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Comment by constantlm | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm. Most people I know who own iPads have had them end up as rather expensive children's toys.

Or, in my case, a YouTube player comfortable enough to use in bed. I had such plans - a laptop replacement, a smart drawing and writing tablet, a conveniently portable development tool...none of which came to fruition, because the technology wasn't yet there.

I'm a little tempted, now, by the iPad Pro and the Pencil. It sure would be more comfortable and convenient to retouch photos that way than with a mouse or a trackpad in Photoshop. But I can hardly justify dropping most of a grand just for that, and the other use cases I no longer have - especially with a 13" rMBP in my satchel, there's really not enough point.

That Pencil sure is nice, though.

"Or, in my case, a YouTube player comfortable enough to use in bed."

In my case Youtube, Netflix, Twitch, as well as web browsing.

And also "everywhere I move about in the house", not only in bed.

I have zero use for it as a "productive" tool, but it's the best media consumption device I ever had, it has replaced my laptop for every use aside from creative/office work and gaming.

It doesn't do everything, but for what it does it's a great device.

I can see the problem for Apple though: if not for a cracked screen, I would have no reason to upgrade my 2+ years old iPad Air 2, since it is still more than good enough for all of the above.

You could just get the screen fixed on your Air 2. They run $180-200 to fix right now (search for a local independent repair shop in your area.)

> Or, in my case, a YouTube player comfortable enough to use in bed

I genuinely don't understand the use of tablets in bed.

I tried for a few weeks to use my iPad, but if I loosen my grip at all, I end up with an iPad smacking me in the face.

I went back to resting my 15" MBP on my chest, screen angled towards my face (of course). Then I can just put my hands behind my head and relax.

Lie on your side and use the hand on the arm that's under your pillow to hold the iPad vertically on the bed. When you doze off, your grip will fail, but then the iPad just falls over on its face, which shouldn't be close enough to hit you in yours unless you're a lot more nearsighted than I am. (It might fall off the bed, though. Not a problem I have because I sleep alone on a queen-size, but I can see how other configurations might cause that issue.)

If you prefer to lie on your back, an articulated arm mounted to the headboard might work; I have one of those, but ended up not actually using it - by the time I'm actually dropping off, I don't want a screen glowing in my face.

The pencil is what will probably push me into buying my first iPad. I've only played with it in the store, but Apple has done something pretty amazing with respect to palm rejection.

I haven't really looked yet, but if there's an art class app that guides you through drawing exercises, I think I would take the leap.

Not an app but I found this awesome: http://drawabox.com/

That looks exactly like what I want. I never really researched it before because the last thing in the world that I need is another thing to dedicate time to.

I swear if I could afford to be retired today, I could keep myself busy for the rest of my life with stuff like this. My Dad retired a couple of years ago and I think he's bored much of the time. It drives me crazy.

Call it a historical irony: those in the generation which can afford to retire have generally built their lives so closely around their work that, without it, they can find nothing to do; meanwhile, those of us who have plenty of ideas for how we'd spend such a vast amount of economically secure free time will mostly never be able to afford it.

When the lotto jackpot reaches around $500 million, I'll spend $5 on tickets (it happens maybe once a year). It's easily worth it for the few days I get to dream about setting up the ultimate workshop or being able to travel to find the greatest teachers.

I'd also buy a nice watch.

We do the same things!

Thanks for the link, this is exactly was I was looking for!

I use mine every day. It's turned my 2 hour train commute each day into wonderfully valuable time. I've written many thousands of words on it and thousands of lines of code. When I was job hunting last year I did several coding exercises on it in Pythonista. It's one of the most productive computers I've ever owned.

Although Sid Meier's Starships is sucking away a bit of my time lately.

Using an iPad (with external keyboard) to even type a simple document is an exercise in masochism. Fair play if you enjoyed it, but something like a Surface makes far more sense for these types of uses.

Trying to use a Surface keyboard on my lap on a train sounds awkward, the trains I use don't have tables. I even find laptops ungainly and sometimes I don't get a seat, but I can still do pretty much anything on an iPad.

I think my error rate is a bit higher than when using a real keyboard, but the alternative would be not being productive during that time at all. I'm an old duffer though, I remember using CPM machines, 5.25" floppy drives, line editors and dot matrix printers. An iPad is fresh air and clear blue skies compared to stuff I've had to work with back in the day.

> Trying to use a Surface keyboard on my lap on a train sounds awkward, the trains I use don't have tables

It's actually not that bad at all, believe it or not. I use the Pro 4 on my lap all the time. The Surface Book does not work in your lap based on what I have seen, but the Pro does fine.

I do not own one myself, by I have seen people type on Surface keyboards on trains, with the Surface resting on their laps. It did not look awkward or uncomfortable.

>Using an iPad (with external keyboard) to even type a simple document is an exercise in masochism.

What exactly is the frustration from it? I find it perfectly fine, if not better than using a laptop for writing "simple documents".

In fact that's exactly the use case most pro writers that use an iPad use it for.

This was a few years ago, so it may no longer apply, but my biggest frustration was that none of my keyboard shortcuts worked. I like to toggle between the browser and my code editor while I code, and the only way I could do that was to physically swipe the screen with my hand. There was a workaround to enable certain shortcuts by turning on accessibility mode, but it was a huge hack and didn't work that well.

Well, if the "few years ago" might be closer to iPad 1 or iPad 2 eras, then that might have been the case.

As the other reply said...non-working shortcuts and also no mouse cursor. You have to continually lift your hand to the screen to swipe or press, or click/double click the home button (hopefully you have the iPad positioned securely or you'll have another frustration on your hands).

When I needed it there was also no splitscreen, which I acknowledge would make things easier. The situation might be better now, but my sour experience forced me to move completely away from Apple at the time.

>As the other reply said...non-working shortcuts and also no mouse cursor. You have to continually lift your hand to the screen to swipe or press, or click/double click the home button (hopefully you have the iPad positioned securely or you'll have another frustration on your hands).

Well, I don't normally use the mouse when I'm writing a document. I even prefer full screen, full focus mode in writing apps like iA Writer and Ulysses (also on the Mac).

That said, most shortcuts one would use for writing work just fine (select all, copy, paste, etc). And more from what I see here: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/every-ipad-keyboard-shortc...

This is why I've been evangelizing Chromebooks recently; they run android apps now, so if you get a small flip-folding one, it's basically a tablet with a hinged keyboard built in.

And a linux chroot that can surface X windows to chrome browser tabs, if you're willing to turn on developer mode.

I'm a big fan of the Asus Flip (and will likely either upgrade to the new model or to the Samsung). It's increasingly my go-to travel machine. But I find it awkward as a tablet. I usually carry my old iPad with me even when I bring the Chromebook.

What model do you use? How well does the Android app support work?

Here here

What apps do you use to program? I'm too lasy to look it up. Sad--I know.

I wouldn't mind front-end programing on my iPad 2, but found it tedious years ago. I remember thinking this will not work--for real work.

Pythonista. It has a syntax-highlighting code editor, integrated visual UI builder, a slew of third party Python modules baked in and a thriving community. There is also now a Python 3 compatible version. You can even use the share sheet from another app to send files to Pythonista and select a script to process the file.

Working Copy + Textastic

Great apps. I use them all the time.

I would say almost my entire family bought numerous iPad Minis just for the Facetime ability. We have non English speaking 90 year olds who loved how easy it is to Facetime great grandkids and it really is worth it (used to be only $300). It really did make it super easy to keep in touch over 4 different continents around the world.

Mine's not a children's toy, but it's almost useless now. Once they stop updating iOS for a device, it's pretty much game over. Many apps have stopped working due to the developers making mistakes and publishing incompatible updates. Just about the only app I can still use is NetFlix.

>> developers making mistakes and publishing incompatible updates

If Apple thinks your device is old enough to end support (and Apple's pretty good at pushing updates for old devices for quite a while) why would devs keep trying to support you (when the app probably only cost $1-2 and 5 years have passed).

Why are the only two options devs supporting them or their app breaking? I have software that is close to 20 years old that is both unsupported and still works.

If you don't update the app and don't update the OS there's no reason it shouldn't continue working. You update the OS and you run the risk of deprecated API's getting called.

Considering that the app store allows device and os specific versions to coexist, there's no reason that requires a dev to break an old game. When it happens, it's typically because the dev made an error and added a feature but incorrectly claimed it was compatible with older ios or device versions.

>> the app store allows device and os specific versions to coexist

It does? How does this work (I'm an iOS dev but been out of it for a little while so genuinely curious)?

I don't know the implementation specifics. But I can go out to the app store on my old iPad and download older versions of my apps. The problem is when the older version was updated incorrectly and is incompatible with my device/iOS version.

I taped my now updateless and painfully slow iPad 3 to my kitchen wall facing the counter. It's got a web browser for recipes, can play YouTube, and can play music via Bluetooth to my stereo.

It's pretty great for that use. I regret not having thought of it before.

I still have the first-gen iPad. The batteries barely hold a charge, but it works otherwise.

Even though it is comparatively heavy, I still really like the build quality.

I have a first generation iPad. I rediscovered it about four months ago after I moved. I reset it and could download and use older versions of Netflix, Hulu, Plex, and a few other video streaming devices. I even used a version of Google Drive to read PDFs.

The battery lasts about 5-6 hours for video playback. Apple lets you redoenload older compatible versions.

My dad still uses my iPad 1 that I gave him. Best present (for me) ever :-) My dad and computers never got along. To my way of thinking, it's pretty pokey but he uses it all the time still.

But it takes about five years to stop releasing iOS updates for particular device.

It's almost always because the device doesn't have enough RAM to support the new OS update.

That's part of what I'm disappointed about today: no RAM bump for the 9.7 Pro, and not clear whether the plain iPad is at 1 GB or 2.

Then that's good news for those who own the current model, isn't it? It will take longer for their tablet to obsolesce via OS update.

The 1st generation iPad was released April 2010. The last version of iOS for that hardware was iOS 5.1.1, released May 2012. That's just barely 2 years later, not 5.

iPads are absolutely fantastic for children, not even kidding...

Between Guided Access and Restrictions, I can hand an iPad to my two year old and not have to worry. Plus then throw on high quality children's apps (most of which are educational) and YouTube Kids, and you have a wonderful platform for children.

Parents could do much worse than to hand their kids an iPad. Certainly can be more engaging than throwing them in front of a TV for the same period (not that either TV or an iPad is a substitute for one on one play time, but sometimes adults need a break too).

And with a $329 price-point it's pretty easy to justify, especially if a $30 case can do a decent job at protecting it from drops. There's a ton of quality educational games on mobile platforms, my daughter loves playing stuff with the PBS Kids characters on her Fire HD but I get really tired dealing with all the arbitrary restrictions that get added by FreeTime (absolutely NO in-app purchases, even if an adult would authorize them - she has a few games with ads that I simply cannot remove because of this).

I've been wanting to get an iPad for her instead for a while, but if I'm spending more than the $140 it cost for the Fire I'd like to get a "full-sized" tablet anyway - so the new iPad hits a sweet spot for me personally.

Any children's app recommendations?

My daughter loves her iPad Pro (12.9) and I hasn't regret single minute about money spent - awesome thing for a kid.

Unless the people you know are somehow representative of the userbase as a whole, this doesn't really mean anything.

I use mine as a rather expensive video player

I bought an ipad Mini 2 for testing (insert sweary rant about mobile safari here) and expected to not get on with it.

It's become a small but important part of my digital life, My ISP rolled out city wide WiFi so I can use it comfortably at the coffee stall in the market, it's great for research, reading, PDF's, screen is large enough to be useable and the battery life is great.

It's the only Apple product I've ever owned.

My iPad mini I use for watching videos and video tutorials and reading PDF documents and of course surfing the web . I play games on it but it's definetly not a toy for me.

I don't like working on laptops and mobile devices , I am more than happy working on an iMac with a gorgeous 27 monitor , a real keyboard , mouse and Wacom.

My iPad Pro (9.7) has been mostly a media consumption device, as was all other tablets I've owned, but now that my company has moved so much to a SaaS infrastructure (Office 365 and VSTS) the need to not VPN in to work network has made actual productivity with it possible. I think the tide will slowly turn.

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen a kid at a restaurant playing on their IPad while the family eats...

It's a depressing trend isn't it?

So terrible... what would you do, not allow children to have fun?

I teach that the meal is the moment when fun can be had through social interaction. I entirely ban communication and entertainment device at the meal table. But then I'm French, so I don't know what the custom generally is in the USA - from my experience there I understand that the daily family meals are not considered such a sacred ritual but I only have anecdotal samples.

Thanks for the perspective; nicely put.

If you can't raise kids that can tolerate boredom, you're doing something wrong.

I much prefer it when the kids are running around the restaurant engaging other customers.

Not expensive considering the better quality of the educational and fun apps and content available on the platform.

I'm a firm believer in the value of gaming and learning... it's a priority.

That aside, as an adult I'm still using my iPad every day.

Lots of sibling comments are defending their iPad use cases, but how many of them could be replaced by cheaper tablets? I'm quite happy with my Linx 7" Windows 8 tablet that cost £50. Real Windows, runs Steam, plays Flash and so on; micro-HDMI out, headphone jack and single USB port just like the really expensive Macs. It's made of plastic and has near-zero durability, so probably only a toy for careful children.

Depends on the line of work and the hobbies of most people one knows.

Given my line of work and hobbies, the iPads are very appreciated tools.

For the average soccer mom or Joe Sixpack, not so much. At best they'd surf the web and social media on them.

>At best they'd surf the web and social media on them.

This is a major part of many people's lives. I'm sure even the proletariat you sneer at appreciate their iPads.

>I'm sure even the proletariat you sneer at appreciate their iPads.

Who said otherwise?

I wrote that for some people's use cases they are capable to be used and appreciated as tools -- which is what the parent contested.

They can be totally fine and appreciated web browsing machines for the average person, but that's a different thing that being tools (with the "productive"/"pro" element inherent in the term).

Indeed. They're better Facebook machines than a netbook or a phone, and are heavily used as such.

> For the average soccer mom or Joe Sixpack, not so much. At best they'd surf the web and social media on them.

In my eyes this is where the device actually shines. Simple content consumption.

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