Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewbeck | Hacker News Reader

> not geared towards productivity? The fact that to run VSCode

Productivity !== coding. Coding is a subset of productivity, but most jobs do not require coding.

I get that you want this to be something else, but a lot of people are incredibly productive on iPads today, and adding the ability to mirror your MacBooks screen means that this platform absolutely has a future in productivity.

HN has a lot of this attitude — “I can’t code directly on it so this is a toy” — and it’s always a laugh for me. There’s … other people? Who want to do other things?

View on HN

That's great for those people but yes, for devs, it's not a real replacement for a MacBook, even though it literally has the same chip inside. It's a shame.

And very importantly: In most enterprises, most MacBook users are either graphics people or devs. Because they're the only communities that really have a legit reason to want them (especially the devs because iOS development just needs a mac).

Most others just have to put up with Windows whether they like it or not (working in IT for a company with 120.000 PCs and 600 Macs). And yes most companies are like us.

"The same chip inside" doesn't mean that much though. This one pushes a LOT more pixels at really high framerates, has to handle realtime input from a ton of cameras and do live algorithms on their data etc. I think the whole realtime usecase on a more open OS like the Mac? Very hard to make that work.

So I see where they're coming from, sure. But productivity wise, iOS apps are not great. Needing a Mac to connect to isn't either considering the price of each.

Depends on the industry. Big Tech workers overwhelmingly use Macs, and not just developers.

>That's great for those people but yes, for devs, it's not a real replacement for a MacBook, even though it literally has the same chip inside.

Good thing Apple isn't marketing it as a replacement for a MacBook then.

Of course it isn't, they want you to buy a MacBook alongside, that's my entire point. They are artificially restricting one device in order to make you buy their other devices. It's the same story as the iPad, it also has the same chip as the Mac but they restrict apps like IDEs so people instead have to buy two devices. If it were a Surface-like product instead, with full macOS, I'd have bought an iPad in a heartbeat.

>Of course it isn't, they want you to buy a MacBook alongside, that's my entire point.

Hardware company entices consumers to buy more hardware. Film at 11.

>If it were a Surface-like product instead, with full macOS, I'd have bought an iPad in a heartbeat.

Ah yes. The Surface, the device that showcases the appeal of running an OS designed for mouse/keyboard input with a thin veneer of touch support spackled on top. It's amazing Apple isn't sprinting to release a product along those lines.

> Hardware company entices consumers to buy more hardware. Film at 11.

Sure, they can do whatever they want, of course. Similarly, I can also call it a shame.

> The Surface, the device that showcases the appeal of running an OS designed for mouse/keyboard input with a thin veneer of touch support spackled on top. It's amazing Apple isn't sprinting to release a product along those lines.

You're right, it works great as a portable computer that I can run anything I want on. I'm sure Apple could make an even better version if, I don't know, they created a keyboard attachment for one of their devices and made that device's OS more mouse and keyboard friendly, while still retaining the ability to run whatever software the user wants. Ah, one can dream.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com