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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

"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.

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.

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.

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...

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