Hacker News Reader

Comment by StillBored | Hacker News Reader

"It feels backwards to say it, but because the iPad doesn't have multiple floating windows, and no mouse, I'm able to focus on one thing at a time."

Uh, isn't that what tablet mode in win8/10 is for? It removes much of the distractions and with an appropriate WP/text editor just sort of behaves like a tablet, but with the option to flip back into desktop mode and run all those "desktop" apps the Op is complaining about.

As much as I despise some of the crap MS forced on people with W10, the convertible idea has a lot of merit. Particularly if your lugging a keyboard around with the tablet all the time anyway. What MS needs is for dell/hp/etc to start making little 7" tablets again, and then force some portion of their workforce to use them so they understand why it was a miserable experience. The result will be better for everyone.

View on HN

I can’t disagree with your observations but you make it sound like the article is debating the merit of an Apple product against a Microsoft product. It’s not.

I think you misinterpreted what I tried to write, to me it feels the article is written more from the perspective of someone who hasn't actually worked with tablet based MS product...

It’s like if someone told you they just had a great trip to France and you said, “What, have you never even tried going to Spain? You sound like someone who has never even tried going to Spain.” The author could prefer an MS tablet for all we know, it’s beside the point. This is a retraction of a previous opinion on a product that has nothing to do with any other product. This article is neither a universal endorsement of Apple nor an universal or incidental dismissal of MS.

I don't think that's a good analogy: in terms of technology you usually settle for a single device to fulfill a given purpose. Travelling fits in the same category as music, films and so on: you want to have different, often uncomparable, experiences.

The article above is a bit like someone saying that they have settled for driving between, say, Paris and London, despite the time commitment and other inconveniences. All while never having tried or even considered flying between the two. The goal here is to get from London to Paris, the goal in the article is to find a produce that best suits their workflow.

> to me it feels the article is written more from the perspective of someone who hasn't actually worked with tablet based MS product...

I don't get how you can make this claim when they actually talk about Microsoft products specifically in the article:

> In the past, I've written about how devices like Surface Go are the perfect venn diagram of productivity and portability—and remain convinced that Microsoft's approach is the right one, allowing a tiny tablet to do run full desktop apps.

> But, what Microsoft still doesn't have is a good enough dedicated tablet software story yet: Surface Go is one of my favorite devices in years, but its problem is a lack of tablet-mode apps worth using. If it had better battery life, that might be worth the compromise in the opposite direction, but that'll need to be addressed in future revisions.

Lucky them.

You don't even need tablet mode. When working in Windows when I need to absolutely concentrate, I just maximize the window and mute notifications.

How old school! <chuckle>

There is even a key for it with win7+ win-uparrow.

There is also the option in the shortcut to automatically run any random application maximized by default. That has been around for ages (XP/2000 at least).

Hadn't thought of it as old school, but I guess you're right. I've been doing it for a long, long time. Predating tablets by quite a bit. Occasionally get funny looks, but it works for me.

Keeping some music offline and disabling wifi helps too.

> Uh, isn't that what tablet mode in win8/10 is for?

It's also what i3wm is for. And the latest versions of GNOME ought to be finally usable on touch-enabled tablet- and 2-in-1 PC's. I expect Linux with GNOME to deliver a significantly improved experience compared w/ either ChromeOS, or Windows in its own "tablet mode". Especially so given the recent work by Purism on GNOME-for-mobile, which included quite a few general improvements.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com