iPad Pro
apple.com
apple.com
By this logic, it's pretty clear Apple is killing macOS x86 dependency (and macOS itself) in two ways. 1. Shifting compute intensive workloads to A level chips. This started with the small stuff around "security" and ApplePay but today the video encode/decode functionality in the T2 is a huge leap. This will extend into graphics next year (thank god cause fuck Intel's integrated graphics) with APIs like Metal and going forward almost anything I/O, Display, and every function outside of the CPU. #2 strategy is the iPad - by offering a compelling device that has all the features and capability of laptops without 2 decades of baggage.
We've all been so worried of the convergence of iOS and macOS, but after today I don't see a macOS future. Sure it will move to Apple's ARM chips, it will last another decade, but the shovel is out of the shed, it's called the T2.
(Jailbreakers, we need you)
While I understand the "you must own your own device" line, that's more of a rallying cry than a useful description. (I have a similar pedantic complaint with "if you're not the customer, you're the product," for what it's worth.) It's interesting to think about a regulatory framework that mandates companies build software-driven devices with the ability for end users to do their own software loads, but figuring out how to do that in a way that doesn't let companies wiggle out of it and doesn't essentially mandate insecure back doors in all "smart" consumer electronic devices seems to me to be a non-trivial problem.
The least intrusive method is too allow users to add additional software sources and either opt out of sandboxing wholly or totally for select vetted apps.
This isnt hard it would just hurt Apples ability to get a 30% cut as third party stores would spring up.
User owned personal computing devices have been a thing for decades can we not pretend this is uncharted territory?
This isn't the case anymore, unfortunately, because the Jailbreak community is smaller.
tl;dr: I tried to be adventurous, but was too impatient. :)
Wasn't that because of the extender cable? As I recall extenders couldn't be USB compliant, so apple made a notch in the extender so that it wasn't technically a separate USB accessory from the keyboard?
It was only for the extension cable -- which are prohibited by the USB spec, so it was technically a "captive" extension. (The USB specs define captive as having a non-standard-USB plug, even if it's not physically captive.)
Blame the USB spec, not Apple. They're actually the only company I've ever seen make an extension cable that meets the letter of the spec.
They are doing this before the EU makes them do it. What apple did do was force the market to adapt to a plug that can go in both directions. And they thinned out the plug quite nicely, it never needed to be so thick.
I've had phones were the plug felt very weak in the socket, and devices with a very satisfying snap and a very strong connection.
This is to say that usb-c is not inherently bad, it depends a lot on the hardware (and I'm sure Apple will get it right)
Cable snaps in nicely now.
The lightning contacts are flush with the port, so very unlikely to get damaged. On the other hand the USB-C has that fragile looking wafer on the device-side.
USB-C puts the parts that wear out quickly in the cable where they belong.
Actually, I'm not glad you mentioned it since that makes it even more perplexing. I was glad because if a port ever failed I would not have easily diagnosed it because I thought they were pretty good. But it must be my fault the cables are failing....
Another issue with lightning: the contacts arc. The middle pin on any non-brand-new cable is almost always a bit burnt — it’s pretty easy to see. I don’t know whether USB-C has mitigations for this.
(I notice the lint in there because the Lightning cable doesn’t quite snap in all the way; each time I’ve pushed it in, I’m compressing the lint up at the back of the port, and eventually it gets too much and prevents a solid connection. Only happens about once a year, but it happens.)
Looking at a USB-C port, there’s still space for lint but much less space to get in and remove it. Can anyone with a USB-C phone share their experience?
You anticipated my experience exactly. My iPhone 6 got lint impacted as much as my Pixel, but it was a lot easier to fix the iPhone. Lightning does seem to require a more solid connection. USB-C will work longer with a "partial connection", which really just means I'm going to wait longer to clean it out.
Edit: I've never gotten any lint inside any of my USB-C cables though. Looking at the cable in front of me, it would be a bitch to clean out.
Really? In another life I worked at an apple store genius bar, and can't recall ever seeing a failed lightning port (physical damage aside). You know what's extremely common though? Schmutz. The port picks up pocket lint, and then the connector packs it all down to the bottom of the port. Eventually your phone stops charging. Often the gunk is packed so tightly it's not obvious even looking with a flashlight that there's anything in there, or that the connector isn't sitting properly. Just dig it out with a pin and you're fine.
Obviously I don't know what happened with your phone or etc. All I can say is in my experience (which is sadly extensive), if you had your phone replaced for a failed lightning port the real problem was almost always schmutz + incompetent tech support.
Edit: Didn't notice jen729w's comment when I posted. So... seconded.
That's a great tip - it never occurred to me and I've just been living with a unreliable connection for months.
I seriously don't understand the logic here. I've never had a port fail on me.
So so so done with Apple laptops, though. It seems like the butterfly keyboards are here to stay, and they're just plain awful.
Only being able to touch the screen while using the iPad Pro in laptop mode feels really limiting.
I also think that the lack of a desktop UI and a mouse is a huge limiting factor of the iPad Pro.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/latest/userguide/amaz...
I"m not much of a mouse user so this is adequate for me.
Not like my life depends on a karma point; this is simply puzzling.
It achieves nothing of what people actually what mouse cursors for.
BTW, people use the mouse to select and change the cursor position all the time, so it's very relevant to the topic since it's a step toward desktop-like mouse support.
Is it a pro device if the choice to add a mouse isn't there? Many pros work in pixel accurate selection instead of pencil or finger.
But yes, it does look like it's a product you can actually buy
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Macally-UCKEYE-Keyboard-12-inch-Com...
See how Autocad was using a command line for ages to implement precise control over coordinates. Don't need a mouse for that. At the same time, the imprecise things that you use mouse for (e.g. dropping a symbol from a library into a workspace, or connecting controls with outlets in an interface builder) are much easier to do using a direct touch.
A mouse has a lot of reasonable functions that are quicker for selection and editing that touch doesn't come near. Touch has its own benefits.
Add a few select and very valuable uses (remote shell, remote access, desktop/graphic layout) and a mouse is much faster.
also apple: here's a laptop with only touchscreen.
fan boys are going to have a field day to sell this one up. (edit: it already started with a workarounds for text input only. let's see how far it will go :)
I am absolutely sure that they will port XCode to the iPad itself and allow visibility into my own apps. This is not the same as a workstation.
EDIT: in retrospect, this is only tangentially related to parent post—my apologies. Also: wording, punctuation.
It makes computing & communications an Apple theme park, where you can't bring anything forbidden into the park, have to buy everything you need from Apple concessionaires, and can't do anything that they haven't planned for you to do. The people in the "park" pay to enter and then become a new type of domesticated herd to be milked.
You can't allow people to bring heavy equipment and power tools into a theme park, but you also can't build the park's controlled features without them, so how do you give power to authorized builders while keeping it away from users? In a physical theme park, they have controlled users during the day and empowered builders at night.
But in Appleworld, I'm thinking they'll keep iOS locked down by limiting the building tools to MacOS.
A unix-style workstation that gives maximum power to its users is so antithetical to everything Apple stands for that MacOS would never be created today, but since it already exists, they can take advantage of it to make iOS even more locked down than it would have been. (And refuse to let any other company use MacOS and not port Xcode anywhere else.) You want to see what your computer is doing (file sys, CPU procs, memory, network, etc.)? Do it with a Mac. iOS is not YOUR computer. It's Apple's. You only paid for admission to iOS, and you aren't allowed behind the locked doors. If you want control, you're in the wrong place.
I'm afraid that if they ever figure out how to sandbox an iOS partition of some sort to allow builder tools to run on iOS itself in a totally controlled way, then the Mac is toast, but the Mac gives them time. I think that for the foreseeable future, they won't risk any accidental empowerment of iOS users and will limit the power tools to the Mac.
2. The idea that UNIX is antithetical to what Apple stands for is just ridiculous. It is still at the core of iOS and MacOS and is one of the areas where Apple continues to innovate.
3. Apple licensed MacOS in the past. It nearly killed the company since third parties like PowerComputing went straight after their core base and did nothing to grow the ecosystem.
4. You can see what your iOS device is doing. Plenty of apps allow you to see what processes are running, file system behaviour etc. Apple just doesn't build it in.
5. Anyone who thinks the Mac is dead needs to go have a lie down with some chamomile tea. Apple even today doubled down on the Mac with the new Air + Mini. And they will continue to grow and invest in the platform since content creation will always be largely done on a Mac.
Do you have any examples? I've never seen anything like this in the app store.
Some apps give you limited access to their filesystem but (as a Jailbreaker) I'm pretty sure the larger system isn't viewable under normal circumstances.
Also for Apple to allow v8, they would have to permit 3rd party unsigned executable code (JITed in this case). Apple doesn't want to allow that.
This is not about CVEs, it's a meta discussion of not outsourcing the security of the platform.
And how does that pertain to security? Android doesn't seem to have a problem with JITed code in sandboxed store apps. Neither does Win10.
Hence MDIL in WP 8.x and .NET Native on WP 10 onwards.
Now, Win8.x did not allow for third-party JIT compilers in the sandbox; it was only CLR or Chakra. But UWP does - look for the "codeGeneration" capability here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/packaging/app-c...
WP 8.x only did dynamic linking at installation time and when OS updates were done, by replacing symbolic labels with the actual target destinations. Everything else was already compiled at the store and downloaded as binary into the devices. This was the whole point of MDIL.
There is a BUILD session and a further Channel 9 deep dive interview showing how MDIL deployment works on WP 8.x.
So Chakra was the only JIT in town.
"BUILD 2012, Deep Dive into the Kernel of .NET on Windows Phone 8"
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005
"Mani Ramaswamy and Peter Sollich: Inside Compiler in the Cloud and MDIL"
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-an...
Either way, code generation is there today.
If apple could make their browser the defacto browser of tomorrow in the way chrome is today then google would surely work harder to fix the pain points apple identifies
> Apple doesn't want to allow that.
Yes, that's all it's about. Apple's control. Other excuses people make up for their reasons are demonstrably false.
There's no actual security reason for iOS to be locked to Apple's webkit exclusively and there's no actual security reason for iOS to not allow JIT'd code. Those are both control issues, not security ones. JIT in particular is purely a control issue - the process itself is already sandboxed which is the one and only actual security boundary here. Preventing a JIT doesn't prevent arbitrary code execution, after all, especially if there's an interpreter in play which Apple sort of allows.
Democratized? Is that because you perceive mobile devices as more affordable? Have you checked the price of a new iPad Pro?
Source: personal experience with multiple over-65 people for whom an iPad or iPhone is the first internet-connected computer they've ever owned.
In the context of this thread, the target user of iPad Pro is more than someone taking pictures of their kids and pets on weekends.
As for my opinion on this, I believe in using the right tool for the job, AND using multiple tools to get the job done. Sometimes an iPad Pro might be fine for certain stages of a project, for sketching out backgrounds or initial ideas for a design, and then importing that into another system such as animation pipelines or other applications on desktop or laptop or workstations. Depends what the job is.
I've never met a professional designer who works only on their tablet. Professionals love their workstations, multiple screens, and all the comforts and power of a proper setup. If you're just marking up a PDF, I wouldn't count that as professional work!
I wish I agreed with you, but I can't but see that as elitist condescension against unsophisticated content.
> the target user of iPad Pro is more than someone taking pictures of their kids and pets on weekends.
I wish I agreed with you, but in reality the iPad Pro is marketed as a tool for "serious professionals" but in reality that's just an aspirational message and a large number of iPad Pro buyers will use them to take pictures of their kids and pets on weekends.
The same is true of DSLRs. They're supposed to be professional work tools but the overwhelming sales numbers are to amateurs taking photos for trivial reasons. (That said, the DSLR market has now matured to the point where they do target the amateru audience.)
What is happening now are those that only discovered the Mac world after OS X, don't care about Objective-C/Swift development, now feeling that their pretty UI Linux replacement is no more.
Apple naturally cares about their Objective-C/Swift developers in first place.
End of the day, Apple like any other corporation does what it does because it makes money for them. The alternative is to use a "free" operating system like Android and you subject yourself to constant surveillance. It's like that scene in The Big Short; "tell me how you're f*ing me." At least with Apple, you know straight up what you're getting yourself into. Your relationship with Apple ends when you stop using their devices. Not so with Google/Facebook, where your data lives on in perpetuity, used for purposes beyond your control.
Now I'm not saying it's not possible to have your cake and eat it too. I'm saying, where is this mythical product, where a user is free to do whatever he wants with his device? What's the market size? How come no one has built it yet?
We don't all grow our own crops, make our own clothes, brew our own beer, refine our own crude oil etc, even though we may have the knowledge to do so. Some things are better left to specialists, due to efficiencies/legal reasons. Surely we can agree on this?
For some reason most Linux conferences end up being about file systems, containers, device drivers and what not, seldom about desktop development.
Objective-C/Swift Frameworks have nothing to do with UNIX, Apple could easily port them to another kernel architecture.
Likewise OS X driver model has nothing to do with UNIX, being modeled on an C++ subset, which was originally written in Objective-C back in the NeXTSTEP days.
The only UNIX GUI certified as such is Motif, which Apple certainly isn't offering on their products.
Nor is the audio stack in any way related to UNIX.
1. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3555.htm
People are greedy and have no values.
For what it's worth... On a computer, I'd look at log files. On an iPad, I'd plug it into my computer... then look at log files.
That strikes me as very optimistic: the business needs come first.
FWIW: the death of the Mac has been predicted constantly since at least the original iPhone came out. If it takes another decade to happen, at least we can lay these accusations to rest that publicly traded companies are forced into short-termism.
totally ridiculous dev machine for scientific or financial computing, no?
So, nothing to do with JavaScript specifically.
That's what I do when I need to do development on the go.
Why don't you see a macOS future? It can use the T2 just as well as iOS, no?
macOS may be the pickup truck. but it isn't going to go away without a fight. not unless you can make software engineering work on an iPad the same way it does on macOS today.
I suspect the drawing experience on here is better than with a ChromeOS device, but I care more about my web browsing/creation experience than I do about sketching.
I agree it's somewhat ridiculous that you can't get (real) third party web browsers, but Apple's is so damn good that I don't consider it a real problem.
I’m typing this on an iPad now. I mainly use it for web surfing, Netflix, email and casual gaming.
maybe we're returning to the age of terminal-only development ;)
but with vector font rendering!
Coda has a local server/browser pair you can use for simpler things. But usually the kind of web work I'm doing barely exercises a single core, it all runs on a $2.50/month VM.
What are you talking about? Apple won't allow developers to do any such thing. They only recently allowed a narrow range of NFC uses even though the hardware itself has been there forever. You think they're going to let people develop your own kernel drivers? Maybe with a $10,000 "hardware developer" account.
I've never owned an iPad, perhaps I'm missing something here. How does the above statement reconcile with the pictures I see on the page where there's clearly a black bezel?
Do they just mean there's not an area at the bottom with a physical button?
Ha!
Problem is, the iPhone X family got rid of the chin... but have the dreaded notch, and not even the mostly acceptable teardrop everyone else standardized on.
At least the iPad Pro adopted chinless and also notchless design. First time in years Apple has made a product that isn't weirdly ugly.
It is trend among chinese phones (Huawei,Oppo, Vivo, OP ..basically BBK electronics)
OP 6T is the first phone popular in the west with this style, and I find it to be amazing.
Still like the MiMix 3 the most, with no notch. But, the OP 6T is the first one that's not egregious.
Not very catchy though, perhaps "innovative CDATF notch - uses 66% less screen space" would sound hype enough for the Marketing department?
Also, two phones does not make a standard. Even the Mate 20 Pro has an iPhone-style notch.
And indeed I was referring to the Mate 20 and Mate 20X rather than the Pro.
You mean "copied with a tiny alteration".
>At least the iPad Pro adopted chinless and also notchless design. First time in years Apple has made a product that isn't weirdly ugly.
You probably didn't get the memo, but the "oh my god, it has a notch, oh noes, so ugly" thing some pundits tried to pull died in its birth, and not only competitors copied the notch, but the X itself became the best selling phone.
Even ignoring that, everybody pretty much praised the Apple Watch 4 as beautiful as well...
in general, apple just tells people they invent and do everything the best, and everyone listens. it's funny, because my lg v35 is much thinner and lighter than my girlfriend's new iphone xs max (which has a marginally larger screen), doesn't have a protruding camera lens, and it actually has a headphone jack with a high-end dac (which basically no other phone has). so apple says they need to get rid of the headphone jack to save room, and yet here we are.
i specifically avoided the lg v40 because they added the notch. as with the new ipad, i simply don't understand this need to extend the screen all the way to the end of the phone in the long way. this is especially true on the ipad, which i nearly always hold horizontally with my thumb on the perfectly sized bezel. getting rid of the bezel literally adds no functionality for me and actually removes some.
Did you know that Google had to ship an update for Nexus 3 XL that "disables" the notch in hardware (by making the background for the part of the screen around it black, making it less noticeable), because of how many people complained about it?
No, "from edge to edge" and "all-screen design" are not metaphors but as concrete as it gets, and obviously wrong. This iPad may be great but these marketing texts are just straight lies.
If I say it's fast as lightning, I'm not saying it's exactly that fast. It's a metaphor for fast.
The fact the speed of lightning is measurable and 'as concrete as it gets' doesn't change the fact that people use it as a metaphor.
You may feel the use of 'edge to edge' is an inappropriate metaphor that's fine, not every metaphor is fitting and, hell I'd even agree with you if you said that.
If you ask me, you can start saying edge-to-edge when the edge is at least 50-80% thinner than what it is now. But it's a metaphor nonetheless, and I'd feel fine applying it to extremely thin bezels which are not actually edge to edge. If you'd have said such a thin bezel was 'razor-thin' or 'paper-thin' when it really wasn't, I'd say it's still a perfectly fine metaphor.
However, there is no such common understanding of the phrase 'edge to edge' meaning almost edge to edge. Edge to edge in English means it goes from the edge of one side to the edge of the other, literally.
It's not a metaphor. Only Jobs had a powerful enough reality warp to make that fly…
Because in the context of displays there isn't really any big consumer product out there that actually has no bezel at all. Rather you have all these nearly edge to edge displays. And we talk about them as being edge to edge, razor thin bezels etc. There's no consumer out there who thinks he's getting a display without bezels. Everyone gets the metaphor.
> It's not a metaphor.
If you don't think it's a metaphor you'd have to believe that Apple truly thinks this device has no bezels, that consumers typically think it has no bezels, that journalists using these descriptions think they have no bezels, because they all take 'edge to edge' as being literal, rather than metaphorical. And that's simply not true. It is a metaphor, whether you (or I) think it's an appropriate one or not.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/8/9476199/dell-xps-15-2015-...
Anyway looking at the dimensions of the iPad Pro 12.9" model it's 11.04 inches wide with a 12.9" 4:3 screen. The screen itself is going to be 10.32" wide as a result, putting the bezel at .36" or around 9mm. By comparison the XPS 13's bezel is 5.2mm.
Also, whenever journalists and commentators write about Dell screens as being edge to edge, years before Apple, they're not lies, they're metaphors.
It only becomes a literal statement that is obviously a lie, when Apple uses it.
/s
To everyone downvoting me above, you can disagree with the idea 'edge to edge' it's a proper metaphor to use for an iPad display with a 9mm bezel. I agree with you in full. You'd want something like 2-3mm bezels for that, at most.
But to say it's not a metaphor is silly. It would mean that you think Apple, journalists and consumers, all or some of them, consider the edge-to-edge marketing statement to be a literal one, that must be taken literally, and is obviously a lie, rather than a statement which must be taken metaphorically.
If you go to the CEO of Apple right now and ask him in an interview, do you mean literally edge to edge, or metaphorically, what do you think the answer would be? (apart from dodging the question)
After that you could tell him it's a crappy metaphor to use. But telling him he's lying because Apple means it literally is just silly.
and... Grammarly says "A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison."
Soooo this supports the idea that "edge-to-edge" can be descriptive but not literally true, and be described as a metaphor, right?
The word "edge" in this context, literally means the edge of the device or screen. That's everyone's understanding. There is nothing metaphorical about it.
The word "lightning" for example, does NOT literally mean "fast". It literally means the electrical energy we see in the sky. When used to describe computer speed, it's obviously a metaphor, and well-understood as a metaphor.
You can't just claim something is a "metaphor" to excuse false marketing.
You can't just claim the definition is not the definition and expect people to side with you over multiple dictionaries.
That's everyone's understanding. There is nothing metaphorical about it.
Literally everyone? Or figuratively everyone? You think the Apple marketing people cannot see the bezel and honestly think is not there?
More than definition, how metaphors are used is important.
Is "edge" a metaphor when the actual edge is right there, 9mm from the screen perimeter? There is no metaphor only 'edge-to-edge' window dressing. In the same way "lightning" is not a metaphor in a discussion about thunderstorms.
See my other comment in this thread, there is at least six years of prior usage by multiple big tech companies describing their product's screens as "edge-to-edge" without literally meaning edge-of-device to edge-of-device, with links.
And see my other other comment where I wonder why "edge-to-edge" has your goat, when Apple describing the iPad Pro as "all screen" doesn't. Is that intended to be taken literally as well? There's no CPU, no memory, no battery, no glass, no other components, all screen?
Because the device is right there, it clearly has parts which are not screen, why aren't you frothing at the mouth about how it's a lie intended to "attract suckers" instead of a non-literal highlighting that the screen is large?
Like "all butter cookies" - that's a lie for suckers to think they are made of butter and no other ingredients, right? Because there's no way it could be read except literally, is there?
Non-literal descriptions are everywhere.
Irrelevant. This discussion was about the one and only use in town right now of "edge-to-edge" in a major campaign to sell new tablets.
"All screen" is more ambiguous. For starters "all screen" is not a pre-existing term. It could be used to mean there's no other elements or buttons on the front, except the screen. "All screen".
"Edge-to-edge" on the other hand, has explicit meaning built in. The primary component of which is measurement. "Edge-to-edge" refers to not one, but two hard edges, and describes that which spans in full from one edge to the other. There's no vague interpretation possible unless you force a square peg through round hole of English. It's either an edge-to-edge screen, or it's not.
I had to measure a washing machine recently to find out if it would fit. I measured edge-to-edge, and by that I mean the actual left edge to the actual right edge. But you knew that already without me explaining.... because I said "edge to edge".
Are you equally offended that this "floor to ceiling room divider" stops a couple of inches below the ceiling? https://www.amazon.com/Royhom-Privacy-Divider-Decoration-Apa...
Do you expect this "top to bottom house cleaning service" to include the chimney and roof and aerials because the "top" has a literal definition? https://top-to-bottom.cleaning/
Are you angry that "surround sound" only has a discrete number of speakers, usually 5 or 7, instead of a continuous surrounding panel?
Are you baffled by Thomson Video Networks' claim that they have an "all-encompassing video infrastructure" when you can see things in the world not encompassed by it? ( https://www.broadcastingcable.com/post-type-the-wire/thomson... )
Do you think "unmissable TV shows" are literally unmissable? ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/unmissable-tv-shows-watch-hulu... )
Why aren't you complaining about Apple calling the iPad Pro "magic"?
Why are you choosing "edge-to-edge" as the hill to die on, when Apple call the iPad Pro "all new" (it isn't), "all screen" (it's not), "all powerful" (it isn't), "a magical piece of glass" (nope) which "does everything you need" (even breathing?), "any way you hold it" (even covering the screen?), "true to life color" (even though you can't represent purples on an RGB screen?), "make everything look gorgeous" (even ugly people?), "the perfect machine for augmented reality" (even more than dedicated glasses? There can never be a better machine for AR?), "immersive games" when you can't immerse yourself literally in them?
The surround sound does literally surround you. Surrounding a person doesn't require a continuous circle.
They said it's an "all-encompassing video infrastructure for broadcast and multi-screen services." That has a pretty clear meaning that it covers everything you need regarding infrastructure in those domains. It is not a metaphor.
"Unmissable" has a second meaning, "too good or important to be missed." [1] It is a subjective statement that the episode is good.
Calling the iPad pro "magic" is the only thing here that is a metaphor.
I'm not picking this hill to die on. I asked one question. You say it's a metaphor, but neither of us have any idea what it's a metaphor for. I think what you're actually trying to argue is that it's completely meaningless marketing fluff that can be applied to any phone or tablet. Would you object to calling a feature phone edge-to-edge?
I also disagree with "all screen", which should have the same meaning as edge-to-edge. All your other Apple marketing term examples have clear meanings (except "all powerful", did they really say that?)
A metaphor is when you say one thing is something else to draw an analogy between them. It doesn't work when the something else is the same type of thing. It would not make sense to say "my car is a Lexus" as a metaphor to mean my Hyundai is nice. It wouldn't make sense to say "my car is turbocharged" to mean it's fast when it doesn't have a turbocharger. If edge-to-edge is a metaphor, I can only think it's a metaphor for a tablet with a screen that doesn't have a bezel. It seems like a straight-up lie.
My biggest issue with the edge-to-edge marketing claim here is that I have no idea what they mean by it. It was bad enough when they made that claim for the iPhone X, but the iPad pro has a huge bezel. They might as well claim it fits in the palm of your hand.
I probably am, yes. I mostly think it's silly to argue that it "can only be used literally" in the face of it being used non-literally. It's a metaphor for its literal definition - this screen is "edge-to-edge" like a screen with no borders. It metaphorically has no borders because it's so big and the borders are so small, even though it literally does have borders, but you won't notice them, you'll accept the screen is edge to edge because it very like one that is. Yes it does seem like a literally false statement to sell people on an idea.
Would you object to calling a feature phone edge-to-edge
I don't know. On the one hand I don't think it is, any more than I don't think the iPad Pro is. On the other hand, they can call it whatever they want, they will just say "the screen goes from the edge of the screen to the edge of the screen" and everyone will say "duh". Do I think it's harmful? Not so much because the screen is visible. "All day battery life" was more misleading because you can't see the contrary at a glance. "No fee" when there is a fee, way more harmful.
"Unmissable" has a second meaning, "too good or important to be missed." [1]
Well "Edge" has meanings "2.a. the line where an object or area begins or ends : BORDER" and "2.b. the narrow part adjacent to a border" and "2.c. a point near the beginning or the end" - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edge
So "edge to edge" could meaninglessly but accurately be saying "from a point near the edge to a part adjacent to the other edge". :-|
(except "all powerful", did they really say that?)
Yep; top of the page here https://www.apple.com/ipad/ - All New. All Screen. All Powerful.
Meaning, presumably, "every bit of it is new, it's mostly screen, every component is high end".
It would not make sense to say "my car is a Lexus" as a metaphor to mean my Hyundai is nice.
"How is your new Hyundai?" "It's so luxurious and feature filled, it's totally .. i dunno, it's ... very Lexus! Yeah, my car is a Lexus by another badge!". You wouldn't understand that?
It wouldn't make sense to say "my car is turbocharged" to mean it's fast when it doesn't have a turbocharger.
"How is your new Tesla?" "FAST it's so fast it's turbocharged supercharged bullet train rocket engine awesome" "I don't understand, it cannot be turbocharged because there is no internal combustion engine exhaust gas to spin the turbine, why are you lying?"
I think that's the core of the dispute here. The screen on this iPad is nothing like a screen that's edge-to-edge. It's surprising and confusing to see it described like that with such a clear thick bezel in all the images. I and a lot of other people in the comments here don't accept that this screen is edge-to-edge.
You can't just say "well even though the words could literally apply to the object and they do literally apply to the object in some cases in this case it's 'just a metaphor'"
It's not. It'd be embellishment if you want to be generous. But not a metaphor.
all-screen and edge-to-edge, however, are not.
Lenovo also use it on this desktop with bezels the size of the moon[1]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/lenovo/b-series/b50-30... saying it has a 'vivid 23.8" edge-to-edge display'
Microsoft use it to describe the Surface Laptop here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-laptop-1st-gen/90f... - "Enjoy more space for your ideas with an edge-to-edge display and ultra-thin bezel." - specifically calling out the edge-to-edge display as being a separate thing from the bezels as well.
HP describe this desktop iMac ripoff with huge bezels as "edge-to-edge" here: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/V2/GetPDF.aspx/c06002849 - "An entertainment sensation; Sit back and enjoy a captivating entertainment experience. Elevate every stream, video chat, and photo with an edge-to-edge up to QHD display"
Acer uses it to describe a laptop in 2012: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/press/2012/50215 - "Featuring a 10-point touch edge-to-edge display and a larger trackpad, the Aspire V5-471P and V5-571P are designed to enhance multi-gesture content" - and it's a 2012 laptop, it has bezels.
The claim that only Apple use it and it's a lie and nobody else uses it in their marketing is nonsense.
[1] I mean literally the size of the moon, because nobody is allowed to use words differently without your approval, of course.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
The device you seem to be imagining where the glass runs all the way to the edge with no edge banding doesn't exist, and would be an ugly and unpleasant device if it did, as the edges would reveal the electronic innards (and heaps of glue).
She also had a career in graphic design and now teaches oil/acrylic painting. I know from her, the art world likes frames. A bezel is not a bad thing.
I suppose if there is not a ready-made one that suits, making /hacking one, the old-fashioned way or through 3D printing, would be an option.
One reason I put a case on every one of my cell phones, is to give me something more substantial to hold on to. The thin bodies and edges start to become a detriment; all the more so in that I have no interest in squeezing mine into the pocket of skinny jeans.
https://www.amazon.com/TFY-Security-Holder-Finger-Tablet/dp/...
Cheers
If that was built into the phone it would be much more expensive to replace, and I'd end up just putting another, slightly bigger $20 case around it to prevent that from happening.
Only to be placed in a $10 case with bunny ears so it won't crack if you accidentally drop it.
Slim sleack shiny phones which break when dropped. Easily dropped because of shiny slippery surface.
What to do? Put some cheap something around it.....
And I'm wondering why people ask me why I don't have a case around my phone.
I don't get the thin phone to have more space for the plastic protection that's why...
It is sort of hilarious that miniaturization has gotten so far that we purposefully de-miniaturize miniaturized goods.
This doesn't seem weird or contradictory to me at all. Nothing seems cheaper to me than my girlfriend's Android phone with rubber bumpers built in. Meanwhile my iPhones with cases look brand new when I'm ready to sell them.
[1]: https://www.gsmarena.com/lenovo_zuk_z2-pictures-8125.php
This is just a blatant lie by Apple's marketing.
Reserve your criticism for companies like LG who actually lied about their monitors:
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
But sure, there's no limit to criticism.
Everything is horrible.
Buy nothing.
How can you possibly look at what Apple is claiming and then look at the pictures and say the words aren't deceptive?
Presenter: “This display goes from its start...”
(Audience gasps)
Presenter: “...all the way until it ends! We call this ‘entire’.”
Audience: <mad applause>
Audience Member 1: (whispering) “I can’t wait until I can get a device with an entire display. I’ll have to put in some OT at the job to save up, though.”
Audience Member 2: “What do you do?”
AM1: “I work at a company that specializes in digging half-holes.”
- 8 core CPU (4 low and 4 high power cores)
- 7 core GPU
- HEVC encoding/decoding
- Neural Engine (they haven't made any comparisons to the A12 sans X neural engine, so at this point I think it's the same)
- Audio DSP, Storage controller, Image Signal Processor, Apple performance controller, Depth Engine, &c.
[1] http://live.arstechnica.com/apples-october-30-2018-more-in-t...
[2] http://live.arstechnica.com/apples-october-30-2018-more-in-t...
This will be big especially if they can get major price or power usage advantages.
Benchmarks from the first device generation: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa...
Presently the T series is generally gimped variations of the A series. My understanding is that the T2 is essentially an A10 with the high performance cores disabled, and the low performance cores repurposed to manage the myriad of functions that were previously handled by dedicated controllers. They're also necessary for certain features like TouchID, and for Apple to use its own HEVC encoder/decoder.
Presumably the T3 will be keyed off of a later part like the A12 or a later generation, which will make it the first T series chip to also include the neural engine. Assuming they don't disable that part, it will potentially make the NE available to Mac application software.
So what's the real problem with ripping out Intel right now? Given a higher TDP, Apple could hypothetically design a much more performant chip that would replace both the CPU and GPU in their current Mac lineup, but they simply don't push enough Macs to justify the expenditure on custom silicon, right now at least. Probably doesn't help that they have been making existing customers less happy, but it also doesn't help that Intel has simply been re-releasing Skylake in different variations for a good few years now.
If you have a Macintosh able to run Mojave, an SSD, and at least 16GB of RAM, you are probably set. The important thing about Mojave isn't so much any one feature of Mojave, it is the continued support including bug fixes and security updates. Given all of that, most people simply won't need a new system any time soon. There's essentially no reason a laptop from 2012 can't take you all the way to 2022 all other things being equal, so we're starting to see sales stagnate across the entire PC market including the Macintosh, so while Apple is selling phones about as fast as they can stamp them out, the same is not true of Macbooks or iMacs.
Silicon is much more of a volume business. Apple can re-purpose older versions of their A series chips because those are an R&D and capital investment that has already paid off, it isn't a new design, and they just need someone to continue fabbing them. New generations of the A series chips will generally pay off, because they will be selling hundreds of millions of the same iPhone, and usually for greater than one calendar year. This past year, for the first time since the A7 was released, they skipped releasing an -X variant of their A series chips which are generally released to support new iPads (there was no A11X for those who may have forgotten). It is possible that iPads have not been selling in the quantities necessary for even a variant design, and rather than an annual refresh cycle, we could reasonably expect them to move to a biennial refresh cycle, hence why they have skipped the A11X and jumped straight to the A12X.
Intel and Qualcomm have customers, but for Apple's own silicon, Apple's only customer is itself, by design. That also imposes a limitation on themselves that it just might not make financial sense to fabricate a series of chips exclusive to their Mac lineup, appropriate to the TDP of a Mac.
By all means, tear this apart if you disagree.
Apple certainly markets their iPads as a competitor to the MacBook, so maybe they’re not looking to use custom silicon in the Macs but simply to phase out desktop computers when iOS and third party applications are ready to replace PCs for the most part.
I meant to say there was no A11X. I'll edit that in shortly.
i would add that the faster upgrade cycle, and therefore money worth spending on developing smartphones is also because people are used to carrier subsidy and spreading out the cost. so it's kind of a virtuous circle of investment that the pc market doesn't have.
makes you realise what a perfect storm iphone was - a massive and growing market of people paying through the nose, annually, for a crap product, just waiting for someone to take that money and invest it in something good.
Isn't this becoming equally true for phones? Perhaps not for hardware as far back as 2012, but I'm expecting my 6S to last me a very, very long time. It's fast, has a great screen (and headphone jack), and I'll get the battery replaced as many times as I need to.
But this doesn't appear to have slowed iPhone XRS+ Maxx sales one bit.
I can well imagine Apple expecting people to plug in a keyboard and monitor to their iPad Pro, while it gets thinner and thinner.
I don't doubt that Macs will eventually fade into the sunset, but I don't think it's coming nearly as quickly as either pundits or pessimists seem to believe. "Marzipan" may indeed be a first step, but I think it's going to be a Carbon vs. Cocoa situation, taking many years to fully transition. For iOS to supplant macOS, it has to essentially do everything macOS does. It doesn't have to do everything the same way, but if it's going to be a full replacement for a general purpose computing platform, it has to be, well, a general purpose computing platform.
†Technically, "grudgingly-tolerate-it" should be in there, but it doesn't flow well.
The TouchBar was a good example though, even if it didn't receive the warmest reception on the market, it is still a good piece of Mac-specific engineering.
And at some point, Apple will introduce an "iPad mini" with no display
Yes, most iPads in existence are much slower than this iPad Pro, and yes, most people will be buying the inferior sub $400 one.
But also, most people have PCs with an Intel GPU, or a really low end discrete GPU... that doesn't stop game makers to make games that can't run on most machines, or Adobe to stop making photoshop.
Let's see what happens with the iPad.
- Files is way too limited. It should be possible to exchange the system supported data types between all apps via files. You can't even add a audio track to Music or a video file to the TV app as it is right now.
- The split screen feature is a good one, but so far I rarely found it useful. Not all apps support it, many apps differ in their behavior. The 50:50 split is nice, but the other split ratios I fould less useful. For some tasks you need overlapping windows.
- On the same page, one of my favorite features is the picture in picture for playing video - unfortunately again, apps differ in behavior and I don't understand the size limit. I would like to be able to put the video to any size.
- And of course, coding and running plain Unix utilities. While I am happy about the security the app model with sandboxing brings, for a "Pro" machine, this is too restrictive. Apple should allow something like Termux on the iPad, even if it were limited to a sandboxed file system, it would make the iPad soo much more useful as a computer. Apple might even release a lightweight Linux-VM as an app.
If Apple could remove these pure software-restrictions of the iPad, they could attract a lot of "Pro" users, I think. Disclaimer: I am an iPad Pro owner, fully in the Apple universe :). iCloud sync already makes it a much more useful device, but I keep hitting my head against the limitations. Running "Blink" to connect to my Linux server makes it almost a laptop, but is very limited.
I could do real work with a browser + terminal client, but have a few issues:
- None of the terminal clients really give you 100% of a normal keyboard (been a while, I forget what doesn't work right).
- Splitting the screen doesn't work well enough. I want 2 windows (browser and terminal) that are each 75% of the screen and the ability to switch between them, preferably from the keyboard. A 50/50 split doesn't work well, and switching the 70/30 split between windows makes a mess when it redraws my terminal on resize.
That's not to say what they've done isn't impressive and that they don't plan to kick Intel to the curb...but it is entirely possible this will be another PowerPC thing, where PowerPC outperforms for a while, Apple switches and then Intel gets their shit together and others are no longer able to compete. If Intel were to merely get a good integrated GPU that could compete with Nvidia's, there is no chance Apple could compete.
Something to keep in mind too, iPad Pros have a much more constrained TDP than your average laptop, so it isn’t merely just a matter of performance but performance per watt and sustained performance.
There is also this question: given a higher TDP, what could Apple’s silicon team really do? Although I’m not convinced it makes financial sense for them to replace Intel with custom silicon, I’m happy to be proven wrong.
I am happy that the iPad Pro is pushing the limits, it is about time that the Surface Pro line had true competition, it will push both to be better.
That's about as serious an indictment of the competence of the software development industry as I can imagine.
Edit: to clarify: the line is "It's a real PSD... it's over 3 gigs, it's a 157 layers, 12000x12000 pixels, and I'm zooming through it at lightning speed, with no lag". While she's doing this she's scrolling the layer list, which is why I was confused in my earlier statement.
Note, btw: when she's zooming, it's not loading the higher resolution in "real time". It takes a second or so for the higher resolution to pop in. So when she's saying "zooming through it at lightning speed", what she's saying is "the UI doesn't hang when I zoom, and the higher resolution pops in quick enough". This should not be an applause line for a device of this power in 2018.
I'm not saying it's not hard: it is hard. Programming is hard. Making sure you're not occupying the UI thread for more than 16 milliseconds per frame is sometimes a challenge. You have to use all sorts of scary stuff like "concurrency" and "threads" and "GPUs". But it's 2018: non-laggy UI's should be the baseline everywhere, for everything.
Apples and Oranges.
My Amiga never did this because the whole user interface was interrupt driven, it wasn't possible for any of the bloated trash running to deem itself more important.
You're dealing with filters, transparencies, hand-drawn paths, masking, linked files, embedded files — there's a wide realm of potential data and complexity.
If you want to test the mettle of a computer, try opening a large Photoshop file and doing anything in it.
People who use Photoshop regularly totally understand the validity of that quick demo.
This, right here, is why it's an indictment of the software industry. It SHOULDN'T be impressive that Photoshop doesn't lag. When she said that line, the entire audience should have shrugged and said to themselves "Of course you can zoom into an image in Photoshop. It's 2018. What's the big deal?"
We're also talking about multi-gig files. Outside of media the occurrence of an individual application file this large is pretty small. It's not like you can reliably play a 4K video file on many entry-level machines either.
In a similar vein, I would argue that it's a better indictment of the industry that I sometimes have to close Chrome because it's hogging more resources than Photoshop.
Seriously? I think this is more confirming that the person you replied to is right. Unless there is some reason that I can think of that only using 2 cores is a good thing?
A cursory search brought up this link, but you should read up on threads and the difference between CPUs and GPUs:
https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20171223_2311-why-...
Everything else—the rendering, scaling, compositing, etc.—runs on the GPU, not the CPU, where it uses hundreds of cores. Y’know, like a 3D game.
And, like a 3D game, it’s still slow, because it’s doing something genuinely hard and your powerful GPU still isn’t powerful enough.
Multiple cores are really good at handling a lot of smaller processes. Photoshop just has a couple really heavy individual processes.
Demo was 12,000 x 12,000 pixels, 2 orders of magnitude would be pictures of 120 x 120 pixels.
We did more with Photoshop in the past than 128px icons.
120 x 120 = 1.44 * 10^4 pixels.
4 orders of magnitude. And in addition to that, the RAW sensor information from the camera has given each pixel more 'depth'. Often times, each color is 12bit (36bit per pixel). There's more to each pixel than what's displayed on the screen: its not just a JPG you're viewing.
I realize I'm biased, but on such a machine, the observed performance is anything but rudimentary.
Tiled zooming into arbitrarily large images is otherwise rather easy to do. Go plop the largest image you can find onto your nearest Android phone and it'll zoom & pan that image at 60fps with nary a stutter or issue. It will take a while for it to re-snap the sharpness as you zoom in, though, but so was the iPad Pro. How fast it was re-decoding at the new scale factor & crop is the interesting question, but one which wasn't covered.
Otherwise we're just talking the same basic tech behind gigapixel viewers. Which isn't interesting or significant in the slightest, and has been used on mobile for years and years and years.
Do you have evidence backing up this claim?
> Go plop the largest image you can find onto your nearest Android phone and it'll zoom & pan that image at 60fps with nary a stutter or issue
I've never seen an Android device composite, pan, and zoom a multi-layer gigapixel image with the same performance I saw today. If you have a video you could share, I'd be interested to see it.
> It will take a while for it to re-snap the sharpness as you zoom in
To let you in a bit, Photoshop was doing the recomposition of the destination region in real-time. And it's not just a single layer that's on display there, but hundreds, composited together while the user zooms in and out on varying regions of the document.
Now I don't doubt that an image viewer specially optimized for zooming and panning huge images like this can do it at 60fps. The typical image viewer likely does not.
That's like wondering why the source + instrumented dev environment uses so much more resources than its compiled, optimized binary.
What a weird confusion to see on HN.
Or are you so naive you think that anything of significance is happening on or blocking the UI thread such that merely showing "smoothness" in any way reflects anything about the device's performance at actually doing the photoshop work?
I think Steve even did a keynote demo of fluid finder window resizing during 10.2 release.
reference: https://macosx.com/threads/why-is-window-resizing-so-slow-st...
Perhaps they have a lot they can optimize but the levels of layers, masking, opacity, blending or whatever is complex.
There’s a lot to be said about reduced efficiencies with the layers of languages and abstractions we use today but I’m not sure photoshop is the best example to try and torch the whole industry.
Scrolling through a 3 GB 157-layer 12000x12000 image is not one of those times.
I love the idea of the iPad becoming something that could replace a laptop, but for me I wait for the day when I can at the very least have sandbox access to the filesystem, and OS kernel to be able to set it up for local development.
Why Apple continues to refuse support for BSD Jails or the sort confuses me.
Personally I think Chrome OS will be so much better for developers once Google gets all the wrinkles ironed for Linux support.
"A computer hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem."
About the BSD jails, it's probably to keep it simple for most of their user base? Power users aren't really their thing anymore. Although I bought a last generation iPad Pro with Pencil for drawing / some 2d animation. I like it better than Wacom now.
In particular, wanting to run absolutely everything in local is reasonable, but not a requirement I think.
Currently the only thing that’s really lacking is direct git integration into Coda or the other editors, and I know Panic is working on it. Git apps can be used to bridge the gap but it’s just too combersome.
Otherwise, accessing an external DB , or even having my code run on a VM somewhere else is not an issue as long as I can remotely debug.
I was hoping we would see XCode for the iPad. The Swift Playgrounds app really does not cut it.The Swift Playgrounds app really hasn’t gotten any love[1] since it was first introduced. You can actually import UIKit and the other frameworks and compile them on the iPad but this is pretty much undocumentated. The preview views are tremendously buggy (really the whole app is) and there is all sorts of hidden debug stuff running in the background[2] that slows down performance. Everything has to be in a single file so doing anything moderately complicated is a pain, the editor is buggy and will sometimes highlight just the last three letters of a word, and there is no Interface Builder[3]. I would love a real XCode.
[1]There have been new playgrounds added (e.g. “Learn to Code with Swift”) but the app itself really hasn’t been changed at all. The same bugs have been present for years. And they aren’t obscur either. You will run into editor bugs within the first 5 minutes.
[2] The debug stuff is to help facilitate the different playgrounds, but doesn’t really provide any benefit to someone coding in a blank file outside of a playground. You can’t turn it off within the app.
[3] I know a lot of people don’t like IB, but it’s great for throwing together simple apps quickly. It’s odd that it is absent from the official apple App but Pythonista, an app made by one person, has an visual interface editor.
So on top of your £769 for the entry level 'Pro, the Pencil is an extra £119 and keyboard is £179, topping the whole package to £1047. Even more if you go for the 12" model.
Also, I use an iPad Pro without a keyboard or pencil, so I saved a good 300 clams, and I am really happy with the rest of what I got.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1408960-REG/wacom_dth...
What are your thoughts on this Wacom Cintiq Pro? Do you think this is too expensive?
A lot of designers I know are replacing that with an iPad Pro. For many, the iPad is a much more flexible tool AND cheaper AND more powerful. The Cintiq still has it's place and for people that very specifically need it, it's useful. But many are finding that an iPad Pro is a better tool for them.
So that's the pricing perspective you need to understand the iPad Pro.
It gave me the impression they were included in the box
A common complaint I saw during the presentation was the emphasis of the A12X for gaming, but Apple is still very bad at incentivizing developers to make games with premium experiences and prices (to say nothing of the lack of an official gaming controller!)
Also, the new Apple Pencil will only work with the new iPads; it's not compatible with previous Pros: https://www.apple.com/apple-pencil/
Because the older pros don't have a way to charge it.
Which is to me another one of those ingenious but now obvious design choices, I know the sGNote series has "wireless" charging for their stylus, but it needs to go into the device to be charged, this is so much cooler because it doesn't require that. I wish that Microsoft had thought of this for the surface pen.
I'm kind of glad they didn't. A pen magnetically attached will likely pop off when you put the tablet in your bag. It's a nice place to dock the pen when you're using the tablet, but poor place to store it in a bag.
People report up to a year of life with the Surface Pen battery. Swapping it out when it dies seems simpler than remembering to charge it regularly.
The surface pen already magnetically attaches to the surface, this would just give that attachment another purpose.
> Swapping it out when it dies seems simpler than remembering to charge it regularly.
You don't have to remember anything, you just "redock" the stylus when you're done using it and it will charge.
I'm aware. But it's not "just another purpose". It's a different design. A battery that needs charging is a fundamentally different design choice than a battery that needs replacing. I'd rather a disposable battery that lasts for a year than a rechargeable battery that lasts a week.
> You don't have to remember anything, you just "redock" the stylus when you're done using it and it will charge.
And then you shove your tablet in your bag and the pen falls off. The pen languishes in the bottom of the bag until the next time you want to use it, when it may or may not still be holding a usable charge.
A pen that needs to be stuck to the side of your device regularly is fine for a device that sits on a desk all the time. It's less clearly beneficial for a device that gets handled constantly and goes into and out of bags.
The science isn't quite there yet with those uranium batteries
I've had a Surface Pro 3 since release and have had to replace the stylus battery twice, so I'm getting ~1.5 years per battery. I would much prefer the old hidey-hole stylus dock to Apple or MS's current stylus docking.
I fully agree about the pen falling off when bumped. I can't imaging Apple solved that since it seems like a fundamental side effect of the design.
So really Nintendo isn't quite doing it yet. Said as an absolute lover of the switch.
If Apple had a snap on controller like the one we're seeing Microsoft leaking, it would be game over. A great controller with great support on a refreshed Apple iPad mini would clobber everything on the market and it wouldn't even be close.
Apple themselves does not publish an 'official' gaming controller, no, instead they offer a number of third-party controllers at a quite nice build quality at prices that are comparable to buying a new PS4/XBOX controller:
https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all-accessories/toys-...
These iPads are more powerful than any nintendo switch, but nintendo has them beat because they have a dedicated gaming hardware ecosystem. I wish I could use my iPhone like I would a switch, but I can't because there isn't any serious games or first party hardware.
As a result, serious game devs target mobile last, if they do at all. I bought Transistor for my apple TV for example and asked for the first refund of an iOS app ever because it was an crashy mess. I played it on my PC instead.
Among their requirements they could list: Apple TV with Controller support (allowing devs to ditch the useless support for the Remote), some online features (some rebranded version of Game Center), Mac support (for Macs that support the latest iterations of Metal).
It's the little things.
* Lightroom CC on iPhone/iPad: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/how-to/lightroom-mobile...
* Just recently announced Premier Rush: https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-rush.html
Planned/Announced: * Photoshop: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photoshop-ecosystem.html * Project Gemini (for drawing/painting/illustrating): https://theblog.adobe.com/introducing-project-gemini/
When it comes to software that’s not games and stuff like video editing it seems to me like the most of what happens is “It takes time for new software/updates to show up that once again are able to waste the full extent of my newly acquired processing power”.
I know we get more robust games now, I know we render 4K videos instead of 460p, I know we display UI on higher resolution screens but there’s really no excuse for a software with similar feature scope to take the same resources percentage of modern top of the line hardware as mid-tier 18 years old machine.
Bummer ;(
Selecting/moving text with a finger is more annoying.
I don't know about that; one of Apple's hallmarks is that they aren't afraid to compete with their own products. Some companies would have said "We can't make the tablet into a powerful computer, it would cut into notebook sales.
Especially with the USB-C change, these iPads are a serious competitor to Apple's laptops for pretty much anyone except developers. In a lot of ways they're better. Just not for programming because the software is still too sandboxed.
Here's hoping that Xcode shows up.
I feel we are insanely close to this reality though. We have large enough displays now (even on the small one), external display support, external keyboard support and USB-C so we can actually plug in an iPhone into the iPad itself (Though this could have been skirted with the advent of wireless debugging support in Xcode. I'd still rather have the wire though.) Only thing I really want is some kind of trackpad or trackpad replacement. Or even just mouse support and I'll drop one in my bag.
As a user, I don't miss having to search the general web to find something for my computer, only to be misled by poor results in the search engine, malware download sites, software that would be the perfect solution but doesn't run on my OS, ads everywhere, etc. Now I have one place to go and everything on it works with my system. Sure it's not perfect, and discovery could be improved, but there's no malware that I've ever run into, and everything I actually need is there.
Also, it's a false dichotomy between PC OSes and iOS. Both macOS and Windows have app stores that their users use.
Along with a million other apps.
Out here in the free world, every time you want to use a library, you have to choose between 12 different options, all suck in one way or another, and you really have no way of making an informed choice. So you pick something by gut feel. Half the time you are wrong, and all of the time you worry that you have made the wrong choice.
But if you buy into Apple's cathedral, they tell you what to use, and you use it. End of story. It's always behind the times, and it won't run outside of Apple's stuff, but it works (for now, at least), it's well documented, and you don't have to spend days finding and comparing solutions. You can get back to writing code, which is the fun part.
Is it good business? Good for the world? Maybe not. But it's certainly attractive.
Isn't that a good thing? For example, wouldn't it be great if all web apps were optimized for specs lower than the machines we use?
[1] https://paulstamatiou.com/made-on-an-ipad-pro/#photo-editing
I'll also add that the older iPad Pro hardware often goes on fire sale, and may do so more often now.
I import raw pictures all the time, but it's usually just a few pics. I don't think people realize how long it takes to import a days worth of pics or how you lose all your file names when you import the pictures.
square-ish edges (easier to hold), better & larger LCD displays within the same body size, and powerful internals.
The new iphones are just too big for one-handed use. you want to type the name of the website on top bar of mobile Safari - bring the next hand out or drop your phone....
It costs a lot less than the current models, supports all the functionality I currently need, and more importantly I can use it comfortably with one hand only.
This is not a great solution, but in "Accessibility Options" you can enable the gesture to swipe down on the bottom to bring the top of the screen down to the middle so you can reach it one handed. It's clunky but helpful.
It's the functionality that used to be on a double tap of the home button or something, and I thought it was removed, but it was just turned off by default.
I can see if the phone is the only compute device you have, which is true for lots of people, then you might want to deal with the larger screen because you are watching videos on it and what not.
And it’s cheaper
Third-party stuff isn't sufficiently sticky. If Apple wants games on their platform, they need their own controller. It might even be best if it comes in the box.
I don't, however, think they really care that much.
The thought that they don't care that much is really strange, because every single keynote that I can remember has included game demos. They always use game demos, from AAA game developers like Epic, to come out and show off the latest capabilities. They could take a sizeable chunk of PS4 and Xbox One customers very easily - fund the development of some genuinely AAA, exclusive games, bundle the controller in the box and the thing would sell like hotcakes. Nintendo is somewhat safe because their IP is much more valuable than Xbox or Sony, who basically offer the same games with a few notable exceptions.
Even the WiiU Pro controller had clickable sticks.
Even the switch joycons, which I think are incredibly impressive with how much tech is crammed into them, are pretty awful to actually control with. The only reason I think they get a break is because they are designed for portability.
Much like Apple feels that the touch interface is a different beast than trackpad/mouse, and combining them would be a mistake.
Compare this with Nintendo Switch - it's significantly less powerful than a few modern iPad generations. But it's also more affordable and Nintendo deliberately keeps the full-price game culture alive. Because of that, they have actual game library to offer to customers.
To me the huge amount of low cost junk in the App Store doesn't feel right next to the high quality expensive products Apple sells.
It might have something to do with all the entitled customers (children?) that will review anything that costs five dollars or more as "a ripoff", unless maybe the game is literally Minecraft.
When the mobile ecosystem settles ~$5 as the price for full-featured apps, with .99 as the price for one-off toys and smaller tools, someone bucking the trend and charging multiple times that for apps that are not meaningfully higher quality than the rest of the charging-five-bucks ecosystem will rightly be judged by the average consumer as overpriced.
That's not "entitlement", that's violation of perfectly reasonable expectations. Don't blame or denigrate the customer for aligning their expectations to what the rest of the marketplace does.
For me, Scrivener was worth the $20. Omnifocus was worth the $40. They added enough value and ability above what other apps in their category had (or paired well, in my case, with apps that I already had on my computer).
It is precisely entitlement that causes people to think that software isn't worth anything ("Code is just typing after all.") or is only worth $5 at most. Good software is worth it's cost if it adds value to your device and workflow or entertains you for a sufficient amount of time.
It is a far less frustrating game console to use than PS/XBox. It’s actually really nice.
I bought a controller for $50 to play Minecraft. It’s not bundled (that’s a good thing).
Hopefully next year's models will finally make the switch!
The old solution, isn't as bad as the media portrayed it.
First, it comes with a socket to socket piece, so if you are charging at home, it's absolutely no problem.
Second, you are only doing that in "emergency" cases where you need it, but forget to charge at home.
No complaints here.
Think size doesn’t really matter that much? The iPhone XR actually pushes the lightning port down slightly off center to make room for the LCD display. The XR would literally be impossible to make with USB-C.
Not an obvious benefit for a largely wireless device. For the vast vast majority of people it’s only used for charging and that’s moving to wireless too.
Regardless, USB-C would not be nicer than keeping the iPhone XR as thin as it is. Lightning really makes it possible.
I was talking with an apple hardware engineer... I'm told that the jack is in some ways a limiting factor, though I'd happily take an extra .2mm of depth for universal charging :-)
Also, the iPhones do support universal charging (Qi).
So the iPad becomes another device to plug your phone into, so to speak (if only to charge at first).
But what about headphones? Also wireless.
but the audacity to talk about intuitive design and then fucking make my vertical scroll wheel scroll the page horizontally is outrageous.
Apple's superior UX team and control over app distribution makes them much more likely to succeed than when MS tried to go down a similar road. Even their long-term investment in LLVM helps here. One can only hope us consumers don't end up with a more locked down macOS as a result.
One of the things I think this industry gets backwards is aspect ratios. I primarily use my tablet to watch movies/tv and 99% of them are squarish. I primarily use my laptop to work, and almost all of them are now 16:9. PCs anyway.
Other than Apple Notes(with Apple Pencil), and watching NetFlix, I dont make good use of it. I'd love to get some recommendation for useful apps to try...
I also use it to create routes for road trips for my Jeep club: it's really nice to have my GPS app and a satellite view side by side as I look for interesting back roads.
In short: I bought a Ferrari and use it like a Civic.
I keep computer science/math-related PDFs in Dropbox, copy them to GoodReader (I've started experimenting a bit with other PDF apps, but GoodReader has been my go to for years now), and occasionally use Apple Pencil to mark them up as I read them. I don't save them back to Dropbox for future review; GoodReader is effectively its own island in that regard.
For GPS, I use Gaia GPS to create routes, often with Apple Maps and/or Google Maps running in split screen.
If you have specific questions, I can address them, but none of it is particularly formal.
I think I would like to move to using Adobe Lightroom on the iPad.
But it works well enough.
I am looking forward to the Steinberg Dorico team putting out a MusicXML viewer for iPad... and have also occasionally contemplated developing one myself, to make sure I get the feature set I want. :-)
[There are good PDF-based systems, but we sometimes need to switch keys for vocalists, and MusicXML works better for that, if you don't know in advance to prepare a new document.]
I've done iOS dev in the past (it's not my daytime gig at the moment), so if your contemplations ever get more serious and you want an enthusiastic partner, hit me up. I'd love to do something musical.
I have a MacBook Pro as well now, so I hardly ever use the iPad Pro for that sort of thing anymore but it was a pretty good experience.
It’s also an excellent music creation device. I originally bought it so I could use apps like Korg Module and Gadget and it’s great for that purpose.
It’s also my favorite device for reading kindle textbooks.
My secondary use case is board games. Carcassonne and others have pretty good ports which was very handy for playing with people while traveling or instead of carting a bunch of boxes (or bags) over to friends' homes. Everyone but me has gotten married and had kids so gaming is much less frequent these days, and usually hosted by the guy who has the biggest board game collection when we do gather.
My final (present) use case is tabletop roleplaying games, but that's also covered by my current device. Hero Lab has an iPad port which was handy for some games I ran in the past, and hope to run again in the future.
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[0] https://medium.com/@headquartershq/how-to-use-your-ipad-to-d... (fyi: there are some links to products we carry in this article, all app links are non-affiliate.)
[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/working-copy/id896694807
[2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/procreate/id425073498
[3] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh/id11567...
LiquidText for reading books and articles, Notes Plus for note taking. Both are a little more finicky than other options, but they each have unique features I find indispensable. (If you haven’t completed a handwritten problem set with lasso-and-drag and scribble-to-erase, you don’t know what you’re missing.)
I do most of my writing straight into Google Docs on the Apple keyboard cover. I also have a LaTeX app and a Jupyter console (Juno) that see some use when I’m away from home, but I still prefer to work on that stuff at a PC.
Edit: Oh, and outside of work, I use GarageBand with a Lightning stereo condenser mic to record music. I doubt if anyone with real production skills would enjoy it, but it works perfectly for my purposes.
Affinity designer is a great vector program. Lumafusion is good for editing, though I havem’t used it much. Ferrite is good for audio. Most areas have a few standout apps, depends what you want to do.
Explain everything is good for making educational videos.
Killer app is (a) ultra portability with genuinely all day battery and LTE for meetings and commute with (b) every tool an office user uses.
Some if us also code (servers and infra not desktop or mobile apps), works great for ‘Git Ops’ workflows.
I'm glad they fixed the awful UX on charging the pencil. Also stoked there's no notch in the screen, but sad that there's rounded corners.
Still no ability to let people make apps for the iPad on the iPad, which I think is truly disappointing.
*edit: I just realized it doesn't have a headphone jack and does have a camera bump. Booooooo
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but don't all (most) mobile devices use USB-C to charge these days?
USB-C will likely be a thing on "pro" devices where users are expected to create more than consume, and because USB-C can interface with more hardware.
This should come in the box with every iPhone: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQGJ2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightn...
Why? What is your use case? (Genuinely curious.)
-- Art: Apple pencil and procreate are the best drawing platform on the market IMO, clips studio on iPad is really close. I'm not a professional but I have tried and owned Wacom's (including cintques) and a Microsoft surface book. The iPad pro's screen and drawing experience is far better IMO.
-- Music: I used to play guitar and still mess around a bit with it, also I've started programming electronic music. Garage Band, DJay Pro 2, and Bias Amp 2 are really amazing pieces of kit. The touch interface for Bias Amp 2 in particular is amazing and feels like using a real guitar amp.
-- Gaming: Card and Board games, Pandemic, Star Realms, Hearthstone, etc.... are absolutely killer on the big 12.9 inch screen. Civ 6 is also an amazing game on the iPad. Along with a ton of AR based games.
-- Reading: iBooks and Kindle
-- Of course all of the standard social media and communications apps. I use the Logitech smart connect keyboard and it's very nice.
-- Software Development: I'm an iOS dev and I use Swift playgrounds on iPad a ton to sketch ideas. When I do webdev I'll often use the iPad with Coda and a remote server and it's a great experience.
With support for the lg 4/5ks I could actually see myself going all in on an iPad Pro for a home setup.
It is simply the best media consumption device I have ever owned.
I bought an iPad 4 at the time (I later upgraded it to an Air and then a Pro) and left it almost untouched for months, then I started using it for web browsing, Youtube, Netflix, Twitch, e-books, light gaming... over time it has replaced not only my PC/laptop, but also my TV, for many activities.
I do not use it for anything professional-related (maybe reviewing some document when on a plane, or an occasional ssh connection to a remote console), but the media consumption part is enough for me.
I don't know why the pencil didn't come with magnetic attachment from the get go, it seems like such a simple change that makes a big difference.
The cynic in me thinks that it was deliberately withheld in v1 so that a big deal about its addition could be made in v2.
The sides of iPad used to be rounded, so it wouldn’t really stick.
I saw a video where artists were demoing the iPad Pro Photoshop. Most of them had experience with the Wacom stylus and criticized that the Apple Pencil was too slim and cramped their hand. The obvious solution would be to add a rubber grip--which wouldn't really work with this storage/charging solution.
The Swift Playgrounds app really hasn’t gotten any love[1] since it was first introduced. You can actually import UIKit and the other frameworks and compile them on the iPad but this is pretty much undocumentated. The preview views are tremendously buggy (really the whole app is) and there is all sorts of hidden debug stuff running in the background[2] that slows down performance. Everything has to be in a single file so doing anything moderately complicated is a pain, the editor is buggy and will sometimes highlight just the last three letters of a word, and there is no Interface Builder[3]. I would love a real XCode.
[1]There have been new playgrounds added (e.g. “Learn to Code with Swift”) but the app itself really hasn’t been changed at all. The same bugs have been present for years. And they aren’t obscur either. You will run into editor bugs within the first 5 minutes.
[2] The debug stuff is to help facilitate the different playgrounds, but doesn’t really provide any benefit to someone coding in a blank file outside of a playground. You can’t turn it off within the app.
[3] I know a lot of people don’t like IB, but it’s great for throwing together simple apps quickly. It’s odd that it is absent from the official apple App but Pythonista, an app made by one person, has an visual interface editor.
The UI has been changed slightly.
> You can actually import UIKit and the other frameworks and compile them on the iPad but this is pretty much undocumentated.
Well, it's UIKit. You can just pull up the documentation at developer.apple.com.
> The preview views are tremendously buggy (really the whole app is) and there is all sorts of hidden debug stuff running in the background[2] that slows down performance.
The app is very buggy, but the debug stuff cannot be turned off because it's compiled into the code you write.
> Everything has to be in a single file so doing anything moderately complicated is a pain
No: you can add additional files to the "Sources" folder. This is how Apple's tutorial playgrounds work.
Also, my complaint was that you cannot turn of the debug stuff. You actually can if you turn off things like logging in a template file on the Mac and then move that to the ipad. At that point you might as well just use the Mac though. See here for what I’m talking about. http://saltpigmedia.com/blog/Modules-in-Swift-Playgrounds
Also, as far as I am aware, you cannot add to the sources folder on the iPad itself. That requires a Mac.
My comments were in regard to using Swift Playgrounds as a pseudo-Xcode. It does indeed compile swift code and UIKit, so a lot of that groundwork is there. And I would love to use the iPad to do real coding, and Swift Playgrounds is real tempting, but it just doesn’t work and I find that disappointing.
A couple of the example playgrounds expose this.
> Also there is little documentation that explains things like XCPlayground and PlaygroundsSupport.
Documentation is available here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/playgroundsupport. It's not great, but it's getting better.
> Also the limitations on Swift Playgrounds are never mentioned anywhere (e.g. autolayout constraints don’t really work for the Playgrounds previews.
They do, but in a buggy way. I have long considered this to be a defect and have filed Radars about this.
> Also, as far as I am aware, you cannot add to the sources folder on the iPad itself. That requires a Mac.
You can create playgrounds on the fly with the Files app, if you know the structure they must have. You cannot edit them in Swift Playgrounds.
As an aside this iPad Pro will replace our home computer in the next month. It has as many USB-C ports as my 2016 Macbook, a better screen and a way better graphics card. Plus the ability to use it with or without a keyboard is amazing.
- LED display is mercury-free - No arsenic - No BFR or PVC etc.
The new apple pencil is interesting. Now without the seamless round body, I wonder if the tip will wear out faster, given user will now always hold it the same way.
The main issue with developing on an iPad is that it’s not easy to load unsigned, compiled code on it, and even if you do, there’s not much that the code can do because of the system sandbox.
My main dev machine is a 12” MBP. I have external monitors, but do quite a bit of work even on my 9.6” iPad. I spend 9% of my time in a terminal anyhow, and have good eyesight.
Apple is quickly realizing that they missed a major market opportunity by not designing snap on controllers that convert iPads into Nintendo Switches. Touch works only for a subset of games, but a first-party controller would have absolutely destroyed the market.
You mean becoming more and more like a Surface Pro?
Even more a dream state: would want a docking station that allows me to use my multi monitor setup.
The increasingly similar optics to the Surface Pro are amusing as well, design students would do well to read the coverage of these two systems from introduction to the present day. A lot to be learned there in terms of understanding how systems like these evolve.
I am bummed that the pencil isn't compatible and while you get better recharging and 'tap to change tools' and some tilt and pressure sensitivity, but how much? Actual specs seem to be elusive.
Desktops are 8-fat-core behemoths in 2018 with incredible potential. Ryzen 7 2700x == 8-core / 16 threads. Intel i7-9700k isn't even the top-end anymore and is also 8-core /(only 8-threads). And its actually reasonable to build a 64-GB of RAM Consumer Desktop (Ryzen 7 2700x or Intel i7-9700k).
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iPad Pro may be 8-core... but its configuration is 4-fast core + 4-low-power Core, still building itself as a way to reduce power consumption at the cost of speed / performance.
4GB of RAM is also pitiful and won't be sufficient for desktop-level tasks.
Desktops can run 8-fat cores all day long due to their wall-power connection. iPads are still designed for mobility and low-power consumption. Its a good compromise, but I wouldn't bill it as anything more than a laptop-class system.
Basically it is Apple and iOS that is limiting the iPad Pro Usage. Give me a BT 5.0 Keyboard and Mouse, along with a Sublime Editor I could even replace my MacBook Pro.
However in the first image showing the iPad from the side there's a clear bulge, I'm assuming for the camera: https://www.apple.com/v/ipad-pro/p/images/overview/hero__b2q...
So is it flat or not? It might seem like a small nitpick but I hate this trend of having a bulge for the camera just so that you can say that the rest of the assembly is like 2mm thinner. Who cares? Now you have something that looks and feels worse and you can't put it flat on its back.
I hope they at least engineered it in a way that makes the tablet stable when lying down on a flat surface instead of wobbling on the pivot of the camera bulge.
EDIT: Actually I just noticed that the bulge seems to be here in the first image, it's just hidden in the palm of the hand. Good job Apple marketers, bad job apple designers.
The Pencil ($129) and Smart Keyboard Folio ($199) are not included.
At $1,327, how does it compare specs-wise with the new 13" MacBook Air?
Any "pro" device needs to allow wired external storage and basic access to files for transferring to and from storage devices. That's just common sense.
To get my video files and large files, for example from my computer to the iPad, I need to go through iTunes or some annoying and slow wi-fi process, which is needlessly limiting.
In regards to the keynote, the constant applause and cheers from the audience is back, worse than ever. Why would the audience applaud "amount of units sold worldwide"? Just because Tim Cook ramps up his voice and prompts for applause at every bullet point in his powerpoint, doesn't mean the audience should oblige like well-behaved school children.
I like the jump to USB-C and I am curious what the ‘docking’ experience is when the new iPad Pro is plugged into a large USB-C compatible monitor. This might make the developer experience very good and open the door to making something like the new iPad Pro in the future be the only computing device required. Add LTE and a data plan for mobility and traveling lite.
It's already bad enough that my iPhone can't sit flat on a table because of the camera lens. It would be super annoying in an iPad!
I'm hoping this leads to a future where 3rd party accessories snap on and charge.
While "the new Apple Pencil starts charging when you place the flat part on the right side of your iPad Pro." from: https://www.apple.com/apple-pencil/
So it looks like the answer is yes.
This looks like the perfect tablet and I’m not sure what else they could do to make it better going forward
Anyone know why this would be? Obviously not a big deal — just curiosity.
That sideways scroll is so irritating, and just when you (hopefully) start getting used to it, it starts scrolling down. :facepalm:
When the time for the next refresh comes, Apple will have migrated their portable line to these iPad convertibles.
Is there some sort of protocol in USB-C for two devices with batteries to negotiate which should charge the other. Though I imagine the iPad could just refuse to deliver the high power states/not have the circuitry.
Note that your device doesn't have to provide the requested power if it is unable to, it can provide less.
When I bought a new iPhone, the difference was night and day. I regularly leave 30+ apps open without worrying about lag.
Not sure why the iPad Pro struggles so much with multitasking, but it's kind of turned me off from buying another.
This doesn't help most of the time.
The "what's a computer" ads are disingenuous because Apple needs to sell computers and a tablet.
The what's a computer ads are disingenuous because Apple needs to sell computers and a tablet.
I scroll down on my mbp laptop and the @#$@#$ pictures move to the right...
I guess that is something we could research.
This isn't profit/revenue, but some brief googling suggests 77 million iOS devices shipped in Q1 2018, and 5 million MacOS devices in the same quarter.
It seems clear that devices like this one announced are at least intended to capture some of the previous market for MacOS laptops as well.
Market share doesn't mean much if the market isn't contributing much to their bottom line, and/or has an expense to produce out of line with it's revenue/profit.
Ah, here we go:
"The Mac's Waning Relevance to Apple" https://www.statista.com/chart/8817/mac-sales-as-a-percentag...
I think releases like OP will accelerate this trend further.
I need a new iPad pro but that really makes me think twice if I should get the older version (and save some money too).
I'm also really unhappy about needing a dongle to connect my headphones. I use my headphones with my iPad daily. I'm also not too happy about needing two chargers, one for my phone and one for my iPad.
their feature page is a 1:1 match to Microsoft 's surface page. Even down to the scree x body ratio (which is actually larger on the surface 4). And having face unlock only (no fingerprint).
https://www.swiftpoint.com/store/swiftpoint-gt-mouse-2/
I haven't tried it just came across it the other day
The iPad itself still has no concept of a cursor.
Funny good old HN I lost a point for not knowing that though I mentioned I came across and never used this product lol.
I've seen videos where there is a faint circle representing where the cursor is and then it 'touches' the screen.
shrug I just wasn't sure if that was part of the ipad itself (like maybe accessibility) or all from the simulator.
That's coming from the simulator, IIRC. Hold down the alt key and it will show up.
Care to give actual data to substantiate that, Apple?
> A12X Bionic delivers 2x faster graphics. (footnote: compared to the previous generation).
What does that even mean? The footnote is even more obscure than the marketing piece. "Fast" measures what exactly?
The chip seems like its designed to beat benchmarks honestly. The A12x has an incredibly HUGE L1 data cache of 128kB, but only has an L2 level of 8MB after that (while your typical Desktop / Laptops have 64kB L1 data cache, 256kB or 512kB L2 cache, and then 8MB L3 after that).
Anandtech recompiled SPECint2006 for the iPhone A12 processor (and the A12x is a faster version than the A12) and it performed well in benchmarks: (https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...)
This includes a suite of tests from perl, to GCC, to h264 (CPU-only) encoding. Now, it isn't "official" SPECint, but Anandtech hopefully used the correct compile flags for the test. (We just gotta hope anandtech did everything correctly to make it an apples-to-apples comparison).
> What does that even mean? The footnote is even more obscure than the marketing piece. "Fast" measures what exactly?
Fast graphics generally refers to the ability to run graphic benchmarks well.
So benchmarks like Ice Storm (OpenGL) would run faster on the iPad A12X. GPUs need to calculate where all those triangles go after affine transformations: there are a lot of matrix-multiplications that go into GPUs.
Its a bit of a special case, so this is generally called "graphics performance".
also in the video editing app shown in the keynote the external display hides the control elements, which is very nice. exposed api, or internal apple magic?
Is anyone using an iPad pro missing in-place handwriting recognition? as in the old Samsung tablets where you could annotate and write everywhere?
Here is an example of horrible UX plus horrible loading time plus janky scrolling brought you by Google. 60 seconds after the page was open the content of the top of the page was still not done loading (72MB before I closed the page).
https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_3
I think it's hardly just a matter of design here.
It's kind of crazy to me that even that's considered low
Way more impressive, though, was Opera 9 at 5 MB, which, unlike Firefox, also had a built-in email client, IRC client, download manager, BitTorrent client, ad blocker, debugger (Firebug was an extension at the time), sync, and several other impressive features.
If you carefully read my message, nowhere I'm saying 14MB (not mb) is "low".
Scrolling 1.0 = normal scrolling
Scrolling 2.0 = left/right up/down directions are inverted respectively
Scrolling 3.0 = left/right scrolling only, via up/down gestures (use left/right gestures at your peril)
Man, this thing drives me nuts, and it's the first thing I change in every touchpad-equipped device I own.
Scrolling is not swiping, people!
The recent fad of reversing the touchpad scrolling direction is an attempt to simulate how we use our phones in which we tap the content on screen and drag it around to pull other content into view.
Because the touchpad was invented to replace a mouse, I expect similar motions to produce the same results. For example: scrolling the wheel down moves your viewpoint in the current window down, so a similar motion on the touchpad (swipe down - use two fingers to differentiate from a normal touch) should produce a similar result. Instead, we get manufacturers who by default include un-intuitive configurations of something that had been working for decades for billions of people. At least for now we are allowed to change those settings.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mouse_acceleration
One of the patented (but probably expired by now) aspects of the Trackpoint is that it has a very highly refined pressure=>cursor speed transfer function, that has a couple of plateaus in it that map a wide range of pressures to one slow or fast but constant speed. The slow speed notch is good for precise predictable fine positioning, and the fast speed notch is tuned to be just below eye tracking speed, so you don't lose sight of the cursor. But you can push even harder than the fast plateau to go above the eye tracking plateau and flick the cursor really fast if you want, or push even lighter than the slow plateau, for super fine positioning. (The TrackPoint sensor is outrageously more sensitive than it needs to be, so it can sense very soft touches, or even your breath blowing on it.)
Here's a description of Ted Selker's work and all the refinement that went into the TrackPoint, that he developed at IBM Almaden Research Lab:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9438461
Highlights:
In 1984 he observed that it took 0.75 - 1.75 seconds to reposition the hand from the keyboard to the mouse, which is a long time for something that you do quite often. `
He tried many different ideas and built several prototypes, then later when he was working at IBM Alameda Research Lab, he had a chance to refine the idea into a product.
He had his father, a material scientist, help by designing the special non-skid rubber that the clitoris was made from.
IBM wouldn't let him ship it until it was measurably as efficient as a mouse for common tasks.
The thing going for it was that it eliminated the 0.75 - 1.75 second hand repositioning penalty, but of course the fundamental problem with it that you can't get around is that it's a relative positioning device, not an absolute positioning device like a mouse. So he had to come up with ways of overcoming that problem.
The trackpoint performs very well for mixed typing and pointing tasks, since you switch between typing and pointing so often, and that adds up to a lot of time, and is a very common way of using computers. The mouse is still better for tasks that are mostly pointing and clicking, but it takes up some prime real-estate on your desk, and there are many situations where a mouse is impossible to use with a laptop.
He also made the observation that when the cursor moved above eye tracking speed, you tended to lose track of it. And also the observation that some of the time you needed to position it finely around a small area, and other times you needed to move it quickly across a large area.
So he came up with a pressure-to-speed "transfer function" that had a non-linear mapping from how hard you were pressing it to how fast the cursor moved.
The mapping had a plateau at "predictable fine positioning speed" (i.e. there was a wide range of light pressure that would map to moving the cursor at one exact slow predictable speed, so you could smoothly cruise the cursor around with a light touch at a speed that was good for exact positioning. Then after the plateau of light pressure, it sloped up smoothly until just below eye tracking speed, where there was another plateau, mapping a wide range of harder pressure to a fast-but-not-so-fast-that-you-lose-track-of-it speed, for coarse positioning without losing the cursor. And then above that there was a fast speed for quickly flicking the cursor to the other side of the screen.
Once I was sitting in a coffee shop in Mountain View hacking on my Thinkpad, and Ted and his wife Ellen rolled in, sat down, and started chatting. Ted noticed that my Thinkpad's Joy Button was all worn down, and he was mortified and quickly excused himself to go out to the car. Ellen rolled her eyes and shrugged, explaining that he was always like that. Then he came back with a big bag of red Joy Buttons, and replaced my worn-out one right there in the coffee shop, and gave me a few extras as spares!
So after pooh-pooh-ing the name "Joy Button", IBM finally settled on and trademarked the name "Trackpoint." But one concession they made, was when they published a two page ad spread in Time Magazine with a close-up of the Trackpoint, above the slogan "So hot, we had to make it red!"
Ted Selker also made a prototype Thinkpad with TWO hot red Trackpoints on the keyboard, which invitingly resembled a pair of nipples. It was very popular with everyone he tested it on, but unfortunately OS/2 had no idea how to cope with two pointing devices, so there wasn't much use for it, besides being a wonderful ice breaker at parties.
Of course, but that's just a metaphor. Lots of people pick up a game controller having never used a joystick or a flight simulator before, so lots of arcadey flying games do it the other way, and receive scorn from people who prefer yoke-style controls. Who are, in turn, considered uptight and annoying by people who want arcade controls.
Witness endless discussion on the subject:
https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/inver...
https://battlefront-forums.ea.com/discussion/76095/let-us-cu...
It can be yours for the bargain price of $1999.95 USD.
Don’t be the last person in your herd of Apple users to pay money to add scrolling functionality back to your MacOS and iOS devices.
In other words, apple became boring, or at least has been boring for a while now.
I mean, the whole computer market is boring (tablets, phones, laptops, etc; all the same shit YoY), but its kind of hard to think that current-apple is going to break that trend, in the same way you wouldn't expect IBM or Xerox to. Don't know of any startups doing anything terribly interesting in the space, with any real chance of success.
Hell, at this point Microsoft might be the likeliest candidate: at least they're doing something with stuff like stupidly big conference room screens and maybe Hololens will do something cool.
Just because a conversation starts with a topic doesn’t mean it stays there.
crosses self, prays for forgiveness
/lifestyle brand/
...that it's going to take a massive misstep of some kind to shake people off the platform. A handful of UI misfeatures won't do it, even if it would do it to users of other software and platforms.
At least - Apple will try it. But I don't think it's going to fly.
Part of the Apple Magic[tm] is conspicuous display of ownership. Rent-to-wear won't have the same cachet.
And I probably wouldn't argue.
After all, when viewing the page on an iPad, I can't double-tap the top of the screen to make it go back to the beginning. Irony at its best.
Seriously - that's a great feature that I use multiple times per day, and Apple broke their own rule!
There's also a strange contradiction in these millions of people always complaining how Jobs would hate this or that, while essentially relying on the implied authority of the name!
If you all are capable of accurately predicting Steve Job's hypothetical opinions on all matters of design I wanna see some products you designed.
Apple[Jobs] produced a steady stream of industry game changers - original iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, even the MacBook Air. Plus supporting ecosystems and software, including Siri and iCloud. And business relationships - with music companies, movie companies, phone carriers, podcast creators, and app devs.
Apple[Cook] has acquired a mountain of cash, but product development has followed a consistent and predictable faster+thinner+more_expensive path.
No game changers. Not one. Watch is the closest thing to a new class of products, but it seems to be an Ive vanity project rather than something that really scratches a user itch that users didn't even know they had - which was the classic Jobs USP. (And - ironically - Watch isn't obviously a design classic.)
No big new ecosystems. No big new business relationships - unless you count far-from-leading options like ApplePay. No game changer products. Just endless glacial refinement.
Which is fine for generating mountains of cash, especially when you're selling into new markets like China.
But you can only keep producing reruns for so long before you lose momentum. And buyer good will isn't infinite.
Luckily for Apple, Windows is still an incredibly terrible POS as an OS, so the motivation to switch isn't there. Nor is MS ever likely to do better for cultural reasons.
And Linux is - Linux.
So Apple can continue on this path for five more years. Maybe ten. But when the next new thing appears - quantum, bio, plain old distributed, whatever the hell it is - Apple will be buried by it.
We need fresnel refractive scrolling. Perfect for Retina displays, and to teach cosines to the laymen.
My laptop is presently docked to the right of my monitor on my desk. When docked I use a keyboard and mouse with the actual laptop being slightly to the right using its touchpad is somewhat awkward but do-able.
Space bar to go down doesn't work, page down/up doesn't work home end doesn't work arrow keys don't work. Try clicking on the little arrow that doesn't work. Try dragging the screen that direction with the mouse doesn't work. Grab scrollbar manually and pull it down doesn't work. I literally skipped that section because I couldn't figure out how to read it. Note I didn't realize you could grab the scroll bar manually do scroll horizontally because I have never had to do that.
After reading this thread I tried reaching over awkwardly to use the 2 finger scroll mode on the touchpad keeping in mind the normal sensitivity is such that one full swipe top to bottom about 2 inches is 2 pages of text. So about 1 inch per page of text.
Swiping through the first section the "overview" took 62 awkward swipes left to right about 2.5 inches each. About 155 inches of travel almost 13 feet for the last few it actually went down while I scrolled sideways which made me pause for a moment.
Scrolling through pages of content is so basic that going through the massive work of making a beautiful device and all the software required to run it and making reading about it that painful is remarkable.
Its like launching a new high end clothing store and making the entrance a dance dance revolution pad where one must complete a hip hop number to enter.
It isn't merely subjectively terrible.
Edit: On my phone also running firefox in vertical orientation it scrolls normally but cuts off a bit on the right hand side, in landscape orientation it scrolls normally AND looks correct.
An article unlike a computer isn't a new exciting tech marvel it should be simple and work on any device that can render text and multimedia.
I viewed it on Firefox on my MBP and thought it was great.
Were all the normal keyboard/mouse wheel navigation methods broken?
Seemingly good design would imply working for the 90% that don't presently use mac or detecting that a device isn't a phone and presenting a usable interface.
Seriously how do you screw up something simple like scrolling?
I also enjoyed the effect. For anything I visit repeatedly, such as webmail or github, or news websites, I prefer a "lean" implementation. But a product page that I will visit may twice in its lifetime? Knock yourself out!
Version 70.0.3538.77 (Official Build) (64-bit) Windows 10 Professional Nvidia drivers
I imagine it works well on a phone in portrait mode. On a desktop with a 16:9 monitor, a horizontally scrolling webpage is... bizarre.
BrightER, biggER, fastER.
This is what I've seen Apple resort to over the last few years.
This is very concerning for a luxury product manufacturer. However my reluctance to declare Apple 'myspace' is that there is a gigantic amount of resources and effort to change from the Apple ecosystem. A user likely wont gamble that a 400 dollar Android is going to be better than an iphone. They wont try something new. A switch from myspace to facebook was basically free.
I've gotten to try both as I purchased one phone, and got the other for work. HN downvotes anything anti-apple, but I was surprised when things 'didnt just work'. Having to hit the play button a few times on my podcast screen, siri needing voice recognition was nothing like google, and a strange bug using apple maps causing my phone to reboot.
That said, I can see their death being from a lack of reason to upgrade. Users deciding their phone/tablet is good enough and they'd rather spend 1,000 USD on other things.
Since I havent experienced it, what is the appeal of Apple in 2018 and beyond?
EDIT: lol never change HN whales, never change
How would someone know what expectations are? It is very expensive and risky to try a new phone.
This was mentioned in the original post.
Never had issues with HTC, loved the HTC Incredible phone.
Might just block the usb-c, but I thank that would be fine. If you need tho port you can run from the internal battery for a while or get an adapter with power-through for a more permanent setup
As shown with keyboard and pencil, the apple care without which you will pay out the rear to replace the battery god forbid you drop it a TB of storage and cellular capability you are looking at around $2500.
The average pc laptop costs what $700 and is probably at that 1-3 years old, not exactly a compelling argument to spend thousands of dollars and replace the laptop with a tablet.
It looks great for consuming content (though the focus on gaming when this device is supposed to be for professional use is odd), but the operating system itself limits the ability to produce anything more than trivial content or development.
I think that touch UI has constraints that are tough to overcome, but I strongly disagree that the operating system is a limit.
Apple keeps exposing different ways to integrate apps, create workflows, even work with files directly.
And of course the problem with this debate always includes fundamental mismatches over what type of content you're interested in, or what you consider "trivial", but Photoshop isn't for trivial content.
Gosh! What an incredible new feature
I see that it would be useful in the field, but don't you find the lack of a second screen an issue? I always like to have my file browser and palettes away from my main work area.
Why on earth does Apple have the audacity to call it an 'iPad Pro', if I can't run any of Apple's actually 'pro' software on it?
Adobe beat Apple to actually getting the first piece of real software on the iPad, with Photoshop.
There's two applications in particular, that, beyond xCode and iOS development, keep me locked in the Apple ecosystem and have for more than 15 years.
'Final Cut Pro' and 'Logic Pro'. The day we actually see Apple's own 'pro' software on an iPad is the day we can call it a 'pro' device. It's literally just a larger version of the iPad with a pencil.
Much less the fact that it'd be great if we could actually develop on the thing...but that's a pipe dream. Expecting Apple will put it's pro software on it's pro device...well, I guess it would be almost as an extreme request as maybe their flagship phone and flagship computer be able to connect to each other out of the box?
I'm confused as to why we've got USB-C in this new iPad Pro and not in the iPhones they released not a month ago. Where is the consistency? Where is the logic? (no pun intended)
It was like in 2017 when they decided to label a laptop a 'pro' unit and soldered a non-upgradeable paltry 16GB of RAM to the board and threw literally a colourful toy in where our actual keyboard buttons used to be.
Or the fact that we've been promised a new Mac 'Pro' and are still stuck with the same poorly-received and certainly-not-pro garbage can we've had for years.
Even the new Mac Mini is more powerful than the 'Mac Pro'.
I'm a seriously 'pro' user of Macs. I have been for a decade and a half. And I'm tired of them using that word. Can they just stop?