The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#61

Post by gmac » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #13

cm2187 wrote: post #4

Text selection is the most broken thing to me on an ipad. It makes any kind of editing pretty much unusable. Great device to browse the web from my bathtub and watch movies on a plane, but haven’t found any other usage.

This is so much worse as of ios13 - which was somehow meant to make text selection better, but for me made it so much less consistent. I really feel like this should be a solvable problem though. It can’t be that complicated to select text reliably.

Agreed — moving the cursor and selecting text has become almost unusable for me on iOS 13 [1]. It's a shame, because I always used to be impressed at how easy and natural it felt. I really hope they figure this out and reinstate the old approach.

[1] As I was saying only the other day: https://twitter.com/jawj/status/1221038674193932288

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#62

Post by jmkni » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:10 AM UTC

nallo wrote: post #26

I actually use iPad for coding nowadays. It is of course slower than using a keyboard but also a quite relaxing and fun way of programming.

What apps do you use for coding?

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#63

Post by ArmandGrillet » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

I always wonder if ipadOS should have a permanent dock or not, it would reduce the screen space but makes split-view much more discoverable.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#64

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #25

Gruber is right that the iPad hasn't revolutionized an industry like the Mac or iPhone. But the iPad was launched smack in the middle of the iPhone and the Mac, not in the middle of a green field. The iPhone had competition below it, from feature phones and Blackberrys. But there was nothing above it. Similarly, the Mac was launched into a very nascent market, where there were competitors (PCs), but it wasn't facing…

The iPad arguably succeeded because it wasn’t a convertible. However, now, especially given big phones, it feels as if some sort of tablet/laptop convergence will eventually be the future.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#65

Post by have_faith » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

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…

I think a big part of the mediocre sales is related to the use-cases that most iPad users have which seems to mostly be watching videos, browsing the internet, reading etc. Any 2 or 3 generation old iPad will do this fine with very little reason to upgrade. It doesn't have anything near comparable to the upgrade path that a lot of phone users who seem very eager to upgrade to a better camera/battery/etc.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#66

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #17

lowkeyokay wrote: post #11

>By 1994 almost all graphic designers and illustrators were using computers for work. The iPad is a great device but, it isn't essential to anything or anyone. If tomorrow there where no iPads anymore, we would all just get on with our lives.

That's because it's a consumption device, despite the heroic efforts of some people to prove otherwise. If I want to reply to an email I'll walk upstairs to my real computer rather than attempt to do it on our iPad. As Joey Hess said[1] "If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." [1] https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/

The main exception is drawing. It essentially replaces touch sensitive Wacoms.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#67

Post by silveroriole » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:21 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #6

cm2187 wrote: post #4

Text selection is the most broken thing to me on an ipad. It makes any kind of editing pretty much unusable. Great device to browse the web from my bathtub and watch movies on a plane, but haven’t found any other usage.

I just learned the spacebar trick a few months ago. I still get “5e” instead of “the” about twice a month. And once in a while I will be typing and four words to half a sentence will just disappear and I still have no idea how I’m doing that. A whole new text entry system wouldn’t go amiss for me, either.

It would be nice if they fixed the autocorrect learning insane things like correcting “male” to “Male” and “doesn’t” to “DOESNT”, so I wouldn’t have to do so much text selection to fix it. My iPhone which is really behind on iOS versions doesn’t do this but my iPad is awful for it.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#68

Post by myt6fore » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

John Gruber craves the power of keyboard macros on his iPad. He apparently thinks that's not possible as iPad's main power is one-state mode (and it truly is a remarkable tool that way). There's always a learning curve with artificial interfaces. Standard way to bridge this is use of metaphors. The problem with iOs on iPad is that iPhone was it's metaphor...

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#69

Post by flixic » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:24 AM UTC

Slartie wrote: post #42

The iPad has failed as a general purpose computing device, sure. But it has succeeded (along with other tablet devices of similar form factor) as a basis for a large and growing number of single-purpose use cases in various industries: - iPad POS are popular in smaller coffee shops and similar outlets - iPad-based document viewing solutions are used by pilots to replace large bags with manuals for planes that they us…

The issue with each of these examples is that hardware advancements barely matter. $200 Android tablet with a simple enough design works just as well.

Apple doesn't want to participate in such markets. That's why they try to push creativity narrative, "what's a computer" and so on. iPad can only succeed as a premium enough product, and that requires software differentiation.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#70

Post by GordonS » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 10:25 AM UTC

rusk wrote: post #39

Maakuth wrote: post #14

> How would anyone ever figure out how to split-screen multitask on the iPad if they didn’t already know how to do it? I actually recently got my first personal iOS (okay, iPadOS) device and this is how I feel about many of the UI features. Touching some side of the screen triggers this or that surprising feature and I'm struggling to undo what I did to get back to the business. Maybe what's needed is good old RTFM,…

> Touching some side of the screen triggers this or that surprising feature Ah this brings back fond memories of Windows 8 :-)

They even did this silly "corner thing" in the server edition, Windows Server 2012 - I remember the first time I RDP'd onto one, and had no clue how to open the start menu (the Windows key didn't work over RDP)!

I had to google it, obviously whilst cursing profusely the whole time. Microsoft have a lot of UI/UX people - it boggles the mind that someone thought this was a good idea!