The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#551

Post by Fr0styMatt88 » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 9:22 AM UTC

signal11 wrote: post #518

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember people saying that the iPad was just going to be a big iPhone and what is the point? I NEVER understood this. I was one of those people that was immediately excited about the iPad. Being able to lay back in bed and casually browse the web, read magazines, watch movies, play games? On something with a decently large screen, decent battery life and something that wasn't bulky? PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY!!!!…

I completely agree with you. A really good drawing surface with Pencil, handwritten notes + handwriting recogniser, a distraction-free writing environment with a keyboard cover, comic book reader, ebook reader* and light as heck? Also, a display of that quality for that price? Oh yes. *Reading O’Reilly Safari books only works well on the iPad, I’ve found. Ever since they killed Kindle downloads. In any case, most tec…

Don't get me started on Google! Hangouts, for whatever reason, never got iOS multitasking support like being able to use it in a side panel (and if I recall correctly, the multitasking features got to iOS long before Google started abandoning Hangouts or whatever they're doing with it now). Though to be fair, I really think Apple should have found a way to do this without a requirement from app developers. I don't think it's an impossible task - just look at what Samsung DeX can do on Android without explicit support from existing apps (even if it isn't perfect,).

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#552

Post by SllX » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 9:43 AM UTC

Reality is actually more exciting and more boring. Apple sold about $20B worth of iPads last year alone and it has a sizable install base for all these services Apple is pushing: TV+, Arcade, News+, Apple Music, iCloud, etc.

There’s a lot to criticize about the software, it is actually very easy to criticize the software for not doing the things you want it to do because it seems like it ought to be able to, and there is obviously a better way to do the thing you want to do if Apple would only do X, Y, and Z and stop doing A and B to hold it back.

Here’s where reality gets really boring though: iPads are only tablets, and only of the stuff in your bag, leave on a table or have it permanently docked in some kind of kiosk variety. That lends itself to being a bit better at some applications than others, but there‘a some applications it will always be downright inferior to compared to a laptop or phone. It’s not going to fit in my pocket better than my phone, and it’s not the entire self-contained package that my laptop is, nor does it have the benefit of always being plugged into a wall socket being able to draw essentially unlimited power that my desktop has. I could try to replicate some of the benefits of those devices with some creative planning and a big enough pile of money with some mixed success, but in exchange for not being as good for certain applications, it is absolutely top tier for reading and drawing. It’s all about the trade offs you are willing to make.

If what a tablet is better at is more important to you than what a laptop is better at, and the few things you would prefer to do on a laptop can still be done on a tablet, you might make the tradeoff to spend more money to have both, or you might make the tradeoff to save some money and only have the tablet. Neither is a bad choice to make.

Putting it that way is boring though, and it doesn’t play into the narrative that we’re only going to have one or the other at some far flung point in the future and tablets are the predestined winner of that zero sum game, you know, just like how we only have GUIs these days and positively no one uses what we once called the command-line interface.

In retrospect the above comment is less a direct response to Gruber’s article, and more a response to a broad swath of sentiments expressed here in this thread and across the part of the web that spends too much time talking about Apple. It should be understood as such anyway.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#553

Post by mbreese » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:11 AM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #452

gregjor wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working Copy and CodeHub handle git repos. I code from an iPad Pro sometimes with Blink (mosh/ssh client) and Working Copy with Textastic. I sympathize about not running local dev environments, but for the actual work I do the apps won't run on a laptop or local PC anyway without a lot of trouble, so I'm used to working over ssh to a dev server. That works very well on an iPad, even better with a decent keyboard with…

I'm quite confused why you'd pursue attempting to use an iPad for development work. As someone who hates laptop-style thin keyboards I could justify it by the fact that carrying around a laptop and a keyboard feels more silly than an iPad and a keyboard - but the weight difference is pretty negligible and the software running on a laptop just has so much more utility for task switching (checking the kanban - making s…

I’ve tried the iPad as a workstation off and on for many years (I had an original iPad). While I’ve never quite gotten it to work for me, I can still see the appeal. And for exactly the reason you state.

A full laptop is much better at task switching.

But when I’m working, and in a zone, task switching is the last thing I want to do. I want a distraction free workspace without widgets and notifications. On the iPad, this is so much easier to achieve. And if you have to change apps (and you have a keyboard), the app switcher is the same as on a Mac... cmd-tab still works.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#554

Post by iudqnolq » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

CarlRJ wrote: post #163

majewsky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that vi(m) is more user-friendly by being more upfront about its learning curve.

Vi(m) favors “easy to use” over “easy to learn” - which is the right tradeoff for a tool that one can use for hours a day for decades. Though I always liked the line, “Vi is user-friendly - it’s just picky about who its friends are”. (BTW, “ZZ” is usually the right answer to quitting/exiting - still funny to see, decades on, people teaching “:wq ”.)

Thank you. I just learned I've been exiting vim wrong for years.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#555

Post by steve_taylor » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:21 AM UTC

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #483

jarjoura wrote: post #480

As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product. "These things will probably sell in the educ…

I still remember people saying that the iPad was just going to be a big iPhone and what is the point? I NEVER understood this. I was one of those people that was immediately excited about the iPad. Being able to lay back in bed and casually browse the web, read magazines, watch movies, play games? On something with a decently large screen, decent battery life and something that wasn't bulky? PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY!!!!…

There’s no Xcode (yet), but there’s a growing number of coding apps available for iPad and even iPhone. My all-time favourite is Codea, which is a Lua game development environment that exports to Xcode so you can publish your games to the App Store.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/id439571171

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#556

Post by terpua » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

jarjoura wrote: post #480

As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product. "These things will probably sell in the educ…

this so called niche product produced $6B in one quarter or about $24B a year, which constitute a fortune 500 (global) company!

so give me a nice, niche product company any day!

https://fortune.com/global500/2019/search/

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#557

Post by gregjor » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:40 AM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #452

gregjor wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working Copy and CodeHub handle git repos. I code from an iPad Pro sometimes with Blink (mosh/ssh client) and Working Copy with Textastic. I sympathize about not running local dev environments, but for the actual work I do the apps won't run on a laptop or local PC anyway without a lot of trouble, so I'm used to working over ssh to a dev server. That works very well on an iPad, even better with a decent keyboard with…

I'm quite confused why you'd pursue attempting to use an iPad for development work. As someone who hates laptop-style thin keyboards I could justify it by the fact that carrying around a laptop and a keyboard feels more silly than an iPad and a keyboard - but the weight difference is pretty negligible and the software running on a laptop just has so much more utility for task switching (checking the kanban - making s…

I don't know why finding that other people have different work patterns and preferences would confuse you. I'm not "attempting" to use an iPad -- I've used an iPad and a Chromebook (currently Pixel Slate, also a tablet) for five years professionally. I used a MacBook before that. I'm old enough to remember hauling a VT-100 and an acoustic modem home to work on weekends a long time ago. I'm also old enough to remember people saying no professional programmer could use a personal computer, or a laptop.

I don't use Kanban or constantly switch to chat. I can see if my VPN is running by looking at an icon at the top of the iPad screen. I don't constantly task switch while working.

It has nothing to do with weight or feeling silly. I want to concentrate on one thing at a time, and I want a portable setup for working because I travel a lot.

An iPad developer setup won't work for everyone, but for the people it does work for it can work very well. 90% of my programming is done over ssh to remote servers, and the iPad can do that perfectly. The rest of my time is dealing with email, also fine on an iPad, or Slack, or reviewing PRs, which I can do right on my iPad.

Other developers have different requirements.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#558

Post by gregjor » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #553

munk-a wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite confused why you'd pursue attempting to use an iPad for development work. As someone who hates laptop-style thin keyboards I could justify it by the fact that carrying around a laptop and a keyboard feels more silly than an iPad and a keyboard - but the weight difference is pretty negligible and the software running on a laptop just has so much more utility for task switching (checking the kanban - making s…

I’ve tried the iPad as a workstation off and on for many years (I had an original iPad). While I’ve never quite gotten it to work for me, I can still see the appeal. And for exactly the reason you state. A full laptop is much better at task switching. But when I’m working, and in a zone, task switching is the last thing I want to do. I want a distraction free workspace without widgets and notifications. On the iPad,…

I prefer to eliminate the task switching as much as possible rather than optimize it. I mainly use a Chromebook, always in full screen with one app window. I can switch windows with a keystroke. I don't need or want a bunch of stuff cluttering the screen.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#559

Post by gregjor » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

lil1t wrote: post #549

gregjor wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPad is fine for writing code, but not capable of compiling/running code. For web development specifically you can't run a real web app on it. iOS Safari doesn't have the inspector/debugger so you can't use it much for debugging/experimenting with web pages. If iOS Safari had the inspector/debugger, or just inspector with live JS console, I would almost never need to use my laptop (which is just Chromebook, but ru…

There are web inspector apps on the App Store. I use Inspect Browser [1] myself for that purpose. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inspect-browser/id1203594958

I use that. It has a JS console but it doesn't seem to have access to JS on the page like the Chrome console does. If I had Chrome or Safari web developer tools I would only have the clunky text selection to complain about, and I can live with that.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#560

Post by 72deluxe » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:59 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #383

72deluxe wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally have no idea how any newbie will know how to use the iPad via the array of gestures to show the dock, go home, switch apps, move an app over another, move them side-by-side, know that you can use mutliple fingers on the keyboard to use it as a cursor pad. I used to think the meaningless icons with zero text or popup hints were bad (they are!) and the zero differentiation between a UI item and ordinary tex…

So we need to add multitasking controls directly to the visible UI. That means they could be accidentally triggered much more easily, so we'd need to do that in a clear and obvious way that isn't confusing, doesn't lead to accidental triggering and is easy and obvious to get out of. Also they need to be unobtrusive and minimise the impact on the display of applications and content. Clearly having obscure gestures tri…

A single gesture from one side of the screen, in the style of the Windows 8 charms? A set of buttons (side-by-side, floating, switch foreground/background floating etc).

Or put it on the dock. One gesture to learn - show the dock, multitasking actions.