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The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

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Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#71

Post by Maakuth »

perilunar wrote: post #48
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,…

There is a manual of sorts: Tips.app There’s also an iPad User Guide you can download in the Books.app.

It's not a surprise to me that there's a manual and that it's even on the device :). But it seems like an iOS design pattern to keep this stuff hidden. I think it's okay for things that rarely happen by accident (multi-finger swipes or so), but touching (swiping?) over screen edges is something I seem to do often, so it becomes a problem. And I'm a geek in my early thirties, so it's not only a problem for the elderly!

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#72

Post by Nextgrid »

perilunar wrote: post #48
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,…

There is a manual of sorts: Tips.app There’s also an iPad User Guide you can download in the Books.app.

I miss the time when there was no "Tips.app" nor a need for such an app. Nearly every UI feature used to be discoverable and made sense. Those that didn't (like gestures to close apps on iPad) were gated by a toggle in Settings so that casual users who don't know/need it don't accidentally trigger it.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#73

Post by Nextgrid »

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.

This could actually be a valid reason to jailbreak my iPhone (the last time I did so was 10 years ago). Does anyone know if there are any tweaks that would bring back the old pre-iOS13 behaviour?

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#74

Post by alopex_plenus »

bronco21016 wrote: post #45
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.

If all of them disappeared into thin air one night then nearly the entire global aviation system would come to a screeching halt. It’s the device of choice among air carriers for navigation charts. Paper backup isn’t even carried anymore. We just carry extra iPads and batteries. I’m not sure any of the charting apps used by air carriers are even available on another OS at this point. I’ve never been aware of JeppFD P…

so the captain tells us to switch off all electronic devices and then proceeds to navigate the plane via iPad?

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#75

Post by Slartie »

flixic wrote: post #69
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.

I get that, but after all it's not really Apple's choice what their buyers do with their devices. If they overwhelmingly decide the iPad is a nice base for this kind of application, Apple can either embrace that decision and cater to these customers (of which a good part are obviously ready to at least pay more than those $200 for the cheap Android tablet option, probably because of better update support as suggested by that other comment alongside this one) or try to make the device appealing to other target markets that they'd like to be in.

But when those other markets don't really take the bait, at some point it might be a good idea to accept that there is a market, but in a somewhat different place than originally anticipated.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#76

Post by Nextgrid »

flixic wrote: post #69
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.

iPad succeeds in these examples because it's a consistent environment with updates.

The problem with the cheap Android tablet is that unless the entire world standardises on a single model of tablet for these purposes you'd have all kinds of quirks around hardware, etc. Updates are also another issue even on premium-priced Android devices, so the cheap one is a lost cause.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#77

Post by asenna »

GordonS wrote: post #70
rusk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

I legit had to google how to Shut down / Restart a Windows 8 machine back then! It's insane to think that tech people could not figure out the UI, imagine what the regular people had to go through.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#78

Post by asplake »

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.

> 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

I don't edit text on the iPad for exactly that reason. As soon as I start typing fast using the screen keyboard, I keep losing stuff

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#79

Post by toasterlovin »

gnicholas wrote: post #21

> The iPads Pro outperform MacBooks computationally. Off-topic, but it's an interesting choice to pluralize "iPads Pro", especially in a sentence where it could easily be singular ("The iPad Pro outperforms MacBooks computationally"). After all, there aren't different tech specs on the different iPads Pro (of the same generation). They just differ in screen size, IIRC.

Being fussy about pluralization and other assorted grammatical issues is something Gruber is known for to his fans. He famously (if you're deep in the Apple blog/podcast world) made a point of referring to the new Pro AirPods as AirPods Pro, which follows Apple marketing, but sounds completely ridiculous when spoken aloud.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#80

Post by flixic »

Nextgrid wrote: post #76
flixic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

iPad succeeds in these examples because it's a consistent environment with updates. The problem with the cheap Android tablet is that unless the entire world standardises on a single model of tablet for these purposes you'd have all kinds of quirks around hardware, etc. Updates are also another issue even on premium-priced Android devices, so the cheap one is a lost cause.

Updates themselves are an assumption. I imagine a large percentage of cafe checkout and meeting room booking tablets are never updated once installed.

The distinction here is Appliance vs Computing Platform. And so far many tablets are seen as appliances, not computers.

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