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Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

The lure of convergence again... that really didn't go so well for Microsoft.

I think that's something that really set Apple's iphone apart and that was really smart.

The problem is the iPad. The iPad should be a mac, in my view, like the Surface is a PC. Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake. Now people make pro applications for the iPad Pro and they're thinking "shit I really wish this could run on a mac" and now Apple is forced into some kind of compatibility that goes from the iPhone 5s with touch screen to a iMac 4K with touchpad.

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> Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake.

I disagree. iPad is fundamentally a touch device, and trying to shoehorn macOS into this paradigm would have probably doomed iPad–remember, that's what the competition was doing back before iPad, and you know how the sales of those devices were…

I agree with the post you responded to. I have a 13-inch iPad "Pro" that I'm unhappy with since it doesn't do what it's promised to do. Can I build an iOS app? An Android app? Upload 100GB of data to Google Drive? Play movies stored on my external hard disc? Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do? And so on.

As far as I'm concerned the "big iPhone" idea is a failure. I don't want a tablet that doesn't have the full power of a PC OS like macOS or Windows. That doesn't preclude touch. The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch. And Apple has the market power to pull that off.

I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps. Yes, both options require a lot of work, but Microsoft is further ahead in having shipped it for years rather than denying the problem, as Apple does.

> [Can I] Upload 100GB of data to Google Drive?

Yes…is there something preventing you from doing so?

> Play movies stored on my external hard disc?

Well, you could if your hard disc supported a format that iOS could understand, such as a lightning cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.

> Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do?

There are apps that let you do this.

> Can I build an iOS app? An Android app?

No, unfortunately you can't do this yet. This is one of the things that iPad cannot do yet and I'm sure Apple is working on.

> The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch.

This is an awful lot of work for developers…especially on Apple's platforms, where bolt-on solutions are rare and most apps try to make full use of the medium they have.

> I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps.

Yes, we all do–and Apple is doing this from the "taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful" rather than "taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps" as Microsoft is doing. My argument is that this is the better way to do things, and the market seems to largely agree.

> Yes…is there something preventing you from doing so?

Full multitasking, which is required for the hours or days it takes for such a long upload, and ability to connect an external hard disc.

> if your hard disc supported a format that iOS could understand, such as a lightning cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.

Which is to say, hardly any of them.

> There are apps that let you do this.

Show me some that still work. I looked but couldn't find.

For the hard drive, I think you can use the USB dongle to connect a hard drive. But you are right in that the multitasking probably doesn’t allow for multi day upload. Haven’t tried it yet though.

> Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do?

That just doesn't work because of business decisions on google's end.

Well, it's not an iOS limitation at that point.

If a device can't do what users want, they won't buy it, no matter whom you consider to be at fault.

Happy owner of an iPad Pro here. I don't know who promised you that you could build an Android app on an iPad but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Apple and they're the ones who should know. As for building an iOS app, you can write most of the code for one and then transfer it to a MacBook or iMac for the final build and packaging (go check out the Swift Playgrounds app for details).

It's not a question of "who promised" but that the device isn't capable enough for my needs.

If I have to transfer the code to a Mac, I'd rather develop on the Mac. I don't need an iPad. Besides, Playgrounds is not a substitute for the full Xcode.

I think you are exactly right. If I wanted a small macOS device, I could buy one (I didn't). What I wanted is a large iOS device and that's why I have a 10.5" iPad Pro. It's my favorite computer.

Making the iPad a giant phone was what made is successful compared to every other attempt (even Microsoft's) at making tablets.

The success of the iPad in the "pro" market is more of an accident and took a long time to come around.

I don't think it's a lure. Multiple platforms and languages is a massive and expensive pain point. It's just that you need everyone (Apple+Microsoft+Google) to play nicely and even now that doesn't seem to be the case. It doesn't look like Apple has any appetite for non Apple portability.

But isn't that exactly what'll drive this shift? Anyone that's using an iPad Pro to do this work will immediately flock to the Mac versions of these apps, especially when they're all in one binary, and the UI will reflect the device they're on, regardless of where it was first purchased. I would love to have those tools on a Mac while still retaining the ability to open/use them on an iPad when I'm on the go and need to make some quick last-minute changes that don't require a full computer.

This seems like the perfect, long-term, planned-out setup.

> Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake.

Making the iPad a giant iPhone gave it amazing standby battery life, and access to a wide range of games and apps, many of them kid friendly.

Compare that to a Windows tablet, which I cannot leave sitting next to my couch for a week, come back, push a button, and have it respond immediately. (Though on occasion Windows' standby modes do work...)

I definitely feel this is more about getting devs who make pro apps on the Mac to start shipping iPad (Pro) versions.

Tim Cook still believes iPads are the future of computing, literally "Post-PC" to quote their recent advert. Yet very few people are making serious productivity apps for the iPad Pro.

> Yet very few people are making serious productivity apps for the iPad Pro.

Text entry is still an unpleasant process on iOS. Even with an external keyboard, not having a good way to move the cursor around the screen without touching the screen (and even then, fingers aren't precise enough to do this quickly) makes typing long documents on it painful. I love my 12.9" iPad Pro, but until they solve this problem, it's not going to be a good productivity device.

I’m waiting for Bluetooth mouse support. It’ll be a game changer. Fingers aren’t precise enough for pro tasks and touch isn’t ergonomical for long duration tasks. The mouse as an option will allow the iPad to blossom into a real capable post-pc workhorse that I could use professionally.

Depends on the degree of convergence. As has been mentioned having both UIColor and NSColor serves no purpose.

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