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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Honestly? For writing, for me at least, there's literally nothing better than iPad Mini + Magic Keyboard (no plugging needed) + smart cover.

It's nearly a third the weight of a MacBook Pro, you can stick them in your jacket pocket (the iPad Mini is barely wider than the keyboard), the keyboard is full-size and you can rest it on your lap for ergonomics, and as long as you're just dealing with writing text, the screen is plenty large enough.

(And the keyboard lets you do all your cursor positioning with the arrow keys, literally no different from a laptop.)

For programming forget it... but for writing, it's the best thing I've ever found.

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I find that hard to believe. What about basic text editing like selecting and moving around blocks of text, copying and pasting between documents, etc?

Those kinds of tasks are excruciating to perform on iOS.

They’re really not at all painful on an iPad with a keyboard. I’m going to guess that your experience is based on a much older version of iOS, but it’s been quite nice for the past few years (and it’s evolving still). Another option: perhaps you’ve only ever learned to do those things with a multi-button mouse? For my experience, I’m extremely comfortable with a variety of keyboard-based systems (especially Emacs), and the iPad interface is totally usable.

> I’m going to guess that your experience is based on a much older version of iOS, but it’s been quite nice for the past few years

I have an iPad and iPhone running iOS 11. I'm not alone in thinking that what should be a basic feature like text selection is awful.

From 10 days ago in the iOS subreddit, "Text Selection is Broken in iOS": https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/7mcvhu/text_selection_...

> How can something so important & basic literally be broken in the most recent version of iOS?!

> It’s been like this for what seems like forever. Having to select some text an upwards of 10 times is pretty annoying.

It seems other people feel the same way.

Reddit thread you linked is about basic text selection via touch.

GP is talking about text selection using an attached/bluetooth keyboard.

It shouldn't need to evolve, it should just work well and it always should have.

Why would those tasks be harder to perform on iOS than on a Mac if you have a keyboard on both ?

Mouse

I would be amazed if selecting text on a mac with a mouse was quicker or easier than selecting text on an ipad with a keyboard.

I… wouldn't. I'm so much faster doing text operations on a Mac, it's not even close. A pointing device is just so much more quick/precise for me than fingers.

That's what I don't get about these arguments in support of text editing on iOS. The mouse isn't bound to the physical dimensions of the screen. It also doesn't require you to put it atop/obscure the screen to work, either (unless you're doing something very wrong).

I'm sure there are zippy ways to edit text on iOS, but like you, after using a mouse, hell, even a trackpad, I think it's soooo much quicker using the latter.

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Text selection on iOS can indeed be a pain, particularly in Safari where it seems to lock onto html divs ignoring your selection and jump to the entire paragraph.

On iPads and 3D Touch iPhones things are generally a lot better outside safari and when editing text. You can 3D Touch or two finger poke the on screen keyboard to activate a text cursor and even select text by pushing again with 3D Touch. you can do the same with an iPad but it’s a little more clunky requiring an extra tap.

Of course you can’t beat a good old text editor.

In essence the iPad is made for people who never learned how to use normal computers.

If you are a person who would mash the delete key once per character to delete a line of text (e.g. my parents) then perhaps the excruciating text selection is not really a negative, as text editing on computers was "always" excruciating. The simplified user experience, is however a positive.

If one really took the time to "learn to use normal computers", then they would be perfectly capable to use a table+keyboard-only interface (and keyboard shortcuts) to do all kinds of editing tasks without even taking their hands from the home row. No need to "mash the delete key once per character to delete a line of text", at all.

So your argument is more true for middling users than for expert users of something like vim or emacs that can do every text edit function quickly with an external keyboard in iOS.

> expert users of something like vim or emacs that can do every text edit function quickly with an external keyboard in iOS

Show me where iOS implements incremental search and a persistent mark, then. For that matter, show me where any OS implements them.

You can run vim itself on iOS. As well as any number of other editors, and tons of standard and custom shortcuts are available -- to the point that not having access to a mouse for text selection is not any big deal for writing.

My experience with a keyboard on iOS has been awesome. Even more impressive is that large handful of the ⌘ keyboard shortcuts work, including some of the globals like ⌘-tab (change app) and ⌘-space (spotlight).

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