Funny how most of the answers to this post boil down to "remote into another $2k machine to do your work on a $2k machine that would be extremely capable of doing it by itself".
I write C# code by remoting to a $2k machine, however, iPadOS 16 got me hyped for the fact that I can take my old Mac Mini give it to my mom and just use my M1 iPad on my 43 inch 4k monitor to do mundane stuff as logging into work via VPN, run RDP, run Teams and use it as my "desktop".
All I need now is a decent terminal for iPad OS AND some kind of USB-C hub to allow charging AND display out the same time.
That sounds like a strange setup for C# unless I'm missing something.
C# is basically "built for IDEs", even VS code can't hold a candle to Rider or Visual Studio - vim and friends are a joke in comparison.
I like iPad form factor and would love the idea of using it as a thin client for development, but unless JetBrains come up with iOS client for remote development (which I doubt) it's a non-starter for me.
Also what's stopping you from charging form USB-C monitor and using it as a hub ?
I have a C# project which I can work with in either VS 2022 or VS Code. I find myself almost always using VS Code. I mean to blog about why, but performance is better and it is nicer for the non-C# parts like TypeScript.
> JetBrains come up with iOS client for remote development
It wouldn’t be stupid if they would, especially that they are moving towards an architecture of a thin client communicating with the extracted intellij core, even selling remote cloud offerings. Actually, it would likely bring lots of money to them if they come up with a seriously good ipad client.
I don't know about C#, it's not an ecosystem I swim in at all, but there are multiple python options (including Pyto, the venerable Pythonista and jupyter notebook hosts like Juno & Carnets). There are js environments like Scriptable and Play.js. And it's not Xcode but Swift Playgrounds offers, of course, swift including swift.ui and the ability to redistribute those projects (with some limitations) including submitting directly to the App Store.
I get it; I use an iPad a lot for a great many things. It's not perfect - I have a long list of things I would like to see addressed. Low effort complaints like "let me know when I can code on it" are just that though; low effort. So those who complain "how to code on it?" or about how it exactly match the workflow they use on a completely different platform etc just sound.... whiney.
Low effort noise when some basic infrastructure could enable so many other workflows. I like my iPad, I use it every day, I hope to use more with less friction soon-ish. Yup, same thing every June.
I mean, on the other hand, there's plenty of other things I could code on. I have a Nintendo Switch with root access, but that doesn't make it an appealing device to write code with. Hell, SSH could run on Apple Watch with a Bluetooth keyboard. Once again though, there's simply no point. You may as well get a laptop, it sounds like you only intend to use it with a keyboard anyways.
I do primarily use it as a laptop... but ~30% of the time it comes off the case and gets carried for data input. Then it's the best tablet I can spend money on, has a very responsive stylus and weighs about the same as a clipboard and pad.
It's the most flexible computer I own. It could be even more so, which I would appreciate, but that depends largely on apple.
For the work I do I can code *locally* but I *don't have to*. Comparing it to a Switch is completely missing what makes them different. Even an attempted reductio ad absurdum should be a little more rigorous than that.
If your monitor can supply power over USB-C it can charge the iPad. There are many options for dongles though. Or even Apple's $350 keyboard has a second charging only port built into the keyboard stand which leaves the main port available for other stuff.
except for the answers that boil down to "buy a $5 app."
this isn't about not being able to code on an iPad. that's easy and people having been doing it for about a decade.
this is just about some people still being mad that they don't get root on a machine they buy. I can understand being mad about that, but just say what you mean. don't pretend you can't code on it when people have been doing that basically since day one.
When the code I write runs at 2% speed it would run natively at on my $2k machine, that's definitely not acceptable and not very useful, I've tried. If your workflow is compatible with that, that's great. If it's web/CI driven, I could imagine that working.
Still not entirely sure what you actually do with it beyond light editing, even with your $5 apps.
No. I've tried coding on these machines. All your tools must run in an interpreter so they're ridiculously slow and the thing gets uncomfortably hot and you can't look at anything else or the app will get closed. It's actually fucking terrible.
Thirding Working Copy here, I've used it for yonks as a core part of my iPad workflow. That and Blink get me super far, and iPadOS 16 is going to get me even further now we have proper external screen support!
I've just been using iSH. It has regular iOS file providers and you can just use regular ol git. No need for weird software you have to pay for, just permissive open source software all the way down :)
I don’t miss root on my device, like having all-encompassing root access is not a goal worth pursuing from a modern security standpoint. But one should absolutely be able to install any app they deem worthy into the existing sand box environment, like put a huge ass scary banner saying it is dangerous and hide it 4 pages down in settings, but let me use my device as I deem fit.
- Swift Playgrounds supports coding, running, and submitting iOS apps to the app store.
- Pythonista is a python IDE for iOS
- iSH Shell is an emulated x86 terminal environment
I still wish they would allow a full dev sandbox on iPad. It can be fully isolated from the root filesystem, I just want to have a terminal, local git repos, and be able to point a text editor at it.
Isn’t pythonista abandonware? Last time I checked the forums for it there were a number of posts about it not getting updates for at least 2 years. It’s a real shame since it’s a nice piece of work that would be great to have actively maintained and updated.
Basically, yeah. Pyto is good and getting better. I recommend it over Pythonista to everyone who wants to run Python natively and doesn't already have a bunch of Pythonista code to support.
The main difference is in the UI libraries each app provides, which aren't cross-compatible. If you want to run plain text-based Python and work with a REPL, they feel very similar. Pyto ship with Python 3.10, though.
I don’t use it regularly, but it worked well enough when I was pushing it pretty hard a while back. Rats. So now we’re back to 0 modern, stable Pythons on iPad?
It runs perfectly. It may not be fair to criticize for lack of major updates. I don’t much like Python but I have bought both versions of Pythonista-really a nice product.
It’s using an EOL version of python. Keeping it up to date to use at bare minimum a version that isn’t EOL (even if it isn’t the latest version) would be nice. Heck, I’d happily pay periodically for major updates since I’m not expecting free work for a product I value and paid for in the first place. It’s a fair criticism if an app is part of an evolving ecosystem (eg, python) and just stops keeping up: slowly but surely it skews further from what people are expecting, what practices are currently in use and those that have been abandoned by the community, etc.
What I don’t understand is why people who have popular apps and decide to stop working on them don’t sell them so someone else can keep them alive. Pythonista is awesome, and lots of people use it. I’m sure someone out there would happily step up to help keep it alive or take it over.
The comment I replied to seemed to think coding was strictly not possible on the platform, so I listed some options for local coding. Honestly I think if someone was serious about using an iPad to develop I would use a remote environment like Github Codespaces or http://vscode.dev/ but others had already covered those options.
I agree that the current solutions aren’t great, thus the second part of my comment wishing for a real on-device dev sandbox which would solve many of those issues.
I would recommend avoiding Pythonista myself as it is abandonware but that has been possible for a long time via stash which is still actively developed https://github.com/ywangd/stash
there are a few other python environments that support pip install
It used to be so good five or so years ago, I remember being so excited about it and even writing so nice little scripts in it. It's sad that it's in the state it is now
Who gets to decide anything? We might as well not speak at all, lest we share spme opinion that's counter to what some other person believes - and some people will believe anything, even that the earth is flat or that crocs are stylish.
Back in real life, however, a Python programming environment limited to "just what it offers in the box" might make some "happy", but it's very easy to argue that it's not serious.
iSH is a great tool, but it's not a general purpose replacement for a shell.
I tried running git clone <some reasonably sized project> and ish died.
I am interested in helping out with iSH development, but it isn't really viable at the moment. It's claim to fame is a partial JIT that runs legally despite apple's jit restrictions
Codea is a really nice lua development environment for the iPad and can also be used to create App Store apps (though you need to use Xcode to build the app bundle). There are quite a few others but I think Codea is noteworthy.
Honestly the whoLe ‘I wish I could code on my iPad’ thing and complaining kids can’t learn to code on them, has been tired for a very, very long time. Many of these dev environments came out more than 10 years ago now. Being able to develop in swift and publish to the App Store directly for the device for free was announced at WWDC and released last year, but people still keep moaning about it. Pay attention people!
I still can't feasibly code and build things in an arbitrary language of my choice. I like my iPad Pro quite a bit but the only way I can do the type of web app dev I normally do through it is by remoting.
I don't believe there are any well-established general text editors that offers decent git and text editing. Syntax highlighting for a few langs, etc.
And then language runtimes. I do Elixir so I need Erlang plus Elixir. The machine could run those fine but I don't think you would be allowed to ship those via Apple's store.
Plenty of limitations. Kids can probably learn to code on them, depending on what they want and like. The argumenta may be tired but so are the unsolved unsolved problems I feel.
Of course it has limitations, sure. iPads aren’t general purpose, open systems. That’s just not in their nature. They’re still programmable though and there are many options for doing so.
Koder and Textastic are pretty comprehensive coding editors. Working Copy is the premiere git client and works well with both.
I (honestly) don't understand the appeal of writing code on an iPad. Feels like the Air or Macbook Pro already do that: a keyboard with a screen. I'd feel cramped if I had to develop on something like iPad OS.
Because it is a locked down supercomputer that could do a lot of things, if it wasn't artificially dumbed down. I completely understand why some people want to undumb it. It is light, powerful and more robust and portable than any notebook.
The iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard weights more then the MacBook Air [1]. I want to say I once read it was thicker as well. It's also just as much money, if not more.
The benefit of the iPad is the touch screen, that's it. The size/weight argument is only valid for those who aren't loading it up with a keyboard cover. I assume everyone talking about coding on it are going to be using the Magic Keyboard.
Do I use it to code, no, but that is because I don’t really code anymore. I have used it along with parallels access to remote in to my Air from literally across the world, and run VSCode to troubleshoot some code for a friend. It worked fine. Anymore it’s become my travel machine.
Yes, but that's only helpful because it has a touch screen. I don't think detraching a screen from it's input devices would be a helpful feature. Touch makes that possible.
The Magic Keyboard is not a portable device. It is built and obviously intended to be a desk-based “dock” for your iPad. It’s weight isn’t really relevant, in fact I expect that they added weight as a counterbalance. I use the Smart Folio Keyboard for my iPad as it is lighter and more portable. Not as good for typing but I don’t type as much on the iPad as on a laptop.
I think there are two camps. Those who are constaintly removing their iPad from the Magic Keyboard for using it with touch and those who never it connected all the time.
If you are going somewhere and will want to type when you get there, the Magic Keyboard is coming with you. It folds up to act as a case for your iPad during transit... it is a portable device.
It’s ergonomic if you set it up right. I have a stand that I attach my IPAD to and pull out my mini mouse and keyboard and don’t have neck pains. With a laptop, you have to crane your neck down to look at it. I see it as like a laptop with a detachable screen.
It’s also less invasive that way, you can get a laptop stand but it looks ridiculous in coffee shops.
This might have been a valid complaint years ago, but now I think the app store rules (and well... sideloading) means that, if you want, you could build out all the apps needed to do this stuff!
There is almost nothing stopping people from writing up iPad apps for coding things up, except for the fact that there is no market. Apple is no longer standing in the way IMO (stuff like Pythonista exists after all)
Sideloading is not accessible to everyone, even though it's fairly easy to achieve. Most users, even technical, would not want to rely on such methods for installing a development environment (or customising their devices for example); Any tentative for monetising an application that depends on sideloading would be bound to fail at scale.
Is the context I described responsible for the lack of market? It may be.
I still think that iOS is the best mobile experience out there, but it's
Turning the iPad into a MacBook is far more than some artificial lock.
It requires consciously designing everything to work as both a fully fledged computer and content consumption device. That touches everything from product design, internal hardware, thermals, operating systems, frameworks etc.
It has a processor, ram, storage, video output, Bluetooth and network connectivity. I'd say it's already fully functioning computer designed to do any computing task. Of course, manufacturer wants it to be a locked down appliance, but its predatory behaviour is not a reason to sheepishly accept the status quo.
And what you say about 'consciously designed ...' amounts to nothing meaningful. Have you seen what hardware people have been running Doom on?
iPad's hardware is already a perfectly usable general purpose computer. It is very portable, unlike your fridge, and has powerful processor and high-capacity battery, unlike your watch. The only problem preventing its use as a general purpose computer in a sense of Macbook is a lock by the manufacturer, which prevents loading a proper OS on it, and the absence of hardware specs, nothing more.
Reductio ad absurdum just to drown out the merits of the parent post. Your iPad is far more capable than those three devices. It should be able to do what the user would like to do.
And an iPad is nowhere close to the safety-critical nature of the other computers. There is no defence for its locked down nature.
People understand this usually. The problem is that when we try to put the same restrictions upon developers of all users there's going to be a lot of friction with the assumptions in design and UX that make it so great for grandma. Bifurcating iPad OS into a pro v consumer version is probably going to result in worse issues for both groups as well, so building something that can be unlocked once in power user mode seems like the better option longer term. There's speculation about _why_ it's been so hard to get this right and only Apple can definitively say what the reasons are.
I want a linux/mac compatible terminal environment sandboxed in iPad OS. I don't need them to be the root OS or try to use a mouse-centric UI via a touchscreen.
Right. I actually do understand and accept the security argument for the locked-down nature of iOS. But with iSH already approved by Apple, WebAssembly already providing a sandboxed VM for untrusted native code, and Google offering VMs on their phones today, full support for untrusted VMs seems like a very reasonable request. If those VMs had graphics support, that might well make the difference between me purchasing an iPad Pro and not—for example, WSL2 is the reason why I've been on Windows lately.
I would guess that Apple fears that Epic will start using untrusted VMs to distribute Fortnite outside the App Store. Though, honestly, they're not far from being able to do that with a hypothetical WebAssembly/WebGL version already.
Sadly, it would probably be memory starved. There isn’t much RAM on those devices. When I tried UTM, a year or so ago, it was difficult to get a functional VM on an iPad Pro.
It makes me wonder how much life my 2018 iPad Pro has left. I think it only has 3GB of RAM, which I could see being more important, as Apple adds more multitasking to the OS.
> iPad OS 16 also adds virtual memory for the first time on an iOS device.
I have also seen that claim, but I have a really hard time believing they didn’t have swap before. Like hell, I’m sure they must have used memory compression as well..
As far as I know iOS dealt with memory by ruthlessly ejecting background apps from memory as needed. If your foreground app exceeded memory limits and all background apps had already been freed then your foreground app is killed.
The latter is pretty rare given how much work has been put into notifying apps about memory pressure, making them easily suspend/resume, and not using garbage collection.
Well, in a way it is a form of swap (just a program-controlled one over an automatic), to tell it to save its state because it is gonna be killed. And to be honest, it is a very fair way of working that should be moved to the desktop as well (plenty of apps have no reason to run in the background - though memory eviction is not needed there when ample memory is available).
Also, sorry to be pedantic but reference counting is a garbage collector algorithm, but I do understand what you mean here (RC needs less memory at the price of not being able to defer work to a concurrent thread)
Not necessarily. I'd be curious to see a slightly different take on the programming environments I'm used to. I like macOS more than iPadOS but regardless, right now I couldn't work on the iPad if I wanted to.
It's a more flexible form factor that can handle things like taking written notes, marking up PDFs, couch surfing extremely well which traditional laptops fail at. And with a Bluetooth keyboard it's perfectly serviceable for typing at a desk. Literally all it's restrictions are completely artificial which makes it doubly frustrating.
I think it depends on the scope of what a user wants to code.
I have a Mac Mini at home, but lately while doing some prep for interviews (sigh, leetcode), I’ve been going to the library or other places with my iPad and a BT keyboard, and it’s not half-bad to write some code. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask) I’ve been mostly writing code on a DigitalOcean instance that I SSH to. That can be trickier if Wi-Fi is shaky where I am since my iPad doesn’t have access to mobile networks and my phone doesn’t do tethering.
Nowadays newer iPads can even hook up to external displays. So form-factor wise, you’re not necessarily missing much, even if you prefer more screen real-estate.
It would definitely be nice to have a native Terminal shell, though.
BTW, if you haven't tried it already, look at Blink as an SSH client. It also supports Mosh, which is a godsend for working from flaky networks. I can literally open a connection from my house, close my iPad, get onto a bus using its WiFi or my phone tether, close it, walk into my office, and continue with the same connection. It's brilliant.
I write a lot of python. A fair chunk of inside Jupiter notebooks. Safari is a capable browser for accessing remotes juypter lab servers and there are a couple developers one-upping each other & producing pretty good options for local development with native libraries.
When I'm home I don't really need the iPad for this (much). There a few use cases where it's clearly better than my MacBook Pro though: the screen is veerry nice outside and I've written more in a hammock than you'd think. Also - airplanes which I am on more often than I'd like to be. an iPad Pro with the magic keyboard is fantastically shallow. It fits on a tray better than anything else.
Forget about writing code, simply having the ability to compile would be a huge improvement. It's obscene that I have a $1500 iPad Pro with hardware/software perfectly capable of building iOS apps, but Apple demands that I buy yet another one of their overpriced machines to do so.
It's not even about the money, it's the sheer audacity and arrogance that shits me.
For someone like me who travels and digital nomads, the 14” MacBook Pro is perfect. iPad is definitely not in my interests but while I definitely can be more productive with more displays, I surprised myself how quickly I got used to using just the MacBook screen.
It's stupid to say this, but I think I work better with just one screen. The temptation to put Slack and email on the second screen and have too many things going on at once is too great. Using a single screen (the MBP display) makes it easier to focus.
I'd say the question is "Can I code iPad apps on an iPad?" I would not really expect iPadOS to become a regular developer enviroment for, like Java, Python or C#. I understand Swift Playgrounds can create some types of apps, but are iPadOS apps written on iPads?
Until I can plug a screen and a keyboard to my iPad and write something as sophisticated as Cultured Code's Things on it, there is still ways to go.
We have a Pro and basically the only advantage is illustration via Apple pencil. It’s even more frustrating to type on than a phone, and every external keyboard I’ve seen requires a flat surface (no ergonomic typing on your lap). In hindsight I’d rather have spent the money on an M1 MacBook Air and a Wacom tablet.
How about getting a MacBook Air and using your iPad Pro as a second display (using SideCar) on which you can also draw with your Apple Pencil? Possibly more flexible than a Wacom tablet.
That’s probably the path forward at this point. Not super keen to shell out for a Macbook Air at the moment (they’re definitely a compelling machine, but I’m trying to keep costs down for other priorities).
I gave up on the idea of coding in my iPad when I realized that my iPad Pro, with the keyboard, weighed as much as a MacBook. There was no real benefit after that point, so I stopped trying. :(
FWIW I do code on my iPad and have gotten rid of my Mac laptop. I have two options: remote desktop into my gaming PC, or use GitPod (which works quite well for a more "native" but not offline dev experience). One day maybe there will be a full IDE, but for now this works well for occasional side project work.
I've used blinkshell to remote into other machines and it's worked well enough for me, although it still requires another machine. It apparently has vscode built into it now, but I haven't used it much since.
I coded on my iPad for a few months (jailbroken with X11) and loved it. I’ve accepted I’ll need to run Linux on an old one if I ever want to use one as a proper workstation. I can’t foresee Apple ever relaxing the security enough to allow a proper development environment.
Yes, via Gitpod. See https://ghuntley.com/anywhere for tips and recommendations for apps / keyboard configuration because the magic keyboard doesn’t have an esc key. Happy to answer any questions folks may have. Ask away!
Does gitpod work well with Cmd- key combinations? That was the problem I had with the coder.com vscode fork. It worked great, but copy/paste/undo were always problematic. I eventually found an iOS app that acted as a dedicated front end to the coder.com web app.
This is the one I use. It talks about subscriptions, but works for free if you supply your own remote VM/server.
Undermentioned new feature: DriverKit is now available on iPadOS. You will be able to, apparently, write your own drivers and run them on iPads. That's a big deal.
I have no idea why Apple is being so unwilling to let the iPad become its touch enabled tablet/laptop. They famously commoditized the iPod to huge success when they made it an app on the iPhone. Why not risk cannibalizing sales of MacBooks by letting the iPads achieve their full potential? I mean what is the point of a m1 in the iPad with 16GB of ram if it’s going to be hindered by the OS? Let it run if not full MacOS at least let us do things like run XCode and such — let us take advantage of the hardware!
It works quite well (I have it ‘installed’ as a home screen app). You can open individual files or remote repos, but not local folders. Seems responsive.
Does it? I remember playing with Codeserver last spring and found the complete lack of basic things like scrolling using the trackpad to be deal breakers. It's neat but mobile safari just was not up to it.
Scrolling with the trackpad is working fine for me (I’m on a M1 iPad Pro on iPadOS 15.4), at least on the ~7000-line package-lock.json I just tested. The app does have some quirks, mind you, like the native scrollbar obscuring the VS Code scrollbar.
Yeah, this is why I sold my last iPad Pro, after owning iPPs for about 4 years. It's such an incredible device crippled in the most brutal way by this overly restrictive mobile OS (let's be real, iPadOS is just an iOS skin and changed nothing). Doesn't seem like Apple has any interest in ever changing this, so I doubt I'll buy an ipp again.
Seriously. I really wanted to buy an iPad but then realised i have no use for it.
It's not as good as my laptop and the functionality in every aspect is still very limited. The only unique feature is drawing/notes which might work for artists but paper is good enough for me.
I want to like it but for now it's still a giant iphone with a pen.
An iPad Pro is essentially a laptop with a shitty OS and some missing hardware. They already have the laptop. They just won’t make it work, for obvious reasons.
Surely the main reason iPad and Air don’t become the same product is to push more and more consumers into the increasingly locked down product. Opening up iPad to run arbitrary code would ruin this anti-competitive advantage
You developed on EC2 then and iPad was your dumb terminal. What is really needed is some sort of native container support so that overpriced gadget could be even useful offline.
Right now, just like you could yesterday. But maybe you actually want to run that code? That's probably never going to happen, not on the App Store at least!
It's a mobile device. Mobile devices are designed primarily for consumption or interaction with walled gardens where your content can easily be monetized by someone else (like social networks). They're consumer devices with the emphasis on the word consumer.
As you say it's entirely an OS limit not a hardware limit.
I think that overstates things and it’s a blinkered “developer” perspective. Many professionals use iPads to create and do real work every day: writers, artists, designers, lawyers, etc.iPads aren’t useful for developers, but developers are a vanishingly small percentage of the population.
“Pro” != Developer. There are many other professions
That's not exactly what I meant. My post above wasn't that well phrased.
The problem is that if you do all those things on an iPad, you don't own your data. It belongs to whatever walled garden you're working in. Uninstall the app and your data is gone. Stop renting cloud and your data is gone. The company running the app goes bankrupt and your data might be gone.
This is the fundamental difference I see between "mobile" and "desktop" ecosystems. Mobile is designed from the ground up to place you into a much more subservient relationship to vendors. I've described the mobile ecosystem as "feudal computing."
If they're emphasizing the word "consumer" why do they put "Pro" in the product name? I generally agree w/ you by the way (just think your reasoning is wrong). Apple clearly has no interest in making an iPad into a computer anytime in the near future. But somehow "Why isn't this a computer yet?" is all you hear after any iPad announcement.
iPadOS 16 and still no multiuser support :-( Why can’t we use one iPad inside a family, with each user having his/her own apps, settings, bookmarks and so on? (Ok I know, Apple needs to sell an iPad to each one of us :-) )
100% at this point. A few years ago Apple introduced a classroom feature which is essentially a multi-user mode, only for education. It is already essentially built, they just have to enable it for general usage.
My understanding of the classroom feature is that it’s built around a classroom usage model: Hand out clean iPads in the morning, students sign in, collect them in the afternoon, wipe, repeat.
It’s not designed for fast (enough) switching or maintaining “hot” data from multiple users simultaneously on the same iPad.
It's apparently not as fully functional as you'd expect. It's designed where apps will have their data all stored in the cloud and profiles act as just a single sign on where the apps will sync down the correct data depending on the signed in user. Especially important as users will be switching around between physical devices so it all has to be cloud storage anyway.
iPad has had multi user support for quite a while, it is necessary for schools, etc. I set it up via Configurator 2. It isn’t difficult. Send me an email if you need help getting it working, happy to help!
That really isn’t multi-user support though, is it? You are just doing rapid reinstalls with a new user profile, wiping the old profile each time. It seems like a pretty crude hack because profile support was not built into the first iOS.
My iPad's typically in the living room, if someone want's to quickly look up or show something, this would be ideal.
The regular user would be great for the rest of my family, especially when traveling. We're just not going to get extra iPads for everyone for relatively low time spent on the device.
I know at least for mobile phones multi-user support is patent encumbered thanks to Nokia [1]. Maybe similar situation to how Apple wants to do it on iPad? They do have multi-user support for education only on iPad.
The patent linked in the article was never even granted, it's been abandoned since 2009 (3 years before the article was even written).
I suspect the author entirely made up the "patent issue" to write this blogspam-like garbage, and that Google's decision to initially restrict the feature to tablets had nothing to do with patents.
Then the TechCrunch author likely made it up (or wherever they got it from). This patent was never valid at any point in time, and had been abandoned for 3 years when the article was posted. This idea that google limited the feature because of patent concerns is pure fantasy.
Android's had multi-user capabilities since v4.2 (2013-07).
This doesn't mean that a 1:1 relationship between a person and their phone / tablet isn't the common configuration - I'm sure it is - but it's fair to say that 'the rest of the world' has had this feature for nearly a decade.
As a sibling comment noted, Apple has developed this feature already in their 'the first hit is free' (aka the Education <sic>) version, so at this point it smells a lot like a plain old vanilla-flavoured marketing ploy.
I think the real answer is that Apple does not see Android tablets as real competition so they don't need to match Android feature for feature since someone considering an iPad will not consider a Samsung tablet a viable alternative.
Just my opinion, but I have both apple and android Samsung tablets (use both for testing), The android tablets are simply not in the same ballpark in terms of quality and UX.
So if I was Apple, I doubt I’d take the android tablet market seriously. Android mobile phones are viable alternatives but not the tablets.
To be fair, that first statement conflates Samsung and Android, so the second half of your first line should be that Samsung tablets are not in the same class.
Samsung's take on Android is, in my experience, dreadful.
I’d love multi-user support on my iPhone. Or at the very least, multi-AppleID.
I have accounts in 2 countries.
Some apps are only available on one or the other. To install (and some times to upgrade, but not always), I need to switch accounts. When I do that, I lose all my locally downloaded music, podcasts, etc. When I switch back, usually some app doesn’t, like Messages, or even Music.
I usually only notice that says later, by which time I might have missed a lot of things. It’s also a pain trying to sign out and back into one of these apps, nothing is obvious.
I'd love to have it for work. I know that most on here absolutely don't want to mix personal and work devices, but I hate carrying 2 phones. I would gladly give a workplace I trust control over a sandboxed profile on my iphone instead of carrying 2 phones.
Personally I only use my ipad as a drawing tablet. I'd be perfectly happy to share it with family members if that didn't mean giving access to my entire apple account and notifications / IMs / Photos
Stage Manager follows the same pattern as the other features Apple took too long to realize were already figured out on the Mac: make it arbitrarily different to be able to call it new. Just like the “changing cursor” for trackpad support on the iPad. But hey, I'll take it I guess.
Unfortunately, in previous cases, these "justification" tweaks have resulted in a strictly worse experience IMO. The transforming cursor on the iPad is distracting and it can be weird how it disappears over icons (resulting in me losing track of it sometimes). The iPad Keyboard is more awkward than a real keyboard, top-heavy, and sold separately of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same is true of Stage Manager, although at least it's on the Mac too so hopefully if it turns out to not be that great, it won't be excused as "people not getting it" like all the weirdo undiscoverable gestures on the iPad.
The sad reality though is that it's taken 10 years for the iPad to finally mature into... an arbitrarily different take on OS X? Same chip as the Mac. Works with a keyboard and mouse. Better for drawing but worse for external monitor support. And now basically the same window management we've always had with the Mac. I was always (and remain, theoretically) a big believer in the opportunity the iPad presented, and think it could have gotten to the same place sooner, but bolder, with the actual aim of replacing the Mac (the same way the iPhone replaced the iPod). Where it's at now kind of proves that's always been possible... it just chose to get here meekly instead, not stepping on any toes, always making sure there was an excuse to need to buy both devices.
Universal Control to me is the epitome of that mentality: a supremely technically impressive, but ultimately completely over-engineered and absolutely ridiculous "solution" to a problem that wouldn't exist if the Mac simply had a touch screen. You wouldn't need WiFi and communication between two computers to move your mouse from screen A to screen B if the Mac just had a touch screen. The experience of having a touch Mac that you just... plugged into an external display would be strictly better than the weird world of Universal Control, where you drag an image from Adobe Photoshop for Mac over to Adobe Photoshop for iPad, or sometimes, you drag it from Adobe Photoshop for iPad running on the Mac using Catalyst to Adobe Photoshop for iPad running "natively" on the iPad.
I think Apple truly squandered the opportunity in the last decade to get truly get ahead on "big screen" (aka, non-phone-based) computing. Instead, the field still remains wide open.
Well, given the disasters that other parties in the industry have seen trying to make the new platform into the only platform, I can't help but think that some trepidation is justified. Power users also seem to be quite outspoken about traditional keyboard-and-mouse UX not going away, which also makes the success of a single unified platform unlikely.
> Universal Control to me is the epitome of that mentality: a supremely technically impressive, but ultimately completely over-engineered and absolutely ridiculous "solution" to a problem that wouldn't exist if the Mac simply had a touch screen. You wouldn't need WiFi and communication between two computers to move your mouse from screen A to screen B if the Mac just had a touch screen. The experience of having a touch Mac that you just... plugged into an external display would be strictly better than the weird world of Universal Control, where you drag an image from Adobe Photoshop for Mac over to Adobe Photoshop for iPad, or sometimes, you drag it from Adobe Photoshop for iPad running on the Mac using Catalyst to Adobe Photoshop for iPad running "natively" on the iPad.
There are plenty of use cases for Universal Control that wouldn't be fixed by a touch Mac, though. I use it to control multiple Macs (previously used ShareMouse and before that Synergy, but Universal Control works much more smoothly without a hardwired connection), as well as to use native iPadOS apps from developers that force their Electron apps on macOS with, like Slack and Discord.
Personally speaking I have no desire for touch on traditional MacBooks – I can only see it making sense on a dockable iPad-like Mac.
> Personally speaking I have no desire for touch on traditional MacBooks – I can only see it making sense on a dockable iPad-like MacBook.
Yes, the fundamental premise is that the last 10 years would have been used differently to grow the touch space to where it fits in the lineup. Arguably a desktop and laptop are as far apart as a laptop and an iPad. That doesn’t mean they need different OSes. I shouldn’t have to use a completely different OS because I want to use the Apple Pencil. It’s just a peripheral. And yes, peripherals should influence the UI (like how scroll bars appear or disappear depending on whether you have a mouse with a scroll wheel attached). I imagine a “Touch Mac” as a laptop where you could spin the screen around to draw on the go for example. Forget complex touch uses, just being able to fold it back to read like a book or watch a movie is a killer feature. But even the Magic Keyboard for the iPad doesn’t support this transformation, you have to take the iPad out to use it… like an iPad. It’s silly. Similarly, opening up touch to the Mac to allow for things like the Surface Studio, for those who need it, would be great! Instead touch is locked in a tiny screen on Apple’s least-used OS (well, after tvOS I guess).
I can kind of see the larger point you're making – it would be nice to be able to directly use an Apple Pencil on a Mac, but at the same time I do think separate OSes are necessary for radically different form factors. The UX requirements just change too much between phone/tablet and laptop/desktop… when you try to fudge both models into the same device you get a mess like Windows 8 or GNOME 3/4 which doesn't serve either set of users particularly well.
> Instead touch is locked in a tiny screen on Apple’s least-used OS (well, after tvOS I guess).
If sales figures are any indicator, it's macOS that likely takes the position second-least-used OS. Apple sold 19.1 million iPads in 2021 and only 10 million Macs[0]. Lots of users who'd never consider buying a Mac are in the market for some form of iPad.
> but at the same time I do think separate OSes are necessary for radically different form factors.
But the last 10 years have been Apple repeatedly disproving this. iPadOS started radically different from macOS... only to have every major inflection point be defined by it moving closer to desktop/macOS. Whether it was giving up on the single-app model to one that recognized that apps needed to run in parallel (first in a "managed window manager" like a tiling window manager you might find in Linux, and later to a more traditional "unmanaged" one like in normal macOS), to shunning away from keyboards and mice entirely, to then only being an accessibility feature, to now being a major add-on that they sell, and even finally adopting key-commands, etc. (I don't know if anyone ever shook an iPad to undo).
I think this position was defensible at the start, but at the very least has had little supporting evidence since. It is indisputable that the evolution of iPadOS has been to move further and further from iOS and closer and closer to macOS. Perhaps there exists some third way (there probably does!), but Apple has proven to be stretched too thin to try anything other than "maybe it should work more like a phone" and "maybe it should work more like a laptop", and the latter has been the consistent, if begrudging, winner.
> The UX requirements just change too much between phone/tablet and laptop/desktop…
I think this has the line in the wrong place. It should be "between phone and tablet/laptop/desktop". The mistake was starting at iOS and having to trudge to macOS over 10 years vs. the other way around (although perhaps it made sense for marketing reasons). I mentioned this before, and Gruber wrote about my thoughts here [1], but the funny thing about the iPhone is that despite being more constrained than the iPad, I feel less frustrated with it. I am impressed with how much I can get done on my phone, I am understanding when it falls short. But the iPad makes it so clear to me all the time that all that's standing in the way of me getting something done is some designer's stubborn reluctance to allow me to do things the "old way". An easy example is writing long form text before there was a good keyboard you could attach. I get why the phone isn't a great place to type, the iPad feels unnecessary for that to always be the case.
> I can kind of see the larger point you're making – it would be nice to be able to directly use an Apple Pencil on a Mac,
I think the best way to think about this is from user workflows first, as I mentioned above it's not even just about the touch aspects. I think the YouTube experience is pretty great on the iPad. Touch here is kind of a bare necessity, I need to pause the video somehow, but it's not a fundamentally "touch experience", it's just a nice form factor for watching videos on the couch. But that experience immediately changes to frustration if I want to suggest the video to someone or have to quickly reply to an email. I'd love to be able to swivel the keyboard out, copy/paste the link, send it in Messages and type something out quickly. Or reply to an email that's longer than a sentence without thinking "ugh, I should really go to my computer for this". This is a point that is bizarrely absent in all these "the devices complement each other" discussions: they work worse separately. I often want to circle something in a picture and draw an arrow, which sucks with a mouse, then type something out, which sucks with a Pencil. The experience is frustrating on both devices, but would be better if I could do both things. And just like a device supporting all sorts of peripherals doesn't mean its a requirement, you could choose to use it as if it didn't have a Pencil or touch as well. There are tons of scenarios that would be way better even in the absolute worst implementation of this: a machine that when in flipped around in "iPad mode" gave you iPadOS, and when the keyboard was out, have it act like macOS (again, I'm not suggesting this is how it should work, but it represents a "floor" of what the experience could be like). Just the weight savings of not needing both devices is great.
> when you try to fudge both models into the same device you get a mess like Windows 8 or GNOME 3/4 which doesn't serve either set of users particularly well.
I've never been impressed with pointing at Linux at Windows as proof that "the other way doesn't work". It is unfortunate that the cost-to-entry on this hardware means we get very little alternatives to compare. And frankly, Windows and Linux don't do that much great in any UI department, that doesn't mean "if Apple can't do it, it must be impossible." If you only had Windows and Linux, you might be convinced that desktop computing was an unsolvable UI problem too...
Conceptually Apple has to create the illusion that these devices are dissimilar enough to justify shelling out thousands for both.
But at the end of the day (in my experience), users fall into one of two buckets- primary use case is productivity (coding, office, photo/movie editing, etc.) or primary use case is consuming content. While there is some overlap between the two users as evidenced by the fact that many people own both and do some of both on each device, it seems inevitable that the devices will continue to converge until a $900 iPad is fully capable of doing 95% of what a $2000 MBP can do and then Apple will have a real problem on its hands as people stop buying the more expensive devices and the cheaper ones last much longer.
We are watching the innovator’s dilemma play out inside a single company. Interestingly one of the tell tale signs a disruption is underway is a hybrid use case where people use a costlier version of a product along side a cheaper version because the cheaper version does certain things better than the costly one.
It's even weirder when Microsoft has been releasing Surface tablets for over a decade, which are generally well liked by their users (from what I understand, I've never personally owned one). They just created some dedicated touch UIs for core functionality, and optimized the higher-level UI elements for touch control. Surface Tablets certainly aren't perfect. But they can run any windows software, they have proper file management, and they can actually be used by professionals without major compromises.
For professional use, iPad OS will always be a compromise until it's fully integrated with MacOS. And it baffles me that Apple is trying to market iPads to professionals, yet their unwilling to take that step.
> They just created some dedicated touch UIs for core functionality, and optimized the higher-level UI elements for touch control.
One should note that the changes Microsoft initially made to support the Surface (and touchscreens in general) so deeply compromised their desktop OS's design and functionality that many had to be reverted for the next OS release; many other "features" have continued to be among the biggest usability pain points for the ecosystem.
Surface laptops are slow with cumbersome interface and even Microsoft’s own apps took years to be touch friendly. Even as of Windows 10 at least there are still parts of the interface that go back to Windows 95.
Apple didn’t design iPadOS to be “arbitrarily different enough to be called new.” They are incrementally building a new type of GUI from first principles. Mouse-based input took decades to evolve to where it is today.
Its okay to feel like this GUI doesn’t work well for your needs, but that doesn’t mean it was “arbitrary”.
The cursor on iPadOS is a game-changer and arguably one of the very few noteworthy UI/UX innovations of the last few years.
IMO it is incredibly well implemented and thought through. And it works amazingly well and serves a clear purpose for the medium which is iPadOS with all of its design details.
In the user interface/interaction world, I'd go as far as calling it genius.
Can you explain why? I mentioned some of my actual issues with it in my critique, which were neither addressed nor even explained away as an acceptable sacrifice in exchange for the many real benefits it provides. I’m legitimately curious what actual big problems you believe it uniquely and amazingly solves. For the record, I think it’s great to simply be delighted by the feature — but if I understand correctly, you think it goes above and beyond that into real “for the history books” usability. That’s why I find it a bit strange that you spent 3 paragraphs saying it’s genius, but didn’t mention one actual problem it solves or capability it enables, let alone what makes it one of the few noteworthy innovations in all of UI and UX in the last few years (which is really saying something considering it has competition like “Scan Text” in photos which is really Sci-Fi incredible stuff that still makes me think “what did I do before this?”).
My least favorite thing by far is the f#*$#%ing "Launcher bar" thingy. Apple, I know how to get home...I don't need a garish bar on screen all the time to remind me whichs ide to swipe from.
Maybe 3-5 years until iOS/iPadOS and MacOS are essentially the same. It doesn’t make sense to keep them separate code based when iOS is developing into a hybrid form factor OS, with mouse, multitasking, windows, file system, external monitor, usb accessories, keyboard, etc.
My guess is non-pro laptops will basically be iOS, and then there will be a MacOS Pro, which unlocks some capabilities for developers, but all in a unified code base.
First step was to share processor architecture and work in the ability for iOS apps to run in MacOS. But iOS is very much converging into a replacement for MacOS. And just like iPhone iOS strips out features you unlock with iPadOS, same for the iOS-ification of MacOS.
If they aren't currently the same, they probably never will be.
The whole business case for the iPad falls apart the minute it can install and run arbitrary code. At that point, the iPad shifts from being a large form-factor iPhone to being a multi-modal Macbook. Which is to say, it goes from a device that compliments an existing device to one that replaces and existing, more expensive device.
The reason professionals use Macbooks is because users still need to install and run software that's not sanctioned by Apple. And users are willing to pay a decently large premium to do so.
I'm sure Apple would love to lock down Macbooks the same way they did for iDevices, but if they do that, they would end up killing the Macbook market overnight.
If Apple allows exceptions to the iOS sandbox for developers, it will very rapidly be abused by users who don’t understand the implications of what they’re doing.
You can see this in the many just-jailbreak-your-iphone-to-get-this-cool-feature videos all over youtube. Almost no-one outside of developers understands what it really means to disable these guardrails and the headache for Apple when it starts going wrong would be enormous.
Grandma: “I let my grandson borrow my phone but now it has this screen that says I need to pay money to decrypt my files how do I fix it?”
Apple store staff: “That appears to be malware, madam”
blank stare
Apple store staff: “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do”
I really despise the idea that we should let the manufacturer decide what's best for us with no out based on the premise of protecting people who don't know any better. As technology becomes an increasingly integral part of our lives, people need to be able to think for themselves and understand the consequences of how they interact with software.
Also as someone who's grandmother started her own software company and was a programmer since the days of punchcards, I find these "what about grandma" appeals very repetitive and kind of insulting.
> Also as someone who's grandmother started her own software company and was a programmer since the days of punchcards, I find these "what about grandma" appeals very repetitive and kind of insulting.
Your grandmother sounds like a genuinely very impressive person, given that it would have been a much more difficult career to forge as a woman in the timeframe from punchcards forward, even up to the present day.
Respectfully, I don't believe you are insulted. I think you know what was meant by the above, and chose to be insulted.
Your overall argument is also not wrong, but kind of irrelevant. This is HN - everyone here is a tech enthusiast. We are not Apple's target market. Removing the guardrails would cost them revenue and headaches.
Whether or not companies should be made to allow arbitrary software to run on devices is a different question entirely, has no clear and simple answer, and I'm not sure who would have the authority to make that happen.
On the other hand, my grandma could barely use a DVD player, and definitely didn't want to learn to set one up. But when the industry bullied her into getting DVDs by making VHS too flimsy to last more than 10 years and then ditching it... she got us in to fix her problem.
"Grandma" doesn't mean "grandma" in these discussions, it's a placeholder for "people not driven to learn the details of all of their tools". Which is most people. Some people do "people" or "animals" or "geology" and not "technology". Your grandma sounds ace, btw.
Apple doesn't allow it because App Store fees are key component of their business model. That's it.
The argument that people are too stupid to know how to properly use a computer is just a handy argument their marketing team uses because protecting little old ladies from evil hackers sounds better than the truth.
This "what about grandma and the ads" argument is tiresome. Try getting viruses on your Apple or Windows laptop which was advertised as secure and going to their support and see what happens. They'll just point you to their fine print, the same as Apple does with hundreds of people every day who come in with broken iPhones and iPads.
> I'm sure Apple would love to lock down Macbooks the same way they did for iDevices...
I really don't think so. The Mac has a different history and use case and is heavily used within Apple, among other important places.
The incentive for Apple to do this would be what: do extract a little more revenue from their smallest-volume OS? As you say, part of its use case is the fact that you can just download and run code on it. That's a small and decreasing percentage of users, but those users are important too.
I'm glad there's no sideloading on my phone and ipad (of course I can always run my own code when I want to). It means my parents have stable platforms to use. And I'm extra glad that restriction doesn't apply to my mac.
I like how the design language of the watch is influencing the ios and macos devices. Unlike the stupid experiments on the phone, there isn't a lot of room on the watch for "flat" interfaces: space is at a premium and contrast is an important factor.
I'm also glad that for almost the first time new features are rolling out to i devices and macos at the same time. Usually it was mobile first, then grudgingly macos.
>The incentive for Apple to do this would be what: do extract a little more revenue from their smallest-volume OS?
I think that's only part of the picture. Yes it would boost their services business, but Macbook/iMac users are a small part of the picture these days. It's smarter from a technology centralization standpoint. Why have almost all your products centered around iOS codebase, and then your laptops/iMacs (small % of total devices) on legacy OSX. A better strategy would be, use a single OS codebase, and add layers of functionality the bigger / more pro a device gets. Makes it way easier to advance the software for your entire product line.
Btw, expanding iOS to Macbooks/iMacs does not mean throwing pro / dev users under the bus. They can think of a way to make "iOS-macOS" appealing to devs, by simulating some of the OSX features, like terminal and the ability to write software on-device.
> A better strategy would be, use a single OS codebase, and add layers of functionality the bigger / more pro a device gets.
That is the strategy that they have used since the original phone announcement (Jobs touted it on stage). Supposedly there were two competing phone teams, one built on a mac os X base and one on the ipod s/w. I don't know any of the people involved so I can't say how true that is, but it feels a bit weird to me, like the kind of thing that would have been decided pretty early in the process.
In any case there's a large percentage of common code base between the oses on phone, ipad, watch, tv, and mac (and a bunch of embedded devices too, like the usb-c and lightning dongles for HDMI -- yes you can open a console to those devices if you want).
What I think is great is that a bunch of ios frameworks now work/have equivalents on the macOS. I'm actually pretty happy for the same capabilities to be roughly available across platforms: back in the 80s the hardware I used (lispms mostly) was pretty much all a computing "window" into a common underlying sense of computation. I use the apple devices because they are getting pretty close to that: I can just pick up the device that has the most convenient interface for task X, or if that's not possible, still do task X with the device at hand.
Having said that what sucks is when the mac application is just a lazily ported ios app that doesn't fit the mac UX metaphors. But this release looks like a good step forward in that regard.
I'm not sure if I recall correctly but I thought the ipod-based iphone was more to have some of the engineering teams contribute to certain parts without expanding the number of people that needed to know the top secret parts.
I definitely get why professionals want a MacBook. I’m just observing that, from UI/UX/functionality standpoint, the differences between what iPad OS can do and what MacOS can do is quickly disappearing. It’s been happening over a few years, and will continue to converge. There will be a point where it will be good enough to add to consumer MacBooks, and satisfy most people. They will maintain differentiation between the “iOS” MacOS just like they enable more powerful features with iPadOS that you can’t have with iOS. But it’s going to happen, the writing is on the wall.
Btw, this doesn’t mean that iOS MacOS will be unusable by devs. I’m sure they have already roadmappped what a pro iOS looks like, for MacBook users. Eg terminal, compiling, code running, etc. But might be more locked down from where you can install .apps from.
Apple could have made the iPad a convertible laptop long time ago. They just chose not to. It's not like Apple is waiting for some technology to emerge that will enable the iPad to be more like a laptop.
Apple straight up does not want people using iPads to do laptop things. They don't want people substituting their $999 Macbook Airs with $329 iPads.
>Apple straight up does not want people using iPads to do laptop things
Disagree. Just look at what they are releasing in iPadOS 16. Apps can now float over each other. Team iOS is coming for Team macOS, they are closing in fast. They are developing a UX & app architecture that can easily match consumer expectations around real physical laptops, and there will be further differentiation when it hits Macbooks in a few years time.
With iPadOS 16, for 95% of non-pro users, with a keyboard attachment, there is very very little differentiation between a iPad purchase and a Air purchase. You pretty much own a laptop at that point. Yes, there are obvious performance differences, ports, form factor, battery, etc. But think through the mind of a consumer user, the OS capability differences are razor thin.
It’s a MacBook Air with a touchscreen and Apple Pencil that you can detach the keyboard and mouse from it. Some examples for things I can do better with my iPad: drawing with Procreate and viewing sheet music for my piano. My iPad can do that and it is as powerful as a MacBook Air for computing tasks
I have a Dell 2-1 with a touch screen. I never use it as a tablet. I tried. The 16x9 screen doesn’t work well with the onscreen keyboard. Even in tablet mode you are still forced to use a non touch interface for most things.
Why? I'm a professional developer and the lightness of the macbook air is great for me. I have a big picture of my code base in my head so I don't really need a huge screen.
> I'm sure Apple would love to lock down Macbooks the same way they did for iDevices, but if they do that, they would end up killing the Macbook market overnight.
Maybe, but its better to think holistically.
iPad hardware sales still trail Macs. An argument could be made that iPad hardware sales + iPad-sourced App Store sales does exceed Mac hardware sales + Mac-sourced App Store sales, but it legitimately is not by much. 2022Q2 iPad hardware sales were ~$7B; Mac sales were ~$10B; total Apple Services revenue, including App Store, on iPhone+iPad+Mac, Music, TV+, etc, was ~$19B.
That context emphasizes your statement: Apple would (maybe) love a reality where the Mac were as locked down as iOS, but achieving that reality would torpedo their Mac sales. But, we need to go a step further: it would torpedo their Mac sales as it has their iPad sales.
To me, the most frustrating thing about being a long-time Apple user (and at times, a fan) is watching their spirit of "disrupting themselves" disappear. They systemically can't do it anymore.
A few days ago I was playing around with python on a windows machine; I say "python3 thing.py" in a terminal; it says its not installed; and immediately opens the Windows App Store to install it. I gotta say; that workflow was the most impressed I've been with a computer in four years (and it was immediately paid back by trying to search for "Spotify" in the windows start search and it returning a website as the first result, but I digress). That's self-disruption; the idea that doing the unobvious thing from one revenue-line perspective can lead to % upticks in other revenue lines that net higher total revenue. The Windows Store sucks for buying apps; but doubling it as a dev-focused package manager? And WSL is a cost-center for Microsoft, but jeeze... does a Surface Laptop make sense for me? Maybe.
Apple constantly says "we want it all, its our way or no way" then cracks start appearing in that peerless veneer and out those cracks surge billions in revenue. Other companies (sometimes) say "ok, we're not great at that, how can we work around that weakness to still drive revenue in what we're great at." Microsoft sucks at building a phone; so bring the services to the phone people already have. They suck at building an App Store; but how can we still make that App Store useful, if not profitable? Their consoles have always been in last place; so how can we deliver the main revenue driver, the games, to more people (cloud streaming)? The list goes on.
I'm not asserting that Microsoft is a better company, whatever that means, I'm just asserting that Apple needs to learn something from them, because at this point the two have switched places. Apple today is acting like Microsoft twenty years ago, and vice-versa, and someone at Apple has to be recognizing that iPhone rev growth is slowing, iPad rev is flat, M1 gave the Mac a little boost but it's been slow for 15 years, their most successful new product of the past, like, decade, were headphones. Momentum is great when its with you, but its apt to decay, and once it starts going the other way its a bitch to turn around.
I doubt it. There’s a reason you can’t call from iPad (despite having SIM card variant). There’s a reason you cannot use Pencil with Mac on touchpad. There’s a reason you have very limited multitasking support on iPad and none on iPhone.
Apple wants you to buy more devices to fill gaps that another one doesn’t support.
My prediction is that they are just slowly going to merge them (like we've been seeing over the past few years with control center, multi-tasking, and now stage manager and system preferences). I bet there would be a lot of outrage and pushback if they decided to merge them before all the functionality is there, but eventually people will be asking for them to be the same.
Is that elbow macaroni in the window corner a new convention in iPadOS, echoing I suppose the old diagonal hash marks of yesteryear?
I'd have to see it in person, but it looks like "stage manager" occupies a lot of screen real estate for something that is supposed to improve productivity, and it's not clear to me how it plays with iPadOS's existing "split view."
I am not really sure whether overlapping windows was the thing I was missing in iPadOS. I feel like this is gonna fall into the "I will get used to it" category.
My hope is that Stage Manager is configurable in a manner similar to the dock, such that it can be hidden off screen until the cursor hits the edge of the screen.
Stage Manager is a mode that can be toggle in quick settings. When enabled it replaces Split View and Slide Over for multitasking. When Stage View is enabled the “…” button at the top of each window can he used to toggle between Stage Manager mode and single window mode.
I am most excited by better support for external monitors. I think my Mosh client app is the only thing now that lets me really use an external monitor.
I like my M1 MacBook Pro for programming but I other wise usually use my small or large iPad Pros. I like Linux for dev, using a few application specific VPSs so eventually dropping use of laptops will happen for me. Mosh/tmux/EMacs is usually my best setup.
Almost certainly just one for now. M1 macs support 2, but it requires 2 usb-c ports -can't be daisychained. So I assume any ipad with only one usbc port can support only one monitor.
Overall, it's kind of meh for me. Stage manager is a mashup of spaces on Mac and a task manager that takes up wayy more real estate than either of those, so it's not super impressive unless you're using an external monitor.
What I would've liked to see were more splits in the multitasking layouts, so you can show more apps simultaneously, while also maximising the screen used for content.
Not even more developments on the "desk-top class apps", the default apps are still not Mac-parity. On the API side of thing, no API for generic background tasks (like hosting a server for instance).
For those who don't want to wait another year for 'further versatility', there's a decent number of tablet PCs that can run Linux and Gnome (along with Wayland, libadwaita, etc. which are improving the tablet experience along with gesture support). Some include:
- Lenovo X12 tablet
- Asus ROG flow Z13
- HP Elite X2 (G4 or G8) (what I use)
- Microsoft surface pro (touch support is finally coming for the 7+ and 8)
Will you get good battery life or a fault-free experience? No, it isn't for everyone. Tablet support might break with new releases. But it's been reasonable enough to use as a my only computer for a year after being a died in the wool Mac user, and inspired exploring more ergonomic forms of mobile computing: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr...
- One of the accessories I showed in there, gnarbox , a second computer for ipad photo workflows, went out of business and supposedly the app required to make it's main features work is no longer available: https://petapixel.com/2021/12/29/gnarbox-may-be-dead-so-buye...
Or you could just get a $999 M1 MacBook Air that had great development tools, 20 hours of battery life, it’s fanless, and can run most popular commercial applications.
I don't want a laptop. I want a tablet that I can use as a computer 2 times a year.
The limitation is artificial, because the hardware is already capable today. I get why Apple keep doing it this way, but I don't get why people keep defending Apple.
In the above scenarios I no longer need to use my eyeglasses while doing this as the display is a bit closer to the face of myself as a nearsighted person. And it's enabled a number of reading tasks (books, papers) without carrying a second device.
You're getting at an important point if you see the links of my setup.
My second monitor has been collecting dust for the past year since switching to a tablet PC, and if really needed consider upcycling a second small tablet to be a second display.
My comment is more about the fact that I can stay in the same device while switching mode, as opposed to switching between the Mac and iPad or whatever. My iPad is mostly unused, I only bought it because I thought sidecar was cool.
The virtual whiteboard app looks exciting. I’ve not really been able to find any diagram-sketching app I like yet. So I hope it works without collaboration.
I’m also excited about lookup being made better. It seems like an OS feature that could be much better if someone just spent a year trying to come up with new things to look up and adding them. Unit conversion is excellent.
Yeah, the pencil support in Notes is OK but not great (notably you can't switch to landscape mode and still get text recognition. Also text recognition seems to think writing all happens margin-margin which is not how paper is always used).
As a result I use all of Notes, Notability and GoodNotes each of which has some capability I use and can't get out of the other two. A terrible situation, though I guess I should be glad there is not a monoculture!
I would love it if the whiteboard fixed these problems, and even better if the fix migrated into Notes.
They say that with every update. I'm waiting for the day iPad Pro will actually be useful for productivity, at least enough to justify its hardware and cost.
I have to say, as a kid, I watched my productivity going from 286 to 396 to 486dx to Pentium just skyrocket. I went from writing config.sys & autoexec.bat files just to get my games to run to running mIRC while my mom was screaming at me to get off the phone line. Modern innovations just don't provide that level of change for the end user, no matter how Apple spins it. I wonder if we'll ever get that again.
Try the "new cool" on Linux: the likes of NixOS and Silverblue+Distrobox (especially the latter for dev). You have to backtrack heavily on learned opinions, but it gave me the same dopamine rush that Rust did when I first "got it."
Both distros build an "immutable system," but in very different ways. Keep in mind that both of these effortlessly deal with rollbacks.
Nix
With NixOS you declare your entire OS in a script, something along the lines of Ansible or Terraform. This can even go as far as configuring your user settings, with dotfiles, gsettings, or various other things (often the modules will expose settings in the native nix language and write out the yaml/toml/json/whatever else that is required). The idiomatic way to do this is to use the built-in NixOS configuration (under /etc/nixos) to set up system-level things: mounts, drivers, users, system-level packages (e.g. greetd+sway), and things that change rarely. You then use a project called home-manager to manage everything inside your user configuration (including applications you use), which itself uses nix. By separating it like this, I can sync my entire experience between my laptop and desktop with Git.
I am currently flighting using a separate "nix flake" for both, which allows you to pin versions of packages (with a lockfile). It also allows you to easily pull in other repositories. It hasn't really taken off yet, and the NUR (Nix User Repository, analogous to the amazing Arch User Repository) is still in infancy. I'd offer up my nix configs as an example, but I am currently in the "make it work" example. I have been yoinking several great ideas from this fantastic nix repo: https://github.com/ymatsiuk/nixos-config
The main challenge with Nix is that it doesn't have an FHS: there is no `/usr`, `/bin`, and what you would typically expect. The advantage here is that conflicting dependency versions are not a problem. The problem is that you need to either build any binaries yourself, or wrap them in an FHS helper.
Nix has a virtualenv system `nix develop` and it's very powerful, especially for teams.
Silverblue
Imagine having a 2-layer container. One contains all the system stuff and is read-only, the other contains your home directory (basically). You can swap out the bottom/system layer at any point to upgrade the system without affecting whatever the user has done. Silverblue "merely" does this efficiently. The problem is, how do you now install packages? Flatpak and Toolbox (or Distrobox if you prefer, which I do).
I have been genuinely amazed at how much stuff now works in Flatpak. You'll get 90% of what you need from there. Distrobox is how you'll approach everything else. It's simply a container with complete access to the host, that also behaves like the host (e.g. the home dir is mounted). It uses containers as a layer, not a sandbox. You do all your development in that and use the container's native package manager to install what you need (apt, dnf, whatever). I actually configured `distrobox enter` as the default shell in my terminal emulator, you should rarely need the host shell.
You can also install packages to the system, but this is strongly discouraged. The only packages I layered in were fish, starship, and a custom kernel. Updates take zero compute (unless you are using a custom kernel, but it's not much), are are applied by restarting. That's also a major disadvantage, if you layer in packages (i.e. by not using Flatpak or Distrobox) you need to reboot in order to use them - it could be argued that a bad practice should involve friction.
Silverblue has done the craziest thing I've ever seen an OS do: I rebased to its sibling distro Kinoite (KDE-based) in almost exactly the time it took to download the system layer, plus the time it took to reboot - so about 2 minutes.
dotfiles are your problem in Silverblue.
I'm currently using Nix, but I am carrying over Distrobox to it and using that instead of `nix develop`.
It's the best device for drawing / pen input imo. Having an all in one device is really nice vs a wacom tablet that costs as much and has 3 cables hanging off it and requires another computer.
I'm baffled. The entire iPad ecosystem is extremely expensive portable TVs. They are also decent (but very expensive) e-readers. For messaging, web browsing, gaming it's much easier to use a phone. For doing real work, you need a keyboard and a mouse/trackpad.
If your real work involves reading or writing or sketching, an iPad is a pretty great choice. I use mine all the time for marking up PDFs, drawing, and note taking (I prefer handwriting to typing for notes).
But how does it do this better than any other brand out there? Is it the software (and then base OS or third-party), hardware that is better (not durability or so, but the accuracy of the pen I guess is relevant here), something else?
As a non-apple user, forgive me for being skeptical but it sounds like (and I'm probably missing something) you're saying one needs an Apple tablet specifically for the grand task of drawing on a touchscreen. Or maybe you're using the word iPad to mean tablet in general and I'm reading too much into the comment?
The Apple Pencil is the best stylus I’ve ever used. The 13” size is perfect (it’s basically an A4 page). The handwriting recognition on the iPad is amazing. But mostly, it’s the software. GoodNotes and Procreate are my two killer apps. There’s nothing as good on any other platform. For me, the iPad Pro I have is justified by those two apps alone.
Aside from an iPod a bunch of years ago, the iPad was my first Apple platform product. Last year I switched from a Google Pixel to an iPhone, so now I have two Apple products. The phone is fine but I was pretty happy on the Pixel too. The iPad though us my favorite computer to use.
I bought a Kindle Fire tablet for my mother a few years ago. It had thousands of 5-star reviews. It turned out to be the biggest piece of junk I have ever used. There was one awful browser available. Everything took 10s of seconds to load. Awful, awful experience.
Apple sells a rather expensive but high quality keyboard + trackpad stand for the ipad which gives it pretty much the same form as a laptop. It just requires better software for this use case.
But only M1 Macs? Oof. I bought a 2019 Mac Pro with a 12 core processor and 192GB of memory, but apparently... not good enough. That's harsh, under 3 years later.
No, I'm all for Apple designing their own processors. But you can't tell me there's anything magical about Stage Manager that can only be implemented on aarch64, not x64.
Ironically, Apple's memory controllers are also "not good enough" to compete with Intel's offerings from 3 years ago. It's a real Mexican-stand-off situation here.
The ARM and x86 don’t have the same memory barriers so MP is different, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re getting at (it’s an instruction semantics issue non memory controller).
I used to think that Intel had the edge in sustained multi core processing but now I’m not so sure.
Apple hasn't made an Apple Silicon Mac that really pushes the boundaries in terms of memory. The most kitted-out machine you can get caps out at 128GB, which is kinda chump-change once you get into the research/professional industry Apple is targeting. Judging by the language at WWDC, this is definitely a memory controller issue.
No, not yet (not without jailbreak, at least). https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/ mentions that M1 iPads "already have Hypervisor support unlocked in the kernel" so they might be planning something for someday…
Why is this being downvoted? with virtualization you could just run a linux distro or whatever and a lot of the complains in this thread would be resolved
fwiw, qemu is not always strictly emulation. On macOS, QEMU supports using Hypervisor.framework as a backend for fast same-arch system virtualization. This is also technically possible on M1 iOS devices (w/ forged entitlements) as you mentioned and someone actually did that recently
All we need now is a proper virtualized Linux sandbox. The hardware can do it. The OS can do it (the primitives are all there). UTM is a thing, but I don't want to jailbreak anything.
OTOH, I think Apple's priorities might well give us a calculator app first.
It's ridiculous. This is their reason for not having a calculator app:
> “There’s some things that we have not done because we would want to do something really distinctly great in that space,” the Apple VP explained. “We want to do it when we can do it really, really well. And we honestly just haven’t gotten around to doing it great.”
Wtf. The UX of a calculator doesn't need to be reinvented. I just need a freaking calculator on my device that I can use. I'd rather have something.
There aren't that many, largely because of App Store policies which make it a risky thing to try. Apple doesn't allow apps which reproduce built-in functionality, so it'd have to be an iPad-only calculator. And if you do anything innovative, apple will rip you off and then remove your app from the store when they release theirs. And they've been saying it's going to be released any day now for the past 12 years. So why bother?
Well, besides all the calculators apps available for iPad, there is a built-in one also. Like the flight tracker, it’s a little bit hidden. If you open the spotlight search and type some math it will give you the answer. I use ⌘+Space to open it on my iPad and it works great!
Indeed. Surely the development effort required is a rounding error compared to that expended for most of the other ‘features’ announced today. Totally inexplicable!
"Mr Federighi, we're going to need an extension on the Weather project. It's been blocking our calculator app, and you know how desperate we are to ship that."
There is, but you have to set it up with Configurator or some other tool. Has existed for quite a while, so that’s why there’s no announcement for it. If you have questions about it feel free to send me an email!
You made my day. Finickiness can be fixed. I’ve always wanted to use my iPad Pro on a monitor with proper full screen since it supports 90% of my day-to-day use cases if I have that flexibility. I’ll wait for the public beta but I’m excited to try it.
It's pretty clear that RCS isn't going to happen for iMessage. Arguably this is a good thing. Having network providers control messaging has largely been bad and finally killing off SMS could liberate everyone from the control of these providers. RCS is already outdated and undesirable before even reaching mass market.
There is value in a lowest common denominator. Originally SMS was fantastic because it was "free" in that it fit into the unused space the towers were sending anyway.
If SMS was to go away, and if RCS wasn't used, then the default will end up being something like Facebook Messenger, which is not desirable since they also own Whatsapp. 1 corporation should not have line-of-sight into the metadata of the majority of the planet's messaging, and possibly also the internal content.
RCS as implemented in Google Messages is not bad. It does include encryption (in Google's implementation) and the other features you'd expect. There are issues, such as AT&T S22 users because AT&T decided to make that device use their own server and not interoperate with the other server. But bumps like that aside, I've tried it out with some people and it works fine and because every phone has a unique phone number, you don't have to establish whether they are a Facebook friend or have the right app first to use it. If it's blue, they can be reached over RCS, and if it's green, then it's off to the SMS races.
I suspect Stage Manager was originally intended as a Dock replacement for both iPadOS and macOS, but because it's M1-dependent they can't pull the trigger on making it the default on Macs until all the old machines have officially aged out enough to stop receiving updates.
I wonder what was the real reason behind this. Surely taking the iOS's Weather app and scaling it to bigger screens didn't take them 12 years. Anyway, I'm glad it's there.
Federighi said it would be very easy for Apple to just scale the iPhone Weather app to the iPad, but that's not something the company wants to do, instead looking to create an app that makes use of the larger screen of the iPad in every possible way
That's an answer but not a reason. Surely it didn't take Apple 12 years to figure out how to make an iPad-native weather app.
Either they explicitly didn't want to make one for some reason or they just didn't care. If they actually wanted to make a weather app they could have done it.
Because Apple does not have infinite development resources.
There have always been far more important things to work on than an iPad weather app. In this case they happened to get it for free with their Dark Sky acquisition.
They acquired Dark Sky and have turned it into a new API service (WeatherKit) that's being released with iOS 16. Presumably the wait was that they built the API and dogfooded it as the basis for this new app.
Why it didn't come with a weather app at release in 2010 I'm not sure, but why it hasn't come in the past few years is almost certainly because they were building it with their new in-house weather API.
I’m guessing that sourcing quality, comprehensive weather data does not come cheap—Dark Sky was never a primary source, AFAIK. The cheapest iPad has been cheaper than the cheapest iPhone for some time now, and that licensing cost ate into margin more than they were previously willing to accept.
Just wild to have such an unbelievably powerful piece of hardware that I pretty much only use for youtube and netflix.
You sell a keyboard for it. Let me code on it!