So, a new M4 chip, up to 10 cores and all kinds of other hotness...yet Apple is still going to treat the iPad with all its big boy computer parts as just a toy computer incapable of compiling code or even giving me a terminal window, let alone run macOS apps.
Our house is chocked full of Apple gear, but the idea of spending a cool $1000 on a neutered consumption device gets less appealing with each generation.
Regardless of our personal professional affinities the only reason iPadOS stays locked down is that it's simply more profitable to sell a customer two devices instead of just one. I would love to have an iPad Pro as my only home computer, but it's just not doable due to its OS limitations. The artistic angle is just Apple's way to make the platform believable.
Why would an artist care if I can also compile code on an iPad?
I can only assume that macOS must be offensive to some due to its "openness". The truth is that macOS allows me to be both an artist and a developer, and I don't have a single doubt that Apple could pull off an interface that allows a similar experience on iPadOS. It's just that doing so will lose them money.
> the only reason iPadOS stays locked down is that it's simply more profitable to sell a customer two devices instead of just one.
Not only do they want to sell you an iPad and a separate computer, but they would ideally like to sell your family multiple iPads, which is why you can't have more than one user account on an iPad (unless you have a business or educational account with Apple [1]).
For the brief stint I had the Vision Pro, I was so confused Apple made sharing it so hard(and it really isn’t shared - it’s just there for the free taste because it is timelimit locked). But after a little thought it clicked:
Apple only loves the idea of the VisionPro if it means you never share.
Apple has always been a walled garden, so when the iPhone imposed it nobody blinked(there are/were tradeoffs, ok). But ever since the iPod, Apple has been all about the personal device. No more multiuser anything:
- iPod
- iWatch
- iPhone
- iPad
It becomes super obvious what the “i” really stands for when you realize it was for a single person.
and now spatial computing, this new era where actual business is supposed to happen
- VisionPro
Even though the “i” isn’t there, it really should be. The power of cohesion between these devices is one of wonder. But the cohesion could still exist with standards. What we have with Apple is bad for the customer and any innovation outside apples limited interests.
I wish Britain would have went for the head and after the innovation stifling instead of the stupid port forcing. Also an innovation stifler.
Assuming you mean "creator" and "artistic crowd" as illustrators and musicians, yes the iPad is a powerful tools for very specific use cases.
But even in these niches there has been a gradual move away from the iPad to more powerful devices where it works out well enough. For instance music creation/management benefited a lot from the new macbooks, especially as they got more ports and top notch software support. Photography/cinematography as well.
Other pro tablets also gained more presence in these drawing/designing circles, the Surface Pro is one and Wacom even entered the market with its own dedicated standalone table, while non standalone peripheral also flourished.
All in all, Apple created a gap and pro users looked at more fitting devices when they didn't want to bend over backwards to use an iPad.
> All in all, Apple created a gap and pro users looked at more fitting devices when they didn't want to bend over backwards to use an iPad.
Honestly, Apple kind of dropped the "pro" crowd some time ago topping out with the trash can MacPro. That thing was such a joke. It took years for them to admit it, which they ultimately did, shockingly. After that, they then went full Apple again in the revised MacPro that still missed the mark of what people actually wanted. It wasn't until the Apple Silicon where Apple's vision could really shine with a near silent "pro" box sitting on a desk. The modern "creator" crowd doesn't have data rooms where big noisy boxes live, so they finally found their audience so their refusal to make a data center friendly box pays off for them. Finally.
Prosumers (where I equate "creators") cheered triumphantly /s
Do you mind sharing a source for this? I spend the majority of my online leisure time pursuing creator communities and I've never seen anything "ecstatic" about iPads.
The iPad audio scene is lukewarm, Procreate is generally considered exciting but I'd sum those as a fraction of a percent of the overall digital creator community. There's also a bit of lukewarm interest in iPads as on set (movie/photo) devices.
I would love to hear specifically who you're talking about and what they are staying.
Things are good yes. but they could always be better.
Imagine how much more they could be if the community of people who like to hack on open devices to create cool software for that community could do so.
What would Blender look like on a device like this?
How would the creator community feel if the hacker community was able to get side car sharing multiple screens so they could use 2 big ipad pros as screens on either side of their macbook pro and another ipad mini with an apple pencil as an input device?
Imagine a scenario where things like nextcloud had better system wide integration into the iOS and macOS ecosystem. I bet creative types would love the money they could save in cloud hosting from that.
I think it is great to think about HN biases. Not in a disrespectful but an epistemological way. For example, we know that Web3 is not well received here.
Cryptocurrencies aren't really "Web3" though are they. Web3 is all the absolute rot that people have tried to glue onto a blockchain just so they can tick a buzzword box. NFTs are still a scam, even in Argentina.
There is no super formal definition of these terms, people think on different things when they hear about them. Even cryptocurrencies could not be crypto.
I will not start arguing about NFTs, it is enough to say that the technology is useful in one place and not in another and help people to transact internationally.
It's really not. That's just the prevailing misconception around here from a group of people that seems unwilling to read anything about crypto not written by luddite griftfluencers.
You’re blasting Apple for their obsolescence? The company that has gone out of their way to support phones and tablets _far_ longer than their competitors?
But when Apple support does end, it's game over. I picked up an iPad 2 (from 2011), it's perfectly capable hardware, although a bit slow, but it's only usable for browsing HN and viewing PDFs because one can't upgrade the goddam browser or install an alternative one. Updates ended in 2015, mostly.
I could upgrade a One Plus X released in 2015 to Android 7 (Lineage 14.1). An old version, but everything is perfectly usable. Browsers are at their latest versions. Before this, the phone was on stock Android 6, the latest Firefox ran on it. Still bad, because there's no security upgrade, but unofficial builds for the latest versions of Lineage exist on this phone (they will never be official because the goddam kernel can't be upgraded, and newer versions are necessary to support features mandatory for being official, including the way disk encryption is managed).
Anyway, phones and tablets are in a sad state overall. They become e-waste way too soon. Android and iOS both have horrible support time. Not more than a few years of updates (with FairPhone probably being the best here, but still a few years). And anything else is pretty much unusable, at least for phones. In comparison, PCs can be upgraded pretty much forever, at least on Linux. Phone constructors are doing this to themselves through lack of standardization and vendor lock in, but I guess they are happy enough with the situation.
The Samsung Galaxy S II (a phone) released late 2011 had official lineage 14.1. There are unofficial builds of lineage 19 today.
That's a particularly good situation, I don't really know how was Android back then, but in any case Android still allowed installing alternative browsers, allowing devices to be useful long after updates stopped. Firefox was still installable on android 4.4 recently enough. So there's that.
But again, that's still just bad either way, I expect better from hardware. 4 years is awfully short and I don't quite care if Android was better or worse. Apple controls everything, how come it was only capable of 4 years of updates? It's unacceptable, and the usual two or three years of updates on stock Android too, of course.
Conversely, I really like using my iPad Pro as a daily driver (eg. Slides, light blogging, Notion, reading, Zoom, Slack, etc) as most of my core apps and usecases are either PWAs or Apps already.
And I think this is the target demographic of the iPad - either creative types (eg. designers or musicians) or executives (eg. Consultants, PMs, etc) who are not code driven but still need a workbook style environment. From a security standpoint it is best for these users to be locked down (Least Privilege is a good security model to follow for non-technical users).
P.S. I do have my own ancient Macbook that I installed Ubuntu on for my own light hacking, but most of my personal tinkering dev is now on Cloud GPU instances so all I need is a dumb terminal for SSH.
> Yes, and I wouldn't be buying one of those for light reading or taking notes in Notion, either.
I'm using it for work, so I am either getting it reimbursed or provided by my employer (in my case), or if I'm running a solo business/self employed (as plenty of creators are) you can get tax credits and a partial reimbursement as it's being used for work as well.
Like I mentioned before, the target demographic is Creators or Executives, but also (increasingly) schools.
> Both of those systems have more flexibility
Absolutely, but that flexibility is a security vector for most non-technical users.
There's a reason companies spend 7-8 figures on XDRs like CRWD/S1/Cortex, or are looking to Secure Browsers like Surf, Talon, or Arc.
No offense to GP, but GP made me wonder if the creative side of the story is just a massive fluff to hide the fact that iPad are built for consultancy tasks first. Having to resort to a premium creator product because your job demands it sounds like an awesome justification for buying a tablet.
I use the Logitech keyboard case with the trackpad. That and keybindings are good enough for my usecase (but tbf, I started my career as an Eng using Vim so keybindings are second nature to me)
> the idea of spending a cool $1000 on a neutered consumption device gets less appealing with each generation
It's not for you and that's okay. They sell big boy computers and if you don't like any of them, there are plenty of others. For me, Good Notes and Procreate are killer apps that justify the device.
My current iPad is six or seven years old. If I spent $1500 this time around and it lasts me six years, that works out to something like $0.65 per day.
I have an M1 iPad Pro too and use it heavily for Logic Pro and occasionally for video editing in Final Cut and Luma. Neither of those things is consumption, and it absolutely flies at both. I suspect OP is somewhat in a bubble.
I don't personally own any Apple products (but use a MacBook for work), but if they iPad had a full desktop OS, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. The form factor and performance is incredible, but the software is the limitation for me.
I’d much rather buy fully specced iPad Pro than a MacBook Air if only it wasn’t neutered by the iPad OS. And that probably is an issue for Apple since they don’t want products to canibalize each other. They want you to buy each and every product.
As it stands today even first gen iPad Pro 11 is more than powerful enough given software limitations.
I would also much rather use a computer than a tablet. The same was true for desktop apps vs web apps, but web apps have gotten so much better and are cross-platform. Desktop apps instead have become repackaged web-apps. All that's to say that the disparity between tablet and computer apps will fade. Basically anything that's web based could already be on-par (if it supports Safari equally well) with the new keyboard accessory. Until Apple makes touch-screen laptops, there's always going to be some workflows that work better on a tablet.
and that is why I have a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 (and to be fair, a Wacom One 13 screen (gen 1) attached to my MacBook).
Probably my next tech purchase will be a Raspberry Pi 5 and a Wacom Movink 13 or second gen. Wacom One 13 --- hopefully it will work as well as the rPi 4 and Wacom One (gen 1) did when I tested them:
Hey, at least it can have native calculator app now. Lack of understanding the innovation about calculator app is real. It took them decade to make. Macos will take few more decades to integrate. Tech is not exist yet even with M4
Yep my 3 year old $299 iPad is already able to stretch iPad OS to its limits. I have no intention of spending $1100+ on an iPad Air/Pro that will add a fancy chip but no functionality to actually use that chip.
After reading this Verge article about decapitating a MacBook (https://www.theverge.com/22965732/macbook-decapitation-slabt...) I couldn’t help but imagine how cool it would be if you could plug an iPad into a keyboard/trackpad case like this and have it switch to running MacOS as soon as you do.
There’s a lot of issues with that, like it would be weird if you were doing something in Terminal in “Mac Mode” but then couldn’t go back to to the Terminal window once you take it off your docking station. But that seems pretty solvable.
There are tools like ISH that lets you compile code. The application situation will definitely improve, not only in the EU, but as seen with the Delta Emulator.
I agree, although having bought a Samsung Tab S9 for this reason, it too seems to be very limiting. Samsung Dex is cool and all, but the app selection on Android is worse than iOS and I couldn’t find a way to run Linux since Linux on Dex was killed off.
Man, Dex is in this horrible spot right now where it's so cool, and so close to being the dream, but misses the mark in a couple of spots (like Linux support) and therefore becomes essentially useless (or rather, toy status). If Samsung fixed a few things like that, I'd be buying the crap out of those tablets.
iSH has to do some insane user-mode x86 emulation, resulting in terrible performance penalty. The experience is not even close to similar where termux runs things directly on the metal.
Yeah... They should have released the iPad Pro and the Macbook Pro with the M4 at the same time. I'm not interested in the M2 anymore. I really want a beefy Macbook Air, but I want it with a high quality processor.
Apple seemingly was recognizing that their userbase wanted more a few years back, and it feels like they're disorganized in this regard still.
It comes down to logistics more than not understanding what their users want. If they released m4 on iPad Pro and MacBook Air at the same time - they would have had to release later.
Apple has also become more conscious of keeping their older hardware in production for longer. Old Apple Watch SoCs become the new HomePod SoC and Apple TV SoC. If they have more of their stuff on the latest and greatest, all their production will have less time to amortise itself, and they would need to either have a greater peak of production output for each product or stockpile and delay releases which is not free when you have such valuable inventory.
I used some WFH budget on an iPad Air and a pencil thinking it would be great for taking notes and diagramming things but it’s mostly been useless. The UX of mirroring from my laptop to draw things has been a buggy mess in every app I’ve tried. The device has been relegated to a screen for watching movies on during flights.
Thanks for saying this, I did the same with expensing an 13 inch iPad Pro thinking I could use it as an extended screen when I travel. The fine print is that its a buggy mess that only works if the ipad and macbook are on the same wifi and even then at half resolution for the ipad, even when plugged in together via usb-c. All I wanted was a standard definition extra monitor that could work over usb-c and watch movies on flights, instead I ended up buying a normal travel monitor out of pocket and now leave the ipad pro at home. Its only function ended up being for my spouse to watch real housewives before bed.
Why are you trying to mirror and not just draw in native apps? Not claiming you're wrong, just wondering what apps/workflow you're using, since "drawing" is pretty good on the iPad.
Not OP: But I've considered getting an iPad+Pencil to use as a digital whiteboard / tablet in meetings. My plan was to either AirPlay the screen to the Mac or use some app like Freeform that syncs sketches in real time and have the Mac app open.
I probably wanna jump quickly between e.g editor / terminal / website and the whiteboard, and sharing the iPad monitor directly by joining the call seems to heavy.
Ah, I would have just joined Zoom twice, once from my MBP, once from the iPad. But, yeah, if you're sharing apps from both devices, that's a bit of a PITA.
I'll have to try it the way you describe sometime just to see how it works for me.
I'd love a new OLED mini. I use mine heavily every day. It's big enough that the screen is much more comfortable to my aging eyes than my phone. But it's small enough that I can fit it in my pockets and take it everywhere. In terms of pure form factor, the iPad Mini is probably my favorite computing device. My dream machine would be an Mini which ran MacOS. I know Apple will never make that, but dreams are free.
There probably will be an update to the Mini later this year. Probably not a huge update if the rumors are correct.
I used to have an iPad Mini that I used for reading and light consumption (along with a MacBook). Over time, I went back to an e-ink device for reading, as it's much easier on my eyes (very noticeable after a day of staring at screens at the office). Now I have a Kindle and an iPad Pro.
My wife used to have a Mini as well, for the same reason. Now she either uses her MBA for consumption or a Kindle for reading.
Basically, we found the Mini's biggest strength (small size) was good for reading, but e-ink is better. And for movies/surfing/etc, we both prefer an 11 or 13" screen.
And with phones getting ever larger, the gap between iPhone Pro MegaXL+ and iPad mini isn't much.
Agreed! I was waiting for todays event to buy an iPad mini. The form factor seems perfect for my usage.
I guess now my choices are either buy a form factor I don’t want, buy a 3 year old device, buy Android or not buy at all.
This is what I was waiting on, but given it seems pretty clear that Apple wants to kill off mini devices and I've been waiting for an OLED iPad for years, I went ahead and got an iPad Pro 11
Gah. So it looks and functions more or less like the last one, albeit a bit faster? Consumer tech is so boring - Nobody dares do something even a little different
I wouldn't really agree with this take. There's plenty of companies making quirky products, e.g. look at the ASUS Zenbook Duo, but they don't sell as widely and hence don't get as much media coverage.
Maybe I'm getting old by the thought of how much engineering goes into making chips, only for them to end up on a tablet kids use to watch cartoons and cat videos is mildly depressing.
Honestly, as someone deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem, I still find myself scratching my head over the random segmentation of the iPad lineup.
There's this whole circus with the Apple Pencil compatibility: one iPad works with the 1st generation Pencil, another supports the 2nd, a two others support the third, and i guess a new magic pencil pro? That's 4 pencils out in the wild.
The real kicker for me is how both devices are hamstrung more by their software than by any hardware limitations so, really, what can an iPad Pro can do off that the Air can't?
Apple’s product marketing isn't doing us any favors here. Their comparison table is laughable:
https://www.apple.com/ipad/
There's a reason why I loved the simplicity of Steve Jobs' product quadrant when he came back to Apple. And a great part of it was the fact that each product addressed a specific category of user. Whereas the iPad lineup has created categories in search of a user.
This is a more detailed comparison table that does new iPad Pro 11in (M4) vs new iPad Air 11in (M2) vs old iPad Air 11in (5th Gen, M1). There are some differences but you're right that they are pretty minor.
I guess the big difference is the display. OLED for the iPad Pro (which they weirdly call "Ultra Retina XDR") whereas the new iPad Air and the old one have a similar "advanced LCD" display (which they weirdly call "Liquid Retina").
Otherwise, the M4/Pro also has a higher core count, more storage options (up to 2TB) and even more storage available via Thunderbolt (e.g. USB storage devices), so long as you don't mind wires or Thunderbolt/USB hubs.
Then there are some differences that are just pricing or upgrade cycle wedges, like the "pro" keyboard support (only on M4) and the new Apple Pencil "pro" (on M2/M4).
I think I'll personally stick with the iPad Air line, especially since I much prefer Touch ID to Face ID, and I just use a full-blown Apple Bluetooth keyboard anyway rather than the iPad-specific ones. I described my iPad "fancy typewriter" setup here:
Hard to say whether this particular iPad Air release will warrant an upgrade over my iPad Air 5th Gen, though. Doubt it. Identical dimensions, nearly identical core count, identical RAM, and I got the 256 GB option last time around, so it has plenty of storage.
Hello, might sound unrelated my keen advice by the way..Before you think of cloning your partner's phone you need to be emotionally strong coz it's not easy down there y'all text (geniusspyhack @gmail com) if in need of any hack/spy services or you are being blackmailed
There's plenty of niches where they're just the right machine for the job. Every pilot I know flies with an iPad running Foreflight for everything from route planning to situational awareness.
I have an iPad Pro that sees infrequent use, but when I do use it, it is excellent. Its primary purpose is making music (background music for a podcast), but on occasion I also use it to sketch out ideas, and sometimes to create polished illustrations. It's not great for everything, but it's amazing at a few things.
If the goal is to get a lot of value from the device, I'd recommend getting a keyboard case and keep it attached most of the time (it can still be detached/put behind as needed)
Otherwise if getting out of the Apple ecosystem isn't an issue, going for a Samsung Chromebook or a Surface Pro also opens a lot more use cases, including "serious" work that you won't need to delay because you're not on a "real" computer.
In my experience, tablets tend to be a highly divisive device, either used a tremendous amount or not used at all. I have friends for whom the tablet was a primary computing device in high school and uni and they often use it more than their laptops. Meanwhile I hardly ever pick one up and can't really imagine buying one for myself.
Similar for me (except I've got an Android tablet for just displaying music). For many people who use web apps for daily tasks (admin), conferencing and one or two somewhat CPU intensive apps, or apps like Procreate, the iPad is perfect. For devs, it just doesn't work.
I recently gave using a 2nd gen 11-inch iPad Air as my daily driver, and I gotta say I like it a lot more than I was expecting.
I have a big beefy TrueNAS machine at home and run various Linux VMs for dev work, accessed via Tailscale; mosh-ing or ssh-ing in via Blink Shell is pretty much flawless. I can even institute my "Cmd = tmux prefix" trick that I do in iTerm (via mapping hex codes), so for me it's essentially the same dev workflow as my M1 MacBook Air, albeit with a worse keyboard and a smaller screen, but with the added benefit of LTE, which IMO is a fair trade off until we (Tim Apple, please) get LTE on the Mac lineup (not holding my breath).
The only thing I've been finding myself wanting is a larger screen and a better keyboard, and the 13-inch could potentially deliver both. It's a pretty appealing device.
That said, I of course wish that Apple would just let me treat it like a real computer and not have to connect to Linux VMs to get any work done, but hey, it's still a nice experience if it lines up with your workflow.
I would have said the same thing a few months ago. I had Face ID on my iPhone X, Touch ID on my 6th generation iPad, and had had Touch ID on the iPhone 6 Plus I had before the iPhone X.
My experience with those left me firmly in the "I really would rather have Face ID than Touch ID on my future iPhones and iPads" camp.
A few months ago I replaced the 6th generation iPad due to a heavily degraded battery. The replacement is a 10th generation iPad. The Touch ID on it is a vast improvement over what I'd had on my previous iPad and previous iPhone.
For example it used to be that after washing my hands Touch ID would often have trouble. Apparently when I dry I don't always completely dry my fingertips.
That's not a problem with the new Touch ID. It even has no trouble if I run water over my fingers and then try to unlock the iPad without drying the fingertips at all.
Apple has a practice in the last decade or so, of bumping its older products into a lower price-point alongside the newer hardware. This is a win for everyone as near as I can tell - The lower priced devices bring more people in. Apple gets to keep using existing tooling for manufacturer. Owners of these products from their initial release can reasonably expect longer support.
Also, tangentially and not at all seriously: If you want to see messy, confusing product lines from Apple allow me to introduce you to a little thing called "Performa"
For iPad alone there are 6 iPad versions now. And 4 Apple Pencils.
It's already on Performa level.
Similar things happen to iPhone (4 overlapping nearly identical models every year for a total of 7 currently being sold) and Macbooks (any number of models any given year, they are currently selling 5)
I apologize for being pedantic here, but we're nowhere near Performa-level confusion. There were 70 distinct models of Macintosh Performa between 1992 and 1997 when the last Performa was shipped. What is the difference between the Performa 635, 636, 637, and 638... SKUs, I guess?
There was a model of Performa that sold for literally 2 weeks (the Performa 410). Apple sold the same series of computer under different names: The Performa 630, LC 630, and Quadra 630 are all the same machine.
I agree that Apple has a real naming problem (is this an X as in 'ex' or X as in '10'?) but I really don't find the iPad line up to be that confusing. There are 2 sizes of iPad Pro, 2 sizes of iPad Air, an iPad and an iPad mini.
The difference between many of them is about the same as between 635, 636, 637, and 638
And who exactly is iPad aimed at?
Or can you tell me without looking into specs what exactly is the difference between iPad Pro and iPad Air? Or even looking at the specs: https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/
Apart from the CPU bump they are so similar that you can't help but to think that they didn't include Thunderbolt in regular iPad just to have something to differentiate them.
Funnily enough, Air weighs more and is thicker than the Pro. A great sign of company completely losing all sight of their product lines.
You don't need 6 iPads. You need 3: iPad Mini, iPad Mid, iPad Max. Name them however you want to name them.
They have a "Pro" product across most of their products. If anything, the "Air" nomenclature in some products whereas others have no name indicating it's the lower priced option is what's confusing.
I own M1, A10X and A12X iPad Pros. I have yet to see any of them ever max out their processor or get slow. I have no idea why anyone would need an M4 one. Sure, it's because Apple no longer has M1s being fabbed at TSMC. But seriously, who would upgrade.
Put MacOS on iPad Pro, then it gets interesting. The most interesting thing my ipad pros do are look at security cameras or read ODB-II settings on my vehichle. Hell, they can't even maintain an SSH connection correctly. Rediculous.
I see Apple always show videos of people editing video on their iPad Pro. Who does that???
A 4 year old Chromebook is 3x as useful as a new iPad Pro.
Our house is chocked full of Apple gear, but the idea of spending a cool $1000 on a neutered consumption device gets less appealing with each generation.