Apple finally admits Microsoft was right about tablets
theverge.com
theverge.com
I owned a surface pro 3 and wanted to love it, but god, it was just awful. Short battery life, crappy eMMC-based storage, weird foldable keyboard you couldn't use on your lap, display that wasn't so bright, rarely if ever came out of suspend properly, the pen required two different kinds of battery (!?) and perhaps my personal favorite, the display sometimes rotated sideways and wouldn't de-rotate.
Pretty sure the iPad will have zero of these problems when it ships, and that makes all the difference, even if it's two years "late".
i personally find that a bold statement. my iPad lasted a whole year as an apartment-only tablet before just outright dying, whereas i have the original surface, a surface pro 4, and a surface laptop that have been heavily used inside and outside and still work flawlessly. and before it died, the software issues on the iPad were endless. on top of that, my macbook pro is useless due to mac os x updates, a dead network card, and a few broken keys (that broke all on their own through normal use, no drops).
personal experience is what it is, but you shouldn't make sweeping statements based upon it.
anyway, i find windows 10 to be the superior os. i run fantastic windows apps and a linux os all from the same computer rather seamlessly.
The better comparison would be Mac OS X (Microsoft I noticed couldn't wait to get to 10, won't be long before they're calling it windows X I'm sure :))
I find Mac OS X to be the superior OS to Windows, since for yeeears I can run fantastic Mac apps and build and run fantastic Unix apps all on the same fantastic hardware.
Why, for instance, do apps insist on controlling the size and layout of everything? There are so many times when a simple pinch-zoom, pane-resize or font-increase setting would make everything easier. It’s certainly possible to do, it’s just that software won’t allow it. That is a huge strike against productivity on tablets; I refuse to be fiddling away in the arbitrary regions of the screen that you have rationed for me, while you waste screen space on things like gigantic sidebars I rarely use.
Similarly, only the system gets to decide what “tasks” I may move between, or even see at once. That has never made sense, and decades of bouncing between overlapping windows with complete freedom should not have been thrown out so easily. Worse still, one is usually punished in some way for having the audacity to switch tasks at all! When you switch back, the app might have been killed. If by some miracle the app wasn’t killed, it’s certain to at least lose your focus, fail to save the last thing you typed, or enter any number of other unsatisfying half-states (none of which are “exactly where I left off 10 seconds ago”).
iPads got their lease on life because of the tiny screen sizes of the original iPhone line. Once iPhones got bigger, iPad sales growth flatlined, and for good reason. They're the worst of both worlds - too clumsy of an interface (I'd say even with this new trackpad bolted on) for real work, and not pocketable.
When I want to do something trivial and immediately, the phone with a big screen does it just fine. When I need to do real work, a tablet interface is a miserable experience, so I use a laptop with all the normal tools an engineer needs.
I picked up an iPad Mini 2 and used it for a good year, but once the plus-size iPhones came out it went into the drawer and never came out.
I recognize that the security story is more challenging with a Real OS, but so is the power and potential. I don't like where this is heading.
iPads are also great educational tools where kids can interact with the device but don't have to contend with a full blown OS.
It's interesting also that the iPad is kinda growing up to be more of a full blown device for more content creation, since the hardware is clearly more than up to the task, the OS can be kept fairly simple and secure - clearly Apple are responding to what customers have been asking for, and what they're asking for is more iPad.
I dont see how one is right or one is wrong. It is a different take. Although I much prefer iPad Pro.
That said, they do look really nice, and are (IMO) some of the best-looking hover effects I've seen in years, so kudos to Apple on that! Microsoft can't even seem to get its hover-effect strategy aligned within built-in Windows 10 apps...
I personally absolutely hate this feeling. Tactile feedback is useful for things like knowing if you've drilled into a stud or just drywall... not for moving a cursor around screen.
QUICK EDIT: It's the same reason we hate scroll jacking. Let me do my inputs as it feels natural, don't have the app dictate how I should motion.
I want to be able to use it to type long-form essays and develop apps (it also needs an escape key!). I want a command line and full file system.
I think they are adding trackpad support not because the iPad inherently needs it, but because it helps their initiative of convergence between Mac and iPad apps [0].
Instead of answering that, I will just say that I am only suggesting improvements on systems the iPad already has. I want better versions of existing hardware accessories and more liberal App Store policies to allow for fully-fledged development environments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto
Some more pictures here:
https://www.ebay.it/itm/Vintage-Compaq-Concerto-2840A-Laptop...
The detachable keyboard made it very comfortable to use when on a table as you could place the screen further from the keyboard.
The lesson isn't that he's some sort of idiot, just that he had iterations and flubs just like anyone else; his hit percentage was simply a bit higher.
Which is why Apple stopped reporting unit sales on devices
However, app review isn’t a needed part of it, and I want to be the one in charge of the operating system, as I’m clearly not on iOS.