatt » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

Industry hasn't caught up yet with the iPad, because it's a very different tool.

But you can see it start to happen. An iPad is becoming the default point of sale system in a lot of places. My wife works with autistic kids; he doesn't have a computer, he has an iPad so he can go from recording behavioral data to YouTube in a fluid motion.

The iPad stumbled because it was supposed to be a consumer device, and then developers and users realized it filled a niche for a lot of creation tasks, and Apple has been playing catch-up ever since.