This is why I don't understand how there's even a market for the iPad Pro (outside the Apple superfans). I like iOS, but it seems like if you want to any real work it's an uphill battle, and for the money there are plenty of alternatives.
I’ve been using a succession of iPads as my main computing platforms since the first iteration was released ten years ago. Initial releases were a bit of a compromise, but the arrival of multitasking, multi-view, and filesystem access (latterly with iPadOS) have come a long way towards ensuring that I have nothing to miss. The addition of native support for an in-built trackpad further accentuates this trend.
Sure, I cannot develop or compile natively on the iPad, but that is something I do very rarely.
[EDIT: Spelling error corrected in ‘arrival’.]
They work in Linux because they're open package repos, we can add our own tress/signatures in and can have a lot of control over them. App stores are bastardizations of this concept. They offer some additional security for the non-tech user (maybe? It's questionable) but it also makes your devices not your own.
It’s not questionable at all, the App Store has been a cornerstone of the iOS security model for years. You can look at how many millions of Android users are constantly infected because it turns out that most people have zero concept of when to trust a third party or not.
Either way Apple does let you run your own apps if you jump through some hoops with MDM and Xcode and whatnot. So it’s not completely locked down either.
It’s locked down enough that I feel comfortable that the average user would be secure and taken care of when using iOS.
iOS and iPadOS pretty much are.
It's pretty questionable. The most obvious reason iOS has better security than Android is because iOS has far better sandboxing than Android.
I don't necessarily dismiss claims that moderation reduces malware, but I am at least skeptical of those claims. I haven't seen compelling statistics that moderation on the scale of the iOS App Store has specifically made an impact beyond banning a few high-publicity, wildly bad actors. The evidence I have seen suggests that moderation is likely not a scalable solution to malware.
More to the point, what we do know pretty conclusively is that app stores on their own are not a magic bullet. We can look at Windows, Chrome, and Android and see that app stores don't automatically improve security.
I think you can make a strong case that iOS shows why having a locked down OS in general helps -- the restrictions around the filesystem in particular close off entire classes of malware. But I think it's mostly conjecture to try and separate the App Store from those other improvements and credit it in specific.
I've yet to see evidence that those stores actively review apps in the way that Apple does. You never see articles like "my app was rejected from the Chrome store". It's less about having a store and more about having a decent review process.
In any case, there are no silver bullets in security. Not one.
1. The application developer creates a manifest that lists the privileges the app wants, and includes it as part of the code-signing request;
2. Apple’s App Store review team audits the application more thoroughly according to the privileges it has claimed;
3. Apple only code-signs the app bundle if the app stays on the strait-and-narrow;
4. The OS (through Gatekeeper) enforces the content of a code-signed app bundle, and therefore makes any included capability manifest immutable (in the sense that, if you change it, Gatekeeper considers the app considered and won’t start it);
5. The OS (through the capabilities system) enforces the restrictions from any included capabilities manifest on any high-level framework calls.
Note that there’s no actual linkage going on between code-signing and the capabilities manifest, in a way you’d expect from e.g. a Docker image. There’s no real “application sandbox” here. There’s just an Apple signature on the app bundle, telling you Apple saw this app as-is and approved it; and then, separately, an entirely optional opt-in capabilities system for which an app can claim any capabilities it wants.
If you take Apple out of the picture as a central signer, then 1. apps could claim any capabilities they liked, and nobody could tell them different (this is more like Android, where installing something presents you with a list of the capabilities it claims); but more importantly, 2. apps wouldn’t even need to use the capability system at all. Like I said, it’s opt-in; regular binaries run on macOS (and iOS!) just fine without living in an app-bundle with a paired capabilities manifest.
So, the whole security model of iOS (and macOS under Gatekeeper strict mode) comes down to “Apple verifies that apps are doing the right thing at some point.” Without that, there’s pretty much no sandboxing on either OS beyond what little you get from BSD user privileges and Mach port ACLs.
When people talk about app store moderation, they're talking about a moderation team deciding which apps are abusive and which ones aren't. They're not talking about the underlying mechanism of, "there's a system that verifies an app doesn't violate its manifest."
The relevant part of the app store that people in this thread are talking about are the decisions about, "should a specific app that asks for location permissions be allowed on the store?" Code signing doesn't have anything to do with that decision. It's an implementation detail. The important part is not "Facebook is signed to a specific manifest", it's "Facebook's app will be rejected if it's submitted with a manifest that asks for privileges that aren't consumer-friendly."
The decision about which apps are allowed on the store is the part of the App Store that's relevant. When people question whether or not app stores improve security, what they're asking is, "does a centralized malware filter improve security?"
You could have a Gatekeeper model that worked the exact same way as Android, where the Manifest was required and the user confirmed the Manifest. Even in that world, Apple's sandboxing would still be better than Android's, because the capabilities Apple offers in the manifest are more intelligently split up, and can be granted in more limited degrees.
The question is whether Apple's security stats are due to moderation, or largely due to having a better set of permissions. I strongly maintain that there is not enough clear data for anyone to claim that the moderation is objectively the main contributor to those stats.
And that's really the only claim that djsumdog was ever making -- that it's questionable whether every company adding an app store to every platform is actually going to make most people safer.
The only reason anyone bothers with the finickyness of capabilities manifests in the first place, is that Apple forces developers to take exactly the capabilities they need, and rejects apps that ask for more than they need, or ask for capabilities that are too coarse-grained for what they need. Without Apple there to do that human-intelligence-complete task of determining whether an app “needs” the permissions it’s asking for, devs would have a much simpler incentive: to avoid work (and “you must re-approve this app” prompts) by just using as far-reaching of capabilities claims as they can. Just as Android-ecosystem apps do today!
And so you’d have iOS malware that simply asks for permission to rootkit you and then rootkits you (just like on Android), and it wouldn’t look out of place, since everything would ask for those same permissions. (Yes, system-equivalent capabilities like that exist in iOS. Apple doesn’t issue them to third parties, but they exist for the sake of system apps. Without a curator, nothing would stop any random app from putting those root-kit-y capabilities in its list, and then socially engineering people into thinking they were sensible things for said app to need.)
tl;dr: The security of an ecosystem doesn’t just come from its mechanics, but also its economics. If nobody has any reason to “only claim what they need”, then why would they? Right now, Apple (and their rejection of apps that are too coarse-grained in their capabilities requests) is that reason.
That's a reasonable question that at first glance seems to have an obvious answer.
And yet, the web works. The web works brilliantly -- the web isn't perfect by any metric, but it is still almost objectively the most secure general-user computing platform that we have today. There are a lot of reasons for that, including just locking down capabilities in general, but where permissions are specifically concerned:
- The current permissions model that platforms including iOS are moving towards is granting permissions piece-meal post-install. Asking for lots of permissions up-front looks a lot more skeezy in this world, which reduces user trust. I particularly respect that iOS pops up reminders of what permissions you've granted apps, I think that's a brilliant UX move, and I wish other platforms would copy it.
- The more sophisticated model that Firefox/Chrome are starting to play with (and that I suspect more platforms are going to adopt in the future) is that apps can't ask for permissions directly, users need to grant them themselves by going out of their way, which helps cut down on people mindlessly clicking OK on everything that pops up and introduces a UX/development cost for apps that want to enable tons of permissions, because they now need to explain to users what to click on.
- The really sophisticated model that people are looking into for stuff like filesystem access is that the app never knows whether or not a permission was granted. If it asks for location, it gets an incorrect answer. If it asks for access to your media files, it gets a blank folder with nothing in it. Under this model, the app is completely isolated by default, and never knows how many permissions the user has granted it, so it never knows whether or not to ask for more of them.
So this is one of those questions that intuitively points towards moderation, but in practice we're starting to learn that with good UX there are a lot of ways to teach ordinary people to be safe, and there are a lot of ways to restrict apps without encouraging users to circumvent those restrictions.
Of course, I don't think it's impossible that app store moderation helps security. I mean, certainly moderation helps on some level. I suspect it doesn't help as much as people assume, just based on what moderation looks like across the entire industry right now. But I'm not going to die on that hill.
I just don't think people should blanketly assume that's the case. MacOS also has a better security track record than Windows even when you're not running Gatekeeper apps, and even though MacOS doesn't force apps to go through a moderator. Any user can bypass Gatekeeper, but through a combination of multiple factors, MacOS still has less malware than Windows/Android.
People look at iOS and Android and make very strong claims based on two environments that are substantially different on multiple security axes: in terms of sandboxing, in terms of market share, in terms of userbase demographics. There's a lot of stuff at play here, and there are multiple ways that platforms (including iOS) are trying to create the economics you're talking about. Even iOS is not all-in on moderation, even iOS is trying to train its users at least to some degree to think about their own security.
This model has benefits, but it also has a major downside: if the app doesn't know it doesn't have privileges, it can't inform the user of that fact. The user has to realize on their own that the reason their search for a local bakery returned something on the other side of the country is that they forgot to enable location permissions.
The alternative explanation, which has far fewer moving parts and doesn't require an assumption of bad faith, is that the Mac App Store was obvious after the iOS Store success, and so was a major push in security/sandboxing beyond chmod -R 600.
It's five years since SIP was introduced, and none of the dire predictions were correct. The mechanism to disable it has not changed even incrementally. But almost no one bothers to disable it because it doesn't actually stop you from doing anything, while it does seem to be effective at stopping malware.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about but sure.
Apple was hoping they'd introduce the MacStore everyone would flock to it in droves. Unfortunately the revenue sharing scheme and onerous requirements and restrictions put upon the Developers have made it an undesirable distribution mechanism for anything that isn't given away free.
Apple's improvements to MacOS have all been about locking down and protecting the user because for years they claimed it was immune to malware and virus right up until the problem was too big to ignore. The past few releases of MacOS have been reminiscent of Windows Vista.
Apple would love to lock the platform down to be like iOS but the users have spoken with a resounding "f*ck you". So instead they're gradually developing a competing platform that is build from the ground up to be the unprivileged walled garden with a big ass toll booth at ever point of entry.
And you're sitting here taking the Apple approach of deny deny deny right up until you switch and say "it's better this way".
Do you worry about iOS's overaggressive autocorrect?
(I'm just kidding, I know people are actually pretty close to as fast and accurate on mobile vs. desktop/laptop: https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/typing37k/)
Even the difference between wacom/graphics tablet and iPad with the pencil is almost night and day, no lag or parallax on the iPads is a huge draw card.
For an illustrator, the iPad is a perfect (digital) tool.
https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays
Have you used a Cintiq much? Would be interested in a comparison of that vs the iPad Pro's. :)
Meanwhile the portability of the ipad and apps like procreate have made the ipad a very compelling tool for artists.
Most professional digital artists I know of use both a large cintiq in studio and an ipad.
There are a trillion comparisons on youtube. Also a contender (but a smaller size) is the ipad air 3 which also has a bonded glass display.
Here we go again with this 'real work' nonsense.
What counts as 'real work' to you? A friend of a mine is a barrister and uses an iPad pro to take and use notes. He's definitely doing 'real work' just fine on his iPad.
I wouldn't use an iPad for this though. The shell's are all a compromise and I'm waiting for a great e-ink display so I can remote from a park / beach / patio.
Even though Wolfram has not (yet? hope always dies last!) released a version of Mathematica for the iPad (meaning, a frontend notebook coupled to an actual onboard computing kernel) they have released a client for “Wolfram Online” (often referred to as “Cloud Mathematica”) offering. This isn’t quite what I would like, as there’s a significant range of circumstances where I cannot rely on network access (such as when flying) but for most other situations it suits the purpose.
Other mathematics-inclined apps allow even greater range of onboard functionality (Pythonista, MathSudio spring to mind).
Upshot: one can most definitely do significant amounts of data analysis on an iPad.
Which is way I had to switch back from OpenBSD (which doesn’t run it) and Linux (which until today’s update, didn’t have HiDPI support) back to Mac OS.
And if real work is just taking notes, then I think you really need to question whether an iPad Pro is the right choice among the iPad lineup.
That's how a barrister does part of their work.
When I develop software I'm 'just writing a program'. But I'm not - I'm forming a mental model of what I want to do and working out how to express it.
You can make any job sound silly by reducing it to its constitutive actions.
This argument pops up regularly on HN and it's always the same - it's all people talking past each other. One half is saying "iPads don't cover as many use cases as laptops" and the other half is saying "but look, my specific anecdotal use case is covered". You're not even disagreeing with each other, just missing the point.
The original argument for tablet computers in the first place was that sometimes you don't need a full-fledged computer, so you pocket $400-500 and get something cheap instead that's a limited but still quality device. And I think that would still be true with the iPad Pro. You want something that's closer to a full computer, with a real keyboard, but you still want to pocket some money.
Except... the pricing is awful.
It's like they designed a product for a real niche, and then stopped thinking about that niche as soon as they got out of the design phase and started working on implementation.
As a point of comparison, even if you hate Windows with a passion, you can get the new Macbook Air they just announced for basically the same exact cost as an iPad Pro + keyboard, and that comes with a full-featured OS. Is a Macbook Air as portable? Maybe not, but it's still pretty darn portable.
You're giving up the pencil, but you're getting a better OS on a computer with better specs. But I guess if you're a digital artist, and you prefer the iPad pencil over the Surface pen or Wacom tablets, and having a full OS doesn't matter for you -- this might be exciting. That seems like it would be a narrow demographic, but what do I know? I'm sure it'll sell well.
The iPad Pro is expensive, but “Pro” implies you want a device that can do things which are useful to professionals.
As a developer, I am better served by an actual MBP for work and a cheap iPad for less-productive tasks, but not everyone is a developer.
It really comes down to form factor and OS.
Of all the product lines Apple has, the iPad is their product line with the most flexible pricing. Everything from the $250 base model up to the iPad Pro at $1000 ($1,350 with the keyboard). If you don't need the iPad Pro, there are three other models below that.
Even their highest priced iPads aren't very expensive. If you are a business buying a computer, it's less than one week's wages for the most expensive iPad.
> It's like they designed a product for a real niche
You have this almost exactly the opposite. The iPad is the mainstream product and the PC is the niche product. The overwhelming majority of people can do everything they need on the iPad. It's the niche users (Developers, Video Editors, etc) who require the additional flexibility a PC offers.
> you can get the new Macbook Air they just announced for basically the same exact cost as an iPad Pro + keyboard, and that comes with a full-featured OS.
Fundamentally, you get a MacBook (or Windows/ Linux) if you need the flexibility of having a desktop PC. A lot of people prefer the simplicity iPadOS offers.
Also, it's not just the most expensive iPad Pro versus the least expensive Mac. If you don't need the pencil or the nicer keyboard, you could get the iPad Air or the base iPad for significantly less.
> but you're getting a better OS on a computer with better specs.
You are confusing more flexible for better. The two operating systems target different purposes. For a lot of people the iPad OS is the better experience. Also, I haven't seen the benchmarks yet, but I suspect that like with the prior generation, this iPad Pro is significantly faster than the base MacBook Air.
Quite simply, a lot of the software I want/need is only on iOS. And while, yes, it's more expensive, the cost difference is a drop in the bucket.
If I was still a starving college student, I'd care. But as a professional, I care more about time than saving literally penny I can.
But, somehow, that's not "real work", apparently.
From what I was able to gleam from similar comments over the last few months, I guess "real work" mostly involves regularly swapping hardware components, overclocking the CPU, daisy-chaining a dozen USB devices, micromanaging kernel compile flags, automating the micromanagement of kernel compile flags, aggregating optimisation metrics in a dashboard, running benchmarks, upgrading npm/homebrew/gem/go packages on a daily basis, and reorganising keyboard layout.
But even running a decent terminal requires purchasing an app and setting up mosh on the other side. There's no Esc in their keyboards. There are too many roadblocks and glitches.
I wish I could buy an iPad and simply open a terminal and ssh to my machine of choice.
Right now, it's much easier to buy a Surface Go / Pro. And these run Linux natively really well.
Also, is it that hard for a giant of Apple's size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS?
Of course it isn’t. And that tells you that it’s a deliberate decision not to, because it’s miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users.
Besides, it would be very confusing for users to have a terminal that can only connect to remote systems (which most people likely don’t have access to), because it’s rather improbable that Apple would choose to expose iPadOS through a shell.
Furthermore, the terminal could be simply running in a little Unix sandbox, like Termux, and that could be a great entry point for kids to lots of different interpreters to learn programming. Not exclusive to remote into other systems.
Even as a learning experience, why give (power)users the ability to acquaint themselves with a generic platform that is not tied to Apple’s own offerings? It makes no commercial or even pedagogical sense.
Try out iSH: https://ish.app It sounds like it’s what you want. Apple won’t be providing anything even remotely comparable for the foreseeable future, I’m sure.
Apple's customers are the >1 billion user install base it has for iOS and more broadly the Apple ecosystem.
Developers will develop great desktop and mobile software because that's the way to reach the incredibly valuable install base where consumer spend is 2x+ that of competing platforms.
You don't win developers purely by giving them nice developer features. You win them by giving them something worth developing for. Part of that is a nice developer ecosystem, but that not enough on its own.
They don't care about those that use macOS as pretty Linux/BSD replacement.
Just like NeXT never did, UNIX compatibility was a means to bring UNIX software into the platform, that was all.
We got disintermediated with the very first iPod. Remember "less space than a Nomad. Lame!"? That was very much the attitude of the crowd you are describing.
I distinctly remember a pry-my-keyboard-from-my-dead-hands attitude when the iPhone came out. It's only benevolence that stops me from constantly reminding the "power user" among my friends that his first reaction was "Not even a stylus?"
While this is true, it doesn't follow that every product they produce should serve developers first and foremost. The Mac is the computer I use for development. The iPad is the computer I prefer to use for photo editing/ sketching/ house planning/ and casual use. If I wasn't a developer professionally, I suspect the iPad would be my "Big" computer.
Because if they did, they wouldn't make some of the silly comments I've seen here.
The device literally has the form factor of a thick notebook when folded inside its robust Logitech keyboard case, connects to the internet over 4G (if no WiFi is available), and is a perfect work environment.
Lots of use cases in many of these professions. In particular, there are a lot of professional artists/ illustrators have switched to the iPad. I also know there is an active community of iPad accessories and software for musicians.
Also, while many of the above mentioned professionals can't move their entire workflow to the iPad, quite of few of them have already moved big portions of their workflows to the iPad.
This isn't a zero sum game. For a lot of professionals there is room in their toolbox for multiple computers.
Not, prevention of minority use cases.
un-prevention, of sorts.
Even when you bundle the cost of both the probe and the iPad pro, it ended up being cheaper than the (much less portable) alternatives in the market.
As a programmer, I use my desktop.
It really depends what your work is. My iPad is my main mobile computer. I do have a desktop, but use the iPad heavily. At work at various meetings there are regularly 2 to 5 of use taking notes or referring to material on iPads. Some with pencils, others with keyboard cases.
Of course it’s not right for everyone, it just needs to be really good at the things it’s good for. That’s all. If a laptop or Surface works better for you that’s cool.
It probably seems absurd to imagine it would do that thing better than other places where I can do that thing, but it's probably 20 or 30% better at email than my other options.
And I do a LOT of email.
I keep an iPad Pro (with keyboard) to the left, and when I want to do email, I look left and do it there. That keeps me focused on my main windows.
I do think that it would be possible for someone to write an email client that is as efficient as the iOS Outlook app is, and maybe it already exists for non-Outlook, but in my current corporate environment the iPad pro is a lifesaver.
If you're not calling that "real work" I'm not sure what else to tell you.
iPads don't run iOS. ipadOS has changed quite a bit from iOS - they are not the same thing.
You can get something like an Asus Zenbook 13 for hundreds less, which has a real i7 CPU, supports much more software, has a dedicated GPU, etc. while weighing about the same and having about the same battery life.
There’s a lot of Apple superfans in the world, then…