The Last Thing the iPad Needs Is a Spec Bump (theverge.com) 128
An anonymous reader shares a column: When Apple CEO Tim Cook and a bunch of his deputies take the virtual stage next week to announce new iPads, they're going to spend a lot of time talking about specs. If the rumors are true, we're going to get new iPad Pros with OLED screens and thinner bodies, new Airs with faster chips and a correctly placed front camera, and a couple of new accessories. Before they even launch, I feel confident telling you these are the best iPads ever. But after all these years, I still don't know how to tell you whether you should want an iPad. Or what you'd want to do with it.
This has been true forever, of course. The iPad is the jack-of-all-trades in Apple's lineup, a terrific device in many ways that still feels increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops. Apple seems to have spent the last decade-plus enamored with the idea of the iPad as a shapeshifter -- a device that can be exactly what you need at any given time. The company loves that the iPad's use case is hard to pin down, that it means different things to different people. It's a fun, good, ambitious idea: The One Gadget To Rule Them All. The way to make that happen, though, is not to upgrade the chips or move the buttons or redesign the rounded corners. It's to focus less on the iPad itself and more on the things you attach to it.
[...] The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it. Give the gamers a controller and an external GPU. Give the music lovers a speaker dock, and give the smart home fanatics a bunch of buttons that connect to various devices. The photographers need lenses; the spreadsheeters need a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and the Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself -- a device famous for how long it lasts and that hardly anyone is using to its full potential -- and more time on how to make it more than just a tablet. (Plus, bonus for Apple: it's going to be a lot easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don't need to.)
This has been true forever, of course. The iPad is the jack-of-all-trades in Apple's lineup, a terrific device in many ways that still feels increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops. Apple seems to have spent the last decade-plus enamored with the idea of the iPad as a shapeshifter -- a device that can be exactly what you need at any given time. The company loves that the iPad's use case is hard to pin down, that it means different things to different people. It's a fun, good, ambitious idea: The One Gadget To Rule Them All. The way to make that happen, though, is not to upgrade the chips or move the buttons or redesign the rounded corners. It's to focus less on the iPad itself and more on the things you attach to it.
[...] The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it. Give the gamers a controller and an external GPU. Give the music lovers a speaker dock, and give the smart home fanatics a bunch of buttons that connect to various devices. The photographers need lenses; the spreadsheeters need a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and the Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself -- a device famous for how long it lasts and that hardly anyone is using to its full potential -- and more time on how to make it more than just a tablet. (Plus, bonus for Apple: it's going to be a lot easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don't need to.)
A Phoneless iPhone for Andre the Giant Sized Hands (Score:2)
Re:A Phoneless iPhone for Andre the Giant Sized Ha (Score:4)
With the Apple Pencil...you can, while on the road, do some SERIOUS work on photos with the Affinity Suite of tools....and video? Well, run Davinci Resolve on this thing (or even FCPX)...but with Davinci...have you SEEN what they can do with not only video editing, but sound, VFX and of course...color correction/grading.
It does take that extra power to run these type of apps....and it's nice to be able to take your "work" with you to the poolside, or beach....or just the back yard when the weather is nice...piddle around with a video, tend the smoker or brew some beer....
Anyway...I find use out of them.
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Over time as macbooks end up being more like ipads both in terms of hardware and OS, it won't make a difference anyways. It's already fairly close to being a simple matter of banning anything that didn't come from the app store. Shit, even the first and second stage bootloaders are already virtually identical between the two, and several OS middleware applications are as well.
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Over time as macbooks end up being more like ipads both in terms of hardware and OS, it won't make a difference anyways. It's already fairly close to being a simple matter of banning anything that didn't come from the app store. Shit, even the first and second stage bootloaders are already virtually identical between the two, and several OS middleware applications are as well.
You've got it exactly backwards.
MacBooks aren't moving toward being iPads; iPads are moving toward being "Lite" MacBooks.
Having said that, I do wish I could just load macOS onto an iPad Pro; or that Apple would create a MacBook with a Dockable iPad for a screen. But there are power and cooling considerations that I am sure Apple has reasoned would make that concept be too compromised of a Device.
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MacBooks aren't moving toward being iPads; iPads are moving toward being "Lite" MacBooks.
The firmware and middleware was created on the ipad, then made its way to macos. Not the other way around.
Having said that, I do wish I could just load macOS onto an iPad Pro
Apple really wouldn't like that. In fact, during litigation in recent years they've only ever made a case for why they believe it should be exactly the opposite. Right now they're working to convince you that you don't need to install unapproved applications on your mac. When, not if, they succeed in that, there won't be a macos.
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MacBooks aren't moving toward being iPads; iPads are moving toward being "Lite" MacBooks.
The firmware and middleware was created on the ipad, then made its way to macos. Not the other way around.
Having said that, I do wish I could just load macOS onto an iPad Pro
Apple really wouldn't like that. In fact, during litigation in recent years they've only ever made a case for why they believe it should be exactly the opposite. Right now they're working to convince you that you don't need to install unapproved applications on your mac. When, not if, they succeed in that, there won't be a macos.
And all of the Mac users will switch to Windows. Right now, at least the Mac is useful. iOS is a toy that can only replace about 1% of what I use my laptop for, because approximately none of the software I have to use exists on iOS. There's no Finale, no KiCad, no OpenSCAD, no Snapmaker Luban, no Xcode, etc. A large percentage of the apps I run are licensed under licenses that are incompatible with Apple's App Store, and most of the others are unlikely to get ported to UIKit ever.
Stop it with the "App Store Only Mac" bullshit. We've heard it all since OS X 10.7 Lion, and it just isn't happening.
An iPad running KiCAD or Finalé, XCode, etc, would not be running under iOS. Hence my desire for macOS on the iPad.
But don't necessarily write off iOS and "big boy" Applications. Apple now sells (rents) full-blown Logic Pro for iPad. $5/mo or $50/yr. And Projects can Round-Trip to-from macOS Logic Pro.
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But don't necessarily write off iOS and "big boy" Applications. Apple now sells (rents) full-blown Logic Pro for iPad. $5/mo or $50/yr. And Projects can Round-Trip to-from macOS Logic Pro.
The very fact that they're able to do that, rather than having to sell the app outright, is prima facie proof of an unhealthy ecosystem with inadequate competition.
I've used Logic on the Mac, but I prefer Digital Performer. Others prefer Cubase. Only one of these three exists in its full form on iOS. The same is true across a wide range of products.
The problem is that there's no advantage to using an iPad over a computer for any of this stuff and a giant pile of huge disadvantages (limited screen size, l
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Who's "we"? I only first heard it after Tim Cook made a point of it during the epic trial.
Elaborate? I've only heard the entire opposite, and it's hard to imagine them even dreaming of Mac owners staying with the line without the ability to install whatever you want.
Was that before or after Apple approved xcode-ghost?
Huh? Are we talking about the malware?
Apple didn't *approve* of it at all, and that's a weasel ass thing to claim.
Now I'll grant you that they ignored it, i.e., didn't bother to notify people they had run code that had been hit by it, but it was effectively neutered behind the scenes.
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Elaborate? I've only heard the entire opposite, and it's hard to imagine them even dreaming of Mac owners staying with the line without the ability to install whatever you want.
I don't recall the exact wording, but he was making comments about how the app store protects from malware, the usual bullshit, followed by parroting even more bullshit claims about android malware, and finally and he's not satisfied with the malware situation on macos.
Huh? Are we talking about the malware?
Apple didn't *approve* of it at all, and that's a weasel ass thing to claim.
Now I'll grant you that they ignored it, i.e., didn't bother to notify people they had run code that had been hit by it, but it was effectively neutered behind the scenes.
Weellllll....so the "value" provided by the app store is that apple has to review and approve every app before you're allowed to even download and run it right? And they did this about 4,000 times, not counting updates that they also *ahem* c
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Weellllll....so the "value" provided by the app store is that apple has to review and approve every app before you're allowed to even download and run it right? And they did this about 4,000 times, not counting updates that they also *ahem* carefully checked.
Well sure, but we know that's bullshit.
Malware has squeezed its way in before, and will again. Until we have universal AI Malware detectors, it's just a fact of life that they can't possibly afford to have some skills reverse engineers figuring out what every application does, no matter what their stupid marketing bullshit claims.
Though if you ask me, I think the purpose of the walled garden isn't about protecting the users or anything like that, it's about preventing anybody from using apps that might in any way hurt Apple's bottom line, including from potential competitors. And by that I mean throughout their history they've banned many apps they felt were more dangerous to their business model than anything else, like when they banned ad blockers (sure, they aren't anymore, but only after they finally gave up on iAd) and the first wireless itunes sync app, google voice, xbox cloud games, etc.
Oh I agree with you 100%, here.
If it was really about protecting the users from malware, then nobody would have ever been able to pull off xcodeghost because they would have been pretty vigilant about it. But they weren't so somebody from alibaba, who has far less access to the internals or the ability to vet apps in any way at all, found it before they did.
And here's where we disagree.
No matter what it's about- to even claim that they could possibly maintain an application base the size they do, and h
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I don't recall the exact wording, but he was making comments about how the app store protects from malware, the usual bullshit, followed by parroting even more bullshit claims about android malware, and finally and he's not satisfied with the malware situation on macos.
Ya, I remember that shit too. It is concerning- you're right.
But I can say if the dumbfuck ever pulls the trigger based on drinking too much of his own fucking koolaid, he'll kill the product line, and that'll be sad, because I do like it.
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Stop it with the "App Store Only Mac" bullshit. We've heard it all since OS X 10.7 Lion, and it just isn't happening.
Who's "we"? I only first heard it after Tim Cook made a point of it during the epic trial. And I don't really know the time span of macos versions. Was that before or after Apple approved xcode-ghost?
"We" is pretty-much anyone with Mac experience back to about a decade ago. As for OS X 10.7 (Lion), that means 2012.
Note: Slide the Graphic to the Right to find "10.7" .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
While quite serious, The XCode-Ghost was a one-time Slipstreamed thingamabob (details are fuzzy. It was like a decade or so ago) into an (IIRC) Unauthorized Chinese(?) Sub-Repository of Apple's Dev-Tools that certain local Devs. Used "because it was faster to access." (yeahrightsure).
Apple quickly fixed the p
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Apple quickly fixed the problem; Got rid of the (4000!) Apps with the thingamabob built-in, worked with Partners to Purge and Replace various Copies of Apple's Tools and with Affected Devs. to Resubmit Purged Apps Built with a Clean Toolchain (and started scanning their Included Frameworks (duh!), started (IIRC) Signing XCode, etc., and the problem was gone in a few weeks.
Sure, after they were aware of it. Though the entire justification apple provides for the walled garden is protection from malware. So how do you get 129 million malware installs? Why didn't the review process, which again apple justifies to the public for the purpose of preventing malware (which I don't buy at all, by the way) nip this in the bud? Why did somebody at alibaba, who doesn't have anywhere near the ability to vet apps as apple does, find it before apple did?
Why would Apple know of 129 million "software installs", as far as them being infected? While it is equally inexcusable that Apple missed xcode-ghost in some 4000 App Approvals, let's not overinflate what Apple "should have known".
And BTW, do we want to trot out just how many times Google's Play Store "App Approval Process" missed Malware in Apps, or Apps that simply were Malware?
And who knows? Perhaps the person from Alibaba knew exactly where and what to look for, eh?
Think about it. Seriously.
Re: A Phoneless iPhone for Andre the Giant Sized (Score:2)
And BTW, do we want to trot out just how many times Google's Play Store "App Approval Process" missed Malware in Apps, or Apps that simply were Malware?
Google, despite their faults and believe me they're are plenty of them, is at least honest about what the purpose of it is, and when they deny an app they aren't known to sit on it for weeks or even months at a time and be deliberately vague about the reasoning leaving the developer guessing what the problem is, unlike apple.
And who knows? Perhaps the person from Alibaba knew exactly where and what to look for, eh?
If it was their own malware, why would they reveal it?
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And BTW, do we want to trot out just how many times Google's Play Store "App Approval Process" missed Malware in Apps, or Apps that simply were Malware?
Google, despite their faults and believe me they're are plenty of them, is at least honest about what the purpose of it is, and when they deny an app they aren't known to sit on it for weeks or even months at a time and be deliberately vague about the reasoning leaving the developer guessing what the problem is, unlike apple.
And that's supposed to be a Defense of "missing" literally tens of thousands of Infected Apps?
As I said: Shall we start pulling-out Lifetime statistics of Play Store vs. iOS App Store Infections?
And who knows? Perhaps the person from Alibaba knew exactly where and what to look for, eh?
If it was their own malware, why would they reveal it?
To make Apple look bad? To satisfy the terms of their Contract, so the nice soldiers will let his/her Family go? We are talking China, here. . .
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Apple is in the business of selling hardware and services to Billy Bob McDrool content consumers.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware and services to Billy Bob McDrool content consumers, and also the largest Content Creators in the world.
That's just a fact. Deal with it.
Billy Bob McDrool doesn't buy $28k workstations with fruit emblazoned upon them.
It's a bit of a curiosity as to why businesses do as well- but they do.
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Both things are converging on the same point, an inadequately cooled shiny slab with ARM cores that are crippled by a case design that doesn't adequately radiate heat and a battery that doesn't last the useful life of the device.
Well, since you don't include any model names in your screed, it is entirely moot.
Re: A Phoneless iPhone for Andre the Giant Sized H (Score:5)
My 16" MBP radiates heat so well that the thing can go full boar for a solid 15 minutes before the fan even starts to ramp up. It's a funking hunk of aluminum- it's hard to ask for a better heat conducting chassis.
Now let's say you didn't mean MBPs, but MBAs- my MBA (which I used for about a year before I got my MBP) will only ever throttle under intense usage. Nothing normal you do will ever make it throttle, and that's because its case is, like above, hard to beat for thermal conductivity.
Really, what the fuck are you even talking about?
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You are saying that like it's an accomplishment, I've an Asus with a Ryzen 5 and 3070 (both well known for their cool operation) that can easily go 15 mins without the fans making a noise (they're still going, but at a low RPM, the same will be true in any laptop)... Longer if it gets as much of a workout as your average Mac.
Not at 100% utilization it sure as fuck can't.
The Mac can do that at 100% utilization.
During the normal workday, my fans do not turn on once, period. 0rpm. Right now? 0rpm.
Of course my Asus has a light plastic body and is designed to be a gaming laptop, so built with plenty of airflow.
Your Asus and the MBP aren't even in comparable power regimes.
Never ceases to amuse me that Mac fanboys who've never used another laptop think normal laptop behaviour is special and only they have it.
You made an ignorant mistake- I wouldn't make yourself look any dumber with it ;)
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I've had my 11" iPad Pro for 5.5 years now, and for me it is a perfect laptop replacement-- it isn't a desktop replacement by any means, but I can get by doing just about anything from my iPad. I like that I can remove the keyboard to slim it down when just reading. I don't need thinner, lighter, or faster really; I never feel like those things constrain me.
I will upgrade when they release the new version, as mine has lived a rough life and it is time. I would rather buy a Linux solution, but there are t
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Similar - my main computer(s) are desktops both at home and in the office. Multiple screens, a mouse and a USB keyboard...
So there is no conceivable situation I would want or need both a laptop and a tablet. Pick one; a device that I can tear off the keyboard to watch Youtube cat videos on the train would win...
Tablets don't run 'real' software? Well my employer lets us WfH via RDP over VPN, so my work computer ain't my input device anyway.
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The iPad is for people who need a computer, not a phone, but don't need any of the accessories of a computer (Eg no printers, computer mice, keyboards, cameras, storage, etc)
The iPhone is for people who need a phone. Like realistically, "ipad kids" is a term for giving a kid an iPad instead of mommy's 3x more expensive iphone.
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And well, it works well enough with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The mouse support is really really odd. I can't recommend that for anyone. And of course it works great with icloud storage.
But yeah, An ipad is a big
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The iPad is for people who need a computer, not a phone, but don't need any of the accessories of a computer (Eg no printers, computer mice, keyboards, cameras, storage, etc)
The iPad is for people who need an office suite and/or a web browser — the same sorts of people for whom a Chromebook would be effective. It is way too limited to be a good general-purpose computer replacement, and will continue to be way too limited until you can either run macOS or Windows on it (whether directly or in a virtualization environment).
Tablets are great as web browsers or for consuming video content. They're downright miserable for everything else. It's all about the apps, and even n
Re:A Phoneless iPhone for Andre the Giant Si (Score:2)
Not an Apple fan by any means, but I use my ipadpro gen2 12.7” bought cheap used for all my limited computer needs, apart from an old Dell core2 desktop that does my TV streaming.
Apps dont mean a thing to me, other than ebay and banking, which are covered well.
Ive also got a good powerful laptop I never use.
My Dad found the ipad great as he got older, he used it until he passed at 97 yo.
Shock news, Slashdotters are not the target market.
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Not an Apple fan by any means, but I use my ipadpro gen2 12.7” bought cheap used for all my limited computer needs, apart from an old Dell core2 desktop that does my TV streaming. ...
Ive also got a good powerful laptop I never use.
I don't think this says what you think it says.
The more significant factor here is that most people don't really need a computer at all. If you're only using a tablet, are not making much use of apps, and never touch your laptop/desktop, then it sounds much like the parent post said, "Tablets are great as web browsers or for consuming video content. They're downright miserable for everything else."
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Does the iPad still NOT ship with a native calculator app?
Huh? (Score:3)
You want to sell someone a device so they have to lug a dozen extra devices for their usecase? Most complaints I see about Macbooks, for example, are the opposite. Carrying all the adapters and peripherals makes people annoyed.
I think the iPad non-pro has a use case: it's a computer for mom and the (young) kids, it does basic computer things. It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me. I absolutely think there is a compelling thing to do to it, but Apple may be too much at the mercy of its app store revenues.
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This was my thought too -The guy wants to turn the iPad into MacBook without a keyboard.
The is nothing less 'portable' than something with pile of external dongles, adapters, etc hung off it just to make it useful.
USB-C or a conventional proprietary connector type-y docking station or port-replicator works for the desk but it does not travel. Nobody wants to walk into the conference room of the coffee shop and assemble and squid like array of thunderbolt gadgets, only to tear it all down (and probably have
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
And I don't really need anything external by the Apple Pencil
To run these apps...you do need some serious horsepower...but I can move data in/out from cloud...or just load it up on the iPad itself, since you can get with like 2 TB of storage....
I might bring my iPods Pro 2 with me for better sound, but that's it.
And this way, I can do some work or 'fun' work while out at the pool or beach or beach bar taking a break, etc.
I'm not sure what all squid array of things I need to attach to still do some serious work or play on a loaded up iPad Pro....?
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Well, this was yet another 'tech" blog post so - no surprise that it's chock full o' silly ramblings.
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>>The guy wants to turn the iPad into MacBook without a keyboard.
They'd be better off releasing a MacBook with a touchscreen. I know lots of people would like that.
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This was my thought too -The guy wants to turn the iPad into MacBook without a keyboard.
The is nothing less 'portable' than something with pile of external dongles, adapters, etc hung off it just to make it useful.
USB-C or a conventional proprietary connector type-y docking station or port-replicator works for the desk but it does not travel. Nobody wants to walk into the conference room of the coffee shop and assemble and squid like array of thunderbolt gadgets, only to tear it all down (and probably have to close or restart half the apps using the stuff) 15min later.
Strawman much?
In a conference-room setting, whether the "squid" attaches to a Dock that then attaches with a single cable to a Laptop or a Tablet; or if the "squid" converges directly into dedicated Legacy Ports on a Laptop, is a total Red Herring. Either way, there's a Squid.
But, you're right: There's a (much) better way.
If the Conference Room has an Apple TV box hooked to its Projector/Audio System, the Presenter with either a MacBook or an iPad can wirelessly cast their Presentations, Videos, Webpages, e
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It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me.
When we had new windows put on our old house before selling it, one sales guy had an iPad pro. He used it to take pictures of our house, loaded them into an app, and swiped through the different styles of windows so we could see what they looked like applied to our house in real-time. Once we picked what we wanted, he had a Bluetooth printer in his car that he used to print out the quote.
I guess you could do the same thing with a phone and a laptop, or a convertible laptop, but it's fewer things than the fo
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It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me.
When we had new windows put on our old house before selling it, one sales guy had an iPad pro. He used it to take pictures of our house, loaded them into an app, and swiped through the different styles of windows so we could see what they looked like applied to our house in real-time. Once we picked what we wanted, he had a Bluetooth printer in his car that he used to print out the quote.
I guess you could do the same thing with a phone and a laptop, or a convertible laptop, but it's fewer things than the former, and smaller than the latter.
Not to mention that laptops, no matter how small and light, are kind of a pain to walk around a house with, let alone actually use, while balanced on your arm, "open".
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You want to sell someone a device so they have to lug a dozen extra devices for their usecase? Most complaints I see about Macbooks, for example, are the opposite. Carrying all the adapters and peripherals makes people annoyed.
I think the iPad non-pro has a use case: it's a computer for mom and the (young) kids, it does basic computer things. It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me. I absolutely think there is a compelling thing to do to it, but Apple may be too much at the mercy of its app store revenues.
iPad Pro + Pencil is a great art platform. With a keyboard case it's a nifty carry-along for writing. I haven't really found any other use-case outside of quick gaming or looking things up. Otherwise, iPads are consumption devices. They could change that, but then it'd step into desktop territory.
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Have they improved the registration of the Apple Pencil to be better than finger painting/crayons? Wacom has the precision advantage if that matters to your art. It does to mine.
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Have they improved the registration of the Apple Pencil to be better than finger painting/crayons? Wacom has the precision advantage if that matters to your art. It does to mine.
I guess I never had problems with the Apple Pencil tracking once I had a decent program. ProCreate + Pencil was a better experience for me than any Wacom I ever had access to. Granted, I'm rarely playing with the truly high-dollar Wacoms, and I'm a very casual artist, but based on reviews places I've hung with "real" artists, my experience doesn't seem that unique.
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I didn't understand the issues people had of Apple switching to all USB-C/Thunderbolt ports from the collection of USB-A, HDMI, mini-DP/Thunderbolt, and/or whatever. When I got my new USB-C laptop I bought a dozen USB-C to USB-A adapters and then stuck them on the USB-A cables and adapters I had, then got a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter for my Ethernet adapter, just leaving the adapters with the cables and treating the cables and adapters like they were a single unit.
It kind of sucks to have to ge
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Kids hate the chromebook. Our schools given them to students and a lot of their material is there. But they sit entirely unused around here collecting dust during the summer or when the material is just on a website they can get via their ipads or home computers.
There's no way to get my kids to agree on a single thing, except they they're not going to use their chromebooks without a fight.
Samsung S Note (Score:2)
Are f* better for everything
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Agree.
My Galaxy S8 Ultra tablet is a way sexier device than any iPad Pro. I have been using iPads for a long time, but made a switch to Samsung and haven't looked back.
Re:Samsung S Note (Score:4, Insightful)
Great kids toy, though! (Score:2)
I always thought that the iPad worked best for elementary school students who haven't figured out how to use a keyboard yet. The touch interface is much easier to learn.
Once you get to the point where you can work a keyboard and mouse, a laptop makes for a much more useful device. They're also great for watching movies while traveling, but I doubt that most people are going to pony up $1,000 for an iPad Pro just do to that.
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Guest editor (Score:2)
Who was that guest editor who wrote an editorial about how replaceable battery were battery banks? Was this written by the same guy?
People can already easily buy bluetooth accessories that do this well...a bluetooth speaker, keyboards, game controller, etc. (The idea of add-on lenses is stupid).
So what is this guy arguing? That Apple should promote it more? That there should be official Apple licensed bluetooth game controllers? That users should be more into it? That app developers should do a better
2010 (Score:2)
increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops
2010 called. They want their opinion back.
Just add the Apple Watch support! (Score:2)
My Uses: (Score:2)
I use my ipad for:
Now whether any of these would really benefit from a spec jump is a different discussion.
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Although, they make some nice non-OLED screens too.
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My miniLED iPad and miniLED MBP screens bug the ever-loving fuck out of me for watching movies on.
They're awesome about 90% of the time, but every once in a while, you get something bright moving on a dark background, and watching that little square try to track it is so immersion breaking it makes me wonder who the fuck ever signed off on the tech for watching media on.
I would trade my miniLED iPad Pro in for an OLED one in a heartbeat.
Although, they make some nice non-OLED screens too.
I don't know. I have supposedly a couple of thei
Only iPad mini threatened by phones (Score:2)
Wait five years... (Score:2)
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My iPad Air 2 is pretty much end of life at this point. I guess that I need to get a new one if I want to stream Netflix on it.
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A new battery and all the tools to do the replacement are currently on sale for $10 Canadian. Looks like Americans still have to pay $50 US though, or $40 for just the battery.
https://canada.ifixit.com/prod... [ifixit.com]
If you need to pay someone to do it for you, $120 is probably less than you'd pay a plumber if you can't fix your own toilet, or a mechanic if you can't change your own oil.
What the iPad is, that phones aren't (Score:5, Interesting)
What the iPad is that phones a laptop aren't, is big and thin.
I use mine as a reader. It's my music book, that I prop up on the piano's music rack. It's my busco book, that I prop up on my tall music rack, the one I play violin from
It's my library, my comic book reader, and it's fantastic for handwriting notes. Those notes are searchable and even my chicken scratch cursive is searchable.
Freehand sketching and diagramming are also superb. It's also my notebook for meetings, etc.
For me, the iPad does things no laptop or phone can do.
I do wish they'd make it bigger. 11.9 is basically a sheet of printer paper. I need something a bit bigger, the size of piano book paper. 15 inch diagonal.
AI, the next 3D TV. (Score:3)
They will push the AI angle until maybe 1.5 years from now, when it falls out of fashion.
My knowledge of customer feedback from the spate of AI helpers from Microsoft, Google and others is that they kinda work sometimes and that mostly, customers hate it. It's like turning on FSD in the middle of a city in my Tesla. You put more effort into monitoring and checking the AI's output than you would just driving.
Similarly with writing a document, or writing code. There is no AI that can help me write the stuff I write. It's mired in company secrets that no AI is trained on and the AI can't put together cogent technical arguments that cover more than a single sentence. It's like having an illiterate child writing over your sheet of paper.
This isn't a value prop for customers and it won't turn out to be one. AI will bury itself in the fabric of the world in the form of classifiers, human language parsers and image/data enhancement but no one is going to pay for that, it'll just be an additional cost on businesses that need to have these convenience functions to feature match the competition.
iPad is good (Score:2)
iPad is good enough to become my daily driver. i dunno who hurt the author of that article.
iPad is kinda niche but excels in those niches (Score:2)
My phone could technically do all of those things, but the iPad's much larger screen and beefier battery make it work waaaay better--a
The future of iPad includes display/"coprocessor" (Score:3)
When the iPad is docked it acts as a GPU and display for the MBP. macOS on the MBP controls it. iPadOS strictly in the background unseen, perhaps available as a "coprocessor"(*) for running threads on the iPad's Apple Silicon CPU in parallel with the MBP's Apple Silicon CPU.
When detached iPadOS takes over and becomes visible, the iPad now acts like a tablet, no longer just a display. Perhaps documents are handed off from the macOS version of an app to the iPadOS version of an app. Ex Pages, Numbers, etc.
Note this would allow for GPU (and "coprocessor") upgrades for a MBP by getting a new iPad.
Besides a MBP dock. Perhaps let iPads connect to any Thunderbolt 4 port on any Mac to be an additional display and/or "coprocessor".
(*) Yeah, not a true coprocessor since we are not really sharing RAM. So some sort of distributed shared memory scheme over Thunderbolt 4 would be needed. Obviously not for casual use but some higher end rendering, image processing, computer vision, and other computationally heavy things where the memory transfer of source and destination data would be a relatively small thing.
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Modern local buses have hundreds of GB(ytes) per second of bandwidth.
A single lane of TB4 has about 4.6.
You can say things like "but eGPUs work!", but you leave out an important aspect of that working- that they do it poorly.
That doesn't prevent them from coming up with a more suitable bus connection for your described system, though.
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TB isn't really fast enough for this.
Distributed computing doesn't necessary need a fast connection. It depends on how long the job takes on s single system. Consider a distributed compilation system at LAN speeds.
Slower access to shared memory is a normal issue in distributed shared memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I think the "coprocessor" aspect is a secondary functionality, an additional display being the primary utility of plugging in an iPad. It's just so tempting to get access to the iPad's CPU even if only at TB4 speeds.
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Distributed computing doesn't necessary need a fast connection. It depends on how long the job takes on s single system. Consider a distributed compilation system at LAN speeds.
This simply isn't true.
You're right that certain jobs do not, but they're a minority of jobs.
Most parallelizable jobs are simply not embarrassingly parallel- i.e., able to be crunched without interdependence.
Slower access to shared memory is a normal issue in distributed shared memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... [wikipedia.org]
It sure is, but not anywhere near the factor we're talking here.
You're dropping it to the amount of "decent ethernet" (40GbE). The bare minimum for a local bus would be infiniband- which is about 30 lanes of TB4 these days (800Gbps)
I think the "coprocessor" aspect is a secondary functionality, an additional display being the primary utility of plugging in an iPad. It's just so tempting to get access to the iPad's CPU even if only at TB4 speeds. Hence my thinking of distributed computing being a more realistic model than real multiprocessing.
You'd be hard pressed to sell a coprocessor for a Mac that could do v
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Distributed computing doesn't necessary need a fast connection.
This simply isn't true.
I think you are conflating distributed computing and parallel computing. Slower access to shared memory is absolutely something dealt with even in distributed shared memory, let alone distributed computing in general.
Slower access to shared memory is a normal issue in distributed shared memory.
It sure is, but not anywhere near the factor we're talking here. You're dropping it to the amount of "decent ethernet" (40GbE). The bare minimum for a local bus would be infiniband- which is about 30 lanes of TB4 these days (800Gbps)
A friend's distributed shared memory research used workstations connected via TCP/IP on the same LAN.
It's just so tempting to get access to the iPad's CPU even if only at TB4 speeds. Hence my thinking of distributed computing being a more realistic model than real multiprocessing.
You'd be hard pressed to sell a coprocessor for a Mac that could do very little other than speed up compilation.
I've done computer vision research and some processing stages have taken seconds to execute on a Mac laptop. The underlying computations having locality so segmenting an image and processing the
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I think you are conflating distributed computing and parallel computing. Slower access to shared memory is absolutely something dealt with even in distributed shared memory, let alone distributed computing in general.
Actually, I was operating under the assumption that *you* were conflating them.
Parallel computing is what computers do in the modern day. Multi-core, Multi-socket, and in the case of supercomputers- multi-node low-latency high-bandwidth shared parallel computing.
Distributed computing is a relic of a time long since past that frankly, sucked, and only applied to embarrassingly parallel tasks- compiling things, calculating a mandelbrot, etc. Anything that didn't require coherence in the dataset.
A friend's distributed shared memory research used workstations connected via TCP/IP on the same LAN.
Your friend'
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Distributed computing is a relic of a time long since past that frankly, sucked, and only applied to embarrassingly parallel tasks- compiling things, calculating a mandelbrot, etc. Anything that didn't require coherence in the dataset.
Nope. It's an active area of research. Its not meant to apply to all parallelization.
Your coherence claim is erroneous. A complete initial state can be provided.
A friend's distributed shared memory research used workstations connected via TCP/IP on the same LAN.
Your friend's distributed shared memory research was less than I have at my lab at work- and it's built with bottom dollar, so I'm guessing you're really stretching the meaning of the word "research" here.
PhD thesis. it's about accurately distributing a workload, whether participants are local or remote. It's not about hardware pissing contests,
I've done computer vision research and some processing stages have taken seconds to execute on a Mac laptop. The underlying computations having locality so segmenting an image and processing these independently is practical.
I'd guess you have a slow Mac, or were doing something silly like using the NPU.
MacBook Pro, i5. Although the code is portable and runs under Windows, macOS or Linux. x86-64 and AArch64 (testing on iPad A13, waiting for M3 mini). Non-ML, the project was using highly customized algorith
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Nope. It's an active area of research. Its not meant to apply to all parallelization.
Your coherence claim is erroneous. A complete initial state can be provided.
If a calculation can be done on a set of data with no relation to any other calculation done on that data, then it can be parceled out without worry for coherence.
That is a job that is worth doing over a slow bus, if the far-end processing unit is fast.
There's nothing erroneous about that, and an initial state is meaningless if coherence is required.
Coherence over a slow bus will be slower than simply queuing the work locally, period.
PhD thesis. it's about accurately distributing a workload, whether participants are local or remote. It's not about hardware pissing contests,
Computing isn't about pissing contests- it's about useful work.
Distrib
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If a calculation can be done on a set of data with no relation to any other calculation done on that data, then it can be parceled out without worry for coherence.
Sometimes coherence can be maintained by further calculations on the multiple end states.
There's nothing erroneous about that, and an initial state is meaningless if coherence is required. Coherence over a slow bus will be slower than simply queuing the work locally, period.
It depends on the nature of the computation. For example an accumulator array that sums up "votes" at pixel locations. These calculations often operate on a neighborhood around a pixel (or edgel) so segmenting an image can cause coherency problems near shared borders. A initial state of a previously completed job can maintain coherency. For jobs run in parallel their final states can be combined to maintain coherency.
Computing isn't about pissing contests- it's about useful work.
Th
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If I said it using the iPad as a node over a slow bus couldn't do useful work, I overplayed my hand.
However, in today's programming paradigms, which have abandoned the older paradigms that favored that kind of thinking- the usefulness of it is very questionable.
Very few software suites support distributed computing anymore. Except for a couple very specific workloads, and some hobbyist workloads, it's simply more practical to get a mach
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But it would be a hobbyist such as yourself, or me at 20 when I was trying to get every 486DX in my house to produce a deep Mandelbrot dive.
I had a 68K coprocessor card in my Apple //e to send "jobs" to,
:-)
Like the "coprocessor" stuff mentioned in past posts, it was a secondary opportunistic use. It was sitting there begging to be used.
FWIW, Macs and iPad can talk over a cable using usbmuxd. An unsupported API so it cannot be used for anything published through the App Store.
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FWIW, Macs and iPad can talk over a cable using usbmuxd. An unsupported API so it cannot be used for anything published through the App Store.
Ya- I used it on a jailbroken iPhone ages ago.
The linux project seems to be highly mature at this stage (in so much that I can't remember the last time it had trouble talking to my iPhone)
Through thunderbolt, there's an additional easy method of communications- it supports a native EoTB (i.e., fake network adapter)
if you plug your Mac into another machine, Windows, Linux, or Mac, it'll create a Thunderbolt Ethernet Interface.
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Consider that 8K/60Hz video requires something like 80 Gbps of bandwidth, with some variation based on color depth and compression. Also consider that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 allow for up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth. If I'm sending some kind of graphics primitives to an eGPU for it to fill out the rest and send on to a DisplayPort display then it might not be too much to expect that the primitive data is half that of the raw video, give or take if there's some compression in the process. It would appear to me th
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Consider that 8K/60Hz video requires something like 80 Gbps of bandwidth, with some variation based on color depth and compression. Also consider that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 allow for up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth. If I'm sending some kind of graphics primitives to an eGPU for it to fill out the rest and send on to a DisplayPort display then it might not be too much to expect that the primitive data is half that of the raw video, give or take if there's some compression in the process. It would appear to me that an eGPU would do fine in processing video for a single 8K display, or some multiple display system with similar data output requirements.
Oh- it's more than fine for display. This wasn't about display.
Video bandwidth requirements are quite benign compared to algorithmic bandwidth requirements- if you hope to maintain any kind of decent performance.
If the eGPU is to accelerate video to an internal display then the math is different. The data throughput is split between the graphic primitives going out to the eGPU and the raw data (again perhaps allowing for some compression) coming back to send to the display. Laptops and tablets today don't have 8K displays, perhaps with some exceptions I'm not aware of. Probably more like a 1080p, 1440p, or maybe 4K at most. With half the bandwidth of a Thunderbolt 3 channel, 20 Gbps, there can be 4K@60Hz video coming from the eGPU into the computer. The eGPU systems I've seen are USB-C/Thunderbolt docks in addition to graphics processors so some of the bandwidth is used for USB ports, maybe Ethernet or some other ports, but there is almost certainly bandwidth to spare for that.
eGPU systems are not good- particularly for anything other than "game" usage, which has a pretty simple data transfer requirement.
Primitives can be pre-loaded and are generally designed to fit within reasonable amounts of VRAM.
Every game made in the last 20 years has a loading screen that loads a
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Video bandwidth requirements are quite benign compared to algorithmic bandwidth requirements- if you hope to maintain any kind of decent performance.
Original poster butting in here ... I think you are taking the distributed shared memory reference too literally. I am not talking about extending a laptop's virtual memory to include the iPad's RAM. I am referring to parallel computations. Each CPU, laptop and iPad, having its own copy of processing code, the laptop sending source data to the iPad, the laptop processing half the source and the iPad the other half, the iPad returning its half of the result. Whether full or partial source is sent to the iPad
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Original poster butting in here ... I think you are taking the distributed shared memory reference too literally. I am not talking about extending a laptop's virtual memory to include the iPad's RAM. I am referring to parallel computations. Each CPU, laptop and iPad, having its own copy of processing code, the laptop sending source data to the iPad, the laptop processing half the source and the iPad the other half, the iPad returning its half of the result. Whether full or partial source is sent to the iPad depends on locality of the computation.
I had assumed you meant parallel computing, because the world has left heterogeneous slow-bus computing in the dust.
There's a reason you don't see eGPU over USB3, and why eGPU over TB frankly sucks ass compared to x16 PCIe attached.
Image processing and computer vision can have simple data transfer requirements too. OpenCV shows eGPUs working well there too.
Only in the case that you have no compute ability on the local machine!
OpenCV does demonstrates a *drastic* reduction of performance via eGPU compared to a local bus.
There's no damn way you can swing this- there's a reason buses keep getting faster, not slower.
Anything you
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There's a reason you don't see eGPU over USB3, and why eGPU over TB frankly sucks ass compared to x16 PCIe attached.
My point is that when you only have that TB connection, using it may be better than not.
Image processing and computer vision can have simple data transfer requirements too. OpenCV shows eGPUs working well there too.
Only in the case that you have no compute ability on the local machine!
Or if you have more pending work than the local machine can do in parallel. A workload that would need to be serialized on the local machine. Some of that serialization might be sent to the TB machine.
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My point is that when you only have that TB connection, using it may be better than not.
But why not make it better?
Having just the TB connection makes it a novelty, not a really useful thing.
Sure, you can run a handful of OpenMP programs with a special support for running arm64 kernels on the remote... but nobody wants that. Not really.
What they want is faster symmetrical multiprocessing.
Or if you have more pending work than the local machine can do in parallel. A workload that would need to be serialized on the local machine. Some of that serialization might be sent to the TB machine.
You're right. Serialized workloads could treat it as an entirely separate computer with a fast network connection.
But again- the utility of such a thing is so very limited that it functionally makes the se
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But why not make it better?
But again- the utility of such a thing is so very limited that it functionally makes the second computer a waste for 99.9% of all people.
Because we're making do with what we happen to have. A Mac and an iPad.
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I don't disagree that it would be "wouldn't it be cool if I could use my iPad as a computer in general, and do this particular thing with it also if I wanted?" but you'll never see a product built around that.
What you're really arguing for is the freedom of the iPad from the bullshit software restrictions imposed upon it- and there, I couldn't agree with you more.
Your iPad can already function as an exte
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There's a reason you don't see eGPU over USB3,
Yes, there is a reason. The reason is that the USB protocol was not built with the broad range of I/O that ThunderBolt and PCI were built to handle. With USB there's device classes in mind, and these would be common peripherals that were traditionally handled with a "low speed" interface (in scare quotes because what is "low speed" is something of a moving target as technology has advanced) such as a printer, mouse, keyboard, network interfaces, and "small" (again a moving target) removable media (initial
I'd Agree - A bump is unneeded (for me) (Score:2)
I don't have any reason to upgrade my iPad. And I use it quite a lot. When I bother to take the time to close all the apps, I find there are at least 10 of them open.
Lots of people have the arrogance to assume that just because they don't "get" it, there must be nothing to get. But I am as technical as anybody, and I find it amazingly useful.
I had one major annoyance... the iPad wouldn't use my Bind9 server for resolution, no matter what I did, which meant it couldn't resolve my internal servers by hostname
The world does not revolve around you... (Score:3)
This is such a dumb article. "I can't find a use for the iPad." So what. I can't find a use for a bra. But my wife sure can. And she also drives an iPad as her primary computing device. She does email on it, browses the web, video calls the kids, shops on amazon, reads books, on and on. For her it is the only device she needs. LOTS OF PEOPLE FIT THAT DEMOGRAPHIC.
Some people want a pickup, some people want a convertible miata. The world does not revolve around you!!
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This is such a dumb article. "I can't find a use for the iPad." So what. I can't find a use for a bra. But my wife sure can. And she also drives an iPad as her primary computing device. She does email on it, browses the web, video calls the kids, shops on amazon, reads books, on and on. For her it is the only device she needs. LOTS OF PEOPLE FIT THAT DEMOGRAPHIC.
Some people want a pickup, some people want a convertible miata. The world does not revolve around you!!
The problem you have is that the tablet fad is over, not just Ipads but all tablets, it's just that Ipads have further to fall before they reach the bottom.
People aren't buying tablets any more, most people who want one already have one and there's no impetus to upgrade as the one they have still works so most new tablet sales are to replace broken ones. TFA is right that a spec boost wont change that. I have a cheap tablet (Nokia T10), it replaced a 2013 Nexus 7, both pretty much had on purpose, they pl
The user experience of the iPad HW is sub-par (Score:2)
I have been using a 8" (16:10) Windows tablet daily since 2015. While MS Windows leaves a lot to be desired, this tablet has a headphone jack, stereo speakers and a SD card slot. It has a battery bump that is really comfortable to hold, and a built-in kick-stand.
It has a high-resolution "retina"-class screen, and I don't need a $100+ "Apple Pencil" to point at it: I can use a friggin' REAL ACTUAL PENCIL as a pointing device, because the capacitive touch screen senses it.
What I want is a worthy successor to
Performa syndrome... (Score:2)
iPad
iPad mini
iPad Pro (mayyyyyybe 2 sizes)
1. There isn't an inch of daylight between the iPad and the iPad Air. Give it up already.
b. I have a hunch that people looking at a 12" iPad Pro 256 for $1,199 are thinking - for $200 less I get a MBA with built-in keyboard and trackpad... that could explain the shift to Mac sales seeing today's earnings, but I haven't dug into those yet.
The Right Tool for The Right Job (Score:2)
I use my iPad for eBooks, Documentation PDFs, light browsing, Video Conferencing when not at the desk.
I use my phone for calling and also all of the above when I'm not at home to use the iPad or the computer.
When at the desk, in front of the computer, I use that for everything + work, heavy browsing and actual computer stuff.
Could I live without and iPad, just with my phone and desktop ? Yes. But I prefer the bigger screen of the iPad to the phone's screen and I don't feel like siting in the chair in front
iPad is fine, just overpriced (Score:2)
I use my iPad on flights and that's basically it. It's compatible with my XBox controller for a few games and I can download movies from whatever streaming service I happen to be subscribed to. It's really a great little device for a flight.
The problem is that it's too expensive to perform such simple tasks. A cheap Android tablet will do all the video stuff and some of the game stuff (lots of games are iOS only) for 1/2 to1/3 the price.
Drawing (anecdote) (Score:2)
30 years ago I started a series of cartoons for a fairy tale/fantasy for my children. The deal was I would do the drawings, they would write the story. I was, as I had always been, a pencil, ink, and erase guy. About a year ago while cleaning out file drawers I came across the originals. I've picked the story back up, this time for three granddaughters.
Paper was a
A problem in search of a solution (Score:2)
iPads, and tablets more broadly, have always been a solution in search of a problem.
About the only thing I think they really do well, and better than either a phone or a tablet, is consuming video media. That's all they've ever been used for in my house, at any rate - by everyone in the house.
Almost everything else they can do, phones and laptops do better, and have always done better. They had a niche for a while due to battery life when paired with a bluetooth keyboard, but not so much anymore.
If they'd d
iPad is great for some people (Score:2)
Apple's contradictory philosophy (Score:2)
The iPad needs a "MacOS" app that loads up the full native desktop compute experience.
On the iOS side the iPad needs to support multiple user profiles by default and not just when set up under MDM. It's insane that this is a fully baked and shipping feature that's so frequently requested but is simply withheld.
Apple are being assholes about these obvious features because the convergence and device sharing cut into sales of multiple devices. How is buying 5 different devices supposed to be "green" when you c
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