iPad Pro M1 | Hacker News Reader

iPad Pro M1

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356 pointstosh488 comments

To me, it doesn't matter how powerful the iPad is if the software experience is subpar. Multitasking is cumbrous enough that it might as well not exist, multi-display setups can only mirror at a fixed aspect ratio, it lacks multiple user profiles requiring a family to be under a single user, and the few apps that take advantage of the keyboard/trackpad are nowhere similar to their desktop counterparts.

Take Excel for example. Try right-clicking on a cell or dragging down a formula, and you'll see that it only picks it up a fraction of the time, and you have to click multiple times with gesture-like latencies in between to get it to work.

My thoughts exactly. Apple might have the apps, but actually getting stuff done on it feels cumbersome and strange. I'm not sure why they continue to stretch the iPad in so many directions when they could just be focusing on a good tablet experience.

It is a great tablet experience! They could have a dual boot option where you get a MacOS for real work. Otherwise you are right, don't try to make real work happen in the current form. SO MUCH FRICTION to copy and move a file around for example.

The bulk of my use is strictly tablet stuff and I think it is really great at that.

Exactly. The OP complaining that it’s cumbersome to use Excel, well yeah, but the things tablets are designed for; dragging, drawing, tapping etc. It excels at (pun intended)

Sure, but I think the overall sentiment is that Apple hasn't really pushed the iPad any further as an input device. It still does those drawing, dragging and tapping things well, but why haven't they pushed those gestures to work with context menus or have some unified purpose? In some ways, the iPad is still the bare minimum of being a tablet, but it's mastered that concept. As Apple continues to market it as a "computer" though, they have a responsibility to improve the computer aspects of it: file management, improved user control, and developer solutions are all weak or missing links in the chain here. Sure it does tablet well, but it sucks at computer.

I'm still skeptical that Apple wants it to be a general-purpose computer.

It doesn’t. It is more a consumer console than personal computer IMO

Personally, if they make it a general-purpose computer, I'll be eagerly waiting for them or someone else to create the next iPad. It's already gone too far that way, IMO—I like it as a slab of smart glass that can become, entirely, a whole bunch of different, separate, specific tools, not as yet another complex, generic, multi-tasking computer. In that respect, it's mostly been going downhill since iOS 6, IMO, as far as the OS interface and behavior.

Why can't it let you just choose which experience you want?

We tried to build a universal app for two sides of a job board once. The app offered different workflows depending on whether you're a job seeker or a recruiter. Man, managing that UX- and code-wise was a pain the ass. Imagine doing that for the whole OS.

This is a common workflow? two views talking to the same backend.

I like it better if 100% of the software on the device operates under the same constraints, so the developer of some app that I really need/want can't decide "no, you need to be in desktop-alike mode for this to run, because I just don't feel like dealing with tablet mode". It's basically the same problem as allowing multiple app stores, in that it'd fragment the experience and leave me having to choose between "do what the developer of this app wanted, which isn't what I wanted" and "don't have the app". I prefer that everyone has to deliver software the same way, under the same constraints, for predictability and user control of their environment (that is, I want the device to work like a traditional tablet, period, so I prefer that developers have to treat it that way, as it results in the device always working the way I want it to, for all software that runs on it)

And in fact, I can currently choose the experience I want if I decide I want a typical multitasking desktop—by putting down the iPad and going over to a Mac (or Linux, or Windows, or FreeBSD machine, or whatever). Or, to extend the "I like a tablet that becomes things, modally" way of thinking about it, by putting the iPad in Remote Desktop mode and connecting over VNC or SSH or RDP to a traditional desktop or server.

As I wrote the above comment, I was thinking along a similar line of thought re: "no, you need to be in desktop-alike mode for this to run."

I do agree that this is an issue, but I wonder how much of one. I feel like there is quite a bit of inertia behind iOS style "apps" right now that a sizable mass userbase will not use your service if it is a desktop-style interface, because that sort of interface is unfamiliar to them.

Only for very niche apps would you be able to survive on desktop app alone. Many fo those niche uses would be geared towards power-users who are likely more used to a desktop environment.

I think that's what Windows 8 was going for, to be able to choose between a tablet experience and a desktop experience based on which app you use. The problem was that they pushed the app experience too hard without a clear option to choose between the modes. Win 10 has walked this back pretty well, but I still find myself using desktop apps 99% of the time (even when using the Surface as a tablet).

I don't know that it would have to be a full general-purpose computer. For the most part, if they found a way for Xcode to run on an iPad, I feel like MacOS would be (eventually, slowly) doomed.

iPad is a "computer" for people who just browse internet, watch YouTube and play games. Bringing the whole macOS experience to iPad would be a distracting endeavour IMO. Yeah, it'd be dope for some people, but the number of those people is overestimated.

Remember the Apple ad with the little girl who replies... 'What's a computer?' The ad ended with the tag line...

“Imagine what your computer could do if it was an iPad Pro”.

disappointingly limited, it turns out.

If you look at it in the abstract, using a computer is equivalent to programming it (ad-hoc), whether the computation and memory live in your head, on a clipboard, or in some app. If the whole "low-code"/visual programming trend is any indication, we need to collectively raise the power of tools and narrow the gap between usage and programming.

Apple should be trying to empower users with safe abstractions, not lock them down even more.

This is something I've been saying: Try cloning and building even a moderate project from github on iSH on the latest iThing with Apple silicon and compare the same on a pinephone with a decade old budget SoC.

One will get painfully hot and visibly tick through a large fraction of the battery while not letting you look at anything else or look away from the screen without killing the 10s of minutes long operation while the other just does what you asked, does it quickly, and lets you do other things (on the phone or not) while it's working. And of course if there's something you don't like about the OS you can just change it on the phone. No need for some crazy setup process even to modify system software/configurations.

You might say it's not fair because iSH isn't running natively but it's your only choice on the iPhone.

EDIT: to be clear: even just running git clone on an iPhone in iSH can take upwards of 20 minutes and chew through ~20% of the battery on normal sized repos.

> Try cloning and building even a moderate project from github on iSH on the latest iThing with Apple silicon

OK but you are describing something that 99.8% of iThing owners will never do.

sharing and building code is an important aspect of computing and making computers fundamental to people's lives while working to make them difficult to understand is very wrong. They don;t do it partly because it's so unpleasant.

Watch a commercial for the iPad. It is not marketed as a computing device, to do CLI programming or spreadsheets on. It's selling points are stuff like Procreate and Lightroom...both 'work' apps but for the 'creative economy'.

That being said, an executive at my company swears by the iPad Pro and he only ever uses it as a remote desktop device to log into his Citrix Windows environment.

I'm a computer nerd at heart, and I've _never_ wanted to pull a repository or compile a project with a phone. Ever.

(Ok, there was this one time with a Nokia N900, but it was just a phase =) )

Do you write notes? Where do you keep them? In some cloud with no version control, under some proprietary binary format? Good luck with that.

You're just not living in the real world.

My mum is never going to care about being able to compile a repo from github on her ipad. Neither are 90%+ of the userbase. The developers interested in the platform use a mac.

They will likewise also not care about the increased computational power here.

Based on the way you phrased this I'm legitimately unsure which one gets painfully hot and which one does what you ask in your example.

Peak Hacker News. Comparing an iPad Pro with a Pinephone to do something 99.9% of iPad Pro target audience wouldn’t even know the meaning of.

If you're not going to do anything where performance matters why pay a premium for it?

Video and photo editing are common iPad Pro use cases where performance matters.

I always assumed that safari/youtube/netflix were the common use cases. Do numerically many people actually video/photo editing on these devices to make it "common"?

As far as I can tell, those would better describe the use cases for the plain old iPad, whereas the iPad Pro is meant to be used for more content creation in addition to those things.

I've been a little confused about Apple's product lineup the last decade; does anybody else miss the foursquare grid of consumer/pro and desktop/portable?

You are not alone. :)

Yes, absolutely. In photography circles the iPad Pro is regarded as an amazing device that offers performance and color quality that you won't be able to achieve even with expensive desktop monitors. Also, for the professional photographer, whose average rig is probably worth at least 20 to 50k depending on what they do, a 2000$ tablet with these characteristics is a steal.

Well, now, that's interesting. I legitimately did not know that, even though I own three Blackmagic PCC4k video cameras and take quite an interest in 'playback technology', whether audio or imagery. I do know that my horrifyingly over-expensive iMac Pro has a good screen, but not Pro Display XDR good. I'd assumed the iPads were basically consumer grade.

So the iPad Pro actually does make sense for color timing and proofs and working in DaVinci Resolve etc? If the display is relevant for this, damn straight giving it a good CPU is going to matter.

People are going to be doing serious video color correction work on these things. I certainly won't… but it's going to start looking very compelling for that audience.

The screen is honestly amazing. Puts everything else in its field (and most pc / laptop monitors) to shame.

That was before the M1 laptops. I would say that most desktop users would be better served keeping their workflow than moving to a tablet workflow.

I do all my audio editing on the iPad. And I generate artwork (generally by mangling stock photos) on there. I also do a little bit of video editing but not enough to count it as a common use case.

It has a great screen, it's very fast, it has built in 4G and the single tasking nature also makes it my favourite tool for writing (including coding, if I don't have to do UI work as well).

For me, it's definitely a creation device and one of my favourite computers of all time.

It's also infuriating because it could do so much more - but as soon as it starts multi-tasking properly it will lose some of its strengths. Same goes for the magic keyboard - I use it a lot but the utility of it has to be balanced by the fact that it turns it into a laptop, which is something it's not.

Do you really think apple would be making pro level devices for that exact purpose if people werent?

I make a (good) living working as an iOS developer on the video editing app (LumaFusion) shown several times in today's event. We have a very solid userbase, including plenty of people using it for professional work. Apple chose to use the app as a featured example in marketing the new iPad. To me, that's all evidence that video/photo editing is indeed a "common" use case for these devices.

Anecdotally, these days my wife (an artist) does digital painting and photo editing exclusively on her iPad Pro because she prefers the software available there combined with the Apple pencil.

Haven't you heard? Programming is the only "pro" or performance-intensive thing that exists.

I don't even understand why programmers are always so up in arms about devices like the iPad. Why on earth does one want to program on a handheld touchscreen device anyway? I have zero expectations for that, much like I have zero expectations for the laptop I do program on to be a good drawing device.

I don't get the huge blind spot there, either, and it's pervasive on here every time the iPad comes up.

"I can't boot an OpenBSD VM on it so it must only be for watching YouTube, for sheeple consumers, not godlike 'creators' like me".

Meanwhile it's plainly great for all kinds of creation-oriented activities, especially where the real-world meets the digital. The sensors are great. Pencil is great. It's a really good companion-tool for all kinds of real-world work, better than a laptop (though actually iPhones often beat both iPads and "real" computers, in that regard, just because of the form factor) Plus it's got some damn good, often-interactive educational apps, some of which work better on a tablet than they would anywhere else. Much the hell better for several of those things than any laptop running a "real OS for Serious Work".

But no, it's just a Netflix console for drooling morons, because you can't easily HAX0R it to replace the lock screen with a port of DOOM, since if you can't do that then it must not be any use for creating things. Give me a break.

Amen.

The whole "this device isn't meant for programmers" argument is a red herring. I don't like how the discussion ultimately boils down to complete control over the OS. That's not going happen, and likely requires a different mental model around OS abstractions, so we should put that aside.

My original point was that productivity apps, whether its photo/video/audio editing, word processing, or 3D modeling, all categorically benefit from features like better file management, IPC, background processing, working with external displays, easier keyboard/trackpad navigation, etc...

I saw some things in the presentation around external storage and thunderbolt devices which look like steps in the right direction, but the OS is really not doing it any favors. I would guess that the iPad is successful among this demographic despite iPadOS, not because of it.

Don't forget only UNIX guys are programmers, the rest of us using XCode and similar tooling are just muggles.

Well yeah, you are. We real programmers program by fabricating our own NMOS transistors and wiring them together by hand.

I hear this argument a lot, but I don't buy it. Let's flip it around, 99% of people will want to do something with their computer that will turn out to be a giant pain in the ass with an ipad compared to a mac or windows laptop.

If you had a friend/relative that didn't have much money, and was asking you for advice about which "computer" to get and they can only have one. Would you recommend an ipad? There is no chance I would recommend an ipad in this context.

Jobs liked to describe computers as bicycles for the mind. The ipad is a unicycle for the mind.

No, and you know what, neither would Apple, otherwise they wouldn't offer M1 Macs. The mistake is that everyone thinks Apple wants its product to be everything, just because their marketing tends to encompass and emphasize bold claims of universality. The reality is that Apple knows pretty well its segmentation. The Pro in the iPad Pro is the same Pro of the iPhone, it simply doesn't mean what the average hackernews reader thinks it means. The Pro is a videographer, a photographer, an influencer, a consultant and so on. In general, a subset of the creative professions or someone that needs a slick device to show its presentations on. I'm lucky enough to review tech products for a living and I've been through the last seven generations of iPads. iPad Pro is a product of its own league. It's perfect for low-distraction pro tasks like writing, for example, with light research on the side, but it's absolutely the best device I've ever used for professional photography workflows. I have, indeed, suggested to many photographers to absolutely buy the iPad Pro, as it's simply a game changer. The quality of the screen paired with the speed of the the AXX chips is unrivaled on Macs, unless you spend quite some money to buy a Eizo monitor or some other professional device. So here's a simple "Pro" definition that in my book is way more effective at explaining why the iPad Pro does not need to be what so many users here think it should be.

I agree that the target market might be different. However, even though multimedia workflows work pretty well on the iPad, some of the same restrictions that apply to development apply there.

For example, there's no notion of rendering a video in the background, organizing project files independent of the application, a plugin ecosystem for creative software, and proper IPC between these apps. So even though the market is different, there's still a lot to be done to come close to desktop editing workflows.

I've always desired an iPad Pro for displaying PDFs of piano sheet music while practicing, because it's light enough to not damage the piano stand, and has a high resolution display. But then I realize the iPad Pro is kind of overkill if I don't intend to use it for anything else. Can you recommend a cheaper alternative? Maybe one of those e-paper things, or some other light tablet?

Why not a non pro iPad?

I've tried that, unfortunately regular iPads are just too small for full-page display of musical notation. Actually right now I just prop up my MacBook Air, but then the keyboard sticks out, and similarly it only displays 1/2 page at a time, and so forth.

gotcha, that makes sense. You might be able to get a cheap chromebook with a big enough screen that folds into a tablet form. One thing to be careful with on these is the brightness of the screens if you want to use it outside.

iPad Air? But any non-Pro iPad is ok if you don’t mind much about the bezels and the less spectacular display. In general, if you have just one intended use for a tablet as a “smart lightweight device with a display”, and that use isn’t tied to an App Store app, then Android tablets are worth checking. The high-quality display might be a bit more of a problem, though, unless you go for a product with a similar price range. If you have other Apple products, the ecosystem advantage is huge.

Ah I didn't mention, for music purposes a big screen is ideal for reading letter/A4-sized sheets of fine-print music for long periods of time. It's a pretty niche use case, I guess.

That's a pretty food idea! I've just been printing it out. I feel like most e-readers are too small though.

How is that different from any other computer?

Point is, the limitation is software. Even an extremely underpowered niche toy beats the iPad in a common, intuitive task for such a device.

iSH is an x86 emulator.

But yes I would love it if the iPad Pro could just run macOS and i could actually use it as a software development environment, but also run iOS apps. I'd buy that device yesterday

Well, I might say it's not fair because iSH is not your only choice on the iPhone, at least if your goal is "checking out a git repo and editing files." Running git clone using an actual iOS native git client like Working Copy is pretty fast. And because Working Copy is an iOS file provider, you can edit files in a repo directly in a native iOS text editor like Textastic. If we're talking about doing web development, pair that with a cheap Linode or Digital Ocean VPS, the Blink terminal app and/or Secure ShellFish (an SSH client that also hooks in SFTP/SCP in as a file provider along with Shortcuts automation) and you're probably doing pretty darn well.

Now, if your goal is "do dev work just the same way I would on a Mac or a Linux machine," then no, the iPad's not going to cut it in its current incarnation, for reasons which one can argue are arbitrary. But honestly, I don't think a PinePhone will really cut it, either. :)

(Digression on arbitrariness: Apple has so far stuck very doggedly to the notion that iPads, like iPhones, should be more like consoles than general purpose computers, and their decisions about the platform mostly make sense if you look at them from that "app console" perspective. That doesn't mean they're the right decisions, but they're definitely conscious decisions. Up until, well, today I was pretty sure Apple was going to keep sticking by this, and that their response to people saying "what about Xcode on the iPad" would be "may we interest you in this Apple Silicon-based Macbook". Putting the M1 CPU in the new iPad Pro under the M1 branding, rather than calling it "A14X" or some such, give me some pause, though.)

As a heavy Working Copy user, with all the respect I have for its great developer, it is just a bad UX; Buggy, slow as hell, and you need to constantly wait for it as you can't minimize the app as the dumb iOS will kill it.

SSH via Blink is also not a very good experience (the keyboard is buggy), but it's good enough. The problem is when you want to do some local stuff, e.g., play some multimedia file, or do some expensive computation that your server is too weak to do. Only a fool pays +1000$ for a dumb terminal. (Of course, artists have their apps, and they are the sole group who are served by the iPad Pro.)

I'm not a huge fan of Working Copy's UI, although to be fair to it, I find a lot of desktop GUI Git clients to be pretty arcane as well. My experience with Blink has been pretty good on the whole, though. In any case, I was focusing on iSH specifically -- I'm just not convinced that "when I run this terminal program which is a clever hack to allow console Linux apps to run in x86 emulation, it's a poor experience" is a great argument against the iPad's utility. :)

But, I'll take gentle issue with

> the sole group who are served by the iPad Pro

I also know or know of writers, photographers, DJs, musicians, and podcasters who do a lot of work on iPads. It was my only portable computer for over a year, and the one I took with me on sometimes long trips. I got real, genuine work done on it, and I am not an artist. I have my complaints with it, to be sure (you might notice I'm using past tense there). But I think the HN audience has a bias toward "ease of use as a development platform" as a primary measure of utility -- which happens to be a measure that the iPad does very poorly on. That's an understandable bias given that audience, but it's worth poking around and seeing what "iPad first" power users are actually doing with their iPads even with the occasionally maddening limitations baked into iPadOS.

I own a pinkebook pro and it can't survive a kernel compilation (which is quite a normal thing to do for this device because it doesn't run on mainline kernel and requires patching) without dying from the battery drainage while plugged in.

I can’t speak to these issues, however it would be excellent to have one of these running a full OSX. I’d certainly get one if I had that level of control to develop on it and choose which software I installed without an App Store. As things stand these devices aren’t for us, so judging them on the needs of hacker news user vs more standard consumers isn’t really a fair fight. They are deliberately limited to appeal to your gran and your 6 year old and your casual user without too many issues.

I should mention that my frustration only came out of trying to switch my parents over from an old 32-bit Windows laptop to the iPad. They're already iPhone users and most of their time is either spent in a web browser or in document processing. So I figured that an iPad Pro with a magic keyboard would be perfect for them.

Even still, the level of finesse they have with Excel and productivity software on a desktop OS was just not replicable on the iPad. It pained me to see my Dad work on his spreadsheets on the old laptop again.

The silver lining to this is at least the iPad is good for watching videos and pretty decent at web browsing. They still use the device casually.

My issue is that an $800 iPad Pro with keyboard and pencil ($1200 including the accessories) should be in a whole different class in terms of productivity than the $329 base iPad. But it's not. They both do the same thing (good for consumption, decent for creativity, pretty crappy for productivity)

A $2000 PC isn't any different from a $900 one either. It's just faster/more memory/more SSD/better graphics card. It still runs the same Office/Photoshop/Chrome/whatever people use.

Yeah, I saw this announcement and was thinking, “Why do I need more power?” coming from a 2018 iPad Pro. All this power is cool, but, the design of iPadOS is just not conducive to me wanting to get anything done on it. I know that’s ambiguous and hand wavey. Part of it is certainly the multitasking. Part of it is the keyboard. Part of it is no local Unix or build tools or good code editor. Yeah, I can SSH into another machine, even using mosh on a local network so it feels entirely local. But given the choice I’ll bounce and use my Macbook or desktop instead and I always make that choice because I’m not in an iPad vacuum.

It seems like they have everything lined up to put MacOS on the iPad, but it would be so unlike them to do it. What’ll they say, you can dual boot but you only boot MacOS if you have their expensive keyboard case attached? They wouldn’t do that.

Maybe someone will hack it on there eventually. An M1 MacOS on an M1 iPad “hackintosh” doesn’t seem impossible.

Apple should let users alternate between iOS and macOS on this device. They should also enable touch on the iMac and let users run iOS on that as well.

Agreed. They can already support mice, why can't I just use it as a computer when I want!

If Apple allowed macOS on the iPad, I wonder if they’d allow Rosetta?

I would've thought this was a really silly notion until now, when they're not just running on similar chips but on the same chip.

I do not doubt that this may become a thing in the future

I actually do doubt it. They want to sell multiple devices, and they have this vague notion of "minimalism" that still dictates design. The idea of running two operating systems on the same device probably gives someone at Apple a stomach flu. They want to merge the two. But I don't. I want the best of both worlds which means differentiation and just - more -.

Give it like, five more years.

Big Sur already takes a lot of design cues from iOS - they're prepping the merge. They're just making sure the frog doesn't realize the pot is starting to boil.

Agreed. They can do it nicely, too, by extending the "Handoff" concept to further replicate application state between macOS and iPad OS apps.

It would probably be an opt-in thing for apps, but even without any fancy state replication it'd be just fine.

Dual boot is not even needed M1 can virtualize, you could run both side by side. Previous iPad Pros could virtualize too, it was disabled in hardware.

This is the first iPad Pro with hardware virtualization support.

Even the hardware isn't ideal for MacOS though. I don't want top-heavy laptops with all the hardware behind the screen. I want an actual laptop... like the MacBook.

I view Apple devices as devices for developers AND artists. Sometimes artists are better served.

Did you see the new iMac? It’s just a huge tablet now.

12.9 inch iPad is starting to look like a 12 inch MacBook. All you need is the OS upgrade.

It going to be really interesting to see if/how/when they unify their entire ecosystem.

Yeah. Exactly the same sentiment. I have a 2018 ipad pro too, and... it runs anything I can throw at it. Admittedly, I don't try to do, I dunno, video editing or something on it. But unless they release xcode for the ipad, or put macos on it, or something that actually uses all that juice they keep shoving inside, I just... don't see the point.

maybe for gamers?

> Admittedly, I don't try to do, I dunno, video editing or something

> something that actually uses all that juice they keep shoving inside, I just... don't see the point

Is this a joke or something? Video and image editing was actually the biggest selling point shown repeatedly all over the keynote.

As an IT "Pro" the only thing I can use "professionally" (apart from testing iPad apps) is the SSH client, and that works fine on my iPad 1.

Sheesh, the browser doesn't even have devtools.

(only grouchy because I'd love to get one if it wasn't so crippled)

The presentation contained a funny mission impossible video where Tim Cook stole a M1 from a Macbook Air and put it in an iPad pro. I think it could be a hint to having MacOS on top of the iPad pro. WWDC is coming and they have been preparing for the same apps to run both on iOS and Mac OSX.

True. But this is also what I am so exciting about what will be next on iPadOS on WWDC this year, hardware has already over Mac, it’s time to software.

The problem is that nobody has really found a way to bridge the chasm between touchscreen UI design and mouse/keyboard UI design.

Attempts to get there tend to dumb down and limit the functionality of the mouse+keyboard experience.

I guess the obvious option would be to let Pro users switch an iPad into a 'MacOS mode' with the full desktop interface, mostly relying on an additional keyboard+mouse. But I can't see Apple going for anything like that. They're more likely to push the desktop interface more in the direction of iOS...

Windows 10 does it perfectly.

If you haven't used a Windows 10 tablet for any amount of time, I'd suggest trying it out. I've used small and large Windows tablets for many years and have yet to find any big complaints about the UX.

In your opinion ofcourse. I find Windows 10 tablet mode ghastly, especially compared to ipados or ios. The only nice thing is that you have a real OS. If this iPad would run macos or windows, I would leave laptops and phones behind from that moment in. But alas. Maybe the 2nd gen surface X?

I suppose everybody here should always preface their comment with IMO...

Good thing that if you don't like the way Windows 10 looks, you can easily change it. Other than that, functionally, everything just works and I'd challenge you to say what doesn't.

I don’t get why you complain anout the OS and then have hopes for the more polished hardware platform. Is it due to it being ARM based? That would impact on performance and battery at most, UX wise...

> "...gesture-like latencies in between to get it to work."

i hate that animations on ios are i/o blocking.

every single time i have to enter my passcode, it misses at least one if not two of my keypresses, which means i have to erase the whole thing and do it more slowly since the missing keypresses are essentially random (not just the final one or two).

another related annoyance is alert popups that occur more than once. the bounce animation takes over a second, so if you have multiple of these coming in succession, which happens constantly, it's a collossal waste of focus and time.

i want to take a sledgehammer to my idevices every time these things happen.

"Pro" used to mean "professional" for Apple. Now it just means "expensive".

It’s been at least 13 years that the meaning has changed. Since the introduction of the 13 inch MacBook Pro.

While I do feel they should've continued the plain old "MacBook" designation for the 13" beyond 2008, I've got to admit the 2009-2012 13" MBP was a solid workhorse for a moderately professional user.

In my experience with that whole line I really feel like only the 17" truly deserved the "pro" moniker since it got better options (processors, matte display) than the others.

My 2015 MBPs (I have 2) rock. Ports galore, too. Hence why I've never upgraded.

You've never upgraded because it has a non-upgradeable RAM and SSD. :-|

The SSD can be replaced. I loved my 2015 MBP to death, but the CPU has not aged well for heavyweight languages like C++ and Swift. Switched to an M1 Air with the same 1 TB of storage and 16 GB of RAM.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Disp...

The iPad Pro is the only one with the ProMotion 120Hz display. The higher refresh rate is a big deal for pro users who want the pencil to be as low latency as possible.

Yes, this is why the default iPhone calculator app is completely useless.

These forced animations make tasks take the same amount of time regardless of how fast the hardware gets. I would love to be able to turn off all animations in iphone/ipad UIs.

right. it's even more frustrating in light of the amazing advances in parallel processing for these devices over the years, which are essentially being ignored. at the very least, they could offload the animation to secondary threads/processes and unblock the i/o, which would allow the keypresses to be registered correctly even as you wait for the UI to catch up. instead, you're forced to wait for the animation to finish before registering the next input.

the computer should serve the whims of the user, not the other way around.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the problem being described, but I just tried this and it is impossible for me to type so fast in the iphone calculator app that it misses inputs. The animation completes in the background but does not block anything.

If I type "3 + 6 + 9" as fast as I can, then hit "=", I only get 18 about half the time. Sometimes I get 12, sometimes 15, occasionally something else. This is with a iPhone 11 Pro on iOS 14.4.2. It's ridiculous. I always hear the same number of clicks, though.

I must have never run into this because I don't calculate fast enough, but I just tried it and confirmed it really happens.

Somehow got the "6" key is stuck lit up, and despite having definitely registered a tap, it wasn't included in the addition.

https://i.imgur.com/onkcv59.png

That is extremely strange. Weighing in from an iPhone XS here on the latest iOS, I cannot understand how it is humanly possible to type the numbers fast enough they aren't picked up. I just tried to do it, pressing 3+6+9= as fast as I could, and I could not manage to get it to not detect my taps. I wonder if you have a defective screen? I have no other explanation

Just tested this a few times on an XS Max 14.4.2 and got 18 every time.

Happens to me all the time, especially when repeating the same numbers.

> Yes, this is why the default iPhone calculator app is completely useless.

Well, it's already made pretty useless by not showing you what's it's calculating…

Probably that's the reason there isn't one on iPad. Let that sink in. There's no calculator on a $1000+ 'Pro' device.

Let what sink in? There are plenty of better third party calculators available than the system calc on iPhone. So much of the angst and frustration comes from self-imposed rules on what is acceptable rather than calmly finding solutions.

There used to be a jailbreak tweak called Accelerate that would speed up animations.

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/11/12/accelerate/

I still use an iPhone 4S, and thanks to this tweak, I don't feel like my phone is any slower than newer models. Pity I can't browse half the web though (https died due to TLS).

You can. Settings -> Accessibility -> Motion -> Reduce Motion

Workaround. It should capture the touches and send it anyway. Like on macOS for example

It's not perfect though, and it only makes the OS marginally more snappy since it replaces many animations with equally slow fades.

That setting only changes the moving animations into fades but doesn't actually make anything faster.

Animations still take the same amount of time blocking interactivity.

Thanks for articulating this as I never understood why iOS suffers from this phenomenon. The only other place I've seen "typing too fast" result in garbled input is on Android based VoIP phone handsets, where if you try to "type" numbers too fast some of them get dropped - an amazing example of a device with many orders of magnitude more computing power than what it replaced still managing to be less performant.

Are you sure it isn't that you are sliding your finger enough for iOS to think you are doing a "scroll gesture" instead of a click?

I hate iOS because the movement limit before a tap gets cancelled is too small for my tastes - simulating "virtual" clicks at 10px limit of motion worked better for my tastes using a browser. Maybe I am just lazy, maybe the capacitance or shape of my fingers is the problem, or maybe I have some motor issue. However I don't on Android devices. I have to allow myself time on iOS devices to make taps work reliably.

I notice it especially on the home screen of my iPad where lazy tapping an app won't open it... Grrrr - there is no other function to a "slight" scroll on the homescreen!

I have seen others have the same issue, so it isn't just me.

yah that also happens to me sometimes too (and it's maddening), but that's definitely not it here. in these cases, the ui isn't responsive because of the animations.

I don't swype, and I get my passcode wrong on iOS all the time. It doesn't register the first press if you do it too quickly.

Ohh, so that's why entering the passcode on my ipad feels so wonky.

I guess this is some kind of legacy thing because the first iphone wouldn't have been able to handle it? Because this seems like an exceptionally bad decision, unless absolutely necessary for some reason.

Must be deep-rooted like the UI render refresh issue on Android. No matter how fast the hardware of an android phone, it will always will be a bit clunky/laggy. "Android has a difficult time dealing with the touch interface because it handles rendering "on the main thread with normal priority," as opposed to iOS, which treats UI rendering with real-time priority." https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/12/07/former_google_int... Also try endlessly scrolling your photos on your iphone and on an android device - the difference in memory management will be apparent.

No matter how fast I type 3 + 6 + 9 into the stock Android calculator (on a Pixel 3a, 2 years old), I can't replicate keypresses getting ignored or laggy, input-blocking animations.

There's also zero lag scrolling through Google Photos. I don't have an iPhone to compare to, but I can't imagine how it could get any better.

If this is actually still a problem 10 years after the linked article was posted, I'd say the main problem is then instead the variety of processing in Android devices. I'd guess I'd see these issues on cheaper phones (maybe I can dig up one of my $79 burners to try with), but I doubt this problem exists on any phones of comparable pricing to iPhones.

Comparing iOS to "Android" might show some clunky/laggy UI in cheaper models, but comparing iOS to iPhone-priced Android phones most certainly won't (most of the time).

[*]: Though, obviously, I expect the sheer amount of variety in Android phones to still produce some expensive, low-power phones that would be an exception here.

From my primitive understanding, many of the iOS animations are basically pre-rendered and played at the right time to cover up any CPU-intensive activities that are happening under the hood. Rather than display a laggy, stuttering input box that captures every keypress (eventually), they've chosen to lock you out from input entirely, force you to sit back and watch the beautiful transition, then allow you to input when the device is fully ready to accept that input.

It's a frustrating design decision to me as well, maybe because I'd much rather prefer a barebones, stripped-down, streamlined experience, but I'm sure it's more psychologically soothing for more people when compared to the laggy experience on some competing devices.

yes, i've heard at least a variation of that explanation before, and it made sense for the first few iterations of idevices, but not so much anymore. apple devices are among the most powerful personal computers ever available. it really shouldn't be that way at this point.

iOS animations are not pre-rendered, and more and more they are even interruptible, even interactive. For example, if you start swiping the home screen you can catch the swipe at any point.

That is not necessarily evidence that the swiping animation is not pre-rendered. It just means that if it's pre-rendered, it can be slowed down, sped up and reversed based on the user's finger's motion.

I can tell you for certain that the OS swipe animations are not pre-rendered (you can easily tell, sometimes one or both of the views involved are animated for example), and I highly doubt anyone would do that. What would be the purpose? It's much more complex to handle, and there's no benefit.

Have never noticed this, but I have "Reduce Motion" enabled in Accessibility settings.

i've tested that setting at some point in the past and found it doesn't help in these cases. from what i remember, the UI still wastes the same amount of time either way.

> every single time i have to enter my passcode, it misses at least one if not two of my keypresses

Wow, I have the same trouble, but I thought it was because my iPhone was old and thus the screen was damaged.

well, to be fair, that could still be, but at least in my case, it's definitely because the default speed at which i enter my passcode is just a little too fast for the UI. i have an old iphone and an ipad pro, and it happens on both.

Thank you! I somehow manage to get my iPhone code wrong half the time. I'm glad it's not only me.

Exactly the same here, coming from a 2017 one.

There hasn’t been a moment I lacked computing power or battery life or anything else. The software experience has been lacking.

I was really hoping iPadOS would bring us closer to MacOS. There was even some hope that an M1 iPad would come with MacOS.

I just want to be able to do things without needing an expensive app or a really shitty work around. If it wasn’t for needing the pencil, I’d have stepped away quite some years ago.

>Multitasking is cumbrous enough that it might as well not exist

iPad OS desperately needs a persistent dock or taskbar, like we see on macOS and Windows. The gesture system is too cumbersome to be effective.

I can think of one use case where it could be nice - content creators.

For example I like to noodle on guitar and frankly guitar interface + iPad > laptop.

Likewise for video editing, photo touchups, etc.

I can see iPad for creatives using more processing power

The iPad is great for musicians. I use mine for sheet music and also for noodling on the guitar but here’s what I don’t like about it:

- you need a dongle to plug the interface and the charger together (maybe other interfaces can supply power but mine cannot)

- my interface also behaves as an usb audio device (I suspect all of them do) but iOS does not let you choose audio out through internal speakers or airplay if the usb audio device is present

- some apps don’t support multiple inputs and default to the first input (which on my interface is mic in), GarageBand does not have this problem

Of course this is not a problem for things like digital pianos that just explore midi over Bluetooth.

For me the overall experience just doesn't work as a productivity device. The gestures to multitask are too complex. Every edge and corner has a different meaning, and swiping does several different things depending on direction.

It's not natural to have your monitor and keyboard super close together, and to have your monitor sitting directly on a desk.

It's not comfortable to poke a semi-vertical touchscreen over a long period of time where you have to support your whole arm while also making precise movements with your fingers.

Fingers are not precise enough to interact with basic elements like text fields and buttons.

I'm sitting here at my desk with its large monitor on an arm, mechanical keyboard and precision mouse and appreciating the years of thought that went into making this setup work. I think there is a possibility of something better with an iPad like device, but Apple would need to be far more ambitious than they've been so far.

Productivity takes many shapes and forms. The use cases highlighted in the video were about capturing video podcasts, rendering previews in the field, etc. you can be productive without fitting into the traditional mold of productive computing. Thats what ipad is after.

ipad's limitations are arbitrary and have no strong reason to exist. I've been an apple fan for years, and bought my first PC in nearly 20 years recently because I shouldn't have to buy two very expensive apple devices (a mac, and an ipad) to cover all of my use cases.

Exactly, the Mac has very biased defaults but is open to customization. The iPad is very biased period. It’s „you’re using it wrong“ taken to the extreme. The device should work for the user. Every time I see a convoluted iPad remote webdev setup I can’t help but think the user is working for the device. (I have the same feeling towards using VIM as a general purpose IDE. It works but requires much more work than, say, using VSCode with a VI plug-in).

It’s been gratifying to see I’m not the only one with these issues! That said, lineage wise the limitations and issues aren’t arbitrary - iPadOS is basically a slightly upsized clone of iOS, and just like you wouldn’t be using your phone for precision data/pointing (or if you were it wouldn’t be as buy a deal, because you’d just be using a finger/thumb and not reaching across a keyboard), the original nature of iPad interactions are similar.

Obviously seeing some improvements, but for instance copying 50GB of high precision photos (without potentially mangling them/importing them because it’s a dataset not a bunch of snapshots!) is a terrible experience in iPadOS - and a trivial exercise in every laptop/pc OS out there.

They’ve got a long way to go, unfortunately, especially for enterprise use cases. The hardware really has potential though!

yeah, I love the limitations in ios for my phone, but not for my computer!

If ipad’s limitations were arbitrary they wouldn’t exist. The product design is shaped by the use cases it optimizes for. This is no different than saying a GPU has arbitrary limitations for running general C++ code. In some sense yes, you could make a single thread c++ compiler target the GPU, but 1) it wouldnt fit the design well and 2) changing the design to make it work well would mess up the original intended use case.

That's fair, arbitrary wasn't the right word. They were chosen for the use case of a smart phone, not a general purpose computer. People pretending that they are reasonable for a general purpose computer are missing the boat IMO.

But some things are arbitrary. For example, only allowing one web browser engine is 100% arbitrary (or worse, an abuse of monopoly power).

MacOS allows arbitrary web browser engines, yet I just use safari. My mac has never felt less like a general purpose computer because of this. How is this related?

I’m a developer that often does web work. I need to test on multiple browsers, which is literally impossible on the iPad for no good reason.

Additionally: I have this beautiful device with great computing power but I can't install my favorite extensions on its browser.

Yes those people are missing the boat. We don’t have to worry about them though. Let’em suffer the pain of ignorance ;)

The limitations were born of hardware weaknesses when mobile devices were brought to market. The do seem arbitrary now, but they made sense 10 years ago. Those hardware weaknesses are long gone (it's not just Apple Silicon that is blazing fast in ARM land). Maybe it's time to rethink the whole mobile OS thing.

The precious use case of ripping 30% off all the cash flow in the ecosystem.

> It's not comfortable to poke a semi-vertical touchscreen over a long period of time where you have to support your whole arm while also making precise movements with your fingers.

To be fair I think Apple knows this too, which is why trackpad/mouse support is now a first class feature rather than an accessibility option.

And also probably why they have never released touch Macs.

What I do these days is use an iPad Pro and use a cloud-based virtual desktop [1] so I have the best of both worlds with me. The caveat is that you can't do this without internet access.

[1] https://shells.com/

This is a neat idea, but I feel like an iPad Pro is overkill for accessing a virtual desktop. You could set up something similar with an old laptop for a fraction of the price.

Or an old regular iPad, if you like the form factor.

I hope they are making these changes in order to take iPad into MacOS direction. Based on MacOS big sur UI changes (icons are now rounded corner iPad like, menu bar has more spacing and iPad like controls etc), I think they are prepping for it.

The software experience is the one thing I wish Apple would improve upon faster. It's got quite good as of late, but there's still a lot of things that could be way better all around.

I can certainly agree that Excel on iPad is an awful experience, though. I gave up using my iPad for Excel stuff at work in short order.

Things I do on an iPad, ranked by how unlikely I am to do them on another computer:

- Draw. This is the big one. I'm no fine artist, but I do a bit of calligraphy now and then, and Procreate is amazing.

- Make memes. It might not be more "productive" to caption funny pictures on my iPad than it would be to do it on desktop, but it's more fun. It feels more natural to manipulate images on a tablet.

- Read PDFs. the 12.9" iPad is carefully sized to make US letter and A4 documents readable. I'll load a PDF up in one of the zones of my wide monitor if I'm using it as a reference for a slide deck or whatever, but if I'm just reading it, it's the iPad for me.

- Edit video. I doubt I would stick with this work flow if I were a dedicated content creator. But I'm not, and stitching some footage off my mirrorless camera together, putting a soundtrack to it: the iPad makes this pleasant.

- Look at photos. Also, showing them to other people. A couple weeks ago I took my iPad with me to the mechanic to show some pictures I had taken of my front bumper, lamentably separated from the rest of the vehicle in a fender bender. A phone might have sufficed, but a tablet is obviously better and I have one. When I'm in the mood to scroll through my memories, the iPad is the place to do it.

- Twitter. This is the inflection point! I had a phase of taking my Twitter time on the tablet, and went back to using my laptop. Scrolling with a flick of the pencil is nice, but inputting text is very much not its strong suit, and there are ads. I don't like ads.

Edited to add: I'm heavy on the gizmos. If I had to ditch one, it would be the iPad, and I have no interest in upgrading my 3rd gen whatsoever. But I'm glad I don't have to ditch it! For what it's good for, it really shines. I'm fond of it.

Pretty similar for me.

- reading pdf and books

- import and watch photos

- write notes and draw sketches and plans with the pencil

- bring along in the shop

I also use it as a laptop sometimes, with an external keyboard. As a linux/vim user, anything with an ssh client is good enough to get work done anyway. I still find it preferable to a windows machine.

I think the idea is: for most of these, extra horsepower isn't much of a selling point (video editing being the big exception). Not that it's bad - it means your device will stay capable for longer, if nothing else - it's just a weird thing to focus on in marketing materials

>- Draw. This is the big one. I'm no fine artist, but I do a bit of calligraphy now and then, and Procreate is amazing.

Same, and this is how the iPad really shines, except for one huge drawback: limited RAM means I either have to reduce my art to sub-4k quality or limit it to 30-ish layers.

Both options suck. It was very disappointing to see no mention of RAM anywhere in this announcement. Maybe for some applications processing speed is a limiting factor, but it certainly isn't the bottleneck for artists, so this announcement is a bit of a letdown.

Wait there was a mention of RAM today - up to 16Gb!

Tada! Apple officially announced that RAM capacity is 8GB/16GB (for the first time to announce it?)

For me the iPad (2018) was just the cheapest entry to the tablet + pen combo. I love digital pen input and the tablet for reading documents. For a moment I liked the app ecosystem and thought maybe the Apple hype is valid. Now, I hate the stupid limitations of iPadOS, the Appstore and the commercialisation of every god damn aspect of the iPad experience.

I would kill for a good Linux tablet with low latency pen input. Xournal++ and Krita would be completely sufficient.

Most apps and ideas I initially liked on the iPad, would be much better FOSS. So many apps ultimately fail for me because the developers trying hard to wall some garden, instead of implementing export/import of an open standard.

Oh and ofc, horrible file management and no code execution.

Fuck this shit. Stallman was right...

It's be pretty great to see Final Cut Pro on the iPad Pro. I'm surprised it doesn't already exist. Maybe the workflows there are incompatible with the iPad UX?

I think they are banking on Lumafusion to be good enough for that use case

Hard agree. M1 on the iPad is great from a technical perspective (having the same CPU/CPU arch on desktop and mobile platforms is a game-changer), but doesn't really do anything for me right now when things like Google Sheets are a pain to use on it.

It does chew through a fair bit of your IT budget though, but yeah no doubt its a cool device.

But, for the asking price of the iPad Pro I'd rather get a nice PC laptop with latest gen Ryzen and Nvidia hardware.

Guess I'm just not in the target group for the iPad Pro.

Really, at this point the only things keeping me from replacing my everyday-use personal laptop with an iPad Pro or iPad Air are:

- The lack of a true development environment local to the device

- The lack of true background app support for things that need persistent connections (ssh clients, etc)

I honestly think there is a great opportunity for a Linux tablet plus pen input (high dpi; precision and low latency). People just don't know yet, that's what they want. FOSS would thrive there.

I’ve been working from an iPad as my main machine for the past couple of years now. Definitely doable (but as other have said, there’s _is_ pain when working local only).

I keep an AWS box spinning that runs docker and my dev env (vim as editor), then connect to this via Blink shell. This lets me port forward via SSH. If I need L2 I then use ZeroTier. My SSH key lives in my local Secure Enclave and then forwards via ssh-agent when needed on the external box (eg pushing commits). Background offloading is avoiding by enabling the geo lock, which also has the bonus of tearing down any SSH connections if the device leaves the lock area. Ends up as a pretty neat setup.

I personally think multitasking works great, but I guess that's subjective. The claim about external screens is not true though, as a developer you can put anything you want on an external screen, mirroring is just the fallback behaviour.

Almost all apps obviously take advantage of the keyboard, and 100% of apps where it makes sense. The trackpad can also be used in all apps, although it is true that not all apps are optimised for it yet, but all standard UI elements support it automatically.

Not sure why you'd expect iPad apps to be similar to the desktop variants, it seems that would be pretty pointless no? You might not like the iPad UX, but many people prefer it.

> as a developer you can put anything you want on an external screen

as a developer, not a user. I can’t have two different apps running on different displays, nor can I take advantage of the display’s resolution. In practice, everything is mirrored.

> Almost all apps obviously take advantage of the keyboard

When I say take advantage of the keyboard and mouse, I mean to offer shortcuts/navigation akin to what you’d find on a desktop.

I don’t mean to say that apps should be exactly like desktop apps, but the iPad UX is making it harder to use the current iteration of document/spreadsheet apps.

There are things the iPad does strictly better, of course. But I don’t see these experiences as mutually exclusive.

It is true that the second screen is controlled by the current app, but I don’t think there are any other limitations.

There are absolutely keyboard shortcuts. Obviously this is up to developers, a lot of apps like Things, Shapr3d etc have excellent shortcut support.

It takes a while to optimise UX in a new interface paradigm, amd again this is obviously up to developers. There are few technical limitations. And considering how little Excel on the PC has changed over the last 20 years, we should be happy. And look at Numbers and Pages on iPad, really good UX.

Multitask UI is still horrible. I sometimes creates new Safari windows in mistake, closing them and return to correct window is not an easy task.

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Yeah I seriously don't understand Apple here.

The Microsoft Surface Pro is such a great example in contrast, offering a full OS in a tablet form. I had a Pro for about 6 months and I loved that thing, the only problem was the hardware was subpar and failed on me twice so I gave up on it.

An iPad Pro M1 running OS X would be my dream portable machine.

iOS is such a waste on this device. A crippled, mobile OS that barely lets you do any productivity work. Why, Apple, why.

It'll be interesting to see if iPadOS 15 steps us any closer to laptop/desktop class usage. The biggest thing holding back iPad from being a real laptop replacement for so many is the software. It's also not as simple as porting macOS to iPad. I get Apple's hesitancy from a usability and a product cannibalization standpoint, but it's time they step things forward.

As an active user of the Mac. That would not be a step forward. It would be a step backward. There are so many things that are fundamentally impossible on a closed ecosystem like the iPad. For example, Macs still support, even on the M1, installing your own OSes.

I don't get why some Apple fans are so interested in destroying a core stable of Apple's userbase.

It would destroy the Mac user base if iPads were capable of running desktop class applications?

I think they could find a good middle ground. Since macOS can run iOS apps on M1 devices, why not allow it to be installed on the iPad as-is? Let users choose between iPadOS for the tablet experience, or macOS for the "full" experience.

Of course just saying this out loud sounds ridiculous considering that Apple is Apple but hey, we can dream. :)

The inability to run the software I need is why an ipad isn't even on my radar yet. The nicer screen isn't worth the lockdown (not to mention that the macbook air is much lighter than ipad + keyboard and cheaper too)).

The macbook air screen is ok, its webcam is horrible, it doesn't have a touch screen, so you can't use it as a "digital blackboard" for remote work, and it can't use multiple monitors.

The iPad has a great front camera, great screen, great touch screen and Apple Pen, yet is software-handicapped to prevent professional use.

I guess Apples' goal is for people to buy both, but I've been on the market for a new "work device" for a while and this messed product lineup just means I'll wait till they get their s** together and produce a decent work machine with:

- support for multiple monitors

- reasonable webcam

- touchscreen and apple pen support

Until then, I'm out. Neither the Macbook nor the iPad are good work machines for me, and I'm not going to buy both to compensate for bad product management. I mean, the title says it all, iPads now have "Macbook Pro CPUs" in them. That's a super mixed message to send if they are not suitable for professional work.

In the last year of remote work I have not missed whiteboard collaboration at all. My team just got better at writing docs and generating diagrams with dedicated tooling.

I use it every day. A 10 second drawings saves me 5 minutes of talking every time.

Colleagues that don't have this capability at home give the impression that they are wasting everbody elses time, to the point that they draw on a piece of paper and hang it infront of the camera instead.

Also, this pretty much completely disqualifies them for doing things like, e.g., "interviews", which restricts their career development.

Yeah we just have a totally different workflow where you provide a doc and that has all the material already included. There’s no adhoc sketching stuff because we think that through before taking anyone’s time.

It’s just a different way of working. But it pays dividends when you have people spread across time zones. Plus none of it is throw-away work. The docs are there for anyone to reference any time in the future.

We develop high perf spatial data structures for computational geometry, so being able to draw is kind of critical.

But I understand that not all jobs need this.

People doing design or architecture probably draw more than we do, and people doing english to french translations probably draw less.

> Also the macbook air can only drive 1 external monitor.

That's the limitation of the GPU in the current-gen M1. It has two display encoders, one of them is connected to eDP for the internal display - except for the M1, which doesn't have an internal display, so it can be wired to external connector.

So unless they redid this part, this iPad and the new iMac will have the same limitation.

Hmm, for the laptop I'd be happy if I could turn off the built in display to get a second external display. That would literally be a big enough change that I would have already bought one instead of not having done so.

I guess I'd be happy with an ipad-m1-computer if

- It could run desktop software.

- It could do that.

Unfortunately, having a feature that requires turning off the built in display doesn't seem like Apple's style.

Tech specs for both the iPad Pro and the iMac show this still is the case.

An external camera will blow away the quality of the ipad camera and work better under a variety of situations. In truth, by the time zoom is done compressing my video, I'm not completely convinced that higher-res input makes a difference.

The macbook air gets higher performance (I doubt they can fit that large heatsink in the ipad) and has better battery life too.

In any case, it's academic because I can't run the software I actually need on an ipad.

Missed opportunity in today's announcement to introduce arguably the most compelling part of M1 adoption: a desktop-like experience, especially since hardware keyboard and trackpad already exist.

If it runs M1, I wanna run my Electron VS Code on it.

Why tho ? Everything about the system is locked down - it's never going to be a good development machine no matter if you run electron vscode or not.

It could be a decent client for stuff like web vscode.

I don't think a machine's fitness for development is correlated to how locked down it is—you can totally have a very controlled environment with gatekeeping like the current iPadOS but have well-designed tools and development environments built for it. Apple did it with macOS after all...

macOS is not terribly locked down. The terminal is immediately accessible, dev tools are one download away (unless you want to use an older version of various interpreted languages). Most of the locked down defaults with regard to downloading programs can be easily sidestepped if you open up Preferences and click a couple buttons.

I think we don't have the same definition of locked down. I can download Linux compatible tools to my Mac and run server compatible software locally. I can install custom browsers, development environments, etc. This just isn't compatible with iOS app model.

The only way I see this happening is if they let you run docker images/VMs. Even then it would suck for front-end. And it's such a niche use case from their perspective - I don't see this happening ever.

VSCode Remote SSH would solve practically all my dev problems. I don't need anything else. :)

Don't know if you're aware of it but you can run vscode on the server and open it in the browser. Might be worth investigating https://github.com/cdr/code-server

I don't remember to ever look into the AmigaOS source code.

Locked down as in Apple won't let you run anything not going through the store on the device because it breaks their business model.

You aren't going to install a custom browser to test your front-end (or get usable devtools), no brew or package manager, no custom IDE unless it's built for iOS with its insane limitations (nobody is going to bother). At best you'd be able to port some dev tools and install with your certificate - and for what gain exactly ?

It's just not a general purpose computer, and it's certainly not a dev machine

> because it breaks their business model

Once upon a time, their business model was to build solid hardware and not get in the way of people who (like me) don't care for their software. I was hoping that the switch to M1 indicated some intention to return to that business model.

I guess you never used classical Mac OS.

The modern Apple is just like how Apple used to be when not trying to save the company from insolvency.

Good news: https://github.com/features/codespaces

A step in the right direction, but still not quite the same as a native app. Try using the magic keyboard trackpad to scroll, unless they finally fixed it recently.

"If I can't run whatever I want on it, it's a console not a real computer."

iPads are still consoles regardless of what kind of chip you put in them.

That may be Apple's intent. They don't seem to be cancelling the Mac, their "real computer." There's more than one market.

Oh, do not worry... it's coming.

M1 > SwiftUI > MacCatalyst = Write once, run anywhere.

Watching the iPadOS and MacCatalyst APIs mature says different form factors will emphasize certain workflows over others, but overall, feature parity is and will be a priority across the device lineup, iPhone included...

Though it makes me sad... soon after their unified OS is realized, Sherman's coming by with his hammer. It'll be beautiful while it lasts.

I don't know if you've tried going from a universal app to Catalyst but it feels very subpar compared to the Mac app variant. EG: Catalyst does not have the proper sidebar support that a Universal App with a Mac target has. Also there's no 'click' in Catalyst (at least not in the way that those components work on the Mac... they feel quite different). The experience is definitely "iPad" with Catalyst instead of "Mac".

I believe Apple is going all in on the Universal App model. You can already get most of the way there today with some limitations (many libraries don't support Mac yet). Making different targets for each hardware with a 99% Shared code base is really excellent.

Seriously. The thing that still bites me the most is that "Share" functionality of files continues to be broken in certain apps.

For example, I frequently need to save a PDF from my Google Drive app either to my local Files or the Books app. But both those options are just... missing from the iOS share sheet, even though Acrobat is there. So I have to share to Acrobat, then share to Files or Books from within Acrobat. Bizarre.

The problem is some kind of combination of file type plus application -- Gmail will let me share a PDF straight to Files or Books just fine.

Or sometimes when you open a PDF in Books from another app it saves it to Books as a copy... but in other cases it opens it in-place. So you think you copied a bunch of things into Books to read on the airplane... and then they're not there.

The fact that there's never any indication whether something is being copied or not, and that apps that support a filetype are simply arbitrarily missing from some share sheets (but not all), makes iPadOS just a disaster for any serious work that spans multiple apps.

Yes, the file management is absolutely terrible, along with the extremely limited multitasking. These are the two biggest factors keeping the iPad from real desktop usage.

It seems most of the successful "pro" usage is by those who can work entirely within a single app that provides everything they need.

a workaround is to create a shortcut that shares its input, you share to the shortcut (which you set to be on the share sheet and accept anything) and from there you can share anywhere

Unfortunately the terrible file management seems to be spreading to MacOS, rather than vice versa. Now if you have iCloud Drive turned on and navigate to ~/Documents in Finder, if you go up one level you'll find yourself in some kind of virtual folder called iCloud Drive, rather than your home directory.

This is exactly the sort of weird filesystem-tree-concept-breaking thing that made Windows Explorer so annoying to use for me.

You mean "if you have your Desktop and Documents folder synced to iCloud".

iCloud Drive is not a "virtual folder" (I think you mean "shell folder"? Like the one that you see when you navigate up from / in the Finder?) iCloud Drive is a real place in your home directory (it is located at ~/Library/Mobile Documents/). It's equivalent to the root of any other synced-directory service — Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Your Documents and Desktop folders — when iCloud Drive sync for them is enabled — are just regular folders inside that synced folder.

The hacky part is the fact that, while the Documents and Desktop folders are canonically nested inside the Mobile Documents folder, they're also linked from outside of it with weird pseudo-symlinks.

Those pseudo-symlinks are more than just symlinks — they appear as real directories (like Linux bind-mounts), which is helpful to avoid breaking legacy apps that expect to be able to find real directories at ~/Desktop and ~/Documents.

But, like a symlink, the "real" directory these pseudo-symlinks point to only exists in one place, and that place is ~/Library/Mobile Documents/. Presuming `readlink(2)` was called to resolve the file at any point, you can't navigate back "up" from the resulting file, to find yourself back at the directory that contained the symlink. Once you resolve the link, the symlink isn't part of the resulting path any more.

the file management in iPadOS is a POS. It wasn't even closer to MacOS Finder level. It still feel like juiced-up iOS without expanding functionalities.

Apple needs to provide an official way to easily transfer file without using iTune & iCloud. Yes, there is unofficial way (VLC) of doing this but it is cumbersome and iPad Files & other apps will not see those files at all. I understand why Apple does this to prevent jailbreaking. But for pete's sake, tablet are not suppose to have a restricted access in file manager since it is a freaking tablet!

My specific use case but I have my NAS mounted on the iPad files app and use that to transfer files.

Another idea I think is interesting. If we reach that level of usability and tech with an iPad, then it seems plausible that we could build tech where you just need to bring an iPhone near a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and you instantly have a usable environment for things we think of as desktop. We've seen usability across devices with things like the google suite or Evernote improve over time, but if you had a single device with you everywhere then data sync is totally solved.

I have zero interest in using a worse laptop. Touch screens are an anti-feature. For decades we have tried as an industry to do touch interfaces on “real” computers and it’s always horrible because it’s not actually a thing worth doing.

With M1 Macs being a thing I have no idea what benefits an iPad offers.

Touch isn’t great but styluses are for those of us that work on presentations.

That’s a fair point. It’s not something I need so I don’t consider it. But if I need a stylus I don’t want to involve a desktop environment. The whole unified os/one-device thing is unworkable IMHO. Just have a laptop and a tablet if that’s what you need. Let the tools excel in their role instead of making a ton of compromises.

"Touch screens are an anti-feature" – I guess you don't have a smartphone then?

The benefit is obvious: if you were the kind of person that previously had a laptop and an iPad (iPads / touch screens are nice for all sorts of things, esp. for say artists), then an optimal solution would be a device you can use as both. An iPad Pro that could run macOS and have a keyboard case with trackpad seems ideal.

Or if you're the kind of person that only has an iPad (my mom), it might be useful to sometimes have more flexibility than it provides, even though she does't need it 99% of the time.

Touch screens are a design compromise. Not as good as dedicated input devices, but necessary if you're putting something in your pocket and perfectly acceptable if all you are doing is consuming media and maybe some light typing.

Someone should really tell all my artist friends that their touchscreen tablets aren't actually very good for drawing and to just use a mouse and keyboard.

> I guess you don't have a smartphone then?

I'm participating in the Astro Slide crowdfunding campaign specifically so that I can have a smartphone without necessarily needing to use a touchscreen.

Fair enough. But that is you and ~3000 other people. The remaining ~3 billion with touch screen devices seem to like that just fine.

I own a 2018 iPad Pro, and it's possibly the best & most versatile device I've ever owned. Among the things I use it for are: surfing the web whilst on the couch, checking in on my RSS feeds, casual gaming, watching movies, reading PDF & Kindle e-books, handwritten & typed notes for work & study, replying emails, portable RDP, VNC & SSH client on the go. And I'm probably still forgetting a lot of things...

Yeah I just use a combination of my Mac and iPhone to do all that. The iPad is an awkward middle spot for me. Different strokes.

Fair enough. I had the same feeling with older tablets that I owned (early iPad's and Samsung Android tablets), but the iPad Pro did hit a sweet spot for me.

not sure i am with you on “versatile”

So about half as versatile as a big phone.

Agree its a great tablet! It is versatile and I use the pencil quite a bit... HOWEVER, if it could boot to a desktop OS in addition to iPadOS... it would be the absolute killer machine for almost every use case under the sun, imo.

I absolutely agree.

surfing the web whilst on the couch -- consuming media

checking in on my RSS feeds -- consuming media

casual gaming -- consuming media

watching movies -- consuming media

reading PDF & Kindle e-books -- consuming media

handwritten & typed notes for work & study -- light typing

replying emails -- light typing

portable RDP, VNC & SSH client on the go -- not sure

This is what the OP was complaining about. It's fine for consuming media, but the Pro part was supposed to be about people creating things. Programming, video editing, graphics design, writing papers, etc... For these applications the iPad Pro has been a disappointment.

Programming, video editing, graphics design, writing papers, etc... For these applications the iPad Pro has been a disappointment

Apart from maybe graphics design, I don't believe the iPad Pro was ever advertised to do those things (if I'm not mistaken), so I can imagine your disappointment if you expected to do those things on it.

If you read the press release, Apple VERY heavily emphasizes "creative workflows"

Do you take all marketing that seriously? IMO it's best to decide what a tool is best for based on quantitative measures, and assume marketing material is just meaningless fluff to get readers excited. I'm pretty sure you can find $200 laptops get advertised as great for creative workflows

Couldn't disagree more. I've used touchscreen laptops and surface for years and if I go back to a non touchscreen portable machine it feels stunted.

i think tablets have their place, but i find that as a tablet interface, windows 10 seems morbidly overweight. Android otoh is too lightweight imho. i think a 2 in 1 might be an ideal compromise. meanwhile ms is trying to push a succession of thinly-veiled tablets, which i don't understand. Windows is a desktop OS, why promote it on the environment it's least comfortable with?

Anyway, just working my way through a stomachache...

What I'd like to do is to use a pencil to draw on my 27" monitor when screen-sharing/presenting. That's the one use case for "touch" I'm really missing. You can sort-of simulate it by screen-mirroring, but it's cumbersome.

It’s not really a laptop replacement. Apple’s philosophy shared by Phil? is that you should be able to do as much as you can on each device before having to move up to the next product.

Watch -> phone -> tablet -> laptop -> desktop

Apple would be giving up an incredible amount of control by allowing anything more and it's obvious their customers don't care.

I've personally completely given up on Android/iOS even if that means I won't have a working cell phone (although I mostly do.) There's way too much money involved for good firmware to be written.

Just a wishful thinking, but since this is an M1 and not the A14X (and 8c+8c+8/16GB setup used in MacBook Pro even), I'm hoping that Hypervisor.framework will come to an iPadOS in the next WWDC. Having something like macOS.app, or even Ubuntu.app within iPad Pro would make it a pretty amazing convertible (for me).

Agreed, ubuntu.app would be amazing

Switch to Safari to surf the net, and come back to ubuntu.app ... ooooh, it got killed in the background!

iOS/iPadOS only kill background processes if they're resource hungry and competing with another resource hungry frontmost app and resources are running low.

Anecdotally, on my iPhone 11 Pro Max w/4GB of RAM it's very rare for apps to get killed while multitasking. There's been a few times when I've brought forward an app I used multiple days ago and it's still running exactly where I left it.

Based on that, with these new models having 8GB and 16GB of RAM processes getting killed should be pretty rare. On top of that, it's highly likely that virtualization apps would be given increased protection from getting killed due to their inherent extra overhead.

M1 is essentially an A14X.

I mean, why can't you just port macOS to iPad? It's all M1 now.

Dual boot would be a great hack

I'm a surface pro user. Why does Apple not just put macos on the iPad and then it can go head to head for my business? The comment above said it's not as easy as just sticking macos on them. Why? (Obviously the answer could be they simply don't want to take on that market, but technically I don't see the barrier.)

Biggest reason is that macOS is designed as a pointer interface and iPadOS/iOS is designed as a touch interface. You could argue that with the Magic Keyboard and Trackpad, the iPad is well suited for pointer input and I wouldn't disagree. However, macOS with touch as an input option would be atrocious, in my view. Rather than opening the door for touch input on macOS, they should bring iPadOS closer to a desktop-class, touch-first experience.

It could switch maybe? If you use the magic keyboard it switches to Mac OS and otherwise ipados? But yes, iPados with proper multitasking and allowing development apps locally would be a step in the right direction IMHO.

I have a Dell XPS-15 laptop. 15" 4K touchscreen/tablet. It is fantastic. Gnome, KDE, Windows all work fine with the touch screen and even active stylus. Come to think of it, MacOS has fantastic support for Wacom tablets, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a terrible experience with the same kind of display that my Dell has.

Seems like apple could make an Xcode app that runs on the large iPads

I think they should include macOS in new iPads as a dual boot option and allow users to connect the iPad to a monitor. This is what I do with my MacBook Air and I'm sure many, many iPad users would find this tremendously useful. Ditto for iPhone.

Have you priced these things, though?

2TB/5G iPad Pro 12.9 + keyboard + pen = 3000 Swiss Francs (over $3k)

2TB/16GB RAM MacBook Air = 2200 Swiss Francs

For whom are these iPads made? I bought a 12.9 in 2015, and another in 2017, but it's my last. They're just not that useful, and certainly not useful at a level that justifies the price of a very nice laptop!

> 2TB/5G iPad Pro 12.9 + keyboard + pen = 3000 Swiss Francs (over $3k)

2TB Storage, 5G, keyboard and pen are all very much optional and not required to use an iPad Pro. If you want a laptop, simply buy a laptop.

Personally I'm much better off with a desktop + iPad Pro combo. When I need keyboard and mouse on the iPad my existing desktop input device can be paired with multiple devices. However that's rare occasion. Most of the time it's simply a much more mobile device than a laptop.

I guess the market is tiny for a full OS on an iPad or Apple just waits until MS is close in other feature parity: the surface X has the battery life and the looks but is crap in all other departments (or so I heard: I have not tried one as people also say it is slow). So maybe gen 2 or 3.

it wont be porting MacOS to the iPad. It'll be discontinuing MacOS and having everyone on a derivative of iOS locked up with the App Store at a 30% tax.

This is my wait and see.

The fact that the 1TB and 2TB storage versions of the M1 iPad Pro have 16GB of memory is something. Plus Thunderbolt 4. It's an M1 iMac you can carry around.

If there isn't capability to easily use that hardware as a normal person (as in, creating bespoke apps), it'd all be for naught for me.

I'm due for an iPad upgrade, but I'm waiting until WWDC on June 7th before I decide on what I'll get. I won't make a bet and pay more for hardware I'll never be able to easily take advantage of. Though if an iPad Pro can let me do a lot more with a more advanced Window manager, it could just end up being a laptop that's not a laptop for when I don't want to sit at a desk in front of my workstation.

If you have been passively reading about M1 and haven’t had the chance to upgrade your Air or MBP, just know it’s the real deal. I have never been happier with a laptop than this first generation M1 MBP.

A little wild to think in — poof! — a single year we have gone to the Air, Mac Book Pro, iPad, and iMac sharing the SAME chip! Amazing, can’t wait for the new iPhone...

This was indeed one of Apple's best moves ever. I've been happily using the M1 MacBook Air. So long as you steer clear of heavy apps that aren't M1-optimized, the battery life is insane and the device seems to make use of the high performance cores, which really scream.

I am confident that the iMac will take advantage of that huge wedge of metal to dissipate heat even better than the laptops do. That will allow it to run all the cores all the time. My impression is people will be extremely happy with this hardware.

I'm a total fanatic. I'll be dumping all my money into this new gear on April 30th.

From the grandparent comment:

> I have never been happier with a laptop than this first generation M1 MBP.

I always skip the first generation of any Apple product. The M1 adoption cycle was infested with hype and was somewhat a hacky process, especially for the developer software ecosystem, and it is still immature, un-optimised and still not ready. You still can't even use two monitors on the M1 Macbook Air simultaneously which I can already do on my older Macbook.

The M2 / M3 enabled Mac would be a more worthy upgrade, depending whether or not if they have addressed these issues rather than getting last years model.

From the parent comment:

> I'm a total fanatic. I'll be dumping all my money into this new gear on April 30th.

I hope this is a joke right? Since I would rather dump that money on some cryptocurrency on April 30th, than dump it all on another beautiful expensive downgrade. At least wait until WWDC.

To Downvoters: Given one already has a Macbook, I am in no rush to purchase either last years model or to purchase another shiny new one; especially if it is a first gen M1.

The fanatics will say the same thing in WWDC and in September when they realise their 1st gen transition technology is already replaced. By then the software ecosystem for M1 is hopefully optimised and somewhat stabilised. Plenty of time to wait.

The hype so far is very well justified, though.

There are issues, for sure, the "2 displays, max" limitation, the memory limitation, these are real problems- but they're not hidden away, they're well known and understood and if you can live with that then these are genuinely generational leaps in terms of performance/watt which _really matters_.

Your negativity is misplaced, the machines limitations are well understood and the performance advantages known too.

We don't know what M2/M1X will bring, but if you want huge performance wins _today_ and not hypothetically then the M1 is delivering that.

I'm a little surprised that they didn't do an M2 chip for the iMac. However, perhaps they'll roll that out later this year with a 27" iMac refresh. In any case, the M1 is insanely fast and will be more than fantastic for most people.

> We don't know what M2/M1X will bring, but if you want huge performance wins _today_ and not hypothetically then the M1 is delivering that.

Given what Apple has done for their A10+ series processors, in their iPhones and iPads, I am long term Apple Silicon and not long term M1 which is why I skipping it and ignoring the 'huge performance wins _today_' crowd which means get in the M1 hype now, until the M1X, M2 hype starts, which is pointless and short term.

What I'm saying is either stay on Intel until the Apple Silicon ecosystem is stable, then jump on at least M1X or M2 Macs and higher. Or go all in on M2 later.

It is not even a secret that Apple is 3 years ahead of product releases. Thus it is better to wait. Patience comes to those who wait.

But, I’m sorry, that makes little sense to me.

If I’m in the market for a laptop I would not buy an Intel Mac. Like you said, 3 generations ahead, it would be foolish. If we take what you said at face value then going from the latest Intel Mac to the M1 Mac is enough for most people to upgrade regardless (usual upgrade cycle is 3-5 generations). But I wasn’t making the argument that everyone should throw away their Intel Mac’s- only that if you can live with the limitations (as in, they don’t harm your productivity at all, many non-devs do use only one external screen if they use one at all) then it’s a no brainer and deserves the hype it gets.

Everyone here in this thread is talking about 'upgrading'. We are not talking about new users who don't have a Macbook. Both the comments I replied to previously have stated they 'upgraded' to the M1 Macbooks. I obviously said 'Given one already has a Macbook'.

> If we take what you said at face value then going from the latest Intel Mac to the M1 Mac is enough for most people to upgrade regardless

So you want to tell me that it's worth upgrading to the M1 Macbook in 2020 even when someone already has bought an Intel Macbook in the same year, telling them to waste another $1000+? Most people don't upgrade their Macs like they upgrade their iPhones so your comment about 'upgrading' absolutely makes no sense to the average user. Perhaps it makes sense to the devoted Apple fanatic in the comments above.

They already said they have 'upgraded' to the M1 Macbook and now will buy the latest M1 iMac by saying 'I'll be dumping all my money into this new gear on April 30th.' Again, most people are not Apple 'fanatics' and always listen to whatever Apple is marketing in front of their presentations. Instead they ignore the hype squad, read the disclaimers, compatibility reviews (does it run X or Y) and what will break and then buy in when it makes sense.

So, given one already has an Intel Macbook (Even if it is a 2020 version) and hasn't bought into the M1 mania, why would they want to 'upgrade now' to last year's model when they can wait for M1X or M2 this year for a newer line up? Intel is still supported for several years so there is no hurry. By the time Intel support is phased out, the M1 is ancient history and it will be an M2 or an M3 line up. So it's quite clever to be bullish on Apple Silicon in general and not be long term with M1.

Ok, but here's the rub: YOU said the M1 is three generations ahead of intel.

If I had a 3 generation old CPU I might consider upgrading, if I had a 5 generation old CPU I would certainly upgrade.

So, if you have a macbook that's >2 years old, I would upgrade, based on _your_ own words.

If you can wait for M2, sure, but by that logic you can always wait for the next big thing. You can always wait for the nVidia 40-series.

This was a multi-generational leap, and if you're considering getting a new device, this is a good time. Or you can wait for the M2, which has no specs, no known limitations, no release date, no price information and little other than imagined vague ideas that "it might remove the limitations and be faster".

I'm not even making the argument that M1's can run x86 programs as fast as Intel, but there is an argument there.

It's obviously up to the individual; but "the M2 might come" is a shit response to someone who is considering upgrading a laptop today.

> Ok, but here's the rub: YOU said the M1 is three generations ahead of intel.

Not the exact quote but if it disrupts my software or if my workflow is broken because something is incompatible, then I will stay on something that already works until the new platform is mature with all those programs being compatible. For it being 'a generational leap' is the reason why I wait for the software developers to catch up.

> If you can wait for M2, sure, but by that logic you can always wait for the next big thing. You can always wait for the nVidia 40-series.

Again, it's clear that you misunderstood the whole point. Perhaps you should re-read my actual reason and then you can see why this 'logic' is completely flawed. Just like you said it being a 'multi-generational leap', my point is that it's the first generation of another new processor architecture for macOS which is a significant change to the software ecosystem and it will take time to fully transition the ecosystem to this platform.

That is plenty of time for existing Macbook users to wait. Even especially those who upgraded to the 2020 Intel models. By then, M1 will become superseded by a new revision, M1X, M2 or whatever it is called.

> Or you can wait for the M2, which has no specs, no known limitations, no release date, no price information and little other than imagined vague ideas that "it might remove the limitations and be faster".

Actually, that is the smart thing to do for those looking for a smooth upgrade process and not to run into the hidden incompatibilities or breakages which is what happened on launch day for the M1 Macs. Maybe you already know the exact date of when Intel will become unsupported by macOS, but Apple isn't silly to outright throw in any date on either releasing M1X, M2 or deprecating Intel. There will certainly be a new revision based on Apple Silicon.

Until then, I can keep using my already working Intel Macbook and skip M1 to upgrade to a newer generation Apple Silicon Macbook with the software ecosystem 'actually' being mature.

> I'm not even making the argument that M1's can run x86 programs as fast as Intel, but there is an argument there.

Don't bother. Apple intends to support Intel macOS for years. Whenever the date that Apple will end support for Intel comes, I can keep running those fully supported Intel programs without them breaking or being 'half-supported' on M1.

Wake me up when these programs have fully transitioned AND are optimised for Apple Silicon, then I'll switch to a >M1X or and >M2 Mac. Otherwise, I'll wait.

> It's obviously up to the individual; but "the M2 might come" is a shit response to someone who is considering upgrading a laptop today.

Depends on this 'someone'. Given this is all about 'upgrading today', telling some to 'wait' is much better than telling them to upgrade to M1 now and then the software is not compatible and Apple Silicon support is still immature and it breaks on their new system. With that, you wasted their time and money.

The M1 sceptics and those who are upgrading are waiting for either WWDC or September for the second generation. Which ever comes first, they can wait and are not in a rush. Unlike the hype fanatics like yourself.

In case there's anyone out there with an M1 MBP that desperately wants multiple monitors, if you use a DisplayLink compatible external dock, something about the alternate driver that such a dock uses allows for multiple monitors. I personally use the Dell D6000 to run three external displays in addition to the built-in display off of my M1 MBP and it works quite well. You can see a list of DisplayLink docking stations here [0].

[0] https://www.displaylink.com/products/universal-docking-stati...

Any chance that you know of any good dock station with 3 HDMI ports? Since DP on my monitors is used by desktop GPU.

Good luck. Even with my old intel based Mac I struggled to find a decent dock. Lots of docks have DisplayPorts and hdmi or if you’re unlikely like myself you are forced to use USB C to hdmi dongles.

I haven’t bought a DisplayLink and probably won’t. Once an Arm based Mac comes out with dual monitor support I’m giving my wife the M1 Air and buying a new one.

I guess I'll just go with hardware splitter then.

Is there any adapter that will let me run my 2 LG 5k monitors on a M1 MacBook Pro?

This is one of those very rare events where the 1st generation product was actually a huge leap forward and the hype was totally justified. It's actually made a mockery of the ancient wisdom of "Always avoid 1st generation Apple products" rule. You are wrong.

> This is one of those very rare events where the 1st generation product was actually a huge leap forward and the hype was totally justified.

I'm pretty much laughing at the fanatics here and the early adopters, especially the existing power users and developers who went all in and bought it on launch day and until now who were hit with multiple bugs, unstable 'workarounds', beta preview software issues, recovery OS failures and so on with the immature software ecosystem on the M1 which they don't tell you about here. That was the hype.

I am long term Apple Silicon, but not any 1st generation Apple product or even M1.

> It's actually made a mockery of the ancient wisdom of "Always avoid 1st generation Apple products" rule. You are wrong.

Was this you with the 'fanatics' on launch day suggesting macOS for Docker on Apple Silicon at the time? [0]

Say I immediately joined the hype train in November, you're telling me that I have to wait almost half a year since the launch of M1 for Docker to be stable? You might as well skip last year's model and go for the M1X or M2 Macbook. No point chasing a 6 month old product when the software was not even ready and Apple will refresh the line up to M1X or M2 this year.

For professionals and existing Mac users, the rule still stands. It's always about the tiny small prints that Apple discloses or what they just don't tell you until you actually buy it but it's clear that many others have already done this for me; Including yourself.

I don't upgrade my Macs as if they are iPhones. Unlike most here. By the time I move to Apple Silicon, all these issues and limitations will be fixed on a M1X/M2 Mac or higher. No rush to get last year's model and plenty of time to wait for the Intel Macs to be unsupported and I will be getting a newer generation Apple Silicon-based Mac. Not specifically M1.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25081189

Thanks I’m thinking about it. But is it good for ios development? It’s the only thing holding me back right now. Currently on 2012 16 inch MBP.

M1 macs can run iOS apps natively, so I am guessing that the emulation for iOS development is a whole lot better. Sorry I can't really give you anything more concrete than that.

I would wait until the fall, though, it is likely that there will be a 15+ inch MBP with a new apple chip.

The M1 feels like magic in this power/thermal envelope.

It’s almost as fast as a top of the line desktop CPU in many tasks, but it accomplishes this in the envelope of a power efficient laptop.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do with the larger MacBook Pro models.

I sold my nearly maxed out 16" MacBook Pro for an M1 Air. I hated the 16" with a passion, but the Air is my favourite computer I've ever owned.

It sounds like a criticism, but the best thing about it is that it gives me absolutely no cause to ever think about it. I don't get irritated by it being burning hot and loud as hell because it's always cool and silent. I don't have to worry about battery life because it just lasts all day. I don't constantly bump stuff on the Touch Bar because it has actual function keys.

It just gets the hell out of the way and lets me do my job. That would be enough, but it's also drastically faster than the 16" at literally everything I do day-to-day, which is nice.

care to share hardware specs of your M1 Air?

16gb ram, base SSD. You cannot go wrong with that. Great machine I'm typing on this message

16 gig and 512g ssd. It gets like 10% better ssd performance and the drive usage is less than reported for the 8 gig models.

Sure: 16” was 6-core i7, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 5500M 4GB GPU

Air is M1 with the 8-core GPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD

Went from a late 2017 15” MBP i7 4core 16GB, RAM 512GB, Radeon Pro 560 with 4GB of GDDR5 to the same Air config. Unbelievable change.

I have a 2019 16": 8-core i9, 32GB RAM, 5500M 4GB GPU.

Worst Apple product I have ever owned. Overheating, slow (forever throttling), battery hog.

Can't wait for the Apple Silicon 14/16" MBPs this year.

My biggest concern is the screen size. Does it get in the way?

It’s a 13” display. You probably already know whether that’s enough or not - the processor can’t affect that.

I do miss having the extra screen space, but even 16” felt like a bit of a compromise compared to being docked with a 27” monitor.

If you don’t mind a little blurriness you can always run it at a higher scaling mode and get effectively the same screen space as the 16”, just shrunk down. I go the opposite way—I’m willing to sacrifice space for perfect 1:1 pixel mapping.

Have the USB-C PD issues been resolved? Like hubs frying the motherboard for some bad PD implementation?

The M1 has the necessary hardware to run virtualization. Apple could decide to allow VMWare or Parallels to bring desktop virtualization software to the iPad. You could have an all-in-one device for casual use, note taking, art and media consumption that turns into a capable Linux desktop at will. There's even 16GB RAM options available to make that reasonably comfortable, as well as a port to connect to a dock.

But I don't think that matches with what Apple considers the iPad to be, so we won't see it. Especially because virtualization would imply virtualized macOS too. I bet it remains amazing hardware crippled by software flexibility - from my perspective at least. It's hardware I'd really want to buy but really can't justify.

All the pieces are there in hardware, only limited by Apple's software choices. A shame, really.

If it were possible to run Linux on the iPad Pro, I would upgrade in a heartbeat to a high-end configuration.

https://getutm.app

Impressive, but unfortunately not in the AppStore :(

Same. I wouldn't need to give it a second thought. Such an amazing piece of hardware

If peripheral input works and networking and all. And 0.5-1TB storage is just expensive, not ridiculously expensive.

Is there a performance penalty with virtualization on the M1?

Based on what I've read about the Mac M1, it's hard to notice.

Usually about 10-25%, I've heard. Depends how often your workflow vmexits.

The fastest available ARM device in the consumer Windows ecosystem, the Microsoft Surface Pro X, is significantly slower than a virtualised instance of Windows on a MacBook Air. There is a penalty, but it doesn't matter that much in practice (just reduced battery life).

> Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This means that every Apple device sold, from material collection, component manufacturing, assembly, transport, customer use, charging, all the way through recycling and material recovery, will be 100 percent carbon neutral.

This sounds impressive. I wonder how that works in practice especially the parts of the supply chain that Apple doesn't control directly, like "material collection". Are they just planting a bunch of trees, buying CO2 certificates, or are they actually making the entire supply chain carbon neutral?

Even Apple corp has to buy co2 certificates, the staff need to take flights, and work in non 100% sustainable buildings. What matters though is that Apple is considering the carbon costs of vendors and suppliers. So all thing equal, low carbon emitting vendors will be preferred.

Anyone know anything about the impact of rare earth material mining/refining?

I'm hoping this leads to an announcement of some kind of hypervisor support in iPadOS 15. I would imagine that would come at WWDC if it's coming. Seems like it would allow software development on the iPad while retaining app sandboxing.

This is a incredible idea. Suddenly the iPad would be a general purpose computer and its utility would skyrocket.

The product page is up indicating 128GB base storage and an interesting RAM note:

> 8GB RAM on models with 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB storage

> 16GB RAM on models with 1TB or 2TB storage

I believe this is the first time has ever advertised RAM in an iPad or iPhone.

Also the first time they shipped different amounts of ram stratified by storage choice.

I'm pretty sure the 2018 iPad Pro with 1 TB also had more RAM than the other models.

It had 6gb of ram but only 4 was available to apps. The extra 2 went to multitasking.

Configurations are expensive. If you have 2 RAM configs and 4 storage configs you have 10 different models. This way they only have 5 models.

They did do it before, but it wasn't advertised.

Does anyone know what the reason for this might be? (doubling the RAM because the SSD is larger)

Also are there any performance implications to this? Should I get the 1TB version for the 16GB RAM because it'll be a snappier machine and more future-proofed?

If they as others have suggested include a hypervisor that would allow MacOS to run on it, not only would they probably sell out overnight, but it would require more RAM.

Its to reduce the number of SKUs they have. Its common for hardware to have only the high end specs matched with other high end specs because its not often someone wants the absolute best of one spec and the worst of another spec.

Lots of people in here talking about trying to use to a tablet for productivity, but finding iPad OS a bit lacking. I'd cautiously suggest you check out the Samsung Tab S7(+).

It is likely considered a worse tablet by many, but Samsung Dex [1] actually works quite well and using something like UserLAnd [2] you can have a full Linux environment (without root). I'm still experimenting a bit with the latter, but seeing that Android is still Linux under the hood I'm expecting it to work out in the end. I plan to run code-server [3] on it which would provide a full IDE.

[1]: https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/dex/

[2]: https://github.com/CypherpunkArmory/UserLAnd

[3]: https://github.com/cdr/code-server

I've been considering this.

One small question: how is the front facing camera? One of my necessary uses for a tablet would be video conferencing because the camera on my ThinkPad is not so good.

I think it's pretty good? Certainly better than what I expect of an average (non-Mac) laptop. It is placed on the long side of the screen, which makes sense if you want to use it for video conferencing (in contrast to the iPad, which has the camera on the short side).

I also recommend termux, code-server works on termux flawlessly.

https://termux.com/

Seconded. I got my S7+ two months ago and havent used my (otherwise beloved) thinkpad since. It is incredibly fast and super responsive, especially the pen! Also the (OLED) screen is naturally gorgeous and the microSD slot a nice bonus.

As for apps I mostly use OneDrive, Office, Teams, Termux and Total Commander. Samsungs Browser is also pretty nice, the automatic dark mode is amazing and it has quite good integrated adblock options.

I wish the iPad pro was not such a locked down operating system. I just want to run a web browser that is not safari, and visual studio code.

You can run Chrome and Firefox on an iPad.

The engines are still Safari Webkit, not Chromium/Gecko.

Its not the real Chrome or Firefox. The iPad version is not even close to the real thing on MacOS or Win10.

Understood, didn't realise they were all the same

At that point, what's the difference to MBA? iPad will always be subpar in my eyes due to poor lappability in "laptop" mode. And I realised I don't want my work screen to be covered in fingerprints.

Re fingerprints: I got an iPad Pro last year, no screen protector or anything, and I do not notice any fingerprints on it after nearly daily use since last June or so when I bought it.

My iPad is covered in fingerprints all the time, even though I don’t use it all that heavily. They are visible when brightness is low, as well as when it reflects surrounding light at particular angles.

I was considering getting a paper-like screen protector (which can also make drawing with Pencil more comfortable) but I’m torn on the issue. On one hand, fingerprints are annoying, and thoroughly cleaning the screen is a hassle since not using any protector I have to be mindful of having a rogue speck scratch it permanently. On the other hand, a screen protector negatively affects image reproduction, and a poorly designed one could imaginably leave permanent marks on the underlying screen through its use.

Does anyone have experience using paper-like screen protectors with iPad? Can they leave marks?

I've used paper-like with my iPad, but I had to throw it away because of how many scratches it got, and it also made the colors look washed out.

I'm glad someone brought this up. I always feel like I'm just stupid or missing something important when people start talking about the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement. As far as I can tell, it looks like it would be a huge pain in the ass to use anywhere other than on a stable flat surface.

And yeah, having to constantly clean a screen that big would drive me crazy. I'd much rather work in an environment where there's no expectation on the part of app developers that I have a touchscreen.

I like to have a touchscreen.

And... no Touch ID (unlike the iPad Air) [1][2].

I recently bought the iPad Air after having the iPad Pro and hating Face ID on it. It's bad enough that I have Face ID on my iPhone. I hate it so much.

Face ID is such a terrible UX that has caused me to enter my passcode to unlock more times a day than I care to count. Even if you ignore the fact that they don't work with masks, it's still a bad idea.

The false negative rate is incredibly high and a certain number of failures will trigger a passcode requirement and there's nothing you can do about that. That threshold is set by Apple.

Just give me Touch ID. I don't care that the false positive rate is too high (in your opinion, Apple; this was a state reason to get rid of it).

Another UX problem: when I had a home button I could exit the app by testing it. Now I have to swipe up. But which way I swipe depends on how the app is rotated. I could bring up my list of apps with a double tap of the home button. Now I have to do a weird swipe up-right-up to get the same functionality.

Just die, Face ID.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

[2]: https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/specs/

Touch ID doesn’t work for me, doesn’t recognise my fingers most of the time.

Die, Touch ID.

Same here, I was really getting sick of re-training the damn thing every time the seasons changed. Drier air and colder? TouchID drops to maybe 10% success. Humid and warm again? Same. Took a shower or thoroughly washed your hands in the last 30 minutes? Or were swimming recently? TouchID doesn't work at all. Warmed your hands in front of a heater for a minute? TouchID's dead for a while. Ugh.

Masks are a problem with FaceID, of course, but otherwise it's a huge improvement, in my experience. I gather some people didn't have the trouble I did with Touch ID, so maybe for them FaceID is worse.

That's quite strange. My understanding was that most fingerprint readers were constantly updating their image of the fingerprint. For example shortly after enrolling my finger or after doing some manual work that made my hands feel raw it was noticeably less accurate to recognized my finger on the Pixel 4a. However I could quickly lock+unlock my phone with different areas of my finger and then it worked reliably.

Both!

That is strange. I don’t remember FaceID failing for me without a mask on. Do you have any ideas on why it doesn’t work for you? FaceID is frictionless now. At first I missed not having to look at the phone to unlock it, but when compared to using our iPad with touchID it’s much easier.

I love the move to Face ID (pre-covid). I would accept Touch ID as a back up, but never as my primary.

> Another UX problem: when I had a home button I could exit the app by testing it. Now I have to swipe up. But which way I swipe depends on how the app is rotated.

It's always swipe up relative to the bottom of the app. That makes sense.

> I could bring up my list of apps with a double tap of the home button. Now I have to do a weird swipe up-right-up to get the same functionality.

This is incorrect. You need only swipe up 20% of the screen or so. You should feel haptic feedback. No right motion needed.

And if you want to swipe directly to previous apps, simply swipe left or right on the bottom bar.

Asia has been familiar with the limitations of Face ID since it debuted, COVID just brought it to the West.

It's common (as everyone is now well aware) to wear a face mask when sniffly or coughing, but also, many in Asia wear a face mask when driving a moped, to try and filter out some of the pollution.

I get the vague impression that Apple is moving toward having both a thumbprint reader and Face ID, which I would welcome. It annoys me that it's taken them so long to roll out the iOS update which will let my Watch unlock my phone, that by the time I get it I probably won't be required to wear a mask in public anymore.

What kinds of iPadOS workflows benefit from this most? The device never seemed lacking in performance.

I suppose it's not as much a major change but more like an upgrade or evolution to get feature parity. If it turns out you can make more devices use a SoC you already have you can scale up production of that SoC and get the benefit of scale.

I agree. Are there really that many people using iPads for high performance video/audio editing? Everyone I know uses their iPad as a video player or recipe displayer.

Isn't that where the regular iPad and iPad Air come in? I know a couple of graphic designers that could get by with the regular, consumer iPads but the Pro is far more ideal for them.

Probably doesn't qualify as "high performance", I've done video editing which stitches together a few 4K video sources. Gen 3 handles it without any stutter, lag, or heat.

I see no compelling reason to upgrade, but also, I didn't expect to. This just means that people who get an iPad Pro will now get a nicer one. Good for them.

Maybe it's not even about more performance, it's simply about economics of scale. It's cheaper to just make more m1 chips than to create a new process to create a worse m1-mobile version. Paradoxically you might get more speed for less cost.

Their entire current lineup has all 8 cores plus 7 or 8 GPU cores too.

I was thinking that they'd sell a 6-core M1 in the AppleTV, but I guess that's not happening and the package is too big to go in a phone. Given their die size and even amazing return rates, there are hundreds of thousands of m1 chips that simply aren't being used. That seems like a lot of waste for a company that talks about going green. Maybe they have another project in the works.

Apple ships hundreds of millions of iPhones that has Axx chip with full CPU cores for all SKUs. Much smaller amount of M1 would be dropped than A14.

I have the previous version with the keyboard, and I love it as a general tablet. I use it for writing down ideas, reading, and an occasional game. But, there’s nothing in this new model that seems to be worth upgrading for.

I could never see my iPad Pro as a workstation replacement. Is that what they plan on doing? I don’t see the benefit.

You can run drawing apps on it in conjunction with Pencil. Those could benefit from increased power if you're working with many layers.

I agree with the ones below who say that it’s because of economy of scale, but I also think they made this choice because we’ll see more at the WWDC and in the next years. Apple keeps saying the iPad is a computer, when in fact it isn’t. But the iPad is capable of many things the Mac can’t do. It has the pencil, it can become more portable when used alone, it has 5G, cameras, the lidar and more. As long as they can sell both, they’ll keep doing it, but I think at some point 13” Macs (at least the Air and the cheapest Pro) will be replaced by the iPad, when it will have a better software. After the Apple Silicon announcement many choices started making sense, and in a similar way this iPad will be a way to test in which direction the computer market will take.

My thoughts as well, I freaking love my iPad pro and it already is good enough at anything I throw it. I reminds me of the iPhone 6s which I kept for like 5 years, until recently where the scheduled obsolescence forced me to change phone.

Lightroom is still sluggish on current gen

The ram boost will be useful for procreate. It limits the number of layers you can use and that limit is on the verge of in the way for me on the 4gb ipad.

It could also enable better external monitor support with a browser on one monitor and an app on the internal.

Text selection, and IOS keyboard autocorrect will forever fuck this platform until they fix it. Autocorrect on my IOS device is so dam bad now. "Fir" instead of "for" - no manner of resetting dictionaries will fix it. Think you can catch it? Well IOS will re-write the whole sentence for you when it thinks it knows the context resulting in utter garbage being output.

Using mail on IOS? Try clicking on a red underlined word to see the spelling correction. Its impossible. Its seriously so dam bad is embarrassing and ruins a very capable platform.

Before you press spacebar, click on the most lefthand suggestion on the suggested words, and it will stop the autocorrect.

I recently decided to get a Macbook Air over an iPad Pro(would have waited for the refresh for the iPad as it was already heavily rumored). I really wanted to want the iPad, but the software is still holding it back, and other than a tablet/convertable form factor I like and a few things it affords like being a decent color eReader, there's nothing that I can do exceptionally better on the iPad compared to a Mac, but several I can do on the Mac over the iPad.

So now I've got a MacBook Air I'm happy with, but my 6th gen iPad will soldier on doing the few things the form factor affords such as being my large color eReader for certain books and the occasional lazy from the bed web browsing while I rely on the Mac for anything heavier.

This so easily could be my primary computing device. I've been an iPad user since the first gen and its my goto for anything that isn't work related and that's only because I can't easily write software on it.

I understand there are more people interested in the use cases apple illustrated in their presentation than software developers who just want to run docker on their ipads so I wont hold my breath.

But I'd love to actually justify the need for an M1 to be in an ipad.

Yes, I think iPadOS is lagging behind the hardware. Hopefully WWDC will show us something that tells they “get it” this year, rather then spending time on widgets and app management.

What I personally want is smoother peripheral support, like working directly on external hard drives and NAS storage both for coding and photo library management. No transfers, no syncing, just working on it.

The Files app doesn’t feel right, it still feels like a hamstrung file management island in the OS.

Anyone remember the Ubuntu Edge? [0]

Perhaps with todays announcement, a bit into the future we will see a new class of phone that unfolds into a tablet and even docks to a screen with accompanying magic keyboard and trackpad.

I know, it's a real shame that I am probably dreaming. But Apple will probably never release a similar phone as it'll cannibalise one of the other products.

Maybe someone can prod shuttleworth again and see if the time for this idea can be realised? I'm sure soon it will be.

I also hope that this trend of arm minimization can continue so an idea like morph [1] will one day be come also.

[0] - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-gTobCJHs

Samsung phones can do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_DeX

Samsung even offered a full Ubuntu desktop for the phones, but stopped supporting it rather quickly.

I sometimes plug in my Android Phone to a USB-C dock (with a keyboard, mouse and monitor) and use it like a desktop. Android has a desktop mode that is actually surprisingly nice. It's like Dex, but doesn't do the remote desktop via USB thing... It just displays on the monitor.

> Perhaps with todays announcement, a bit into the future we will see a new class of phone that unfolds into a tablet and even docks to a screen with accompanying magic keyboard and trackpad.

Or the motorola phones before that or the windows version of that or the nokia n900 or maruos or ubuntu touch or... . This has been tried many times before, so I am skeptical that just "a bit into the future" will finally be the time.

I have a 2018 iPad Pro and it still feels wildly overpowered. I can't really see myself upgrading for a newer chip. They need to further improve on the software to make it more realistic as a high performance work environment. Until then, I'll continue using laptops, and my iPad will remain primarily for web browsing and media consumption.

I tried to use an iPad air since the processor is more than adequate for me.

The software experience is trash.

Great for single tasking but just awful for doing two things or more. Facetime inexplicably behaves differently when minimized for example.

For this Mother's Day I am thinking of getting my old mother either an iPad Pro (M1) or Macbook Air (M1). Emphasized on "old" because she is technically quite illiterate. She does use iPhone though. I wonder what will be the better gift for her? Is iPad quite foolproof? I am thinking of getting the magic keyboard as well and the mouse in case she needs a mouse.

Her workflow most likely just browsing, email, FaceTime, reading, thats all.

Go ipad. My parents both have ipads, works great!

If she is familiar with iPhone, she will be right at home with iPad Pro after some small adjustments.

As for being foolproof, it is about as foolproof as an iPhone is. So if you count iPhones as foolproof, then you should be good to go.

MacOS, for all its good, is an entirely separate beast, and she will essentially have to learn a new OS, with all the caveats that come with it, not even mentioning foolproofness and such.

For your specific scenario, sounds like iPad Pro is the better of the two options.

There’s the iPad mini or Air as well. None of those use cases requires the performance of the iPad Pro. It’s easy to use and just like a big iPhone if that’s what you want to do.

Yeah, I'd go for something smaller like an iPad mini, or regular iPad. The iPad Pros are big.

The benefit of iOS is there is almost no way for them to mess it up, no matter what they click on. Troubleshooting is usually always turn it off and on, or uninstall the app. I have been pleased with the results of giving all of the older and non tech literate people in my family iPads.

I do not see why a non tech literate person would need an iPad Pro though. iPad Air (bigger screen is more comfortable for older eyes) or even Mini should easily suffice.

I'd go with the iPad for some casual content consumption, but in my opinion even the iPad Pro is totally overkill. iPad Air has already been upgraded to the new design and is much cheaper.

iPad for sure! I went with the mini for my parents.

Since my mom moved to an iPad for her general internet consumption, my thankless tech support tasks dropped to zero.

I'd go with an iPad over a MacBook Air, especially for the much better FaceTime camera. My parents (~80) use iPad Airs and thought the Pencil looked like a silly product until I convinced them to try using mine for a few days.

The current iPad, iPad Air, and iPad Pros all work with some version of the Pencil. Any recent iPad will have 1080p FaceTime rather than 720p of the MacBook Air. This new iPad Pro has even higher resolution with automatic panning that could be useful if they want to set up the iPad on the kitchen counter and walk around while they talk to you.

YMMV. My formerly technically competent mother can no longer learn new skills. We've tried for years to teach her how to text, initiate FaceTime, play Word with Friends, etc.

My advice to future eldercare providers is to pick a tech stack, lock down those skills, and then stick to it.

Wow this is a good advice!

I'm not disagreeing with you, but picking a tech stack and sticking too it kinda sucks. You never know when the manufacturer is gonna do something to screw you (MacBook keyboards from 2016-2019). And then you're stuck.

I'll echo the other comments about the iPad being the better choice in this case (though you may as well get the Air rather than the Pro - you can get the same Magic Keyboard as the 11-inch Pro for typing).

As well as being more familiar right away because it will mostly feel like a bigger iPhone, it's a better device for reading (put the Kindle app on there with a Kindle Unlimited subscription for a bajillion books and some free magazine subscriptions), it's got a better camera for FaceTime, if she's at all artistically minded there are a ton of excellent drawing apps to go with the Apple Pencil, etc.

The one big caveat I would point out is that the gesture controls have really poor discovery, so you may want to print out and laminate a cheat sheet (like the illustrated versions on https://ipadpilotnews.com/2020/04/all-the-gestures-ipad-pilo...) for easy reference.

Correct me if my layman's understanding is wrong, but the M1 in an iPad is not as significant a change as it was in the Macbook/Mini, isn't that correct?

iPad was already using Apple's Arm A12/13 chip, etc so this is kind of incremental?

Geekbench: iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation), A12z: Single-core: 1128, Multi-core: 4713

MacBook Air, M1: Single-core: 1730, Multi-core: 7640

Its a 50% performance boost over the last ipad pro and a 2-4x memory increase. Thats pretty massive imo

How long before MacOS and iPadOS have enough feature parity that they get merged?

Probably never.

The divergence between macOS and ipadOS is not technical, it's that Apple believes a touch-oriented and a pointer-oriented interface are completely different things.

While that makes sense, Apple's recent changes with the iPad Keyboard case adding a trackpad makes me think that they might have something else brewing for the long term. Time will tell, but I would love to see more MacOS applications like XCode become available on the iPad.

Edit: Also the fact that MacOS has been changing the UI to make it more touch friendly, for example: new control center.

Plus the Big Sur interface changes seem to be touch-oriented. They made a lot of pointer targets much bigger than they used to be, and added a new special window type for modals.

https://sixcolors.com/link/2020/11/craig-federighi-says-touc...

Sure, but it's not really like Craig would say "yeah, touchscreen Macs are coming eventually, and this redesign is preparing for that" if they were. Apple doesn't do that. What I would glean from this is that they're not coming soon, and it's probably not going to be a conventional "add a touch screen to an existing interface" type deal. At the very least it leaves the option open for them here.

Quite honestly I don't think Xcode is ready for the iPad. It's a complicated software that has a lot of bugs that has to be fixed manually a lot of times by accessing or clearing files directly. I'm pretty sure they have a version of it already running on the iPad but the workflow or software quality is just no there yet. However if SwiftUI becomes the standard I can imagine an Xcode light as a starting point with way less panels and options.

iPadOS, iOS, and tvOS are all the same operating system with different user interfaces.

I think eventually macOS will be too.

With BigSur, users can run ipad and iphone apps natively on an M1 mac.

It's not a large stretch to see some overlap between allowing macOS features on a large screen mobile device.

> It's not a large stretch to see some overlap between allowing macOS features on a large screen mobile device.

It is in fact a rather large stretch. macOS allowing the larger targets of iPad applications is a rather different proposition than macOS's rather small targets being on touch devices.

ipadOS has pointer support and the preferred way to do pointer interactions on macOS seems to be touchpads (not mice), so the gap is definitely not as large anymore.

> ipadOS has pointer support

Yes, but it does not mandate a pointer.

> the preferred way to do pointer interactions on macOS seems to be touchpads (not mice), so the gap is definitely not as large anymore.

A touchpad is a pointer device with a similar level of precision and interaction as a mouse. One completely unlike touch.

> A touchpad is a pointer device with a similar level of precision and interaction as a mouse. One completely unlike touch.

The main difference is if you aim by using a pointer on the screen or if you aim by touching what you want to interact with. Some things like gestures are basically the same (or could be).

> The main difference is if you aim by using a pointer on the screen or if you aim by touching what you want to interact with.

Yes. That is not a small difference. That is, in fact, a huge difference.

The buttons on my phone are physically larger than those on my laptop's screen, yet they are significantly harder to hit reliably. Manipulating text remains a chore on touch device, except when those touch devices provide a pointer erzats (of which Apple removed a large part of the convenience when they broke selection support with the deprecation of 3D touch).

That might be part, but it's not the whole picture.

The only way to put software on the iPad is through Apple's app store, which is a hill they seem awfully willing to die on. It's possible they give that up for the iPad but hold onto the iPhone, but that would weaken the PR value of their security argument.

I've worked a full week away from an office using only VNC even before Apple added mouse support. It's fine. Touch-oriented vs Mouse-oriented is an odd philosophy to hold when it's used to oppose a workflow being somewhat supported vs not at at all.

If the kernel is the same, I imagine at some point it is going to happen.

Yet almost every marketing photo of the iPad Pro shows it with a keyboard + trackpad attachment.

I'd emphatically disagree.

Touch and Pointer are different in emphasis not user intent. User Intent can span across device classes for different contexts -- i.e. jotting notes in a long form document in a meeting vs. at your laptop in private, all revolve around making progress on a text based deliverable.

Before recent MacCatalyst developments, the UI libraries were on different continents with CC and UIKit. Now, the major differences are design limited, not API limited.

UIMenuBuilder and UIHoverGestureRecognizer tells you most everything you need to know about how Apple is viewing the touch vs. pointer environment.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uimenubuilde...

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uihovergestu...

I don't think it's about features, but mostly about the input methods. Until this day we (as a society) haven't found a way to combine pointer based and touch based UIs in a single product in a way that at least one of them doesn't suck hard.

Apple has repeatedly denied that whenever it's come up. MacOS and iPadOS are completely different platforms with different goals.

My guess is that they prefer to sell more than one device to everybody, so not anytime soon.

Really interested to hear Apple’s excuse not allowing to run MacOS on M1 iPad pro with an external monitor and keyboard. The standard "optimized for different use case" argument doesn't make that much sense with that setup.

> My guess is that they prefer to sell more than one device to everybody, so not anytime soon.

Sharing the same OS never precluded people having both an iphone and an ipad.

They just split off iPadOS from iOS, so it seems unlikely.

I would expect an announcement during the next WWDC.

You can already use iPadOS apps on MacOS with m1 right? So maybe that's why you would pay more for the Mac versus the iPad.

1TB harddrive and 16GB of RAM puts the ipad at $1,800.

Macbook Air with the same RAM/storage is about $1,600.

If you want to compete, you need a $350 keyboard for the ipad which makes it a full $550 more expensive.

As to tradeoffs, you get a better conferencing camera and touch on the ipad, but you get a better trackpad and two thunderbolt ports on the macbook.

I wonder even if that never comes to fruition, there'll be a "hackpad" that's essentially flashing/installing macOS onto an iPad Pro. Same M1 SOC hypothetically should be straightforward.

A moment of silence for the guys working on the MS Surface devices.

There are still reasons to get the Surface instead of an iPad, but the M1 in an iPad sounds like a hit.

Apple needs to do something about the software situation. You can write computer programs on a Surface. You can do CAD and play AAA games on a Surface. Windows, for all its flaws, does have a lot of software that targets it. Big things, and the long tail. iPad OS is rather limited.

I have an older iPad Pro and I like it better than any laptop I've had. It doesn't have any configuration to tune, it doesn't require a 2 hour update every time you turn it on (like my Surface Pro did). But, you can't deny that it is limited; you have to SSH somewhere to do real work, and its hardware isn't exposed to web applications. (For example, it has a 120Hz display, but web apps can't use it.)

Even with these limitations, it's still my favorite mobile device. For $20/month I have unlimited 4G anywhere in the country, and so sshing somewhere to do real work is no problem. (The whole pandemic thing really killed my desire to travel, though, so it just sits on a table until I use it to read a book or something.) But, there's no need to upgrade it; it's fast and the battery lasts forever. Only better software would make me want to upgrade, and it's not there yet. People still treat the iPad like a toy. I'm willing to treat it as a computer, but people that make software I use aren't quite there yet ;)

Wow, as a Surface and an iPad owner I really disagree. The M1 is great. But iOS means that the iPad is mostly a device for media consumption and maybe writing or drawing. It had all the power you need to do that with the A12.

The surface can run JetBrains, Godot, Blender, a bunch of IDEs that make it useful as productivity device for a person in tech. Most people don't need that, so I am sure the iPad will sell great. But there is still a need for laptops/ tablets (whatever weird hybrid that is becoming) that are not locked down.

Until the iPad Pro gets a real desktop OS there will always be reason to buy a Surface.

Yep. M1 changes nothing for iPad, it has been limited by software not CPU for years now.

No moment of silence needed. I have a iPad Pro 12.9 and its awesome for consuming content and drawing. For everything else there is a real computer. I can't use the iPad to program my Drone, or Run a CNC, or Play steam games, or link to the Oculus, or run VS Code, or use Fusion 360, or Run Linux or Windows VM's. Or, or... or ...

I love my iPad, but it is very, very far from a good computer interface right now.

> program my Drone, or Run a CNC, or Play steam games, or link to the Oculus, or run VS Code, or use Fusion 360, or Run Linux or Windows VM's

But you don't have to use (and pay extra for) a Surface for that. I'm not saying the iPad is a computer. I'm saying that iPad is a touch+ink device superior to the Surface (most models of which are kinda mediocre computers IMO).

You are right that I don't need a surface to perform general computing tasks. All I am saying is that, I could do those things with a Surface. I can not do those things with an iPad. The Surface line is is DEAD once you can run a desktop OS on an iPad. Heck, I would go so far to say that would be a redefining moment for computing in general.

When you can play DOTA2 on an iPad I'll be impressed

That seems very feasible

I see a lot people bashing on how iPadOS is holding back the hardware of the iPad Pro. I totally understand where this train of thoughts is coming from. But how many of these people actually tried to use the iPad Pro to its fullest extent as the main computer? I suspect most of the people here are accustomed to MacOS and never really dug iPadOS for productivity for extended periods of time.

Besides, the iPad Pro is really not designed nor advertised as replacement for MacBook. They have very different audiences in mind. Of course it sucks for the desktop tasks that MacOS was built for. But the iPad Pro beats the Mac for artists, students, and researchers in most tasks.

I’ve been using an iPad Pro for all of my work as a mathematical physicist for many years. I think the iPadOS is absolutely fantastic for what I do on a daily basis: editing and reading PDFs (LiquidText), writing with LaTeX (TeX Writer), opening a ton of Safari tabs. It can even do an okay job on editing videos (LumaFusion), photos (Darkroom), writing codes (Textastic, Working Copy). Of course it’s not the best for all of these things, but it excels on where the MacOS sucks, and vice versa.

As for the new iPad Pro announcement, I absolutely don’t think the M1 is a waste. I can totally see myself utilising the extra RAM to stop Safari tabs from unloading, to working on larger workspace in LiquidText, to editing more tracks in LumaFusion, and etc.

I think the real question is, suppose they make this thing 10x as fast, with 10x as much storage, and 5x the pixel density, 5x the max brightness, unlimited battery life.

Would I get one (at >$1k)? The answer is likely no, unless it's very cheap.

It's an absolutely lovely little device to have laying around on the coffee table / couch, to read the Economist, turn on some music, watch a Netflix episode. But not at the price levels it's at.

I can easily do without it, because it's still not replacing my iPhone or Macbook.

It's great to see the innovation because these features will be part of the $300 entry level iPad in 5 years. But the added value just doesn't seem to be there for me to be an early adopter of the latest Pro models. All the improved features don't really help me read the news any better or stream a show any better. And while I'm happy to pay $1500 for a Macbook due to its deep functionality, I'm only willing to pay a few hundred for a consumption device like the iPad.

I feel the iPad is kind of getting squeezed by a much improved bigger iPhone and smaller and better Macbook. The last iPhone screen is 75% larger than the iPhone 4, making lots of consumption in an iOS interface doable. The Macbook Airs are powerful, slim, great battery life, lightweight. There's the Apple TV / Smart TVs for watching shows. For me I either have to be way to rich to care, or the iPad to be so cheap that it's worth having on the side.

I have the 12.9 iPad Pro (last generation now) and I really want to like but I can't - I keep going back to using a MBP.

What do you find lacking in the iPad Pro? I'm curious, because I have a 12.3" pixel slate that I'm not a fan of, because it's too big to work well as a tablet (cumbersome to hold, etc.), and inconvenient to attach the somewhat-wobbly keyboard to it, so it feels like it works well for neither use-case. I'm sure the iPad software is better, but the size seems like a contradiction.

My daily driver is my 16" MBP, and while I'm thinking of getting a plain-vanilla 10.2" iPad, I can't think of any cases where I'd want a bigger one.

When they announced it I was briefly excited at the prospect of finally seeing macOS on an iPad, but for some reason Apple continues to be stubborn about it.

I don't like Apple at all, but I have to admit that HW-wise this iPad really looks interesting.

Now, please Apple, keep the bootloader unlocked (or unlockable), let us install Asahi Linux (or any other distro, really) and I'll buy this thing.

Would be interesting to see if people will manage to run macos on this.

So do these things run Xcode and Terminal, or not?

No shell access or Xcode.

I haven't used it, but I've heard of others using Blink Shell [1] with Mosh [2] very effectively.

[1] https://blink.sh/

[2] https://mosh.org/

I use Blink regularly, and it’s great. The only issue is that the keyboard’s Cmd button gets “stuck” in software sometimes. Blink added a modal to warn you to tap the key to fix it,

I _love_ Blink Shell on my iPad – it's great for connecting to other machines, and I've had some success setting up a dev environment in EC2. but what I really want is for my iPad to be a complete development environment.

Apple has lidar on this iPad. At some point, Elon has to concede that lidar is not too expensive to put in a car, right? I understand that not all lidar is the same in precision and cost. But surely some lidar is better than no lidar.

Automotive lidar is a very different beast than this. 200m range vs 5m just to start.

I ended up using my iPad Pro 2018 as a third screen (via Airplay) below my 4k monitor. My MBP sits on the left. It‘s an excellent setup running iTerm on the iPad screen, calendar or email on the MBP screen and editor / IDE on the 4k display.

Other than that I use the iPad Pro for occasional couch surfing. iOS is just too limited to use the iPad Pro for pro use-cases.

Would love to have macOS on the iPad though. Sometimes I connect the iPad to my MBP via Airplay and do some coding on it (using macOS with a full keyboard / mouse) in another room, away from my desk.

> iOS (sic) is just too limited to use the iPad Pro for pro use-cases.

Too limited for all pro use cases or too limited for your use cases?

I have an iPad with Apple Pencil, thought I would use it but hardly ever. Don't think I need or have time between Laptop and Smartphone.

Might as well be running MacOS with those specs

The iPad now has hardware virtualisation support. Indicative of big changes to iPadOS coming at WWWDC in June, or just a case of it being cheaper to only manufacture M1 vs both M1 and something like an A14X?

This thing being absurdly powerful is cool and all, but when the hell am I gonna be able to code on it?

I know this thing is wildly changing workflows for creatives on the art and design side. Let's shake up coding too!

How to code on an iPad: step 1, remote into a Linux box. Jokes aside, there is a Python IDE but that's it as far as I know.

The iPad doesn't need better hardware, it needs Mac OS X.

I know is a massive overkill, but how is the experience of reading books (pdfs)on the iPad Pro ? (Reading books on a laptop is a pain and phones are too small)

I read programming books side-by-side with Blink ssh'd into a remote server. I find the experience pleasant. For other reading, it depends. I do a lot of gaming and so I have a lot of PDFs, two-page view or split view of different materials is very nice since I can read them without needing to zoom in. OTOH, if I'm just trying to read fiction or something then a smaller tablet (Kindle Fire, in my case, that I bought to replace a defunct iPad a few years ago since I just wanted a reading device) works better for me. I knew it was a stretch, but I was really hoping for an upgraded iPad Mini.

I recommend you the 2 TB 5G version for 2400 USD + the 150 USD Apple Pencil + the 350 USD keyboard, so in total 2900 USD for reading PDFs.

Best regards :)

I read textbooks on my standard entry-level model iPad (eighth generation). It's a pretty good experience. PDFs fit on the screen decently well and I can annotate with the pencil.

ePubs are nice too, since they can reflow.

Countdown to someone forcing MacOS to the M1 iPad...

Is 8GB of unified memory enough for a such machine?

It's overkill since most iPadOS apps are not optimized for more memory.

The previous generation maxed at 6, so probably.

Although note that it maxes at 16, not 8. But the RAM you get is linked to the SSD size for some reason:

> 8GB RAM on models with 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB storage

> 16GB RAM on models with 1TB or 2TB storage

Yes. Definitely.

Wondered why they seemed fine with the iPad Air grabbing so many pro features. They had an M1 up their sleeve.

My read: Apple has a disconnect between their product refreshes and the internal development on their M1 SoCs. They knew they weren't going to tackle Thunderbolt for the first gen of the M1 macbooks, but now the internal development has caught up enough and they're in a position where they have to refresh the iPad. So, of course, they put the new SoC into the refresh.

Is thunderbolt relevant to the iPad? Their video really tried to sell it, I don't really buy it. It's not like, "Oh, I would have used Photoshop on the iPad, but the transfer speeds are too slow so I guess I'll get something else." That's not to say that it isn't welcome, just that it's not a big deal for this particular product.

The MacBooks and the new iMacs on the other hand, yeah -- thunderbolt is a huge deal over there. Apple's 2nd gen ARM laptops should scare the hell out of all their competition.

The first gen M1 devices have thunderbolt.

Thanks for correcting me on this. You're right, they have TB3 (and just not TB4). I was confused and thought they just had USB-C.

My read above is just wrong.

I think it's a very nice toy to play with. I definitely don't understand why people want to do anything useful with a toy. How much is it again? Ah it's Apple so no need to ask. See you when I make my first million.

Thinking of buying one and propping it up on my piano and using it for music writing and music tuition apps. Anyone tried anything like this?

I'm in a band and want to get one to use for for sheet music.

We use it a 1st-gen 12.9" iPad Pro for our piano (and other stuff). If you've got a digital piano you can even plug it in and get MIDI input, which enables some really cool stuff (especially for writing music, I'd expect). It's great, and the 12.9" size is really good for that. I'd expect any newer model to be the same thing, but a little nicer.

It's great for this, but by a base $329 model for that, there's no advantage with the Pro for piano. Or buy a refurb 12.9" if you want a bigger screen for the piano

If it could just port current CAD software, I would buy it in a heart beat. I don't want to have to learn new CAD software like Shapr.

The iPad Pro has Thunderbolt before the Microsoft Surface. So tired of MS dragging their feet, kicking and screaming on TB.

Still no big MacBook Pro? (Sorry folks, 13 inch is not "Pro" in my eyes)

Will we even ever get one? What's happening?

> Committed to the Environment

That section is just nasty and dishonest. It perpetuates an image of Apple as a company caring for environment, which isn't exactly true. They should at least be honest that their devices are artificially hard to repair, so that they can squeeze more money out of the consumer. If someone does not have money to pay Apple to repair the device, where it lands?

Right to repair has nothing to do with the environment.

Additionally Apple supports their devices far longer than any other company.

How so? Inability to extend the life of the device is environment neutral?

Does Apple make parts available for their products? If you want to replace the charging chip, can you get it from Apple? Or do you need to take a bus, train, a car to go to Apple store, to have them then ship the entire device god knows where, to replace whole motherboard and then ship it back? How is that has nothing to do with environment?

Reduce, reuse, recycle. And in this order. What can be fixed will not end up in a landfill somewhere.

Agreed!

Apple products last longer than the competition. You can verify this in any manner you please: there is a robust aftermarket in everything Apple, and in at least phones, laptops, and tablets, the Apple offering will last longer in the wild than comparable products from other companies.

Perhaps the most virtuous thing is to reduce tablets by not having one. But let's say you want one, an iPad will be used by someone or other for ten years, an Android tablet... won't be.

> there is a robust aftermarket in everything Apple, and in at least phones, laptops, and tablets, the Apple offering will last longer in the wild than comparable products from other companies.

And these devices could last even longer if independent repair shops or users themselves could repair them. Unfortunately Apple has a habit of telling their suppliers to not sell parts to 3rd parties.

I wish I could agree!

Modern electronic gizmos last as long as the underlying software is supported by the manufacturer. The bits are the first part that wear out, unless supplied by Apple.

Having spent some time in southeast Asia, I can assure you that if you break the screen on your iPhone 5, someone can put a new one in for you. Good luck finding a sceen replacement for any contemporary phone: not that you would be carrying it, since the version of Android it would be running would be so out of date and insecure that the parasitic malware would render it unusable.

Their stuff lasts though. iPhones don't get slower over time like Android phones inevitably do, and they get software updates for 5 years.

It just feels like an iMac with touch screen to me, and the price is on par with an iMac

Adobe apps aren't introduced well at presentation, is there any battles?

Are there official specifications for the bit-depth of the new display?

How many external monitors can the iPad Pro M1 drive ?

shouldn't HN have a gear/hardware section like ask HN or Hiring or show HN?

macOS on iPad when?

There isn't really a reason you can't do this, right?

Can we call it M1Pad?

i have a m1 mac mini and so far it has been unusable garbage. it crashes everytime i shutdown/restart (lol) and will no longer detect any usb keyboards until i reinstall big sur. yes, really. maybe i could do a trade in for something like this to get a remotely usable device out of this waste of money

Hmmm Does this have Ethernet as standard without a dongle?

Asking as I can't see any mention beyond under the Thunderbolt section in which it has "Configurable with Gigabit Ethernet" slapped about.

Gigabit Ethernet! If that's the max then that will upset some for sure.

Do you mean does it have an ethernet adapter? No according to the tech specs page: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

Their marketing blurb mentions 10 gigabit ethernet is available over the thunderbolt port.

Thunderbolt supports 10Gbps Ethernet and opens up a massive ecosystem of high-performance accessories, like faster external storage and even higher resolution external displays, including the Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution, all connected using high-performance cables and docks.

No I was wondering if it had an Ethernet port as standard without the need for a dongle, and thank you for clearing that up.

Good they can do a 10gig ethernet, didn't see it myself - thanks again.

Here are two anecdotes to explain why I'll never buy an Apple computer again, as 'sexy' as they are:

1. My brother has a old iPad (3rd generation). Somehow its battery is still good enough and the screen is in great shape, but the OS hasn't been updated in years. IIRC, Chrome is stuck on version 60 something. I could jailbreak it, but apparently I'd need a Mac to do that.

2. A friend of mine sold me an iMac 2010 for 50 bucks last year, peripherals and all. The hardware was in excellent shape. When November came, Apple stopped maintaining the latest version of the OS I could possibly get. Due to that iMac's finicky graphics card, installing a user-friendly Linux distro such as Ubuntu wasn't trivial. I ended up donating the computer to a repair centre.

So here's a company with no interest in its hardware being of any use a decade after it's released.

Planned obsolescence is bad enough when done to phones, it should never apply to full-on computers.

3rd gen iPad was from 9 years ago... show me a 9 year old phone or tablet for any other manufacturer which still gets updated

Apple markets the iPad as a computer, so we can compare it to competing touchscreen laptops.

A dual-core Cortex-A9 with 1GB of RAM chokes at almost everything today even when updated.

Source: Surface RT today is still getting security updates. And will continue to get them until 2023. However, it doesn’t matter much in practice. And that’s a quad-core Cortex-A9 clocked 400MHz higher with twice the RAM.

The iPad 3 was not being marketed as a computer like the new ones are

Not my point at all, though still pretty appalling.

It's quite trivial to install LineageOS, for instance, on an old Android phone. Apple completely blocks this route. If your iDevice is no longer supported, it becomes a shiny, expensive paperweight.

That's fair. I'm not complaining about their update policy, though.

My issue is that I see tablets as computers, and yet I can't even run an updated browser on a fairly decent computer released only nine years ago.

Apple also makes it very hard for more savvy users to install something else on their hardware, so once they stop supporting it one's forced to recycle it.

Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned the iPad, but a thousand-dollar iMac from 2010 no longer being useful is quite sad, IMHO. My 2005 NEC laptop is still going.

> My brother has a old iPad (3rd generation). Somehow its battery is still good enough and the screen is in great shape, but the OS hasn't been updated in years.

Try to update the OS on a 9-year-old Android tablet, see how it goes.

You really can't complain about their update support when iPhone gets support twice as long as Android. And I'm using Android personally so don't think I'm just an Apple shill

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