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Comment by roody15 | Hacker News Reader

I Work IT in a institution with 290 employees and have had 5 switch to iPad Pro's to "replace" their laptop. I am now 5 for 5 with all asking for their laptop back.

iPadOS is nothing more than iPhoneOS renamed and the device is still too heavily crippled for desktop/laptop replacement.

In my mini test case scenario I never said a word..simply the employee asked for iPad Pro.. I just handed it to them... waited... then about 2 weeks later they asked for laptop back.

Not sure what Apple's plan here is but they continue to market this to schools and workplaces as a laptop replacement but refuse to add functionality to the OS and keep it overly crippled/restricted.

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On the contrary, I have owned MacBook Pros from the first to the last 17", then again every model since the 16". I also have iPad Pro with magic keyboard and touch pad. I don't travel with the MacBook any more, as I can do anything from the iPad. But it's not just me.

I've also been CTO at mega bank and hedge funds where we've rolled these out along side laptops. I've found that after initial objections, folks tend to agree. After a month or two, white collars who are not devs generally have switched to carrying the iPads, not laptops. Then the support costs basically go to zero, which matters a good deal at scale.

Users do have to think differently. That's ROUGH. Employees will ask for their old thing back if it changes their workflow, period. (See the book "Who Moved My Cheese?")

If they just use it, they generally find out it's fine. Could even be argued the Office / Teams ecosystem is superior.

Bonus: Letting employees have TWO screens (MacBook + iPad) also gives them two retina class monitors, portable, fantastic for hoteling or remote work or work from home. Two screens are better than one, and two that go with you are amazing. The new keyboard/cursor sharing while each device runs its own apps, with copy paste and drag drop between them is even cooler. In this model, the iPad Pro can become a Teams or Slack device, for instance, while other work stays on Mac, so you just wander off to a meeting with your collaboration tools intact. Instead of picking up where you left off, you just pick up and go.

" I don't travel with the MacBook any more, as I can do anything from the iPad. But it's not just me."

Interesting, how long have you been iPad Pro only? At the price point of the iPad pro with a keyboard and touch-pad.. why not just buy a laptop like the MacBook Air?

Hauling around an iPad pro with a touchpad.. and an external keyboard seems less convenient than just using something like the MacBook Air. Unless I am missing something here.

> At the price point of the iPad pro with a keyboard and touch-pad.. why not just buy a laptop like the MacBook Air?

1. cellular + eSIM, missing from Air (WHY, Apple, why?)

2. detaches into perfect touchscreen tablet, Air doesn't

3. Apple Pencil (requires "Paperlike" for texture): https://paperlike.com

4. it's a great second screen in either extend desktop or keyboard/mouse mode

> Hauling around an iPad pro with a touchpad.. and an external keyboard

No, the keyboard is the case, you have no sense of carrying a second thing. In fact, it's a magnetic dock, you USB-C charge through a port in the hinge, iPad pops on and off mag-safe style.

Interesting, I hadn’t heard of Paperlike. I’ll have to give it a try.

Paperlike is pretty pricey. I bought a similar screen cover on Amazon Canada by Bellmond for CAD$20. Works great!

I am a lawyer, my boss uses an ipad pro heavily for work. He usually does not have much time to work on stuff, we mail him the contracts, documents etc., he marks them up with digital pen with his comments and sends it to us to revise. He finds it extremely productive. He can give instructions on the go, even while physically walking to a meeting room.

Prior to the ipad pro, we literally took printouts and handed it to the boss for his comments. He doesn't bother with word comments. Many older senior lawyers who learned the practice before word processors still work this way.

For jobs not requiring much typing and special software, iPad pro can be a good addition.

For replacing my work computer, oh no.

If I were provisioned an ipad pro, I'd use it to read and markup contracts, look up legislation, occasionally jump into calls and I'd be pretty happy. I could work on my commute, quickly review documents and respond in off-hours etc. instead of carrying a laptop. The IT provisioned laptop takes ages to boot up, heavier and more fragile than an ipad.

Another problem is that screen and keyboard doesn't quite replace pen and paper in my industry. I switched to Onenote from using a paper notebook during remote working and I miss taking notes on paper greatly. I frequently miss parts in contracts when I read on the screen and have to be extra careful. If I were in the office, I usually printed these out. I knew a senior lawyer who wanted us to print out every piece of related legislation so that she could work on it. She refused to read them on computer.

iPad pro could be highly beneficial for low-tech human mind driven industries such as law.

I know there is AI, I am grateful for redlines and spell checkers, but the computer screen and keyboard interface lacks in some ways.

I'm in an architecture adjacent company and often deal with PDF drawing sets. When I get a 400 page PDF with E-size pages and I'm trying to look through a whole building to find or count something in it, I send those right over to the iPad.

Now that I think about it, displaying gigantic PDFs is probably the most performance intensive thing I use it for, and the iPad Pro is very fast at it.

What do you use for giant PDFs? I have some textbooks on mine, but nothing performs/functions as well as readera does on my android phone.

I’ve found PDF Viewer from PSPDFKit GmbH to perform very well, though I also sometimes use Documents by Readdle which lets me do things like reorder pages without a subscription.

Not sure if Documents is still that way for new users or only because I paid for it back before everything under the sun turned into a subscription.

Thanks!

iAnnotate handles my PDFs that are 100s of MBs with absolutely zero lag.

>Many older senior lawyers who learned the practice before word processors

Considering how long ago that is, they must be pretty old. I mean, I'm 58 and I can just barely remember that time.

They are not young :). I live outside of US so technology might have come a bit later to us. And law is an industry that does not like change that much.

I talked to a lawyer in his 70s about this. He liked the way that dictating forced him to consider his thoughts in advance and speak in paragraphs. Technology has made dictation/typing pools unnecessary, but it's worth considering the ways that it might have led to benefits that we currently miss out on.

I've kind of found this with certain reporting that I used to automate. I used to be of mind that everything that can be automated should be automated. I've come to realize it's a big mistake as it limits my processing of information. Even cutting and pasting can have me thinking about something more than automating.

Heh - I am a lawyer too. One of my old bosses didn't budge off paper even during covid. We had to email him PDFs of drafts so he could read them on his iPad and occasionally he would print them. If he had comments or revisions, he would print the draft, write his comments, and then use his iPhone as a makeshift scanner (no scanner app - he would just take pictures.)

Once in a paper file I had the only example of A4 paper I've ever seen - I'm an American. He was traveling in Europe and we had to send the draft to his hotel so they could print it and give it to him. He wrote comments on it and brought it back.

I'm not of his generation but I think I'd find an iPad pretty useless for work. I print most things I need to review so that I can read the closely and scrawl notes on them, though if I need to give the notes to someone else I put them into Word or on a PDF - but after printing it. I find it too cumbersome to review documents on the computer.

The most I could use an iPad for is a second screen to look up statutes and cases and the like, or just to read emails - but it's too limiting even for emails. In Windows I drag emails to folders to save them, and I take notes with Notepad, go look stuff up in the browser, etc. The iPad is just too limiting.

Former lawyer here. iPads make much more sense for senior partners than for associates or junior partners. They're reviewing documents and writing emails, not composing long memos or doing intensive legal research on the web. The battery life and "boot time" differential are great for senior folks who don't need a desktop environment.

I don't think this dichotomy maps onto technical roles, since there are more technical things you can't do on an iPad, but it's worth recognizing how much iPads can be a game-changer for some of the most senior people in organizations.

For travelling specifically:

• The Magic Keyboard acts as its own case for the iPad Pro. I wouldn't keep a bare laptop in my bag, but I would throw the iPad-Pro-in-keyboard-case in there.

• The iPad (any iPad) is better for reading books, watching movies, and all the other stuff you do more of on planes/trains/automobiles, than a laptop is. The Keyboard Case holds the iPad up in the air by about two inches (getting the screen closer to your eyeline without straining your neck), and then lets you further position the screen at strange angles (e.g. "inward") for better viewing — angles you can't really adjust a laptop to. And if you want to read a PDF, a graphic novel, or anything else designed to be viewed vertically, you can, at full size — just pick it up and turn it. (Maybe pull the case off to make it lighter, if you're going to be reading for hours.) Basically, the same logic behind bringing a purpose-designed e-reader device.

• If you have a Pencil to go with it, it can also be a reusable piece of paper with infinite "template" content pre-loaded — since you can arbitrarily mark up any PDF or image in the Files app, you can just load on a PDF of coloring-book pages, and now it's a coloring book; or grab a PDF of crossword puzzles, and now it's a crossword puzzle. No purpose-made apps required for either. (If you draw as a hobby, it can be your sketchbook, too; sadly, I'm no artist.) In other words, bringing an iPad also replaces packing those dimestore "activity books", and/or a notebook + actual pencil.

• iPads (or really any convertable / 2-in-1, where you can fold away the angled keyboard part of the computer) are great for showing people the stuff you do / giving people demos — which is something you might be doing a lot at conferences, if that's why you travel. This is a pretty unique use-case; tablets themselves are really "the thing" for this. They maybe replaced... handing out brochures? Having a glossy explainer book printed, and then packing that? Bringing a portable projector + slides?

• Kind of like the recent revival of "intentional dumbphones" that encourage "unplugging", the iPad is designed in a way that still allows for productive work, but makes it less fluid. I can SSH into prod from an iPad, but I don't want to do it for a minute longer than I have to. If you're travelling on vacation, this could keep you focused on relaxing, in a way you might not be if you have a laptop along, tempting you to spend eight hours ignoring your wife and kids to squeeze out that new feature that popped into your head.

Notice that none of those are benefits of the iPad Pro specifically. I don't think that, for at least my use case, there's really much I'd get from an "iPad Pro with Keyboard Case" over an "iPad Air with Keyboard Case." Mind you, I have an iPad Pro... but I bought it because I had the money, and wanted the beautiful color-calibrated display; not because the Air wouldn't have suited my use-case just fine. (Though, when I bought it — 2019 — they weren't yet selling the Keyboard Case for the Air.)

I'm a lawyer and I also only travel with, and can do a lot (but not all) of my work on an iPad. I probably spend more on my iPad Pro + keyboard than I would for a laptop. But the iPad is also my primary e-reader, I watch movies on it, I take note on it legal pad style, etc. Google apps all suck on iOS so I don't use them. I occasionally remote in to a desktop for this or that, but less frequently.

I mostly find that nerds who don't like iPads have opinions that are like 5 years out of date. Trackpad support is great on iPads. The Files app is all I need on a portable device for file management. I can use any USB device I ever want (though in practice, I never do).

Usually it's still lighter. When I have back problems I will pick up the iPad and take it with me rather than my MacBook Pro. It has the added bonus of being easier to read pdfs and annotate them while traveling too (it's not perfect. If I'm gong to be digging around my email archives I prefer to do that on a Mac but that's partly the way our company limits Outlook on iPads.

I know people who are laptop power users who are fine traveling with just a tablet and an external keyboard. (They still use a laptop when they're not traveling.)

Good for them but I've never been able to make it work for me. I'll just carry the extra weight. But, to your point, it's also true that, beyond getting an external keyboard, I've never really committed to making a tablet work for me as my only travel device (other than a phone).

Why do the support costs go to zero? I would think iPads would bring their own set of problems/hazards that laptops may not have.

It’s next to impossible to get an iPad to a non-working state.

A creative user with a Windows laptop can do it easily unless it’s really tightly locked and controlled.

And sometimes Windows just does that on its own.

Basically, they're an appliance, and hard for a user to screw up.

Of course it's not actually zero.

There's always someone whose finger can't poke things that will ask where the mouse is, or why this stupid iPad doesn't run Lotus 1,2,3 -- and you have to respect their challenges. Or of course (rare) hardware faults, and you have to provision a new one.

But the appliance-ness of it makes it a support dream.

Unless you are a power user who manages to overload it so severely it becomes unusable (not hard to do, if you’re a certain type of power user - unfortunately), it’s basically just a big iphone you can attach a keyboard too.

Much harder to actually break or make unusable than the typical 5-10 yr old windows laptop from the lowest bidder most people interact with.

How much spyware have you seen gunking up the default experience on an iPad? Compare this to a typical consumer laptop.

I thought with an iPad you simply can't manage it remotely. If you can, I want to know, because my father-in-law keeps screwing up his iPad and I can't fix it without shipping it back and forth.

You need an MDM to manage it remotely. Something like Jamf Now is $2/device/month. Not sure how much the shipping costs, but might be break-even

Sure you can. Look into MDM services like Jamf Now.

Splashtop will let you view an ipad's screen. It's fiddly to start (remote user has to allow access, enable broadcasting, etc every time, and this is a non-trivial step to get over), but it does work, in the sense that seeing the screen is faster than just guessing what is going on as your panicked user pokes randomly at things no matter what you say, leaving you with no context.

It is functional enough to be useful, if the other person on the line is good at following instructions.

The biggest drawback of iPad OS is lack of windows, to drag around.If you don't need to multitask - iPad is OK.

I tried going all iPad and my husband opted for iPad Pro as personal computer - it is woefully underutilized.

"And that's not just me"

> biggest drawback of iPad OS is lack of windows, to drag around

First thing productivity users do to a Win or Mac laptop is install a windows manager so they don't drag windows around.

iPad Pro in its landscape dock provides split screen with adjustable ratio, as well as left and right floats, along with swipe between desktops, as well as push to view and pick a diff app. One app wide, one app narrow, tends to put the narrow app in iPhone UI, which is pretty ideal, better than desktop where windows refuse to get narrow.

You can drive iPad with a magic touch pad beautifully. I suspect this workflow management is behind some of the gesture convergence in Ventura and iOS 16.

IMO productivity users are mostly lemmings. MacOS has plenty of good tooling built in to manage windows and desktop environments. A tiling window manager makes a lot of sense with cli based tools but for gui based tools imo becomes annoying fast. Especially when most websites these days will serve you a mobile website depending on the dimensions of your viewport.

> First thing productivity users do to a Win or Mac laptop is install a windows manager so they don't drag windows around.

Interesting point of view, but I must either live in a parallel universe or know no "productivity users" (whatever that is supposed to mean) then. Windows' window management features cut it for 99.9% of Windows users, and the rest use PowerToys Fancy Zones or something of that sort.

And iPadOS window mgmt features cut it for 99.9% of users so… even stevens?

> First thing productivity users do to a Win or Mac laptop is install a windows manager so they don't drag windows around.

Well... OK. I'm clearly not a "productivity user".

I'll prefer better optimized workflows on my phone and flexibility and speed of a full sized keyboard with a mouse. Every few years I fall into this "this looks cool, lets try" iPad thing - to only go back to a mouse.

I use cascaded windows. It doesn't need a window manager and it's more useful & productive for me than tiled layouts. It looks like this:

  +--+--+--+--------------------+
  |  |  |  |                    |
  |  |  |  |                    |
  |  |  |  |                    |
  |  |  |  |                    |
  +--|  |  |                    |
     +--|  |                    |
        +--|                    |
           +--------------------+

I generally put terminals and my note taking app towards the left (smaller windows), my IDEs in the middle (enough for split pane editing when needed), and my browsers on the right, where they are in square / portrait aspect ratio more suited to reading.

Thing that really kills iPad for me is the web browsing experience. I just find iOS Safari so limiting.

It's also needlessly slow (considering M1). I suspect they have some optimisations designed for memory constrained devices like iPhone tuned in the same way for iPad.

Also ad blocker support is limited.

Oh and in a lot of video calling apps, if I try and browse something in Safari while the meeting is happening, then I'll suddenly stop sending video. Though that isn't strictly a Safari issue, more a Apple holding back features from third-party developer issue.

> Also ad blocker support is limited.

Try 1Blocker or AdGuard Pro. And similar limits (for similar "this shouldn't run that there" reasons) just arrived for the Chromium family.

> needlessly slow

I tend to find that when I notice slowness, I have several hundred tabs open, approaching the 500 tab limit. Save all tabs to bookmarks, close all tabs, and I find it's as "snappy" as the new iOS meme. (Related? New device, no tabs? Hmmm...)

Super annoying this hasn't been resolved since introduction of cloud synced tabs.

> And similar limits (for similar "this shouldn't run that there" reasons) just arrived for the Chromium family.

If only there were another browser other than Safari and Chromium that didn't have those limitations...

Orion let’s you run full chrome and Firefox addons in iOS and iPadOS. No joke

That's incredible, thanks for sharing! Looks like it's still working on supporting some APIs (claims to currently support about 70% of Web Extensions APIs), and so far both the Firefox and Chrome NoScript extension don't appear to work for me on iOS, but that's awesome that they're working on adding support for Chrome and Firefox addons. I'll definitely keep an eye on this project.

Currently the ublock origin and dark reader I have tried with the Firefox extensions work very well, but I haven’t tried any others so it is good to know.

As it stands right now, there is essentially no windows support or support for the various browser sync plugins, but both of those are on the way. The main developer seems like a nice dude, and I’ve had a chat with him on Reddit a couple times so it is definitely a VERY active project.

If you want to be my hero, can you try to install this extension on Orion on iPad

https://github.com/WaldiPL/playbackSpeed

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/playback-spee...

And let me know if it works on say a youtube video with speeds above 3x?

I don’t actually have an iPad, only iPhone. But if you give me a couple of hours I will do so and reply to your comment with my results

I did try on my iPhone and it didn't appear to work :(

I tried it on mine as well and it didn't work.

The API is at the same state across all versions of Orion as far as I can tell, which means that at the point it works on your iPhone it will also work on iPad. I would guess that it will be quite soon considering even a couple of weeks ago uBlock didn't work 100% and now it is fully functional.

> then I'll suddenly stop sending video

Does this happen to be with low power mode enabled?

AdGuard Pro seems to block ads well on iOS/iPadOS. I haven't noticed the browsing experience to be any slower on my iPad Pro M1 than on my 13" Intel MBP.

I prefer Safari on iOS and macOS because it is so limiting that I assume it is helping conserve battery. With Wipr content blocker, I never see ads and it is generally pretty fast.

I cannot imagine doing my job on on iPad, it's way too limited. can you open more than one google doc at a time yet? run desktop extensions on the web? open complex sheets/excel files? I have no idea what job other than sending emails and being on video calls all day could work on an ipad.

Yes to all of those and they’ve been supported for years with the slight caveat that extensions are more limited and need to be provided by an app

also the caveat that excel/sheets is not good on ipad.

You absolutely can't open complex sheets on the ipad still, I just tried a few and they're not functional. how do you open more than one doc natively? I'm still seeing online that it's not supported (using the browser doesn't count). And yeah, none of the extensions I use have a special iOS equivalent.

Why is using the browser not countable? It’s how I deal with sheets anyway on desktop.

Are you talking about second screen as in Sidecar - or just to open the same app that you would use a Macbook for - eg Slack, email?

Anything in the gSuite is terrible on iPadOS. Excel is also fairly crippled. I can’t see how it’s usable at all.

Even just for emailing, GMail at least is a terrible application on iPad. For examples, cannot format anything, or view one email while writing another (that isn’t a reply).

I primarily use mine for

* Note taking

* Browsing/showing PDFs in a construction engineering setting. Nothing is faster or as flexible.

* Sketching for construction drawings

But the lack of good tabular worksheet and emails beyond quick replies pushes me back to my laptop all the time.

I gsuite good anywhere? It's not good in the browser on desktop/laptop devices, certainly.

I have noticed they cut tons of features from the iOS versions and keep you from using the site if they're installed (and maybe even if they're not? That's got to be how I ended up with them installed, I wouldn't have done it by choice), which is super annoying and makes no sense since I'm sure it's all the same webtech crap as the "real" sites, just wrapped so it's "native".

The Gmail app ate multiple gigs of ram and repeatedly crashed on my prior two Android phones. Disabling it and using an alternate mail client works much better.

That is strange. If it is one app that I have never had a problem with is Gmail on Android(Nexus and Pixel devices)

>I gsuite good anywhere? It's not good in the browser on desktop/laptop devices, certainly.

Re web-tech: All iPad/iOS browsers run a low-perf version of Safari under the hood. In my experience anything Google seems sluggish on Safari. Frankly, I think that a part of this is due to FUD (Safari is not slow).

I still use FF and Safari for 99% of my browsing, but certain sites just require me to use Chrome.

I assume anything Google is extremely energy/processor/RAM intensive and only consider it as a last resort on battery powered devices.

It's basically the same Safari, no?

No, WebKit is the same across devices.

That’s not 100% correct.

Web views aren’t the same, neither is the JS runtime configuration, hence the performance differences.

My entire company (800+) runs on gsuite for better or worse. At least in browser on desktop its functional.

> I gsuite good anywhere?

Yes? I use a Linux laptop + firefox, g suite works great even for docs that have hundreds of pages (though I do use a top of the line Lenovo P series with an i7 and 32GB of ram).

Google seems bound and determined to make their user experience on Apple products as painful as possible, perhaps in the misguided belief that if we see how awful their products are, we'll want to switch to their native operating system.

Main effect for me has been to drop them like a steaming deuce, but not everyone has the luxury.

Excel is almost guaranteed to be a terrible fit for iPad. Data import/export has always been a weak point with the iOS and the many of the use cases for Excel are data crunching. If you are pulling out the keyboard and mouse regularly then a laptop seems less awkward.

> Data import/export has always been a weak point with the iOS

I don't think this is really very true anymore, and I say that as someone who moved away from using an iPad as my main portable. I'm sure there are specific cases where that's still a problem, but now that it has a file manager, USB drive support, a full array of cloud services support, etc. etc., this is just not a big deal.

At any rate, if you're a dedicated Microsoft Office 365 user, you can be working on the iPadOS version of Excel and using the same files stored in the same cloud service (ideally OneDrive, of course, from Microsoft's point of view) pretty transparently.

I suppose this is colored by my distrust of cloud storage. Since I don't use it for the most part a lot of the "easy" solutions don't work for me. Putting my data on someone else's servers just never seemed like a great idea to me.

I’m just talking about basic worksheets to do some math in 5 minutes, let alone actual hard work.

I disagree, I think there are 4 good GSuite apps on iPadOS: GMail, Meet, Calendar, and Drive.

With the magic floaty keyboard, even long emails feel fine on iPad.

Unfortunately, Docs, Slides & Sheets are pretty terrible, and fall far short of the desktop experience. For those apps, a Chromebook would be a much better choice. If only they made Chromebooks with trackpads as good as Apple's laptops, or even as good as the magic floaty keyboard.

Meet is in my experience worse than Zoom and Teams, and with the latter that is saying something.

Gmail and Calendar are great. Drive is also sub-par in experience when compared to Dropbox (probably Box as well though I've not used it)

Oddly Sheets is the only one I like. It is good enough for most use cases and simpler and easier to use than Excel.

I've never even considered using Docs or Slides.

Office 365 is hard for most organizations to switch from, since the overall package is a set of tools that are generally better than the Gsuite competition.

Some MSPs I work with make good money just converting businesses from Gsuite to Office 365. I don't use either platform personally or at my work, but I understand why Microsoft is eating the SaaS email & baseline office tools market.

I wouldn’t say gmail is good if the compose button floats on top of my inbox, a new message opens up in a modal and covers anything you’re trying to read/refer to. No format buttons.

Sheets is terrible. Cannot use the magic keyboard to shift your active cell (ie click a cell, type = and use arrow keys to find the cell you want to reference.. it just quits the cell).

Sheets is a bad UX across every class of device. My mouse supports horizontal scrolling. I can horizontal scroll in every window that requires it, because it's supported at the OS level. Sheets uses it's own control for scrolling which seemingly does not support horizontal scrolling from a mouse wheel.

Lots of people only look at data. A crippled mobile version that permit read access is good for an awful lot of people.

Let's look at pharma. They have a ton of sales reps and relatively few people in tech roles supporting them. Similarly, they have folks in scientific roles that push all software to the limits with a few people supporting them. The use cases of the sales reps are very well catered for on iPad and reps make up a lot of the user population. They present products to customers (eDetailing), have some basic data entry (CRM), might browse a range of reporting, and do some email. Email is critical, but as a sales director, that's not where you want your reps spending time. A limited experience somewhat helps just reply or move on.

I make no claims that this is sufficient for sales directors or scientific staff. It is however very well suited to some of these roles. It's also very reliable, cost effective, and easy to provision. It's unfortunate that laptops end up being so complicated in comparison for this audience.

> Anything in the gSuite is terrible on iPadOS.

Yes, well, monopolies will generally try to sabotage competitors.

Is gsuite even ahead of office?

Maybe it's just me, but I can't think doing any meaningful work without access to the filesystem.

What do you mean with "filesystem" specifically, that isn't available on iPads?

There's the Files app.

Does it allow you to have access to the whole fileystem, unrestricted access?

It allows access to a filesystem, just not the root filesystem.

You can do all the basic copy/cut/paste ops and create whatever folder structure you want. Don't expect to edit system files though. People spend lots of time looking for vulnerabilities to achieve that.

The iOS file system is very frustrating. By default, applications can only access individual files in their own sandbox, and if you want to point an application to a folder of media, you can't—it's simply not possible, or if it is it's so burdensome that it's simply not practical. Least of all for images, which for some reason are not accessible from the Files application and have to be manually exported from the photo gallery app, and music, which is not accessible at all: you need to clumsily use Apple's proprietary sync program on an actual computer.

In contrast, Android also doesn't let you access the root file system, but the user folder is yours to do whatever the hell you want with, and if you want to give your audiobook or music app to your folder of mp3 files that you've collected over the years, you can.

What do you need with unrestricted access to the root file system?

I think the arguments is non-developers don't really need access to it.

You aren't configuring anything or doing anything that needs access to the file system.

You are simply interacting with documents and online systems/applications that you can do the same as on a laptop. Add the greater mobility and the iPad pro really is a better device for most people.

However, as another commenter mentioned, these individuals who SHOULD really benefit from using an iPad primarily also are the group that struggle greatly with the changes to their overall workflow (see Who Moved My Cheese).

Thats kind of a poor argument that just self fulfils itself. If we mask things like the filesystem and the actual shell, then of course no one will really need to use it. If we unmask these things, maybe paradigms will shift and they will themselves use these things.

IMO so few people know how to code because we have been abstracting it for years, not because its tough to do or anything like that. Plenty of things people do are just as challenging as coding. You just need exposure to coding is all, its easy to write bash or python. Anyone could do it in a week. Hard to get that exposure when a company decides it won't be possible for you, and its a slap in the face considering these features are there in the device but you have to jailbreak the damn thing and violate your warranty to get at them.

>Hard to get that exposure when a company decides it won't be possible for you,

The company decided it was not possible using a specific product. You decided to use a product where it was not possible.

If you are not the most technologically inclined person, its really the company's marketing that is choosing the product rather than you. Its true with any product you lack relevant knowledge in, marketing becomes the dominant factor of choice beyond tooling that you don't fully yet understand. I think what is especially frustrating in this case, is that these capabilities are already there built into the device, they are just not exposed unless you jailbreak the device.

> I think the arguments is non-developers don't really need access to it.

I bought the device, why shouldn't I?

My MacBook doesn't either, with system integrity protection, and I'm just fine with it.

why do you need that for meaningful work? anyhow, github codespaces is usable on the ipad. i've done billable hours while traveling on my ipad, as long as the internet is good.

But very few apps built to work files/folders.

Image files?.... they obviously want to be mixed in with your photos!

Media files?.... you don't want those!, would you like to subscribe to Apple Music?

What apps don’t work with the Files App that it would make sense for?

Well, transferring files between an iPhone and a Windows PC is still far more of a pain than it should be.

Still can't just treat the phone as a drive and put files on there.

(edit: or trivially share a folder on the LAN over wifi, without even needing the USB cable, if you're considering the iOS device a 'real computer')

In the same way you can't treat a laptop as a drive and put files on there (transfer from another pc); because it's not a drive.

Except you can on the Mac. Ever heard of Target Disk Mode?

Yes when I want to transfer a few files between Macs my first thought is “let me use target disk mode”.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/transfer-files-mac-...

Seems pretty simple with iCloud for Windows.

So transferring a file between 2 local devices should require sending it to a cloud server and back?

To be fair, apple devices have airdrop for transferring files, which works much more seemlessly than any kind of network drives I've ever used (and I'm using one right now).

The interface exposed is just not mounting a remote file system.

You can’t connect a laptop to another laptop and treat it like a drive. Why expect anything different from a phone that’s really a computer?

If it was a real computer with a 'real OS', I'd be able to easily set up network shares and transfer files over wifi, without even plugging a cable in.

Well I can transfer files wirelessly via AirDrop to my Mac.

You can do it with a third party app

https://mobiletrans.wondershare.com/iphone-transfer/transfer...

I've been using real computers with real OSes for a very, very long time, and when someone says "hey, could you send that file to me," I confess my first thought is not, "Why, sure! Let me just configure a network share that you can mount on your system to do it, because that is obviously the easiest possible way I have at my disposal!"

Yes you can. It's called Target Disk Mode on the Mac.

Yes and you can also easily share files from an iPhone over Wifi on a Mac. That isn’t possible on a Windows PC either.

Any concrete examples?

As far as image processing apps, I've been using procreate and affinity designer. Both use the file system and not the photos app.

As far as audio processing, apple's own garage band app works natively with audio files and lets you slice and dice them.

Try thinking outside your specific needs. The raw filesystem is an antiquated interface that, honestly, a vast majority of people do not need. In fact, if you observe average computer users, the filesystem is what really impedes their ability to get things done. In fact, the filesystem introduces a huge complexity when the application does not know where its files exist. Did the document you downloaded in the Downloads folder? The Desktop? Documents? Or is it in the last folder you downloaded? Users want to get things done, not hunt for files. The iPad paradigm solves a lot of regular user issues. It was never meant for "power programming users". The car vs. truck analogy.

> The raw filesystem is an antiquated interface

Not really. It has often been tried to find something better, but there really isn't. It works decently on Apple because they set certain constraints and standards. But overall it is like saying a table of contents in books is antiquated. You don't need it for belles lettres, sure. The analogy doesn't fit too well, but there a similarities.

It is actually the most simple way to present structured information. It is not optimal, but decently approaches it. This is a reason why it is so successful and to my experience even normal users don't have too much trouble with it. Alternatives obfuscate this for everyone.

A table of contents isn't the same thing as the raw file system, and is much more analogous to the simplified file system available on iPads.

It is an insufficient abstraction because it gives you less power as a user. Same with everything on iOS. This sadly creeps into MacOS too.

If a table of contents it is a good analogy depends on what you define as content. For me the content is all the files.

A generic way to view data content is a file explorer that lets you explore the file system. Some abstractions can be here too, but it shouldn't be too much and certainly not to a degree like iOS. I can understand why it is there, it is a consumer device primarily.

If you have more than 10 documents, how do you organize them by topic? Into a new folder? Thought as much...

> don't travel with the MacBook any more, as I can do anything from the iPad

This is what everyone I know with both devices does. I still prefer my Mac, but I'm in the minority in the under-fifty crowd.

This isn't contrary. Quite the opposite. None of the cases you present are iPad only. They are iPad alongside laptops. They might find cases where the iPad is fine, but none are iPad only.

And your "bonus" is basically an iPad Pro as a $1000+ chat device.

Now, if you mean that they added an iPad Pro, and eventually stopped ever using their laptop, that's a different story, but that's not what you said in your comment.

>> Then the support costs basically go to zero, which matters a good deal at scale.

Genuine question - what is the biggest time sink/cost for support on laptops? Put another way, exactly why do support costs drop so much with the ipads?

I remember a project in the early 00s at a place I was working. They were rolling out Windows tablets to installation engineers[1].

The justification was to reduce breakages to the screen and hinge of laptops[2]. It sounds daft but apparently it was not uncommon for people to leave their van keys on the keyboard and then shut the lid on them.

By switching to tablets they hoped to get rid of that failure mode.

I imagine that's quite specific but just having less moving parts will increase reliability in a large organisation. A keyboard on a ThinkPad might be easy to change if it fails but a keyboard an iPad will be even easier as it's not attached permanently.

1. In this particular case that means people in hard hats and high viz going up telephone poles and into holes in the ground all day.

2. Standard issue at the time was Panasonic ToughBooks.

The fact that you can do all your work on an iPad as well as you could do it on a Laptop may say more about your work than the devices. I do not mean this in an insulting way, but perhaps your work is so disconnected from technology or the creative process that you could do it, no matter the device you're using?

IMO companies should give their employees one e-ink screen instead to save their eyes. Most office-style work can be done well on those screens and they are much healthier. I now barely use paper as I use an A4 Onyx tablet with e-ink screen and do most of my notes there. It's so much better than using iPad for that.

My concern with anything e-ink is display latency -- if the display isn't updating at a fast-enough clip, I don't think note-taking would be an enjoyable experience.

These days they have multiple modes - they can be fast depending on how precise pixels you can tolerate.

> Two screens are better than one

Seems annoying actually.

I think for me a major bottleneck of using iPad as laptop is that the screen is still gonna be on heavier compared to keyboard, and the whole combo doesn't feel as solid and sturdy as a good laptop does. iPad feel more physically free in some ways (you can just use screen etc ...), and physically restrictive in others (doesn't feel like one big sturdy unit with keyboard).

That all aside, as an engineer it's too restrictive and less fun. I'm sure it can get a lot of other non-programming workflows done quite well though.

People have been using MS Surface for years now. So top heaviness is generally not an issue that impacts productivity.

The magic keyboard works great. You can even get BT knock offs for 1/3 the price. Works fine on your lap.

I'm not questioning the productivity but the feel of it, if you care about that. It always feels natural to me when weight distribution is heavier towards the keyboard.

I can't speak for Surface Laptop, which I think had a bulky keyboard, but the the normal ones (I think was called Pro), always felt weird. Obviously this all is personal choice.

I think the overall point is, iPad is nice replacement only if you are not going to be using keyboard much.

I was referring to the Surface Pro. Forgot that the laptop even existed. A better keyboard for the Pro would be welcome but not a deal breaker.

The cantilever design iPad keyboards are indeed very heavy to counter the tablet weight. Which brings the total weight of an iPad with the keyboard to almost MB Air weights.

The iPad is really crippled by software. Undoubtedly they cannibalise their own sales by allowing MacOS to run on iPads. But they have purposely killed off their own product categories before. Having that dual mode device is great.

I wonder who at mega bank and hedge fund isn't using excel...

My experience at mega bank is that the IT department is often delusional about what business users actually do.

There are plenty of depts with a good iPad use case, typically those with very standard workflows and few apps.

Think about HR who just need Zoom/Meet/WebEx, Greenhouse (or whatever ATS), and email+calendars.

Office admin, customer support, etc. all have simple needs that benefit from a really nice, but easily controlled and secured device.

Also, don’t underestimate how much “the Spotify app works” will entice people too.

Yeah, you won’t convert all the quants, engineers, etc but they aren’t the target. That said, in my experience they love the iPad as a second screen that’s very portable, in contrast to the high powered very unportable workstation.

The biggest factor for iPad adoption is really: “is there an app”. Particularly with SaaS tools there’s often a decent which lends itself to iPad usage.

Yeah this sounds ridiculous. I work at a large asset manager which is constantly upgrading tech after being hamstrung on the budget for many many years. Everyone gets an iPad if you ask for it and a lot of folks who travel need it for making notes in conferences etc. I don’t have a traveling job but I could still get one but it is useless for almost anything beyond doodling. I generally take meetings from my desk so I don’t even use a notebook in most cases and just type it up on my laptop. I did get a separate desktop because I have dev work that requires a lot of compute power from time to time but I manage with those two devices and have never felt anything lacking.

> Instead of picking up where you left off, you just pick up and go.

Completely lost me. You don't logout, close all your windows, and so on, when you undock/unplug and go mobile. I never have a problem picking up and going with my laptop, then coming back to my desk right how I left it. And the 27" monitors (32" also common here) are far, far better for productivity and dev work than a 13" ipad HDR screen. iPad is a poor choice for a 2nd screen.

You can even create a separate workspace for when you detach. I don't do that myself but plenty of my colleagues do. (If you don't do that then sometimes a window re-homes itself if you resize or move it while undocked, thinking that is its new home.)

Ran a similar play recently and found a similar result.

Can’t understate how much people want the nice/fancy/pro device too. It’s hard to lure people off MBPs to generic PC laptops or chromebooks but an iPad Pro + magic keyboard is shiny enough.

Not just lower support cost, but much higher security bar at a lower cost too. Having been at the same fund, and other big banks, that’s an important consideration. Strong MDM, yubikey support if you want it, decent app sandboxing, etc. gives a lot of security control in a nicer manner than on a desktop OS.

Finally, I think the Office/GSuite issue depends so much on usecase and who’s using which bits of each suite. Gmail is so much nicer than Outlook, but GDrive horrible organizationally compared to OneDrive, while GDocs collab beats O365, etc.

I'm curious about the workflow for these employees... How do your staff actually get things done? Are they in excel/word/email all day long? Custom apps?

In dev/data science there are some okay cloud providers (gitpod, etc) that work resonably well on iPad in a pinch but I can't see moving dev full time to one.

For our use-cases if you think about a recruiting team who are just using:

- GSuite for email, calendar, etc - Zoom for candidate meetings - Greenhouse as an ATS

Then those all have dedicated iPad apps which are very usable.

Same story for office admin teams, EAs, etc.

A few questions since this is a novel thing I haven't really heard of in the business world!

1) What tasks do the people you manage tend to do on their machines?

2) Why replace the laptops with iPads if you expected it to be disruptive for a month?

I think there's a big difference between traveling with an iPad Pro and only having an iPad Pro.

You might not need anything else if you only do some presentation work, data display or write some mails.

It also shines for people that like to write non-digitally. Awesome to draw a quick sketch. But for anything else? Not really a working device. It seems to convince management because Apple is shiny.

This isn't some topic about thinking differently, this is a topic of being restricted, which frankly iOS (before rebranding) simply does to you. Maybe you can map all your workflows to some iOS tool, but I assure you that a notebook is still more powerful. The two monitors might indeed be an advantage though and I hate any form of hoteling and luckily don't do that too often.

I used the iPad Pro for about 2 years for nothing but productivity apps and it was overall pretty great.

It wasn't without issue though, here's what I ran into:

1. I didn't run any dev tools on the iPad. That's insane. I used a laptop running macOS for that.

2. Google Docs updates would always ship with weird bugs, like if I'm editing a cell in a Google Sheet and hit space, the space wouldn't insert.

3. There's loads of issues with drag and drop in most apps. Dragging and dropping a picture from Photos into a document is the most common flow which works in some apps, but not in others.

The plus sides:

1. The built-in cellular connection is amazing. I wish MacBook Airs would ship with built-in cellular.

2. The Apple Pencil (2nd gen) is great if you design software or UX.

Google Docs updates would always ship with weird bugs

Is that really an Apple problem? Sounds like Google is just lazy with QA on Apple devices.

Did you try Numbers or Excel and have similar problems?

Or Safari is not a good browser.

These are native apps.

I’ve been using Safari almost exclusively for 2 years with no problems. I did prefer Chrome for web page development, but I’m not doing that right now.

> 1. The built-in cellular connection is amazing. I wish MacBook Airs would ship with built-in cellular.

don't you always have your phone on you? i don't have any issue at all tethering.

> but refuse to add functionality to the OS and keep it overly crippled/restricted

What would the point of "adding functionality to the OS" be? If they wanted to put macOS on iPads, they'd just put macOS on iPads.

My understanding at Apple's strategy here is that they're simultaneously exploring two different GUI paradigms — almost pitting them against one-another to see which wins (or, if you like, making a hedged bet):

• macOS, for building "Unix pipeline-like" workflows where you point different programs-as-tools at the same document or take one program's output as another's input. Apple encourages macOS developers to make this kind of app.

• iPadOS, for building "all-in-one silo" workflows (think: Photoshop, Garage Band, XCode), where the developer intends to solve fully for a use-case, such that people with that use-case can get by using only their app. In these cases, rather than interacting with other apps, a siloed app will embed whatever other accessory workflows a user might need, either directly (e.g. XCode embedding a terminal console) or through plugins (Photoshop plugins, Garage Band VST support.) The user might use other apps at the same time as this app, but not in a way where the apps are sharing data or interacting in any way; rather merely using each app to "do what it does" — e.g. referencing a design diagram in Miro while implementing that design in XCode, and writing down reminders in some reminders app. (Thus, the iPadOS 16's Stage Manager, which assumes you want several apps on screen at once, but doesn't implement drag-and-drop between apps or any other kind of useful inter-app interaction.)

As a user, as long as each user-story you have has been perfectly addressed by some particular siloed iPadOS app, then iPadOS should work for you. (And there are a lot of people whose user-stories have all been perfectly addressed by these siloed iPadOS apps — mostly, people with boring, predictable, traditional workflows. Novelists; illustrators; business executives; possibly salespeople.)

However, if your workflow is niche or "constantly reinventing itself" enough that nobody's ever going to make a siloed app specifically for your needs, and so you expect to get things done by throwing files between various different tools all day — then iPadOS is never going to work for you. You need a desktop OS designed around that kind of thing.

Well, MacOS won. Silos don't work, and they especially don't work when Apple controls the means of distribution single-handedly. MacOS has clutched onto a shred of relevance by letting the user install package managers, download software from the web, run software compilers, and so much more. There is not a future where iPadOS "wins" and MacOS is slayed in ritual combat, or something. It's obviously not a contest, and even by your own admission the separation of these OSes is mostly arbitrary. Apple knows they're gimping the iPad, they're just expecting other people to not care.

Everyone would be happy if Apple focused more on perfecting the iPad's hardware instead of pushing iPadOS to the brink. An iPad with options to run MacOS, iPadOS or Linux would be the knockout product-of-the-decade for Apple IMO. Judging by the design of Monterey, I think iPad/Mac convergence seems fairly likely.

I don't think we would see full convergence. Apple does a decent job at having classes of devices. What I could see is, the top of the line iPad Pro converging with the Macbook Air. The regular iPad, minis, etc will probably stay with a relatively locked down iPadOS. You want an "entry level" Apple laptop, you get an iPad Pro. But if your work flow requires more, than you go with a Macbook Pro, iMac, or Studio.

> There is not a future where iPadOS "wins" and MacOS is slayed in ritual combat, or something.

Well, no, it's not about the Operating Systems; it's about the UI paradigms themselves.

I believe that Apple is worried that the desktop WIMP UI itself is going to be disrupted and fade into irrelevance due to 1. "do everything on the web" devices like Chromebooks, and 2. VR/AR productivity-workflow paradigms that are yet to be formalized; and so they're trying to find a successor to the WIMP UI, one that will still be relevant in 2040, even if/when the WIMP UI dies.

The distinction between iPads and Macs isn't arbitrary, insofar as iPads don't require a keyboard, and Macs do. iPadOS (and iOS) apps have to be designed under the assumption that a keyboard is optional; and that really changes things about how an app can work. You can port apps designed for keyboardless tablets to macOS just fine (and as of the M1 you don't even have to, you can just install them); but fully-featured macOS apps can't just be thrown onto a keyboardless touchscreen. (And you can't say "well, you can't install 'keyboard required' apps if you don't have the keyboard", either; the OS has no idea if the user owns a keyboard but just hasn't bothered docking it.)

You are accidentally correct in the other direction, though — that there's no reason you couldn't run iPadOS as well as macOS on a theoretical "touchscreen Mac" (which would be a different thing than an iPad, precisely because the keyboard would be welded onto it, and so apps could guarantee its presence/require you to use it.) The reason that Macs don't have touchscreens, AFAICT, is because Apple wants to use the iPad — along with everyone who buys one, and every developer who signs on to develop apps for one — as an isolated laboratory to run this "successor to WIMP UI paradigm" experiment. They don't want to "dilute" that experiment by allowing those users and developers to get the advantages of the iPad from any of their other products — because then those users and developers wouldn't be incentivized to use the iPad, and thereby to give them the experimental data they need.

Consider: why didn't Facebook just merge Instagram and WhatsApp into features of Facebook Messenger? And why is it still considered a huge mistake that Twitter killed Vine after acquiring it? Because, like the iPad, these alternate experiences — despite being owned by the same old bigcorp that serves you the traditional experience — are both innovation laboratories, the learnings of which can be folded back into the regular app; and also hedged bets against the market failure of the old-school experience. Vine could have been TikTok if it had been allowed to grow for a few more years. What could the iPad's UI paradigm be if allowed to grow for a few more years?

> What could the iPad's UI paradigm be if allowed to grow for a few more years?

Well, we asked ourselves that at the launch of the iPad. At the time it was basically a reading/web browsing tablet (in other words, revolutionary). But people had grander visions, like running DAWs on it and porting Photoshop and developing software. All of these things are not hardware-limited; their exclusion entirely boils down to arbitrary software decisions made by Apple.

So, we waited. We let it grow for more than a decade. What we have today is just a bigger version of iOS, which is a reflection of Apple's refusal to upset a paradigm they directly profit off of. They're genuinely incapable of disrupting the computing market, because they're the ones abusing the market the hardest.

My only hope is that legislation steps in to stop all this bullshit. Your customers shouldn't be treated like guinea pigs, and they should have the authority to install whatever they want on the hardware they own. If Apple can't design a product that respects those two simple principles, then they're going to have a hard time courting modern-day pros that use Macbooks and Wintel machines.

We’re not moving to the web totally unless the web recreates there UI features we already get on desktop. I have to juggle a half dozen apps at a time no matter how much I automate.

VR/AR makes people feel sick and are fundamentally uncomfortable in a way a screen not strapped to your face isn’t.

> As a user, as long as each user-story you have has been perfectly addressed by some particular siloed iPadOS app, then iPadOS should work for you.

And then I tried sending a pdf by email. Oh well.

Can I share it on the corporate FTP ? Oh no.

Let me airdrop this to you... Wait... is this a windows / android device ?

...

Alright, I'll just use my laptop. My iPad is too niche for this workflow.

Do you actually have issues attaching a pdf to email on iOS?

There are plenty of apps to upload stuff to FTP. If this was an actual thing you used with any regularity, you'd have something installed already if files isn't connecting for you.

> so you expect to get things done by throwing files between various different tools all day — then iPadOS is never going to work for you.

GP was right, iPadOS is never going to work for anyone having to send a pdf to someone else.

So, to be clear, it is not possible to email a pdf on an iPad?

No. And to be clear, it depends where the pdf is : if it's inside another app, like adobe scan, you can't unless you share it from the other app and retype your mail. If it's already in "Files", then you are lucky and some apps -like gmail- allow you to pick from "Files".

If you wish for Adobe Scan to store the scan in "Files" automatically, well, you can't. You have to "share" them individually FROM THE APP to "Files".

And I think you will understand, now : this is the same shit show when trying to upload something via FTP. Like family photos.

The UX is stupid. The workflow is abysmal. The discovery is inexistant. The teams responsible for this at Apple don't care, as it's been like this for _years_.

What else are you going to use an iPad for, except for editing family photos and annotating pdfs ?

I use mine to watch Netflix.

I don't even understand the advantage of an iPad for non-drawing work. It's just a worse laptop with a too-small keyboard that can fall off and a square screen so it's not good to watch video on and an OS that doesn't do anything well. But Mac laptops are amazing, run all the same software, and don't have any of these problems.

I can't adapt to the workflow on an iPad either, and I have tried. I have really tried. However, I have seen other that have. To them the iPad is easy and macOS is overly complicated.

I am not sure if general computing is changing or there are now two branches, but I have watched other people do things on iPads that I consider impossible. Even simple things, like working in Excel, I find challenging on an iPad. But when I watch someone else who sort of "grew up" on iOS work in Excel on an iPad they are like some kind of wizard. I have found myself more than once now asking someone, "How did you do that?" feelsbadman.jpg

I think a lot comes down to muscle memory and shortcuts. While I know many/most of the shortcuts on iPadOS they are not automatic for me the way they are on macOS. I often have to think, "Wait… how do I do this on the iPad again," for even simple things. I even find drawing applications unintuitive. In the Adobe suite everything is explicit. In Procreate everything is unlabeled. This is even true in consumer applications, like Facebook vs Snapchat. Pinch here, tap there. Swipe from one of the four sides to reveal some function that is completely hidden. But for some people this is intuitive. There is an additional layer (or two) of UI abstraction in iOS/iPadOS that I have not internalized.

There definitely ARE some things you can't do on an iPad, but that list is actually shorter than you might think. There are a lot of things that you can do, they are just done differently… and in a way that, at least for me, seems to take a lot more work. But for others they are like, "Eww, why do I have to look for an icon and move the cursor over to it when I can just…" and then they proceed to input what is essentially sign language into the screen while holding down a modifier key.

I have an iPad Pro M1 11" with the Magic Keyboard.

It doesn't fall off or detach unexpectedly at all. And the keyboard size is close enough to "normal" that I don't notice for normal typing. The only thing I miss is a dedicated ESC key.

All that said, it only replaced my personal laptop. I continue to use a 13" MBP at work.

You can map caps lock to esc on the Magic Keyboard.

But why do you prefer this over a laptop?

For personal use… I like the size, it’s a bit more portable than a 13” laptop (0.5lb lighter with Magic Keyboard, 2.7lb lighter on its own), smaller footprint). It does everything I need (surfing, streaming, email, FaceTime).

Would I be happy with a 13” MBA as my personal device? Sure. I basically flipped a coin - the iPad won because shiny new thing.

For work, inability to run Docker/VMs and install VSCode is a deal breaker.

Work is not always about content creation, some people work mostly by consuming content (reading websites, browsing photos, selecting movie clips, navigating PDFs, or something else) and iPad is great for consuming content.

But not as good as a Mac at any of those tasks?

Could you elaborate? In what way?

Well I can use the exact same apps on the Mac to do all of those things, so there is functional parity. But you get the advantage of a more precise pointing device, keyboard, and an OS that lets me easily have multiple things open at once. Video is certainly better to watch on a Mac, since it's got the correctly shaped screen and doesn't fall over when you set it down.

What is so hard to understand about the fact that this is for you and not necessarily for everyone?

That's not hard to understand. I just think it's probably true for most people, not necessarily true for everyone.

Plus, I'm interested if the person I'm replying to actually thinks it's _better_ than a Mac or just "also good".

For me iPad is better at these tasks i.e. at tasks about consuming content.

I guess mostly because of its form factor (I can sit on a couch, no need to keep anything on my lap, I can adjust viewing positions easily) and the touchscreen input (to me it’s more immediate than working with the pointer).

It’s subtle; obviously you can sit with a laptop on a couch too, and touchpad can be intuitive as well. Still, for me it adds up to iPad’s UX being more approachable, more hands on, and more natural.

I think it's superior for reading. Newsletters, news, articles, etc.

> In my mini test case scenario I never said a word..simply the employee asked for iPad Pro.. I just handed it to them... waited... then about 2 weeks later they asked for laptop back.

If you work in IT with hundreds of staff members, why would you let them pick their own devices with zero guidance? This seems like a recipe for disaster no matter which product is picked. Do you let them do this with laptops / printers / operating systems / etc.?

Nope there are only three computer models to choose from and that we support. The iPad Pro was added as a 4th option based on a higher admin recommendation (not in IT ). However we are now back to supporting 3 models.

What are the three laptop models

MacBooK Air 2020 M1. Dell XPS 15/17 iMac 2019/2020 (last of Intel model) - some users still prefer desktop (will run either MacOS or Windows on these)

My daughter is 16 and has used an iPad for school for many years. Latptops are foreign to her. Same for her cohort. They are the next generation of adults and have replaced desktops and laptops with iPads and iPhones.

That is scary to me, an entire generation growing up within the walled garden and perceiving only Apple's products as what is possible for computers to accomplish. These computers are confining, as much as their constriction liberates the user in its simplicity, it is a real constriction. To me, that's exactly what the FLOSS movement hoped to avoid, and failed to do so by advocating for a purist f/open stance rather than winning smaller battles with open source at least staying in the war for market share.

Not just the walled garden. iPads are simply less capable as productivity devices than a laptop is.

Right now, for instance, I have this page open in a web browser, which has youtube playing in one tab, twitter in another, and this in yet another. I also have an iPhone simulator running behind this browser, a terminal window tail -f ing a logfile, and vscode in another window.

All of this stuff is open at the same time. I can hear audio from all of it, access all of it, see all of it, all at the same time. This is not possible on an iPad.

True, but that's not how most people use their devices.

Right, but some people do. And the people who do, used to be people who don't. And those people became people who do because it was possible. It is a bit worrying to me that so many people will be growing up with devices with such a low "skill ceiling"; devices which don't let your interest in technology bloom but rather restrict what can be imagined.

> And the people who do, used to be people who don't.

Yep. Walled gardens kill curiosity.

Curiosity is what got me into this industry, way before I knew it could be a career. Playing around, messing with files that ran my games, making web forums and learning to change how they look.

I think multitasking is the basic operation and these are normal operation. Ipad is seriously limited by Apple wallgarden design.

And, I think many people work like this if it will ever be available in wall gardened ipad.

When was the last time you used iPadOS? It can run multiple programs, and can display two side-by-side just fine. Yeah that means it's a little clunky if you need to switch between three or more apps, but it's not like it can't have apps in the background when you can't see them. (Plus, no need to simulate anything, you're on a real iOS device.) There's still no Xcode for iOS, though there is Swift Playgrounds if you're an iOS developer, and VScode still hasn't made it to the App store, but it's got a keyboard and a mouse so if you squint a little, it's fine for a large segment of users.

Sure there are limitations; you can't hit F12 and drop into developer tools in Chrome, plus iOS Chrome is just reskinned Safari anyway. Oh and the sound thing. I'm not saying a full laptop doesn't have more, but the lost capabilities simply aren't showstoppers for everyone, especially if you're not a developer. In fact, because they can have build in cell-modems and macbook air's don't, combined with the fact that there are decent SSH clients, it's actually a better device for some.

As opposed to other schools that use ChromeOS devices?

There is also very little digital knowledge for them to gain as they already handle their phones better than their parents. As a technically aligned kid I would have hated an iPad. Well, I still do...

I believe Chromebooks are more popular in the education market in general.

My son, 14, uses a Chrombook instead. I can compare both. Honestly, he hates it. Limited yet still expensive. He would much rather have a Windows or Mac laptop instead. The school prefers Chrombooks over Windows - easier to manage.

If they would just allow UTM to run, that would be good enough for me.

https://getutm.app/

This! They even enabled swap on iPadOS 16. Why oh why can’t I run a VM?

It honestly just needs virtualization. They don't care about evolving the product because they are mortified of cannibalizing a revenue stream in an official way.

Only nerds and IT would bother with virtualization and they'd net a new sale.

I've been eyeing an iPad Pro, but it's just a colossal waste as it trends strongly toward only consumption, which is frankly a poor purchase.

Programming on the iPad was OK, in the sense that Blink Shell is a better ssh client than PuTTY, and I don't want to carry my desktop around with me. Eventually I switched back to a Linux 2-in-1 laptop -- it is nice to be able to run GUI applications locally, but it is nowhere near as good a tablet as an iPad despite whatever tweaking I try...

actually many people don't use putty and recommending putty in 2022 is not that good. Windows terminal etc can easily do ssh without any hassles.

What kills it for me are the apps where you can't copy a single word. e.g. Apple's own Messages app, you're forced to copy the whole message.

Same for the spell checker. For some reason I have ridiculous trouble triggering it in certain apps. I can see the mistake underlined in red but I really struggle to get trigger the correction popup instead of the "copy, lookup, etc" popup.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think I could consider an iPad as laptop replacements without some basic changes to iPadOS.

> apps where you can't copy a single word

This one is ridiculous. On Reddit I always want to quote part of a message or copy a phrase to translate it, and it’s literally impossible to do. You have to copy the whole message, paste it in a text editor or in Notes, and finally copy what you actually wanted to copy.

This should be solved at the OS level.

> This should be solved at the OS level.

It is. Take a screenshot, then select the text in the screenshot.

By design it is never going to be able to replace a "laptop" running desktop OS. If the workplace is not designed to work with iPad, then I doubt anyone really can replace even a MacBook with iPad.

Your "mini test" is invalid because they are allowed to choose, ie intermixing all sort of OSes together. In that case it is very likely any workflow the iPad excels at are not used in the workplace, and vice versa that anyone else' workflow is really traditional (as simple as depending on the file system a lot) that doesn't play well with iPad.

When your mini test doesn't agree with how successful it is (for business to deploy iPad), it just means your mini test is nowhere near the norm.

Eg you mentioned school, that's the best case for the iPad to shine, because everyone are mandated to use iPad, and the IT would have already figure out how to perform all needed tasks. (And bonus is that the students are a blank state with no prior bias on how to do a certain thing.)

I can't speak to how Apple attempts to make deals with schools and workplaces, but their normal consumer marketing seems to pretty clearly highlight the differences between a MacBook and an iPad. If anything they seem to go out of their way to maintain significant differences in the two operating systems (which, ironically, is also a very popular complaint in tech circles).

I have an executive roll and I used an iPad almost exclusively from probably 2013 until about six months ago. It’s eminently doable.

Kids who don’t know better might become accustomed to it and, unless they are power users or interested to become that, they might prefer to scrape by with the iPad.

There is pretty strong evidence that people aren’t great at using full fledged operating systems and feel much more comfortable on a slate with a dumbed down UI

Most people aren't power users. An iPad is a great device for lots of people. It's my favorite computer to use mostly because of the excellent apps.

What you call a dumbed down UI, I call streamlined. It's simple, focused, and fast.

You’re right. Ironically my “dumbed down” description was a little too dumbed down itself. I agree though, there are cases where a tablet is actually a better tool too.

I suppose the problem is that they rarely present us with opportunities or necessity to dig deeper, learn more, and become adept at working with and within the operating system.

I could be wrong, too. The truth is I only use an iPad once every couple of weeks for 30 to 90 minutes. My point of view here could be too limited to be accurate, and I’m totally glossing over non-Apple devices.

I would not say that “people aren’t great at using full fledged operating systems” but that fully fledged operating systems aren’t great at accommodating people.

I think it goes both ways, but I agree, we’re mostly bad at making software work well for human beings.

I do think people have individual limitations though, and eventually complexity becomes exceedingly difficult to hide being a well designed user interface. That’s not their fault though, and I worry that we don’t consider this often enough as we race towards higher technology. We’re definitely leaving people behind.

iPads and Chromebooks are rapidly taking over education. Both K-12 and in college.

I think the pandemic really accelerated things. A lot more students are using iPads, rather than paper notebooks.

Chromebooks won this battle.. handily.

My perception is that this is largely based on price. Not necessarily because it’s better.

Nope,

Apple didn’t listen. They had to make a low cost plastic version of the ipad to survive education.

The chromebook is far cheaper and far more functional.

Kids throw devices like crazy and it turns out that having a glass-only ipad is more expensive (spending $100 on a case that successfully helps it survive is one expensive solution though!).

Note that all this is coming from a huge iPad fan that has used it from day 1 (and I am typing this on my ipad pro!).

I don't think Apple is marketing it as heavily as you think at replacing Workplace laptops, but moreso consumer laptops. iPad is a delightfully simple device for consuming any kind of media, editing photos and videos, light to medium gaming, and doing little creative things.

Without a clear description of what these employees were using their iPads for, it's impossible for anyone else to use this info to determine if their scenario fits yours.

Your ability to use iPad full-time depends heavily on the type of work you do.

It depends on the user.

Execs and task oriented workers are great iPad use cases. In a global org I’m familiar with, they run about 15k iPads, about 5-10% of the IT engaged headcount. Senior execs in large orgs in particular are ideal in the iPad environment.

For schools, I think the iPad sweet spot is grade K-4 for dedicated devices; 4-8 is Chrome and 8+ can be Mac/Chrome/PC. For shared or purpose dedicated devices, iPads fit every level.

Lots of other use case are limited by legacy or enterprise software. Police patrol car, medical point of service and point of sale are examples of use cases where iPads would be the ideal solution, but for the existing software.

Is everything they do web-based? Or did they just not know that it won't run any desktop software and that even if there is an app-store version it's usually cut down to half the features of the desktop version?

I can attest to this, I worked in IT back in 2011 at a school where teachers loved the idea of iPad's over their clunky laptops.

However, in time, they all needed their laptops back and either gave the iPad back or worked 50/50 across both devices.

I have no doubt that today the iPad is more useful for students and teachers, but if you don't have a defined workflow that easily allows for the use of iPads teachers won't use them. We're all too familiar with the way in which Windows works and it integrates well with the networks companies use.

I use the ipad for reading music scores but would never replace it with a laptop. M1 and M2 is overkill for a consumption device that doesn't have a real file system accessible to the user.

We have over 3000 employees with Apple equipment as their primary device, and probably 200 of them are iPad Pro only.

They do serve different niches than laptops, but with a keyboard case in an Office 365 environment, they can be full office/productivity replacements for anyone who prioritizes light travel over running local software.

Either-or obviously desktop. But why either-or not both and an iphone as well. The form factor is so different. And if you develop with lots of internet and book/pdf to reference.

You can ask me to choose TV or ipad or even in reading novel kindle or … obviously not job setting but it is just different tools.

It's a great consumption device though - ever since Google stopped paying attention to the tablet space we have an iPad 9.7 that lays in the kitchen and all my family members only touch it for watching Netflix or YouTube.

Even for browsing it feels very slow compared to Surface tablet or even Firefox on M1 MBP now a days.

If they're competing against Chromebooks, they're maybe better actually.

Because web apps can actually opens up the flexibility of a classical computer system again. For strategic purposes Apples support here is minimal.

Still not optimal, but certainly far better for education, not only because of the price and because you don't make yourself dependent on a single manufacturer or at least to a lesser degree.

Largest problem is the lack of education of teachers though.

I don't like how Apple is making the iPad more laptop-y. My ideal is to use a normal desktop computer, and an iPad. No laptop. But if I had to pick only one of course it would be a laptop.

Makes a lot more sense if you consider the idea that "pro" has become a luxury designation rather than the audience they're marketing towards.

It's not just that the OS is crippled, the apps are as well.

Trying to quickly navigate between apps, edit, and copy and paste, is an exercise in frustration.

I have my iPad Pro+Magic Keyboard with me 24/7. I wish I could code on it but that's it. For everything else it's perfect.

> refuse to add functionality to the OS and keep it overly crippled/restricted.

Is this your opinion or was there any feedback from those 5 users?

ipads (like phones) are appliances... designed for consuming. Much like a microwave or a fridge. they're designed for very specific scenarios. sure you could make it do other things... but it will not be very effective.

Laptops are swiss-army knives. you can create/consume/compute and they're pretty effective at all those things.

My use case for this would be fairly simple: future proofing, to make it unlikely to need a new tablet for 10 years

I personally carry both my ipad pro and macbook pro all the time. They’re just both so useful.

Given how you approached it (zero guidance and support), I'm not surprised all 5 asked for their laptops back.

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