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Unifying iPadOS and macOS

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Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#91

Post by tacker2000 »

lisper wrote: post #76
tacker2000 wrote: post #73

Maybe the future will be 90% of normal users using dumbed down touch devices, and the rest of us “power” users who need to develop stuff will be using a normal OS. Maybe the normal OSes that we all grew up with are actually overkill for these other users and they dont even want it. Why would they need a shell? Or the ability to install some arbitrary programs? They only need email and word and thats it. Maybe this is…

It depends on whether you think computers should be tools for empowering people or subjugating them.

But isnt that too far fetched? Most people dont care about anything else than checking emails and playing candy crush. They dont think about empowerment or subjugation or changing the world.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#92

Post by zozbot234 »

tacker2000 wrote: post #73

Maybe the future will be 90% of normal users using dumbed down touch devices, and the rest of us “power” users who need to develop stuff will be using a normal OS. Maybe the normal OSes that we all grew up with are actually overkill for these other users and they dont even want it. Why would they need a shell? Or the ability to install some arbitrary programs? They only need email and word and thats it. Maybe this is…

It's sad that we can only think of touch screen interfaces as "dumbed down". The affordances of a touch-centric interface have yet to be fully explored; at least in principle, there's no reason why they could not be made just as capable as a keyboard+mouse.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#93

Post by simonh »

flohofwoe wrote: post #4

It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual" vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes. It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved…

Are Windows, Linux and MacOS really better platforms for lots of tasks, performed by mainstream and professional users for daily tasks, principally because they are used to pipe text between command line tools? This is delusional.

I have good news, iOS user's productivity woes are solved. Using iSH you can pipe text between command line tools all day every day. Finally the power of the iPad is unleashed!

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#94

Post by _ph_ »

tacker2000 wrote: post #91
lisper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on whether you think computers should be tools for empowering people or subjugating them.

But isnt that too far fetched? Most people dont care about anything else than checking emails and playing candy crush. They dont think about empowerment or subjugation or changing the world.

Even if it is not done daily, not being able to tinker with your system is fundamental. You don't have to be an expert yourself, but most computer users know someone with in-depth knowledge or just follow step-by-step instructions from the web or, imagine the concept, a computer book :) This allows a lot of control of your computing environment, you just don't get on an iPad.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#95

Post by lisper »

tacker2000 wrote: post #91
lisper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on whether you think computers should be tools for empowering people or subjugating them.

But isnt that too far fetched? Most people dont care about anything else than checking emails and playing candy crush. They dont think about empowerment or subjugation or changing the world.

Beware of self-fulfilling prophecies, especially this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#96

Post by flohofwoe »

simonh wrote: post #93
flohofwoe wrote: post #4

It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual" vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes. It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved…

Are Windows, Linux and MacOS really better platforms for lots of tasks, performed by mainstream and professional users for daily tasks, principally because they are used to pipe text between command line tools? This is delusional. I have good news, iOS user's productivity woes are solved. Using iSH you can pipe text between command line tools all day every day. Finally the power of the iPad is unleashed!

The text piping is just one small part and not the most important, instead its about sharing and processing any type of data with small tools that can be combined like lego blocks (and if there isn't the right lego block for a problem you can build your own). The UNIX shell is just one very primitive implementation of that idea (and yet it's still much more powerful than anything we have on iOS or Android).

In the "mobile app ecosystem", each application is more or less an island. It would be possible to achieve something similar on iOS/Android devices, but the entire "value proposition" of walled garden ecosystems isn't compatibel with this idea of open and creative computing. One prerequisite is that I actually own my device and can do anything I want with it, without the platform owner getting in the way.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#97

Post by flohofwoe »

tomjen3 wrote: post #83
flohofwoe wrote: post #4

It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual" vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes. It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved…

The Unix shell was exceptionally good for its time. Powershell, IMHO, go it right by not sending strings but objects around. This gets you around the issue of spaces and means you can send more than one value. I haven't been able to play with the shortcuts functionality because I don't have an iPhone, but if it is what I think it is it, it is a powerful tool to do things with. We shouldn't fail to acknowledge that mo…

And that's exactly why the "great unification" doesn't make sense.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#98

Post by _ph_ »

There is a lot of reason for having different UIs to start with, between a tablet and a laptop or even a desktop computer. Though I think productivity could be better on the iPad in this regard too.

But the very basic problem is file handling. It somehow seems to vary across apps. Some have local storage to themselves which is hidden from everyone, some have visible local storage, others support files/iCloud. While files can be cumbersome on its own, if at least all apps would share the data in a way accessible by files, it would be a start.

Best example which keeps bugging me: music. I ripped my CDs into my iTunes library and consequently into Apple Music. Now, Apple Music decided to delete some of my tracks from its library. How to get them back? I even was able to put them into my iCloud drive, but there is no way to add music to your iPad this way. Is there any other way you can add tracks to Apple Music? Is there any way to cause iTunes, which still has all of them, to upload them to Apple Music again (never mention that I do need my Mac for that, destroying the notion of the iPad being stand-alone).

Same situation with videos. How to copy videos from iCloud onto the iPad apps? And of course, none of these apps open something like an "open file" mechanism.

I quite like my iPad Pro. But I never figured out, how to really "do" things with it. The only positive exception seems to be the "Working Copy" git client, which enables some apps to be used productively.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#99

Post by FredPret »

still_grokking wrote: post #37
jbverschoor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just lazyness / QA problems at Apple that prevent high quality apps

Maybe they just can't afford QA? Shareholders are demanding sometimes, but end-users aren't mostly.

Apple can afford a small country, and shareholders will certainly support an Apple management that insists on adequate QA.

Re: Unifying iPadOS and macOS

#100

Post by walterbell »

derefr wrote: post #70

Y’know Samsung’s DEX, where you plug a Samsung Android device into an HDMI output and the output is not a mirror of the phone’s mobile UI, but rather a full Android desktop UI? There’s little reason that Apple couldn’t do the same thing with iPads, where the “desktop UI” is macOS. Unify the kernels/userlands, keep the “Desktop Environments” distinct, but ship them both on iPads, with the macOS DE just waiting around…

Many people were expectantly waiting for this to be announced at WWDC 2021, especially with the M1-based iPad including silicon support for hypervisor/virtualization and the 16GB RAM / 1TB storage model. Yet nothing was announced, suggesting that the only use of 16GB RAM will be upcoming memory-consuming Adobe "Pro" apps.
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