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Comment by idoh | Hacker News Reader

It has the ambition, agree that they haven't figured it out yet. I think that it just might be a hard problem to figure out. I have an iPhone, an iPad, and a MacBook. I really understand when I want to use the phone or the notebook computer. The iPad is sort of in the middle.

I have made attempts at doing all my work stuff on it, but failed every time. Simple things like taking a screenshot over here and pasting it over there just feel harder on the iPad. I really want them to figure it out though!

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I believe it is time for Apple to rethink iPad and MacBook. They both have the same chip now.

iPad should be a Macbook Air.

Apple already allows to run iPad applications on macOS. They should completely destroy iPadOS, and let macOS run on iPad. I would prefer to have powerful OS (macOS) with some glitches on iPad, than to have an iPad with limited OS (and still have glitches to be honest). I even ok to use similar to Windows 8 idea, you aren't plugged in to keyboard - it is going to look like an iPadOS (with different app launcher), and when you connect keyboard you can use macOS.

The only reason I am still own iPad (to be honest two of them), is because I cannot disconnect screen from my laptop, even that is not the biggest issue, but because there is no Netflix app, and I cannot download movies to watch in the plane.

>iPad should be a Macbook Air.

Isn’t there already a MacBook Air?

It just seems that trying to use the Mac UI purely by touch would be godawful. I mean how do you Command-click, or right-click a UI element with your finger? These are solvable, but only with horrible compromises. The iPad has a completely different interaction model to very good reasons, and this would utterly butcher it. Microsoft tried this approach and it was disastrous.

Yes the iPad has its limitations, but also incredible strengths. The new multitasking gesture system is a vast improvement.

> It just seems that trying to use the Mac UI purely by touch would be godawful. I mean how do you Command-click, or right-click a UI element with your finger?

That's already in iPad OS/iOS. It's the long touch.

>Microsoft tried this approach and it was disastrous.

Surface Pro/Go is a pretty successful product for Microsoft.

I got a Surface 7+ recently and really like it. I can put full desktop applications (firefox + ublock origin, pycharm) and have it better mirror my dev environment with WSL.

Windows 11 on a tablet is really not that bad.

(I also run linux on a desktop and have an iPhone and Apple Watch, so not a hater by any stretch of the imagination)

The Surface has come a long way. I had (and still have) a Surface Pro 3 that had pretty much everything going for it: excellent build quality, great high-res screen, nice optional keyboard and decent PC-grade specs. There were two major flaws, though:

1. Linux support was pretty bad. You needed a custom kernel for an enjoyable experience, and even that was pretty unusable on anything other than x11 GNOME.

2. The overheating was a dealbreaker. I presume this was either a driver issue or hardware failure, but the device would regularly hit 55c in normal workloads, which was a no-go for that sort of product.

It was so close to being the Linux iPad of my dreams, but fell just short. I might give one of the later models a shot someday, but I'm not really in a rush. Maybe once Alder Lake makes it's way into a decent Windows convertible, it will finally be The Year of the Linux Tablet.

I have a m3 Surface Go 2. It's making a fairly decent Linux tablet with Arch using Gnome 42 (Wayland) and the mainline kernel. The camera doesn't work well, but everything else does including LTE.

It's actually a ton faster in Linux, but with a bit worse battery life.

The biggest flaw with using Linux on the earlier Surface line was the shit Marvell Wifi. That would drop out all the time. So glad they switched to Intel for the later ones.

Hm, I think I'll still wait for the Alder Lake update, but it really does sound like a good setup. If I didn't disagree with the direction GNOME was going in this choice would be a lot easier...

When combined with Apple Pencil it’s the best digital note taking device. I hardly need to use pen and paper any more. Note taking, reading books and watching videos, playing board games makes it’s a fun and work device. YMMV.

Yeah, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Don't try to do everything on it, just use it for when you would want to sketch things out and don't look back. This comment inspired me to plug in my pencil and try it out for that.

Same. I have both an iPhone and a MacBook as well, but with the Pencil, I just want to do everything on the iPad. It’s become my single notebook and sketchbook—-this is saying a lot coming from someone who has gone through countless fancy notebooks and fountain pens. I still use traditional media for anything I want to last, but for ideation and sketching practice, it’s all iPad all the time for me now.

> I really understand when I want to use the phone or the notebook computer. The iPad is sort of in the middle.

I'd never seen it put that way before, but I think it hits the nail right on the head for me. I do like my 2020 iPad Air when I use it, and the pencil is great; however, I basically end up using it as easy scratch paper or when copy-pastable handwriting is useful. Plus when I need an extra screen to go with my laptop.

It definitely has nice features, but doesn't feel like a compelling use-case overall, yet.

Way back when the iPad first came out, I didn't get it. But I read a lot, got one, and rather liked it. My conclusion was it (especially pre-pencil) was a somewhat luxury and rather optional device that did some things quite well. But was rather unnecessary compared to a MacBook or iPhone (or substitute some generic equivalent). And even non-Max smartphones are much bigger than they used to be.

The most compelling use case I've seen yet for the iPad is for regular people who don't want a desktop or laptop computer, but don't want to do everything on their phone. The iPad is just a really big smartphone that with a folio keyboard can become an impromptu laptop if needed. In my extended family I have a few people who are using it for this exact use case and love it. Only one of them even has the keyboard, and all of them do everything on their iPad they'd otherwise use a 'real' computer for.

Another great use for the iPad is for sheet music. IME it is better than paper and much, much, much better than trying to use an iPhone or PC (which I've done sporadically).

Niche use case, but totally agreed. I was holding onto paper sheet music for the longest time, but no desire to even look back after switching to iPad for that purpose.

It helps that the app I use easily integrates with any cloud storage you would want to use, so I can easily just get sheet music using any personal device and just drop it into my cloud folder. And the next time I sit down at the piano, all those sheets are already there.

A while ago I had an iPad, didn’t like it because of its limitations, and sold it. Now I have an iPad and love it despite its limitations. I think iPadOS still has a way to go, but it’s definitely progressing for me.

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