Giving up the iPad-only travel dream | Hacker News Reader

Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

sixcolors.com

382 pointshaunter617 comments

The key sentence here is:

> This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done).

Apple (since Lisa/Mac, after Apple II, which had an open architecture) likes appliances and to control the user experience, so the iPad is "more Apple" than Macs are.

Whenever I am waiting at airports, I have to grin at how much stuff people are carrying nowadays: it's not 2, it's 3 full-blown computing devices. First there was the mobile phone (which then just a device to call), then came the laptop, then the mobile phone became a computer with the iPhone and Android, and finally, the iPad appeared to fill a middle position. You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead. That's because - as stated in the article - there are known limit, or people are worried that they may need all devices for particular use cases or data kept on them.

At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.

I tried working with an iPad (and later iPad Pro) but eventually got back to a Ubuntu Linux laptop (ThinkPad X1 Nano), which at 970 grams is also lighter than my iPad Pro 10".

> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop, depending on whether they are private people, non-technical "creatives" or IT/technical/dev folks, but instead, everybody appears to be travelling with ALL THREE devices instead

I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go. I can't plug my macbook into a car to use maps or play music. I can't use my macbook on the beach to take a picture of my child playing in the surf. I can't really use my phone to type out anything shorter than a quick text.

(Caveat, for the pedants: yes, I could do all those things, but with terrible inconvenience.)

Maybe it's an American thing but I don't think I know a single person who owns or uses an ipad, with the exception of rich parents who use them exclusively to distract children. I certainly don't notice a lot of ipad users in airports or trains.

I had my "single device for everything" experience with the original Galaxy Note. I would plug in a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and use it as a computer (it required a special OTG USB to HDMI adapter). It connected to my car. It had a big enough screen to be a mobile Tv. It was fun for sketching with the included pressure sensitive pencil. I had a game-controller that it could click into, making it into a handheld game machine. And it had a graphics chip that gave it more graphics ability than comparable mobile computing devices of the time. It even had a cool thing where it could emulate and magnetic credit card swipe, making it compatible with credit card readers that didn't yet support tap-to-pay! Truly a miracle device.

Yet for all that, I replaced it with a Moto X just 2 years later, and it's the Moto X that I really miss, with its superior voice control and its preference to remain in my pocket, and the little dimple in its wooden back.

Parent's point still stands as in a decent ecosystem you'd get down to at most two.

For instance a phone and a Surface Pro covers 100% of the use cases, there's no gap for a 3rd device. For some this gets down to one device with a Galaxy Fold and DEX.

People might have different preferences and/or be locked in the Apple ecosystem anyway, but we have working products showing things done differently ("think different" was such a good copy)

> I can't answer a call or text my family with my laptop while I'm on the go

That's interesting, for me, any texting (usually via whatsapp or signal) is far, far more convenient on the laptop than on the phone, so far that if I expect a longer response, I'll rather find a place to sit and pull out the laptop than try to type all of it on the phone; and for calling people also videocalls on laptop are more convenient for me than the phone, so again, if it's more than a one-minute conversation, I'll rather put down the phone and call them through the laptop.

More importantly for an airplane, you can't watch Netflix (or most streaming movies) offline on a laptop. Though I've never used a Surface, maybe you can do that with some kind of mobile app that runs on a hybrid thing.

I have an Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo as my main home and travel computer. I am upgrading my Samsung Ultra Note 20 to a Samsung Fold 5. I can work off of my Note now, and leave the Asus laptop at the place I am staying. I spent 6 months in Saudi Arabia working this way. You can run MS 365 and Dex on the phone. I use the Note to annotate photos in the field and to annotate during Zoom calls. I've typed proposals, spreadsheets, and more just on the phone. Because I do CAD, physics sims, and rendering, I can't lose the laptop, but for everything else, I could get away with the phone. I think the Fold 5 will make it even more capable for what I use it for. I still have a 2015 iPad Pro, a 2011 27 in. iMac, but I've left the Apple ecosystem for a while now. Android, Windows, and Linux for me mainly in that order.

Screen Mirroring is possible, but it has to be a little creative.

iPad is super handy but I'm not sure a laptop has turn by turn nav, maybe it could via an emulator.

    You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with 
    EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop

You're missing a few major scenarios.

- The iPad works as a second monitor for a Mac laptop. Great for creative/tech people.

- If people are traveling for work, they are bringing their work laptop which may have corporate lockdown/spyware software installed. Therefore using their work laptop for entertainment might not be possible or optimal. (Not to be crass, but: watching porn in a hotel room is a pretty common use case)

I'd prefer to travel lighter (and I do when possible) but I don't find iPad+Macbook to be an onerous load for a airplane carry-on bag. Although, a smaller person or somebody with an injury or disability might feel differently.

    At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.

But, they already can? You do need a separate cable for the iPhone of course, which is annoying. https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Four-Port-Charger-USB-C-...

> The iPad works as a second monitor for a Mac laptop. Great for creative/tech people.

You need to be logged into the same Apple ID, which is a huge hassle for everybody who has a different Apple ID for personal and work use.

There’s tonnes of Apple features that break because of this. Apple’s view is that there’s a 1:1 correspondence between Apple IDs and people, and everything they do is designed around that fact.

> At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.

I have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, an Android phone, an Apple Watch, an iPad, and AirPods Pro; so I have fairly demanding charging needs.

I have the MagSafe Duo Charger and a Minix Neo P3 to plug into the wall. I have a lightning cable to plug the Duo Charger into the Minix. From there, the Duo Charger can charge both phones, the watch, and the AirPods. I have a USB-C cable I can use to charge the laptop and the iPad from the Neo P3. Obviously I can’t charge absolutely everything simultaneously, but I never need to because most of the batteries last days and I don’t use all the devices simultaneously anyway.

So all of those devices but I just need a wall charger, a Duo and two cables. The “oh no, everything is so complex because Apple refuses to use USB-C” hand wringing is massively overblown. Does it really matter that my iPhone, my AirPods, and my watch don’t have USB-C when all I do to charge them is put them down on a pad when I’m not using them? Sure, my Android phone has a USB-C port, but I charge my iPhone and my Android phone the same way – by putting them down on a pad. What is the EU forcing Apple to add a USB-C port on the iPhone actually achieving for me if I never use the Lightning port on the current models?

I got a single Anker 120W GaN charger with 2x USB-C and one USB-A for my travel needs.

It charges pretty much every single device I own at max power.

> You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop

But why would you think that?

I don't want to have to pull out my laptop (or even iPad) for phone calls or to check a quick e-mail.

Obviously there are types of real serious work that can only be done on a laptop.

And then I'm bringing the iPad to read books on, which takes up a lot less space than if the books were physical. It's far nicer reading on the iPad than the other devices. It's also far easier to position the way I want on my tray table for a movie.

I have zero complaints. My phone doesn't take space away from anything else, and my laptop+iPad together are slimmer and weigh less than a single laptop did in the pre-Air days. And much less when you consider I no longer bring physical books/magazines.

> a single laptop did in the pre-Air days.

I used to travel with the first Apple Luggable[0] (and extra lead/acid batteries).

Times have changed.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable

It's very simple for me. The three devices are rather specialized. The phone always comes with me, so that's a given. The tablet is primarily for content consumption (why use my tiny phone screen for this when my nice 10-inch tablet works perfectly?) and the laptop, well, let's me get work done. Each has a fairly specialized function and each performs that function exceedingly well. Forcing one of the devices to perform a function that another device was designed for just gets frustrating.

And that's my problem with it- if I buy a device and what to do whatever with it, who is the company to specifically stop me from doing that? I'm not asking them to design anything special for me, just allow open access to the device so that the community can build whatever we want

It's simple.

A laptop is a keyboard-oriented device, packing a,lot of computing power. It has the shortest battery life, and requires a desk, or at least a seat, to operate comfortably.

A phone is a handheld device, one which is always on you. It necessarily has a smaller screen, no separate keyboard, and only has a decent battery life because it sleeps most of the time. It can have serious peak performance, but has a hard time sustaining it (ask Ingress players).

An iPad (or another tablet if you feel fancy) is a two-hands device with a good, easy to use touchscreen, and software built around it. It's a natural choice for a graphic artist, for instance. An iPad has a more tolerable onscreen keyboard than a phone. Also its screen is large enough to enjoy movies, etc, so it's a convenient visual media consumption device, more so than a phone. I had laptops with touchscreens; they were fun, but not nearly as handy.

(For the record: I travel with a phone and a Linux laptop.)

Imagine we took this approach to cars

A convertible is for sinny days, it has no roof at all, you should use another car on rainy days.

A Smart is a 2 seater for trips to the city, its easy to find parking

And a Hummer is for trips to the countryside, it won't fit into any parking spot in London.

You should buy all three and use the right tool for the job

Having worked in many graphics roles for 20 years, I have never heard of a professional wanting to use an iPad for their work, yet this thread is full of people claiming the iPad is some artist dream tool. It is not even close to true.

I end up travelling with all three but (as a web developer) I could just about pull off travelling with just my iPad.

But I do want to observe that there is really no such thing as a non-technical creative person, and if there were, they would likely have a laptop, because using an iPad to fully replace a specific workflow on a laptop is, as the article suggests, eventually a more complex challenge than using a laptop. If you have one specific creative application to run that means anything it’s likely to need a traditional desktop/laptop OS scenario, because the iPadOS versions are generally still compromised.

The “non-technical person” is an IT industry trope we should retire. Very few such people really exist; people are just “technical” in ways that IT folk don’t recognise. At best it’s a fiction that IT people use to describe those who have the good sense to not care about the minutiae of computers. But in this day and age, no creative person has the opportunity to know nothing about technology.

This is very egalitarian of you, but much like the effort to turn STEM into STEAM you would strip the world of a useful distinction in order to be more inclusive.

When I say someone is technical I mean this: I could give them instructions that include the words "open a terminal/command prompt" and they would both know what I mean and not be completely freaked out at the idea. If they are non-technical, then they may use several different devices quite successfully but have only the faintest idea how they work under the hood.

Every industry has to make this distinction: an auto mechanic needs to know whether they're talking to someone who understands cars or someone who just drives them. A plumber needs to know whether they are talking to someone who understands plumbing or just knows how to flush a toilet. They may have different words to describe this distinction, but it's an important distinction for the language to have and the word we've settled on in IT is "technical".

A "non-technical person" is someone who is not skilled in technology, usually IT, not someone who knows nothing about technology. The fact that there exists nobody who knows nothing about technology is a good clue that the term doesn't mean that, or else it'd be a useless term, as you pointed out

> people are just “technical” in ways that IT folk don’t recognise.

yes, perhaps they can work an abacus, or throw a javelin, or arrange Skittles by color. Those are all technical, but they aren't what IT folks mean when they say technical vs non-technical, and are mostly useless technical skills in that context (e.g. if FAANG was looking for "technical person", they likely do not need help arranging Skittles)

Which is precisely what Apple wants. They want each devices to be their own, they want you to buy them all, and to carry them all.

> An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone!

Apple got there by tearing down device barriers. Now …

Buy them all – maybe.

Carry them all – hardly.

Apple has invested a lot of time and effort into making full continuity across their entire computing ecosystem actually work, which allows the user to pick only one device that is the best poised for the task at hand.

The user can switch devices as they please and carry on on another device from where they left off on the previous one. It is seamless.

Of course, the user can also choose to use all of the devices at the same time if that is what they want or it merely suits them.

Microsoft and Linux ecosystems, however, do not have the same level of completeness and continuity and convenience.

Don't forget people like me who have to travel with my locked-down work laptop as well as my personal laptop. I used to bring my Switch on long trips too but I've honestly stopped because I would take up like 4 bins at the TSA scan and it's awkward. They always tell me to put each piece of electronics in a separate bin. Now it's laptop, laptop, ipad+shoes+belt+phone.

Get TSA PreCheck. Just the fact that I don't have to pull my devices out of my bags makes it worth the cost.

Personal computers started open, the iPad started as closed. The author is trying to get the twain to meet.

Myself, I've always seen the iPad as a "media consumption device" (despite the amazing Procreate) and never bothered to try to shoehorn it into another role.

My laptop and desktops will remain my primary devices forever I suspect.

> Myself, I've always seen the iPad as a "media consumption device"

I see it that way too, but I also see some confusion in their product line towards "the top". The iPad mini or even a regular iPad makes for a fantastic media consumption device, the only place any other device has those beat is a Kindle for books but that's another conversation. But when it comes to the iPad Pro, I always had a hard time figuring out what Apple's pitch for it was over a Macbook Air. Apple always pitched how portable the iPad Pro was but it's a hard sell when they have the Macbook Air which is smaller. And it's not even a competition in terms of use cases, iPad limits you in some pretty serious ways while the Air (especially with the new M1 processor) can chew through stuff normally reserved for i7's on a desktop. My brother asked me if he should get himself an iPad Pro for work (he's a real-estate agent). I told him outside of the use case of walking around a house and pulling up home plans or something, the Air is kicking the iPad's ass in every single category.

They've been trying for 12 years.

This is a white flag in Apple community parlance, not a plea.

Too bad that USB-C is so poorly designed from a mechanical standpoint. Apple's Lightning connectors are robust, but for some reason the consortium that developed USB-C decided they needed to make it more complicated so that both the male and female connectors are prone to wearing out and getting loose.

> male and female connectors are prone to wearing out and getting loose

And yet despite the sheer number of USB-C devices I own at all ends of the cost scale, this has only ever happened to my 2017 Macbook Pro.

And on the male side, Apple dutifully makes up for the claimed robustness of the connector by making some of the worst cables.

They each fit a different use case. You don't stop having those use cases just because you're not at home.

You make a tradeoff between the extra weight and the convenience of the right tool for the job. None of those devices are all that heavy. It would be very different if they each weighed ten pounds.

>At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger

Good luck with that... I've a very nice dell laptop a client gave me to access their network. It uses USB-C (90W) for charging. Recently I had another dell laptop shipped to me by another client for the same purpose. This one too uses USB-C charger, but a 130W one.

A 130W charger had a broken plug so I attempted to use the 90W charger to charge the 130W laptop. You knew w what happened? It started charging and in under a minute it detected this as a "wrong" charger. It stopped charging and it would not boot with the 90W charger plugged in.

So if we can't use USB-C to swap chargers between two very similar devices made by the same manufacturer, what hope is there for having a truly "universal" charger? Yes, the 130W laptop couldn't possibly pull 130W from the 90W charger, but why couldn't it throttle, the cpu? Set the built in gpu to the igpu mode (yes it has both a igpu and another nVidia one)? Sad.

As for travelling with devices. I have been travelling with a laptop + cellphone forever. Few years ago I bought a little "convertible" laptop. I think it originally run windows 7. I installed Linux on it (with xfce desktop). It is essentially a tablet with a power of a laptop and detachable keyboard. I expected the keyboard interface to fail very quickly, but it hasn't. This way I have the convenience to browse the Web on a tablet, or plug the keyboard in and do actual work.

The law should make that dell situation illegal once it goes into effect for laptops.

>You'd think depending on the person, they'd travel with EITHER their phone OR their iPad OR their laptop

I don't want to pull out my iPad or laptop when I need to make a call, or while standing in line.

I don't want to do everything on my phone, I appreciate the larger screen of an tablet or laptop.

When I need to be reachable for work I carry a laptop too -- I'm not allowed to do work on my personal device, but even if I could, I wouldn't, that would mean giving my employer far more control over my personal device than I want to (the same reason I wouldn't use my work laptop for personal use)

So which single device do you travel with? I think it's obvious to most people that a phone can't replace a laptop in tons of situations and vice versa.

When I travel I usually only have a non-smart phone.

I'm long way out of tech community talks, but I have been highly interested in ARM powered Windows laptops. They thinner, lighter, last longer on one charge and can be really powerful. Overall, they can be more efficient than the Apple devices, since you only need one. But can someone explain what happened to ARM powered x86 development? Is there some conspiracy behind the scene like how Hydrogen powered vehicle got murdered?

I don't bring my laptop with me on non-business trips. It's a matter of principle.

I have a cheap Android tablet but it never leaves my living room. I don't know what people do with tablets while traveling that they couldn't do with their phone just as easily (at least in a non-professional context). The OP certainly didn't get me any closer to an answer!

Watching movies/series is noticeably better on a 10" screen. I suppose the same can be true for some games.

Other than that, I don't see much extra value for tablets either.

I got a foldable phone, which has replaced my tablet. Somewhat ironically though, I bought a lapdock to use my phone's desktop mode. It's actually a pretty neat solution that bridges the mobile-desktop functionality divide. I wrote about my setup here:

https://rafichaudhury.com/fanzine/lapdock

As a proud (and happy) owner of an iPhone Mini, there’s quite a lot of things that I can’t do comfortably on a phone. I use an iPad Mini as a travel companion for reading, maps, some games, playing music (longer battery life) and sorting through photos I took on my phone.

You’re even forgetting the supercomputer they’re carrying on their wrists.

Yeah I also travel with a battery pack and, if I'm overseas, a pocket wifi. And my airpods, although lots of people like big headsets too. Apple also thinks their VR rig is great for air travel. So potentially 7-9 devices.

I'm personally not as bothered by the number of devices as much as all the forced redundancy. Like the core devices could have 3 desktop quality processors, 13 microphones, 3 selfie cameras, 2 rear cameras, 2-3 cellular modems, etc.

I'd love a design where the phone is my chip, 5g radio and storage. The camera can be worn as a bodycam (for lifestreaming or personal safety) but also docks to the phone. The phone speakers and mics are a 2nd set of airpods you can cycle in to keep them charged (both sets can be docked at once). The tablet is just a bigger screen with extra battery/storage and the phone docks to that. The watch screen is weaker and monochrome so the battery life is better and it keeps the health functions.

This is why I've been using Windows tablets for a _very_ long while --- since the NCR-3125 (though I would often boot it into PenPoint).

Still quite sad that I couldn't find a "real" replacement for my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 and its transflective display --- the Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was close (but I had to roll it back to 1703 twice, and it lacked a daylight viewable display --- repeat after me, trying to outbright the sun on a battery-powered device is stupid).

When it was time to replace my GB12 I bought Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, which unfortunately is too large for my sling bag, and still doesn't have a daylight viewable display, but it has a stylus (which I have to toggle between modes depending on which program I'm using).

Yeah, this guy really raises the correct issue, but doesn't quite phrase it as I would: "The beauty of the Mac as a platform is that Apple doesn’t have to think of every use case and doesn’t have to build out every single esoteric detail in order to enable new features"

Apple doesn't have to imagine every use case for their portable devices; they just have to let developers address them. But they don't; Apple BLOCKS any use case it doesn't imagine. When Apple enabled real apps, a lot us expected all kinds of cool applications that involved the phone talking to other devices. I wanted to write a time-lapse controller for cameras.

But NOPE. Apple locked down (and continues to lock down) the I/O port on iOS devices. This will no doubt continue when they finally slap a "USB" port on the rest of their mobile products. It's "USB" because yeah it'll physically be a USB-C and charge through it, but no way are developers going to have access to it.

Apple even cripples its Bluetooth. And of course there's the lack of a user-accessible file system, and the attendant lack of drag-&-drop file transfer between iOS and computer. I scoff at the arrival of video-editing apps on the iPad, when there's no good way to get gigabytes upon gigabytes of footage onto or off of these things. Not to mention the laughable clumsiness of trying to manipulate tiny controls on a touchscreen with your finger (and hand) blocking your view of what you're trying to work on.

And by the time you're done junking these gimped tablets up with a keyboard and pointing device, you have all of these limitations plus the cost and bulk of a MacBook Air. I'd argue you have more "bulk," in that you have a loose collection of crap that you have to carry around (and charge) instead of a tidy computer.

What Apple should have done is enable the Pencil to work on the (defectively) giant trackpads on its computers. Its failure to do so is baffling and unfortunate.

3 devices sounds a lot, but what do people normally travel with? Probably 2, laptop and phone?

Considering how light the iPad is it’s not a big addition to slip in an ipad in your bag.

Sounds great you just use your thinkpad ubuntu, but what’s the battery life on that compared to iPad?

My experience has been that installing Ubuntu on laptops dramatically reduced its battery life.

I travel a lot for work. For a one day or one night trip I tend to take 3 devices: work laptop, work phone, personal phone. For longer trips I tend to also take personal laptop, e-reader, plus external keyboard, mouse, headset (works better for me than airpods), laptop stand, mouse mat, and streaming stick so I can watch Netflix etc in hotels (tend to use the Amazon Fire sticks these days). Plus assorted chargers.

All of them (MBA, iPad Air, iPhone, e-reader). And they’re still lighter than my old inspiron).

3 devices? I usually have 4 devices. I bring my Iphone 13 Mini, iPad Mini, Macbook 12-inch and Steamdeck (and before the Switch). The iPad is for content consumption. I can watch 8 hours of TV on it without breaking a sweat about battery life. The laptop is to work and the phone is to communicate. Steamdeck is just for play.

I do try to buy the lightest and smallest version of every device. The steamdeck is honestly the most unwieldly device I carry around. Everything else fits without a problem in my messenger bag.

I did a lot of personal travel with an iPad Mini (plus BT mouse and keyboard) and do just fine with RDP connections to my office and home as needed. In fact, I’m typing this on the second iteration (the 5th Gen one) and hope to get a new one as soon as it’s launched.

There is certainly a lot you can do with an iPad if you have the right apps (I run full-fledged vim, with plugins, inside a-Shell and code Python, Lua, Janet and Guile inside a-Shell or iSH as required). I also dabble in music (plenty of amazingly cheap synth apps), but most people don’t have the patience to try these things out (and Jason Snell’s audio woes are something that runs deeper).

Not to mention smart-watches too, which also do calling and texting.

I feel like at least some of these can be consolidated and the only reason they're not is because of arbitrary limits. I don't see any reason the ipad can't be more open like a laptop as well as operate as a phone (some android tablets can). You could use the watch as your "notifications and reach me asap" device.

But overall I always end up overpacking just because of being afraid of needing something I don't have.

I traveled with a Kindle Fire Tablet (middle device).

I’m loving it. It’s been mainly used for video on this trip. Quick web searches and killing time ready a distant second.

It’s a better size for a plane. I’m lucky in that I always have a gentleman in front of me that can pull 2gs pushing his seat back in a seemingly targeted attempt to snap my laptop screen. Not an issue with the middle device. And it is costs hundreds less than my laptop when the flight attendant spills a coffee on it.

That said, you still need a computer to compute. The mid size device is still for consumption. The article makes the case that it’s getting better, but it isn’t there

> 3 full-blown computing devices

It's four now, with the smart watch.

With LTE, the smart watch can conveniently replace the phone a lot of the time. But not ALL of the time, so, again, you'll probably be carrying both.

I feel like Smartwatches are to phones what tablets are to laptops: a supplementary device that doesn't work as well without the primary computer.

While many people might work entirely from a tablet, or even a Chromebook, you'll run into so many issues that you're better off carrying a laptop to cover all bases. In a pinch, a watch or tablet can pinch-hit for the device they supplement, but using them as a primary device every day gets old really quick.

Foldable iPhone Plus could probably narrow it down to two but I've also seen people go with ipad mini + apple watch + airpods where the duties of the phone split between the iPad/watch.

Talking about EU I'm patiently waiting for official app side loading and alternative app stores that should come before the 6th of March 2024 [0]

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/13/23507766/apple-app-store...

I agree with this summarization but I don't see an issue with carrying three separate devices (three separate batteries!).

I bring all three on a bicycle trip. My iPad replaces a book and a notebook, so I pack just as much as before. My laptop is an actual work machine that does a lot more.

I tried to combine both with a Windows tablet, but it was just the worst of both worlds: a slow and needy Windows PC, and a tablet with bad UX, bad apps and poor battery life.

Besides any of its standalone functions, an iPad makes a useful secondary display when traveling with a Mac, plus it serves as pretty large external battery pack for any other devices if needed. I’m not backpacking everything, I usually have a carry on, but it never felt more cumbersome than toting a magazine around.

Depends on what you want you want to use it for.

An iPad + Apple Pencil is amazing for jotting math or CS problems brainstorming, sketching, messing with music ideas, etc. Also great for reading, watching video content on the go, etc.

A laptop is much better at anything typing intensive or coding related.

Today it is not possible to travel without a phone, so the question reduces to whenever to take laptop and/or tablet or not. I mostly prefer to travel with phone only, if I do not anticipate some working tasks to be done.

> At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.

Nitpick, but I've been using the same usb-c charger for years. Soon they can all share the same cable.

Well that or one or more of those are work devices. I’m not going to do all my personal stuff on a work-provided machine so I’ll still bring my iPad along.

> At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger.

My Macbook's MagSafe charging cable already plugs into a USB-C charger, so I already only need one charger (but two cables) for my (Android) phone and (Apple) laptop. But, of course, the bureaucrats know better than the customers and engineers.

Btw, from what I've read, Apple is contemplating removing the charging ports from their iPhones completely and going with wireless charging only. So much for banning everything but USB-C charging ports..

> banning everything but USB-C charging ports

You ahve it backwards - you Must include a USB-C chsrging port. No-one is banning you from having additional ports, the EC comission aren't cretins. And so Macbook already complies, I only charge mine from USB-C.

You can charge it (slowly) via USB-C as well.

I bring a galaxy fold and xreal and a foldable keyboard. Works well for everything (I am a fulltime dev).

You forgot the e-reader!

Mine actually has Android on it and had allowed me to leave my iPad at home for some trips.

Actually you need 2 phones as even dual sim is not enough. Uk only app vs USA only app say.

if it takes me more than three seconds to edit a url i'm out. sorry but lol no

Pretty incidental comment, but just had to bite-

"At least - thanks to the EU - soon they can all share the same USB-C charger."

The EU is basically the guy that at 5am declares that the sun must soon rise or else. By the time the EU decided on their USB-C dictum, Apple -- a co-inventor and standards participant of USB-C -- had switched their laptops fully to USB-C, their desktops to USB-C, and half their pad line to USB-C, with the rest coming not long after. Most people fully expected the 14 to be USB-C just because it was starting to be silly, and by the 15 it would be ridiculous if they still had lightning.

Apple was already switching. Which is exactly why the EU could go ahead and faced little resistance. The EU deserves zero credit.

And FWIW, the EU in 2010 dictated that all smartphones use micro-USB. Apple provided an adapter as they moved their entire line to lightning, thankfully, as micro-USB was a garbage connector in every way.

I doubt they would have switched on the same timeframe. They dragged their feet for so long and they also fought against this regulation.

And they saw it coming, so doing prep work doesn't show they wanted to change.

A big part of the reason people thought Apple would change is because everyone knew these rules were coming.

Also I don't think micro-USB ever got mandated, and 2010 was before lightning even existed.

And given the pin burnout problems I'm not even sure if micro USB is worse than lightning with USB 2.0

Not sure why you're downvoted. Apple led the charge on a fully usb-c ecosystem. There are billions of lightening devices out there, so Apple has been transitioning over multiple years. The charger side went usb-c awhile back. Now most users should have usb-c chargers, and likely a few usb-c cables. When the iPhone changes this year or next, it won't be a big deal. People forget when Apple went from the 30-pin to lightening there were a lot of complaints. This though, Apple can point to the EU and say 'they made us', even though they have been headed this way all along.

The iPad software has been lagging behind its hardware for so long now.

My iPad and laptop both have an M1; the laptop has more RAM but they are effectively equally capable on paper. And yet, due to a series of entirely artificial restrictions, my iPad is useless for entire categories of applications. That power sits unavailable for me to ever utilise.

I’m sure the iPad Pro can live up to its name if you’re an artist or designer or maybe even something that involves 3D modelling, but outside of that absolutely not.

It’s a terrible shame because I think there really is value in a computer that fills the space between a phone and a “real” computer. Especially given its modularity (though the obscenely high pricing of Apple’s keyboard cases is another problem).

At this point the thing most holding the iPad back is Apple itself. Anything to do with software development is impossible or involves remotely interfacing with a second computer. The things it does support are tedious and frustrating, like file management (Files.app is hopeless) and multitasking (Stage Manager is a convoluted mess).

What the hell was even the point in splitting iPadOS out if it’s just gonna have the exact same limitations as iOS. I got a good deal on a used iPad Pro but when it comes time to upgrade this thing I’ll just go back to the middle of the road model for a nice, but ultimately unnecessary consumption device.

The problem is an organizational cultural problem at Apple itself: they are control freaks obsessed with putting the user first, but as with all extremists they take it too far, trying to obtain some “perfect” user experience, even when that hurts the user’s own interests!

Apple sees developers and third party software as threats to the user, the only safe thing to do is to lock it all down.

Apple also got addicted to App Store money. Letting you install unapproved software means Apple doesn’t get their cut of not only the sale of the software but also the sale of anything through the software. And Apple wants their rent.

Apple is organizationally incapable of building a good iPad OS. The culture prohibits it and the incentives are misaligned.

Those are all the main reasons I don't choose Apple devices.

Same here, they are not even luxury anymore as it was viewed in many parts of the world in the past, my current phone was more expensive than highest iphone at the same time. I can do what the fuck I want with it. Its full fledged computer with tremendous power for most real tasks, and I don't need to hack it to fully use it.

I admire the sheer time and resources poured in perfecting the Apple experience, it has been its trademark since original ipods. But the way they set up relation between customer and provider is so unequal and outright disrespectful, I'll never buy their product.

Don't treat me like an incompetent idiot and we can start talking.

> It’s a terrible shame because I think there really is value in a computer that fills the space between a phone and a “real” computer.

Apple has the technical capability to make a Macbook that is separable. The screen comes off and makes an iPad.

It also has the technical capability to make a bi-modal OS.

OSX with a HW toggle switch that allows OSX/iPadOS modes. The switch could be nearly seamless. The unlimited freedom OSX mode is an overlay FS on the iPadOS mode. Change anything you want, run anything you want and when you flip the switch, the OSX apps are frozen to disk, the overlayfs unmounted, and you still have any iPadOS apps running. Flip it back, and the OSX world resumes as it was.

But you can't have this product, because the marketers at Apple know that you would never buy an iPad again if you had this.

To be fair Microsoft has their own version of an iPad that converts into a laptop and it doesn’t work that well from what I heard.

It's been about 10 years since I used my surface pro at uni. The main problems that I remember were

1) top heavy, because all the hardware is on the screen portion, so it's difficult to balance and use it on your lap

2) lack of processing power due to the form factor and thermal limitations

3) lack of touch friendly windows apps that can make it truly useful as a tablet

1 probably can't be helped, but 2 and 3 should definitely be better now especially since Apple silicon and iOS exist, if they choose to make something like this...

I've got a Microsoft Surface Book (3rd gen), and it works great. It works just how you'd expect in any configuration (laptop, tablet, or with the screen mounted backwards). The stylus has fantastic battery life too; I've only replaced the AAAA (quadruple A) battery once in 3 years. My main complaint is that I got the 15", and a 15" tablet is awkwardly large. In retrospect I probably would have been happier if I had gotten the 13".

I'm in the market for a tablet upgrade because my Galaxy S3 Tab is feeling quite laggy and is years out of support. I was excited to give the iPad Air a shot as I've heard so many good things about about the M1 chip. But the locked down nature of iOS made it impossible to recreate my workflows and seemingly failed to really take advantage of the M1, so I returned the Air and am currently looking into the S9 Tab.

I do wonder where they are headed with the iPad.

If you have an M-series iPad, you won't need another for years because the user interface and processing power are sufficient.

The only way to change that is introducing more powerful capabilities to the iPad that require faster hardware.

On the flip side, Apple seems to be leaning in hard on subscription services so they can have recurring revenue when you don't get new hardware.

I wrote a 160,000 word book this year on an iPad Air with smart keyboard (I find how the pro keyboard doesn't fold all the way back to allow holding the iPad landscape too big of an annoyance to buy one). I think it's a brilliant device, and while limited, does do some things better than the Mac - annotating PDFs and ebooks with the Pencil being one of them. Also nice to hold a document one is working on in landscape so that it looks like it's on paper, yet remains interactive. Yeah I get it's kind of hamstrung and annoyingly clunky in a way that you'd think apple could resolve, but still think as a device it's pretty remarkable, and still got loads of potential for getting better, somehow.

I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.

One other side benefit is that the iPad somehow seems incongruous - with a laptop out in public you're "working" yet with an iPad you're somehow perceptually not.

Plus, iPad coupled with Library Genesis is awesome. Totally awesome. Yeah I'm a terrible libertarian pirate, but it's just incredible. Better than the libraries I've paid a fortune for as part of my education. Heaps better than the annoying tedium of logging in to various publishers and databases and subscriptions via a library website to then use a locked-down epub in a horrible and further locked down DRM e-reader, every one of which I've ever tried is basically an abomination.

Like all things Apple, iPad is great if you only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for. The moment you start to be beyond that slightly it completely falls apart.

Contrast it to a more general computer running macOS or Windows, which does a poorer job at what iPad does best, but it has a much longer tail where the complexity ramps up linearly, compared to the hockey stick of iOS.

At the same time though, limited tools can lead to creativity. I know we're in the company of coders with complex workflows, but using and understanding a limited tool well to the point where you can max it out can be better than living with a "long tail" of untapped power and productivity. Strange though, how the iPad is ostensibly a much better device given the touchscreen and keyboard (and now pencil) and yet remains somehow less useful than a MacBook. Might also be an issue of perception that the iPad can't do certain things well, when it almost can. From a user standpoint, having a device that really is like an appliance that never blinks or goes wrong is pretty brilliant. Windows has let me down on that front too many times for too many years, and now the only time I use it I live in a web browser 99.9% of the time (in a university library)...

> only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for

Only if you stipulate that it was never designed to handle text editing, multi-object selection, and a number of other fundamental use cases that apparently no one at Apple bothers to do on their iPads — if they did, they’d either 1. Experiment to find better solutions; or 2. Admit that there is no good touch-based solution for this UX scenario.

looks at beardyman's insane live music setup running a mix of open source and commercial software on a six iPad matrix deck

I would argue that some form factors are better for some use cases, others for other use cases, and we are still figuring out how to best take advantage of each particular form factor.

Despite how popular it seems to be, I think framing it as "it's bad for certain use cases because Apple is evil" is a bit reductionist, and sort of gives up on the power we do have to mold tools to our needs.

> ”Like all things Apple, iPad is great if you only use it for the exact, limited use cases it was designed for.”

That’s actually the definition of a product. To create something for specific use cases. That’s not an Apple problem/issue.

Sure, I could use my Toyota Camry (iPad) to haul lumber - but it’d make more sense to use a truck (MacBook) that was designed for those use cases.

Unlike most everything else Apple, the degree to which iPads seem to dominate the tablet market is interesting. In general tablets never really caught on, but to the extent that people want tablets, they apparently actually want exactly the use case Apple envisioned.

> Like all things Apple …

> … computer running macOS …

Limited case?? Come on. Slightly harder does not equal fall part.

what else do you want to do with your tablet?

> I think I'm going to try laying out my next book using Affinity Publisher - I used the Mac version to lay out the last one so hope I can do the same while finding benefits for doing so with my little paddy.

Side note: I wonder if Adobe ever regrets discontinuing Framemaker for Mac given the resurgence of Apple in the intervening years.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_FrameMaker

Adobe doesn’t seem to regret very much.

I haven't used an iPad keyboard but 160,000 words is about 159,000 more than I could stomach writing on a Macbook keyboard - which is the best laptop keyboard I've tried.

Perhaps I'm spoiled.

I really don’t see much wrong with it. It’s fabric-y and squidgy and kind of only alright, but at the same time, it works fine and my typing speed on it is about the same as anything else.

Don’t forget that people coded whole programmes on the Sinclair ZX80 and rubber-membrane-keyed ZX Spectrum, which were both abominable, nightmare fuel in fact to those desirous of Cherry keycaps and clicky tactility. The Smart Keyboard is a functional middle ground.

I also wrote the book in Google Docs, and pecked out some of it on my Android smartphone if inspiration struck. The fact that changes instantly sync so seamlessly and unthinkingly between platforms and devices I think is also really brilliant. It’s easy to forget in our quest for computing perfection that ‘good enough’ really is good enough if inspiration strikes. I wrote huge chunks of the book on transport and in public – literally on aeroplanes, trams, sitting on benches outside the library or by the beach. Creating where for the most part people are just consuming or scrolling content in those environments. The iPad and its day-long battery is amazing for this, and I’m not sure that a laptop would have been the same.

I'm spoilt by my Kinesis keyboard, I just can't use any laptop keyboard for a significant amount of work.

I've liked the recent XPS 13 Plus keyboards. I'd put them at least on par with recent Macbooks. Decent travel depth, but still limited as it's an Ultrabook.

If apple did a proper convertible laptop format, which is a hinge and touchscreen away, how many pros would care about the iPad? It would be lighter than the iPad and keyboard combo too.

Same here, that was in 2018 and I was using the Editorial app. Great app for its time BTW. Although, once I got to the publishing part, I found it lacking and switched to my Windows(At the time) now I use PopOS. But that was before Obsidian. I discovered Obsidian on Hackernews BTW. Thanks guys. Obsidian was exactly what I needed as a drop it replacement for the power of the Editorial App on MacOS.

Exactly.

The iPad isn't for multimedia production like podcasting or for connecting niche peripherals to.

But if you just want to write and e-mail and Zoom and read(+annotate) and watch, it's fantastic.

I just use a Bluetooth (Magic) keyboard with mine for writing in coffee shops and it's great. And the Pencil is a godsend for highlighting and annotating PDF's.

> with my little paddy

gross.

Really just an in joke to myself because I have a friend who calls his paddy. I’ve also got a laptop called ‘urgh’ and a MacBook Pro 13 from about 2016 - the first one with the Touch Bar/strip (given as a freebie) that is called ‘shite’ because its still the worst Mac I’ve ever owned. It’s clunky, riddled with latency, and unresponsive to quite an extreme degree, and I think it’s because of some kind of hardware deficiency with the touch strip being introduced. I’d work on Paddy over Shite any day of the week.

When the iPad first came out, people knocked it as "a big iPod touch".

But…maybe that wasn't a bad thing?

I feel like the iPad, despite alllll the efforts to seemingly make it a pro device, is an iPhone, but bigger. It's great for messages, browsing Facebook, and watching video, and that's just fine. Because that serves a lot of people's needs, and trying to add in a bunch more stuff just overloads the touch interface paradigm. (Ugh, the number of times I activated the split screen thing when they first introduced multitasking…)

I think "iPad is a big iPod" worked great, but then they brought out the iPad Pro. That thing was supposed to be for Professionals doing Professional Work Things. After that came the iPad Mini, which is an iPad but smaller (so it's an iPod but bigger but smaller?).

Weirdly enough, I don't think the iPad Pro is more than just the iPad but faster and bigger. There are tons of model-based software restrictions between the different models for what I assume are market segmentation reasons.

Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".

Apple's reveal of their weird multitasking iPad interface was quite humorous to me. It just screams "don't try to do anything professional on here" compared to the existing solutions Samsung have provided for years.

Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple. Dex on an iPad could replace many people's laptops and desktops and compete with Microsoft's Surface series.

The biggest issue with the iPad Pro is macos. It should either run macos, or get a compatibility layer that runs macos programs, but Apple's sitting on this fence for a decade neither pushing the mac to get touch, nor letting the iPad become desktop class.

> Too bad Qualcom/Samsung/Mediatek can't figure out how to compete with Apple

I'd argue Microsoft did, and they're at their 9th iteration of a decently good product. As do Dell, Huawei, ASUS and the other makers shipping windows tablets. They're definitely there on the "Pro" side.

Samsung also pushed some pretty good devices on the Chromebook side, which I'd argue is a more direct competitor to iPad if it comes to elderly or kids in school where you need a more constrained and touch first experience.

I've said this in other places, but the biggest issue with the Surface lineup is that the Go line is ... just garbage performance wise, absolutely unusable in my experience (despite really really wanting to use it, and basically just using it for PDF annotations!). And the Pro line is good! But it has no 11-inch line and (importantly) it costs so much compared to iPads. If you are looking for a high-end tablet with some pen/pencil input, an iPad Pro 11 inch is the cheap option!

It's kind of frustrating, because I think what's happening here is that the Surface Go line makes a lot of money, and a 11-inch-but-fast thing would probably be popular but have less juicy margins.

> Meanwhile, Samsung has had Dex for a few years now, and it works great. It's included on any midrange product and up and it feels like what you would expect from "what happens when I plug my phone/tablet into a USB C dock".

It is a lot more convenent to carry an iPad with a magic keyboard than to carry a USB-C dock, keyboard and mouse though.

Dex also works on tablets without a dock, of course. You can just attach a keyboard sleeve to the tablet to turn it into a laptop.

So? Dex works without any of that.

The ipad is the perfect device for old people. You can't mess it up, it's extremely simple to use, has a long life span, etc. The users do not care that they can not host a webserver on it because it prevents their bank account being drained after they click the wrong advert.

That hit close to home because my father’s bank account was indeed drained after clicking the wrong ad on an iPad. But it did require the intermediate step of my father having to call the number in the ad to talk to “bank security”.

Having fewer malware vectors is a big plus but one still needs to exercise caution.

My father doesn't own a PC. He never used one in his whole life. To him, using his iPad is "using a computer".

iPad solves exactly ONE single problem for him: no enough screen space on his phone.

I know someone who lives in a trailer in the boonies whose only window on the internet is an Amazon Fire Tablet.

I remember when iPad came out, and I was younger and cared more for arguing online. This is one of the hills I time and time again chose to die on. The anti-Apple brigade was about at its most insufferable at that point in time. The ‘full Windows running on a tablet’ utopia has to this day neger eventuated to any mainstream degree. iPad as a larger iOS device was and is the right way forward. IPadOS’s inscrutable ‘power user’ features of late are purely a consequence of Apple setting the expectations for a continuous iteration schedule, and Apple as a company being a huge self-serving bureaucracy looking to make work for itself year after year.

Surface Pro has definitely materialized.

I agree, I like the simplicity of it essentially being a big iPhone. I don’t want it to be like a Mac or do Mac stuff on it.

Missing from this article: why is he traveling with his iPad at all? He loudly asserts "I’m not leaving my iPad at home" but does not explain why.

From where I'm standing, the iPad is a crappy platform that has no reason to exist. It's a worse Mac. I can maybe see artists using an iPad for the touch screen, but that use case only exists because Apple refuses to give the Mac a touch screen.

At the time of my first daughter's birth, my local government gifted me an ipad mini. Three use cases:

1. I find it extremely useful for one specific thing: chess. I can't effectively play blitz timed games with a mouse, and with a smartphone I get way more off-by-one mistaken taps than with the ipad mini.

2. Almost five years later, my daughter enjoys making animations on it with Scratch Jr.

3. It is a comfy form factor for just plain reading content from the web. When I come across something specific that I'd like to put more than, say, 40 minutes of directed attention to, I sometimes pull up the resource on the ipad and hit the couch. It's a lot easier for me to focus on long form content (especially if it's dense or boring) with the ipad because it isn't my computer. I can't instantly call up other interesting and ongoing tasks with a meticulously programmed hotkey.

Also, touchscreen laptops felt like an upgrade to me until I tried to use one. IMO, the geometry just isn't there. If the screen is close enough to be touched as part of the general workflow, then it's too close for your eyes or else the keyboard itself is too close.

Have you tried Kindle (or other e-reader) instead of iPad? Works very well for me.

I can't speak for him, but I find m iPad incredibly useful. I sign and review documents quickly, tap out emails on the go, watch movies or TV shows, use it as a reference screen if I'm in a rack and need diagrams, manuals etc.

Like most modern computing devices (laptops, phones, smart watches, etc) it has crossover functionality with some devices but not in all cases, and in some it is the superior device for varying reasons.

But you can do all of those things very well on a laptop.

Especially if you're trying to travel light, and you know you need a laptop, I don't understand why you'd pack the iPad as well.

It exists for casual, potentially older users, outside of dev/IT profession, to do grocery shopping and simple games on a couch while they watch TV after work.

I've never bought an iPad or found use for the one I was once given as a present, I have seen older people transition from using cheap crappy laptops to iPads with only positive feedback, probably because it's easier for them to use.

It's largely the same UI as their smartphone which they'll be familiar with by now, it's easier to pick up and put down, smaller form factor but not so small that they'd be pinch-zooming frequently as they would on a phone, etc.

Anecdotal but it makes sense. Also marginally easier for a layperson to hold an iPad up and show a partner what they're buying, than a laptop.

Personally, I'm in the industry, and I've been playing with computers for 27 years. I have a phone for reading stuff like this on the go, and a laptop for working on things home or at the office. I have no professional or recreational use for a tablet. I have a laptop and I'm very glad it doesn't have a touchscreen. But I can understand why non-laptop products exist.

Couple of other developers I know have iPads, but they have them in the same way they have an electric toothbrush — they didn't need it, but they bought it anyway. Mostly see them use it for browsing the web or shopping after work. I suppose if your stuff's at the office and you just want to cruise the web, an iPad is lighter than a personal laptop, but I just use my phone /shrug emoji.

Some illustrators I know have iPads but I'm pretty sure they'd survive without them. For actual work they have a proper setup (wacom, magic trackpad), and if you need to sketch something on the fly, pen and paper is still a functional and low-cost solution, as is a phone since you have one already for a dozen other reasons.

Designers don't need an iPad at all, mouse is sufficient.

Currently, I have two iPads: relatively modern mini and the 3rd (first model with retina, iOS 9). Mini collects dust for years, I never use it (yet unwilling to sell). The 3rd one still rocks YouTube in Safari, its basically a TV with batteries. I use it at kitchen, e.g. when I cook.

Both of my iPads never leave my home. I am an avid traveller (before the pandemic) and even then I never took my iPad out of my house.

I do travel with my MacBook Pro (with Linux these days), Kindle and a couple of smartphones (I use both iPhone and Android). I don’t see any need in an iPad at all.

Outside of work I use my iPad. I don’t work on holidays, I pack my iPad. I just prefer it. Why is a preference so hard to accept? Are we going to argue about favourite colours next?

What would the OP be for that? Apple default colors don’t allow my favorites?

For art of the digital drawing/painting sort, the iPad absolutely dominates the scene now and has for a while, mostly thanks to the Procreate app in combination with the Apple Pencil.

A Mac with a touch screen would be worse than useless for this, because it still wouldn’t be a tablet form factor, and you need that for the right feel.

So while I too would like to have a touch screen on my MacBook, there’s no way I’d ever use it for drawing the way I use my iPad.

The iPad is great for reading and great for video:

- ebooks - web articles - RSS - newspaper - tv series and films

This is always on a case-by-case basis. Just because THIS particular person can't work everything on an iPad doesn't mean EVERYONE is the same.

My mother-in-law, for instance, does everything from an iPad. She doesn't own a computer anymore. She does her emails, bills, spreadsheets, printing, reading...etc etc...from her iPad. She has a keyboard she can hook up to it to write long things, and then puts it away when she doesn't need it.

Could I work like this? No. But again, this doesn't mean everyone is like me. It all has to be taken case-by-case. I would suspect that the vast majority of readers to Hacker News can't work like this either, nor could they think of why anyone would want to...so confirmation bias kicks in big time.

This article explains why you can’t travel with only an iPad (and a phone presumably) but doesn’t seem to bother explaining why you can’t just travel with a small laptop and phone.

What does the tablet add that makes it indispensable for travel? Just the media consumption?

I never used a tablet for an extended amount of time so maybe I’m missing something here.

I travel with just an iPad and a Phone.

The iPad is great for media consumption while traveling. e.g. playing some games or watching shows, and it's good enough to do some cramped work in a pinch (sales and business management). Also take notes/sketch with the pencil, read a book/article.

Most of the things I would use the iPad for can be done better with a more dedicated, or more versatile, channel. Like a laptop, or a paper notebook, or a paperback book/kindle etc. But the convenience for me of having it all in the one package is enough to make up for that.

I still don’t understand why a laptop wouldn’t work for most of those use cases if you already are carrying one. Sure it’s a bit tedious to use a huge laptop on a plane but a 13” laptop will fit on your lap and in your bag nearly as easily as a 10” tablet.

Agreed. I feel like in the next year or so my travel bag is going to boil down to a MacBook Air and a paperback book.

I'm also looking for a two in one, a tablet that can be a laptop. The best I've found is a surface, and I think dell has some two in ones too. The surface feels like the right call because it's just light enough to be a powerful tablet, but not so power hungry that it's stationary. I think they've hit the right balance here.

It's a shame this form factor isn't so common, and what would be perfect for a vacation would be a Chromebook. It's browser centric which is 98% of vacation related activities.

I was about to comment something to the same effect.

Like the author, as well as many who have commented, I've long been disappointed in the gap between macOS' support for advanced use cases (which I need), and the iPad's portability (which I like).

I picked up a Surface Go 3. Having an actual desktop OS on a well-built, decently powerful (albeit hot at times) tablet struck the perfect balance for me. Wish I had done it years ago.

I love the Surface tablets! Runs Windows, Linux (WSL), and Android (WSA) so covers almost any use-case I'd need. Stick to the ones with Intel processors for maximum compatibility.

Have you looked at Asus Z13

That’s why I like my Surface Go 2: it lets me carry a real OS in a tiny tablet form factor. I take it everywhere and it has been my only travel laptop for a couple of years. I have even done local Rust development while on flights.

If only it wasn’t so frigging slow… it’d be awesome.

Its great to run linux too.

The 12" Macbook is a great contender too.

Hm, does it? I’ve been tempted to install Linux but I’ve found conflicting information online about how well it’s supported, and the small SSD doesn’t lend itself for dual booting.

Yeah I recently bought an iPad because the surface is either too slow to be usable or like double the price or an iPad

I just wanted a tablet with good software, and the surface is so close to being that but the Go is a disgrace. Even an instore Go 3 barely handles opening Edge. Edge!

My ideal mobile computer would be something like the GPD MicroPC, but with mobile broadband, a camera, and a bit bigger battery. Hell, if it had the ability to do proper phone things, it could legitimately make a decent mobile phone replacement: it doesn't really need to be spectacular. The keyboard is small, but in situations where a laptop dock is a possible answer, it's pretty damn good. In other situations, having a dedicated laptop would be ideal, of course... But I've been experimenting with ditching smartphones and alternative phone options, and I gotta say, the MicroPC really feels like it's as close to the ideal general purpose mobile computer as I've ever gotten, so the desire to have something like it that really could just replace any other mobile device is strong.

Unfortunately though, as of today, we're really no closer. For some insane reason, most computers that can do mobile broadband cannot do calling or SMS, at least not in any obvious way. The PinePhone Pro offers a potential story, giving you effectively Linux but on a touchscreen, but many of the OS options for it do not handle suspend well enough; and the RK3399S is not exactly about to blow anybody's mind with its performance. And of course, with no keyboard, you'll need to dock it to do any kind of "productivity" work.

With how fast flagship phones are, dockable smartphones that can just provide a full desktop OS experience when plugged in should be commonplace, but they're not. Some vendors have shown off different compelling ideas, but nothing is quite fully baked.

As for the iPad... It's still kind of a toy. I like it for drawing, the Apple Pencil is nice, but I struggle strongly to put it in the same class as a general purpose computer.

Also, one last note. I really regret the iPhone. It was a really important device, because it showed off how to design a mobile device with a capacitive touch screen that was actually nice to use. But I wish not everyone would just chase the iPhone, as there is plenty that could be done in the mobile computer space that would be compelling if everything was not a buttonless, thin slab of touch-sensitive glass.

I recently bought a full-size bluetooth keyboard with a slot on it for mounting tablets. It's must easier to type on then any portable mini-keyboard and totally worth it if you are going to write a book or code. I consider those little ipad sized keyboards a total waste of time since I started working on one with a full-size keyboard that's even bigger than a laptop keyboard.

I always work with a full PC keyboard, because scientists came up with it, and marketers came up with a small laptop keyboard. I used to just carry it in my backpack all the time. I just have big fingers :)

I suppose the writer will have to wait a few more years before apple 'reinvents' the touch screen and convinces everyone they invented the touchscreen laptop. Notice how just about every other manufacture has a touch screen offering. The same was true for DVD writers back when apple called it the super drive. Many devices on the market came with DVD writers.

The ipad pro as great as it is, will not replace a Macbook. Sure it can do similar things, but for professionals who only need one app and email for work or for grandmas that don't need much it certainly can be the only device. But it cannot do everything that a laptop can do and that's why most people need both a (tablet and a computer)

The surface pro devices are on their 9th generation. This is what you want if you want to travel with a tablet only experience that you are able to do laptop stuff with. Sure the tablet experience is miserable but tolerable. The only things mac users are missing is IOS/MacOS. Which I admit is a big miss. Let's be honest, the Mac OS is great it's always been the hardware that has been lacking in other areas. But the surface device is a full blown computer that runs a full desktop OS and can virtualize others. If your workflow allows for a windows device,and if you like learning and trying new stuff, you will most likely enjoy your experience. Otherwise you will be as miserable as a die hard windows user who is angry that CTRL+V is CMD+V. If devtools are the only thing keeping you with macOS then you owe it to yourself to checkout WSL[1] and the new windows terminal app[2].

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

[2] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

I hope Apple never releases a touch screen MacBook. MacOS is the only operating system that still has UI elements appropriately sized for mouse use. Everything else uses huge buttons to account for touch use-cases.

Have you seen the Ventura system settings update? It kinda looks like iOS.

Edit: I also think the touch screens have gotten more accurate so you'd probably have not that bad of an experience. Using windows with a finger or pen isn't that bad.

My (general purpose) Linux machines and Chromebook all have reasonably sized UI elements for mouse use.

I've tried doing iPad-only several times, but I'm a bit of a digital packrat, a highly-organized packrat, though. So I really miss a solid File Manager.

I know Android is much better at this, but the default "Files" app in iOS just sucks -- I feel like I have to bounce between three or four apps just to get something simple done.

Has anyone found a reasonable way to manage files on iOS?

GoodReader has a classic file manager, sync to NAS/cloud and OS-independent encryption.

I am looking for someone who can develop a good two panel file manager for iPad. Please check my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37269536

The file manager has gotten better but it is still way behind Finder. Otherwise, pair it with a keyboard and mouse, open codespaces, and you have an excellent travel computer. Just don‘t expect to move files around.

FE File Explorer is most of what I want in a file manager

I've been trying to use iPad as a developer tool for over 10 years now and it seems I'm starting to get it right. I have tried a lot of software since the creation of the iPhone 2G, connected hardware, joysticks, keyboards, mice, connected an iPad to a computer back in 2015. I think the iPad is the most successful device for smart people, but the problem is marketing. Apple had the ability to make a single system for all devices from the very beginning, but the market and maximum profit was more important. I developed the system and development tools. And with the help of which I created an application for HN on the iPad.

Here is a demo video: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/833395245

I'm building a community, join to Discord https://discord.gg/4m9g7KSaMV

I travel with an iPad mini and worked off it regularly using SSH and RDP. The only thing I really miss is a normal CLI environment (I use iSH and a-Shell with great success, but I would love a sandboxed ARM Linux environment).

Yeah, iPad Mini is great. I bought it a year ago and it replaced my iPad Pro 2018 which is too big to take out and hide often. I think iPad Mini is the ideal device for smart people. Only a little bit worse in performance, it can be seen when heated.

I really, really wish that Apple had not let developers opt-out their apps from running on M1/M2 Macbooks.

My use case is a long flight where I want to watch a movie on a screen bigger than my phone. For a while, some of the streaming service iOS apps ran on my MBP. In fact, I subscribed to HBO Max partially because their app worked on my MBP. But since their rebrand to Max, it no longer works.

I sympathize to some extent with their reasoning here, that developers for good reason want to sell separate macOS and iOS apps, and that they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.

But there are plenty of cases where I cannot fathom why the developer has opted out. Like, Genshin Impact won't let you play on macOS, because ???

Same for Minecraft (Bedrock Edition, the one written in C++, not Java). They unchecked this "allow to run on Mac" checkbox the instant it got added.

Mojang (= Microsoft) hates the idea of Minecraft Bedrock running on Mac with a burning passion. If you told me they somehow lobbied Apple to add this option to the App Store specifically because of Minecraft, I would have believed it.

Because this is at least the second time they have had a Mac port of Bedrock basically right in their hands, yet actively decided not to release it (the first one being Education Edition, which also runs on the Bedrock engine and is like 90% the same game – and they offer it for macOS, yet never bothered to release normal Minecraft the same way).

The other port might've cost them probably a few days of work (basically an asset swap, because the engine is done). This version (running on M-chips) they could've gotten for free, yet they killed it too.

> sell separate macOS and iOS apps

Makes sense, so why not only offer this for devs who actually do that? Declare that a Mac version of the app already exists and let Apple check.

> they don't want a lot of customers complaining about a lousy UX.

This comes up every time and it's a legitimate concern, but IMO no way it warrants to completely block users from running compatible software on their computers. Call it "Unsupported Mode", spam me with warnings, prevent me from submitting reviews… but never completely block it. That's the asshole approach.

What is the problem with using the browser on the MacBook to access content ?

Many flights do not have reliable internet access that is fast enough to stream video. And I want to watch what I want to watch, not the random selection of stuff I might find on the inflight entertainment. Not to mention that I want to zone out, and not hear a captive airline credit card sales pitch from the flight attendants at 90db in my headphones while they pause the video I'm watching.

So, for all those reasons, I'd prefer to download content prior to the flight and watch it in-flight.

Some of the apps allow you to download the content, while the browser version doesn’t. In case you don’t have to wifi on the flight.

Maybe it needs a connection and not all flights have that?

I was today years old when I heard you can put an iOS app on a Mac.

Apple stopped any significant innovation on the iPad platform many years ago. It is an also-ran cash cow for them not anything worthy of investment. I say this as someone who was once enthralled with the platform and it is sad. It’s hilarious they throw m2 grade processors in something used to watch Netflix and surf websites.

I always found the 'multitasking' features on iPad OS to be really poor. It suspends things in the background so aggressively that any kind of switching back and forth between Safari tabs (to and from a Github Codespace) is just non-feasible. And the lack of browser dev tools without tethering to a 'real' computer.

Even Final Cut Pro on iPad requires staying in the foreground during exports.

Never understand why apple ships their iPads and Macbooks with such little ram by default. Yes I understand profit, but it really limits what these devices can do. The numbers have not really changed much in the last several years...

I'm convinced that the M2 MacBook Air is by far the best portable work device. It's got enough horsepower yet light enough to not break your back over. Previously, I've been carrying the latest 15inch and then 16 inch MacBook Pro since 2012 when I travel.

I have an iPad Pro 12.9 with the magic keyboard as a device that's not purely for work but honestly, it's been collecting dust and I use it perhaps once a week to read news on the couch. It's pretty much a glorified note taker, a way to browse pictures/videos on a bigger screen, and respond to non-serious emails. For what I'm using, I don't think it's worth the $999+ price point.

> I want to do it all on my iPad. I hope that one day I’ll be able to.

But why, though? The author never bothers to justify this. If you acknowledge that your tablet is so anemic that you have to bring your laptop with you, why not save the weight of the tablet and just bring the laptop?

I know Apple has a strong resistance to the two-in-one form factor, but an M-series MacBook Air with detachable screen that seamlessly transitions between macOS and iPadOS is basically my dream device.

I'm amazed the two haven't converged yet. I've no doubt apple have lurking in their labs a "double iPad" with a "screen" and a second screen where the keyboard now lives, running a version of iOS-like MacOS. Would love that device and think it'll emerge eventually.

I would also accept an iPad that can dual-boot into macOS when using a Magic Keyboard.

The fact that they don’t allow this is absurd. They basically charge $1500 for macOS. I’d probably pay that to let my iPad dual boot if they’d let me!

The problem with a convertible MacBook is that you'd have to move the battery to behind the display, at which point you're really just making an iPad that can be attached to a keyboard dock and run macOS.

I think the latter is a plausible evolution of the iPad Pro.

This. Or a Yoga style fold-over in an 11" formfactor.

I picked up an X13s (the ARM one) for travel. It's not perfect -- one thing I like about iOS is that the airline apps are kind of required for IFE, but, my X13s weighs the same as my iPad Pro with a keyboard and can do much more. Trying to use Google Slides or Docs on the iPad is a poor experience.

They want to sell you two devices, and a monthly subscription to iCloud to interoperate between them.

The iPad I have has effectively become a second screen for my MacBook as a with a walcom tablet.

It's too heavy to read from.

The iPad pro is basically this, but just needs to be able to swap when you hook up the Magic Keyboard.

As long as it didn't sacrifice the user experience both devices currently have I'd be on board!

iPad with a power connector on the side where the cover attaches, and a macbook the exact size of an iPad with no screen, just a remote desktop on the iPad.

Either data over the charging port, or low throughput over Bluetooth 5 (when is 6 due?)

And now it’s mine too…

It's quite disappointing. They have so much potential but Apple do not want to meet it for whatever reason, maybe they do not want people cutting into their MacBook sales. Beautiful UI but poor UX, especially its file management which is nothing short of abysmal.

I travel with an Android tablet now — and while they have their own problems they still are far more functional and flexible than iPads. Want to watch a movie that's not on Netflix or Prime? Just find a torrent and open Flud. You can use it as a FTP server, basically anything you need, an Android tablet is perfect for. My iPad is delegated to note taking now with the pencil.

It's also pretty clear that iPads nowadays are the lowest of Apple's priorities.

I'm fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, but one of the most useful pieces of tech I own is a device that turns my car's touch screen into an unrestricted Android tablet (ironically, using the Apple CarPlay protocol to interface)

I realized early on that the iPad like iPhone is a consumer device. Somewhat better with apps targeting the iPad Pro, but still not general purpose like I want.

Settled on the Surface Go, which was the right call and later upgraded to the Go 3 with Intel Core m3 processor. With heavy cpu/gpu use it gets very warm and throttles down so got a USB peltier cooler that keeps performance 100%

MacBook Air m1 at 800$ blows iPads out of the water. Small, portable, great battery life and flexible enough to get work done without requiring a variety of “pay as you go apps” to put basic functionality back into an iPad.

My dream is some form of MacOS being released on iPad Pro instead of iOS … not going to happen but would absolutely buy one if it happened.

I used to grab my iPad Pro (a 2018 12.9") a lot more. Battery life used to be a factor but these days my M1 MBP probably gets better life. Since I got the Magic Keyboard for the iPad (which is awesome), it's not much lighter than the MBP either. I'd cry a lot less if it got a liquid spill, which would probably only take out the $300 keyboard.

It does pretty much force me to single-task, often either in a document or a terminal (Blink), which can be a real advantage at times. But so often I'll need to swap between a browser, Slack, Trello, a terminal, etc. that I'll end up with background apps getting killed due to memory pressure or the dreaded "respring" where the base UI completely reloads.

So the iPad now mostly makes a good reader (indoors only though), note-taker, and video watcher. It'd be good as a travel monitor if goddamn Sidecar could work more than 24% of the time.

An anecdote: I hadn't taken the iPad seriously. It didn't have the apps I needed to get things done, either in my personal life or work life. Or it didn't have the physical aspects (why stream on a small screen when I have a TV at home?)

As I entered into a more senior work role, I refused to put work email or teams on my phone. No device management or malware on my personal device.

Instead, I found out that my company let me use an iPad with email and teams and the management software didn't infect the whole system making it nearly useless, and I could even take screenshots. It's not perfect but let me have a lighter daily carry.

All that said, I can't develop on an iPad. I think if I could get an MBA for on the go meeting type work and a mac studio for delivery, that would be fine. But then we're right back to: I refuse to have any of that stuff on my personal device.

I just left for a trip today and have a macbook I purchased three days ago along for the ride. Both the spouse and I were uncomfortable with only having ipads - and within 4 hours of landing it's already been the right call.

It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.

>A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.

There are many, many ways to acquisition that, just because apple won't let you do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Anything that can run linux with the KDE plasma desktop environment will, at very least, feel very familiar to OSX. You might have to seek out some app alternatives if you're doing something specific, but nowadays general desktop computing like you'd do on a laptop is well covered in most distros, and if you're looking for a place to start, Kubuntu is likely your best OOB experience.

Combine that with basically any windows native tablet computer, and you're off to the races. You'll likely have to play with some things to get it how you want it, but the nice thing about linux is you can play with those things.

So yes, the holy grail is here weary traveler.

The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.

I think MS got the closest to sort of addressing it with windows 8, but everyone simply defaulted to the desktop mode rather than the touch mode (didn't help that the windows store was/is incredibly poorly done).

This is why devices like the surface pro or other 2 in 1 devices never really seemed to work out. You are either harming the tablet experience or the keyboard experience.

> The issue is a OS and UX designed around touch screen doesn't work well with a mouse and vice versa.

This is really not the case with iPadOS though. It already works quite well with a touchpad and keyboard. The hardware is already there to control a full desktop OS, iPadOS already allows itself to be be controlled as if it’s a desktop OS, and with continuity mode, it’s already possible to control macOS via an iPad.

All of these things already work pretty well, and paint a pretty decent picture of what might be if Apple decided to go further.

Some things just work better on a touchscreen, even when they’re running on macOS. Some things just work better with a mouse and keyboard, even when they’re running on iPadOS.

As long as there’s some way to transition between them, I do really think a best-of-both-worlds option exists, because it’s mostly there already.

Out of curiosity - what problems did you run into?

> "A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail."

A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.

I have a Windows Surface 7. The battery life is insufficient for travel and Windows is not reliable enough for me to trust it.

It served as a overspec baby cam monitor for a few months but we had so many issues that the second time I went to reformat it, we replaced it.

What are you missing? If only a few tasks you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks. I would assume most things that requires such OS requires an internet connection anyway.

I still primary use a laptop, but that is because I like the form of it. So I have no actual experience trying to survive with only iOS.

> you could just VNC to a “desktop OS” for these tasks

There are many places in the world where the availability of the internet is so spotty and so poor, that trying to use VNC to get work done would not be possible.

If I have to VNC into a real machine then the iPad has failed. I'd rather just spend a few lbs of weight budget and bring a real laptop.

The only way to make VNC worse is to have to do it on a $1000 locked down tablet.

It really is -- my iPad has the same CPU as my Mac, and it highlights just how much iPadOS lets the hardware go to waste. MacOS is better in essentially every possible way -- faster, can run whatever you like, better multitasking.

This is a new development, and only on the most expensive versions. Historically, the iPad has always been running an iPhone-class processor.

I'd bet that Apple is still shipping 5x-10x as many A-series iPads as M-series iPads.

I'd love to be able to run a more capable OS on an M-series iPad, but not if that means all the rest have a worse experience. Maybe Apple needs to release an iPadOS Pro to go along with the M-series chips?

Like a vacation trip? What are you doing that requires access to a laptop?

I used to carry a big desktop replacement but now I think different and carry an iPad. I use it as a terminal for a better windows computer than the one I used to lug around.

I use two (2) applications for productivity: Safari to run web applications and the RDP client for everything else.

I think different. Instead of getting an expensive special-purpose keyboard, I have my choice of any compact Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

I'm not waiting for Apple to do anything, although I am waiting for the 40th anniversary of Apple's 1984 Superbowl ad. I'm hoping somebody runs a parody of it, because if you don't control your computer, your computer controls you.

I've been tempted to try this for a while.

How do you find this in practice?

For example, do you have random connection errors, or latency issues?

And have you tried connecting from another country? Or are you always physically close to the main device?

It's pretty reliable except when the power goes out at home or something like that. I use Tailscale to get around the NAT on the router.

My big computer is behind an ADSL connection where the uplink is pretty slow. If I am changing windows it can take a few seconds for the window to update but once the window is up it is reasonably responsive to type into PyCharm. If I spun up a machine in us-east-2 and used it over a gigabit connection it would be very fast.

Recently my 2013 Mac Mini crapped out and the keyboard fascia of my Alienware laptop delaminated so I swapped in the Alienware for the Mac Mini so I don't really have a laptop I want to travel with. I am not sure what I will get to replace it and when; I've got some desire for a laptop for "hacking" such as connecting to a WiFi CAN bus dongle in my car or to go to an electronics club and program my Arduino. I haven't really decided what it's going to be yet.

I've never understood the attraction of the iPad for travel with any hint of work. Today's modern laptops, whether a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or the typical corporate 14-inch Lenovo, take up so little room and weight that it's hard to imagine giving up a real keyboard simply so you can carry a few extra pair of underwear that, in today's modern fabrics, can be carried in the pocket of a laptop sleeve anyway. Heck, even when my trip combines business and personal, it's no challenge at all to carry two laptops--my own, and the company's, in the same attache.

I just don't get it.

>> Here I sit at my mother’s dining room table, typing on a MacBook Air. Something has changed in my approach to travel, and I’m trying to understand just what it is…

> I just don't get it.

Here I sit far from any WiFi, doing the same on an iPad Pro with the same "real keyboard" backlit magic keyboard with a smaller but just fine touchpad, a charging cord dock port, an inset hinge taking less room on an airline tray table; and of course the 120hz 2732x2048 264ppi touch screen with 1600nits brightness; connected by eSIM to my 4G and 5G carriers of choice but not really caring because I also have 2TB of local SSD built in.

I guess I have a very different approach to travel.

I don't have to be at my mother's dining room table. I don't have to get my Verizon JetPack (I own the top model fast enough to act as backup uplink for a small office in an emergency, but then I'm carrying two things, not one).

I can shed the keyboard and just read my Kindle, or take notes with feel of paper like my Remarkable 2 thanks to having installed the Paperlike™ screen protector while fresh out of the box.

I can present on a second screen, or drag multiple different app windows to a 6K monitor.

I can use it days in a row without having any idea where a power pack is, fast charge it from any 30W USB-C, and slow charge it from, well, anything. Same port works with most any USB-C dock, and any Thunderbolt 3 dock.

Lying in a hotel bed watching Netflix in HDR with speakers is no way to use a laptop. The iPad 12.9 at arm's length -- no awkward keyboard to weigh you down or cramp your style -- is a larger apparent screen size than a 75" TV, and looks better than most of them too.

All the tools most anyone needs are there. Office suite, Affinity suite, VSCode via blink code (same tool for mosh/ssh), Obsidian notes for personal KB, GoodNotes for handwritten ... even Kagi Orion if I need Firefox and Chrome extensions.

Same form factor for travel, same form factor for the boardroom, and more specs than really anyone needs: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

And nobody's offended when you're using it. Nobody says "no laptops please".

Does everything, goes everywhere, all at once.

. . .

> even when my trip combines business and personal, it's no challenge at all to carry two laptops--my own, and the company's, in the same attache

TL;DR: For business or personal, iPad Pro w/ Magic Keyboard is no challenge at all to carry no laptops, in no attache, with no WiFi. And no inspections from TSA.

I like the 12.9” iPad for reading all kinds of documents, and video. I use it most as a “computer” when I remote in to my media server. But I still can do all my work on it when traveling, despite the inconveniences.

Pick literally any other vendor than Apple and you can likely do most things.

Apple has hobbled the iPad and I can only assume the intention is to not cut in to MacBook profits. Thus the iPad is really only useful for content consumption and even then it fails.

This — and the related take from DaringFireball — is getting traction, but it’s presenting as a general case something that is really specific to, well, HN types, or full time bloggers, or similar: that some of the tasks you do are better suited to a Mac than an iPad. The difference is that users like this are the minority.

Most people’s computing life is Office-style docs, emails, browsing, and social media. The iPad is great at doing those things.

If your default mode of computing insists on having a host of windows open that you, after years or decades of experience, can fly through like a hacker god in a movie, then yeah, you may find the experience limiting. That’s when you start wondering if it’s worth the trade offs.

For me personally? Yeah, on short personal trips, I go with the iPad alone. I can do everything I need to do personally with it, and if I need to reach out and do some work tasks, it’s still possible. (Not for nothing, my photo workflow now runs through the iPad first, which further enables no-laptop vacation travel.)

What do I get for making the tradeoff? I carry a far cheaper and lighter device with better battery life, and one which is also better suited to reading or video consumption (IMO) than a full laptop.

I'd buy an iPad immediately if I could run MacOS on it.

Surface tablets exist (they can run Linux but I'd stick with Windows on them). 2-in-1 laptop/tablet hybrids have also existed for a while, sold with Windows and ChromeOS but many of them work fine with standard Linux.

Some models can even become relatively competent Hackintosh, though macOS lacks proper pen drivers of course.

Samsung has Dex, which is a desktop interface for Android tablets (and phones hooked up to a dock). For a while they experimented with offering a full Ubuntu desktop, but I believe they've stopped that experiment.

Honestly, Apple seems to be the only tablet manufacturer that still tries its hardest to push professional users back to laptops. With the virtualisation support in Android 13+, I wonder how long it'll take before someone brings out the first macOS-on-Samsung-Galaxy app; various people have already run Windows 11 as a proof of concept on Pixel devices so who knows how long it'll take.

Too bad surface processors are not near as good as apple's M series both in terms of performance and battery life(

I don't get why this is still impossible in 2023, with M1 in both macbooks and ipads.

I'm sure at some point someone at apple has built a prototype and did extensive testing, I'd love to know why was that shut down. And whether it was a business related issue, or a tech/UX related issue.

My guess is that Apple wants companies to reinvent their programs to work well on a touchscreen, which has largely been happening. If you could just drop macos on the ipad, we wouldn't have things like Procreate. You'd just get told to install desktop photoshop and connect a mouse and keyboard.

I hope they never do this. Bolting touch into a desktop OS is too much of a compromise for me. It didn't work well in Windows 8 and I don't think it would in macOS.

This is a silly thing to say. macOS is specifically designed for use with a mouse and keyboard. iOS is specifically designed for use with a touch screen.

Adapting either one to work with the other would only make it worse.

MacOS allows me to run any software I want. It has a terminal, and allows me to run scripts. It has a shared file system and offers true multi-tasking.

You can already run some iOS apps in MacOS. I'd like a single computer where I can switch between mobile / pencil usage and desktop keyboard / mouse usage.

Apple sells a magic keyboard for the iPad pro which also has a touchpad. The hardware is not the problem.

No... I use an iPad with Magic Keyboard case daily.

It works pretty well for things designed for keyboard and pointing device -- one of my main uses is to remote in to a Windows machine.

The main problems with this setup aren't inherent... while the track pad is quite good, the keyboard is passable at best (needs function keys and for the frequently used keys to stop semi-dying).

Pretty quickly you start to naturally switch between touching the screen, typing on the keyboard or using the trackpad, depending on what you're doing and what software you're using.

Now my wife laughs at me when I'm using a regular MacBook and try to swipe or tap the screen.

Despite all the posts in this thread definitively stating that the iPad is “just for entertainment”, an illustrator ex-colleague of mine creates all her work on an iPad Pro.

She owns a home, and has 2 kids, and as far as I know has no other sources of income other than her illustrations, which are all made on her iPad.

Thank you for pointing that out. And I think that’s exactly what the article says:

The iPad has some really powerful use cases, but only the ones Apple made (like illustration work).

There is no doubt that the iPad can be a very useful device if the available software fits exactly your needs. Here obviously the pen input is the critical enabler. Thus the iPad is very popular for anyone "drawing". But beyond those fields, the usefulness drops rapidly.

This post and the comments here make me think of two things:

1. Digital minimalism can be extended to hardware. Buying the most generalist machines for every possible use case is what leads to having all this clunkiness when you travel. Think deeply on your hardware scenario and optimise for that. You might save some money in the process too. E.g. I moved from a desktop + decent dev laptop to just an M1 MBP and a Steam Deck - primarily for portability and battery resilience during power cuts. I've recently also ditched my mech keyboard for a smaller wireless one I can travel with.

2. I do kind of wish we'd get more desktop devices in a tablet form factor - "Bring your own keyboard" sort of thing. I don't even care about having a touch screen.

After trying the iPad for this, I discovered a 12" Macbook is a real option to consider either as a secondary or mobile laptop. It allowed much quicker on/off usage, and for longer sessions it was really serviceable. The 2017 model in particular is one of interest.

Instant on, a full and normal keyboard. An i7 with 16 gb of ram is still serviceable for cloud type work (or some local). Perfect for travel, planes, cars, trains, hotels. Easy to remote into a Mac Studio if needed too.

The new iPad keyboard is nice, but there's still a lot more disney magical gesturing than a keyboard alone allows. Touch is slower, and the iPad keyboard is slower to type on than a laptop keyboard. The horsepower the iPad has is great, though. An iPad makes a great second monitor off the 12" Macbook, too.

"For many years, I tried very hard to travel with only an iPad. (Why bring two devices? And I’m not leaving my iPad at home.)"

I bet they means three devices, since I would wager they does not leave theys "more expensive than a Windows-based laptop" iPhone at home.

The hardware in the iPhone is probably powerful enough to run all software he'd run on his Mac if it were similarly unhampered by iOS.

The biggest issue I have with iOS is that it absolutely sucks at multitasking.

If you want to one task (eg. take notes, watch a movie, make a sketch) then it is great. Even the files app is good enough now to quickly find some document when you need it.

But it becomes unusable as soon as you switch between tasks.

On the Mac, I can just move some windows to the side, work on a different task, then go back to what I was doing before. My work is waiting for me right where I left it.

Advanced users can even use spaces for switching between tasks.

On iOS, I need to go to every app that I used and try to return to the previous state, at which point I'm so annoyed that I'm switching back to the Mac.

The concept of this website (sixcolors.com) is bewildering to me. I sincerely hope the authors are being handsomely paid by Apple behind the scenes, otherwise they just spend their lives doing free advertising for a trillion dollar corporation.

He's a long term journalist (was editor in chief at MacWorld) focusing on Apple and is also podcasting on Apple. If you're married to the Apple ecosystem his insight are pretty interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Snell_(writer)

unlike this website, which provides a penumbra of authenticity to a tech funding cartel which regularly runs pump'n'dump schemes against the rest of the world?

Is it though? Seems like (1) they are fans of the products; (2) they want to write about stuff they like; and (3) they figure out that they can make a career out of it.

The proprietor was editor of Macworld and similar publications for a couple decades. It probably sounds crazy to you, but there are and/or were entire print magazines reporting on the Apple ecosystem!

Working as a consultant means I literally have no days off. I also don't like to carry customer laptops with me when hiking somewhere in Patagonia. So my ultra light travel workstation became my Samsung Galaxy S22 phone paired with an Anker USBC hub with HDMI and a Planck by Drop (and a few cables). All I need is a TV which I usually find anywhere I go. With Samsung DEX I have a full desktop experience with functioning keyboard and the phone itself becomes my mouse. From there I can VPN and launch a RDP session to access a development environment. Outlook and Teams work natively in DEX.

So far I've been managing to keep up with work while traveling using a Samsung tab. So far its been going well, granted that I mostly only need MS Office and sometimes a terminal for some code.

We're building a web development environment for iPadOS/iOS that hopes to address some of the shortcomings developing iPad-only (and iPhone, but...)

Free to download, developer-tools browser built-in (Inspect Browser), Git and PHP available as an in-app purchase. Glad to answer any questions!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/webforge-ide/id6450872424

Having to buy a FOSS VCS as an add on is kind of proving the point that the iPad’s closed software ecosystem is really holding the fantastic hardware back.

My mom has Macular Degeneration and can no longer read sms messages even on a phablet size screen.

Wanna have a phone number or receive SMS on an cellular equiped iPad?

Well, fuck you, that's not allowed.

I tried the iPad only lifestyle with the original iPad Pro - stuck with it for almost a full year. In the end the abysmal text editing and extreme restrictions when multitasking drove me to distraction. Thankfully the M1 MacBooks fixed the battery, size, weight and heat issues of the Intel based laptops.

And yeah, if you have the magic keyboard/trackpad text editing is a lot better - but at that point you might as well just have the full laptop.

I really wanted to use a tablet – either iOS or Android – as a lightweight work device but it was too clumsy and uncomfortable to use. Any time you encounter a new situation, you're not sure you'd be able to solve it within the OS boundaries.

I finally settled on an 8inch "proper laptop": the GPD Pocket 3. Linux works like a charm, real keyboard, and powerful. It even replaced my spec'd out 15" Dell Precision (from 2017) because it's so more fun to use.

These types of articles come out periodically and annoy me quite a bit. iPadOS has been my interface to the digital world for going on 6 years. Here are the things I do exclusively via an iPad Pro:

  * administer a dozen HPC clusters
  * perform all the digital tasks required of a non-profit board member
  * learn/read, communicate, consume media, photo edit and all the other normal life things one does on a computer nowadays

It’s true that I don’t have a podcast. But I think I’m in the majority of computer users there! I’ll also say that I have had to accept some limits or look for workarounds in the past, but the big additions of file downloads, safari compatibility modes and finally stage manager have effectively taken care of those.

But isn’t that the point of the article? The iPad works great for the things you want to do on it because Apple has decided to support those workflows (or you have been able to adjust your own practices to suit the device). But on a Mac (or Windows, or Linux), no-one needs to think ahead for your use case. Someone can just build software that enables it.

Software development is a much less niche area than podcast recording but one that is equally unsupported on the iPad. I doubt many are itching to swap their dev machines for an iPad, but given the hardware it sure would be nice if I could tinker with stuff on the sofa. But no amount of workarounds or developer ingenuity would enable that because Apple has decreed that I cannot run arbitrary code, or run a local server.

Yeah, same. I think at the end of the day, some folks don’t want to work that way. Which is fine.

I do all of my personal business on an iMac. The big gap for me was the shell, which is now not an issue with iSH available. There’s literally nothing I cannot do that I need to do that can’t be done on the iPad.

"It's Apple's fault that nobody has made an all-in-one podcast production app for the iPad."

This sounds like an excellent opportunity for someone.

I’ve been using Remote Desktop to a windows environment in the cloud for a while. It’s been pretty great actually. As long as you have a Bluetooth mouse an IPad makes a great thin client in a pinch.

I know people want MacOs, but it’s a workaround that works.

As a developer/CTO who's use-case when travelling is just being able to take care of emergencies if something present itself I wanted to do away from bringing a laptop in vacation. Since I develop using Docker, my solution is basically an EC2 machine I can fire if needed that has VSCode installed as a server running in a browser with Docker installed in the same machine. Basically a cloud dev environment available in the browser.

It's amazing how it all works well, even the Docker integration inside VSCode. The main thing that doesn't work as well as locally is searching the source code which is very slow. A work-around would be to search your code separately in Github or whatever service you use.

Anyway, with this setup, I can go away with a clear mind that I have a dev machine available even if I only bring my iPad (with keyboard cover).

One serious problem is that only a limited set of PC keyboard keys and key combinations are available in that setup (mapped from the local keyboard). It works in a pinch, using the Windows on-screen keyboard when necessary, but I found it impractical for regular work,

Which cloud provider do you use? I'm currently connecting to my pc but i don't like this solution. I'd like to run a docker instance

The only thing my iPad has going for it is cellular. If they would put a cellular modem into a Mac laptop I’d be thrilled.

Someone should make a list of analogies of: if X were an iPad you couldn’t do Y.

Perhaps after a few hundred of these we could identify a higher level pattern that would “make sense” instead of being frustrating. I feel like there’s some deep philosophical underpinning or monad-like slip-through-your-fingers constraint that is maddening.

Nope, it's just Apple wanting to maximize profits.

It’s wild how few keyboard shortcuts you can use on an iPad. That alone has been enough to make me use mine less.

What if Apple released a device that was an M2/M3 MacBook, but the back side of the screen was another screen?

I didn’t used to believe this was likely, but now we have the Vision Pro which has an internal and external screen. A combo laptop/tablet would be incredible, and they use the same chip so why not?

Double sided devices are inherently more fragile, for one.

Lenovo did that, put an eink screen on the back of one of their laptops. It was Intel only, and I was looking for a Ryzen 7 or 9. Asus's Z13 and X13 Flow lines work for me here. I use an X13 Flow with a Ryzen 9 and a 3050Ti. It works amazingly. Fedora and KDE have native touch support.

The iPad only travel dream is a reality now, just not with apple hardware.

Get a Lenovo yoga 7i for $500 (iPad price) and you have a fully capable multi Linux machine (via WSL) which is also a fully featured touchscreen tablet. Uses the same little USB charger as your phone.

My dream is to do all computer work from a couch or hammock. I’m not sure if it will ever work out.

That’s bound to be very unhealthy in the long run, posture-wise. You’ll notice when you get older. ;)

This can be done but ergonomics become a consideration if you plan to spend some time there:

https://mgsloan.com/posts/supine-computing/

https://www.piratekingdom.com/blog/my-productivity-couch-set...

https://www.jefftk.com/p/folding-couch-monitor

I feel that's got more to do with the UI of the couch or hammock than that of the computer.

Didn’t you do that during corona? Remote work is still common in Europe if you are employed in the tech sector.

Tried using an iPad pro as a workstation. Terrible ergonomics. iPadOS multitasking is a terrible experience. USB-C transfer speeds were bad. Overall very disappointed with the experience. Went back to Macbook Pro after a couple of weeks of pain.

Meanwhile my Android tablet does just fine, I can even make use of DeX mode if I miss desktop like workflows that much.

Nowadays I seldom pick my aging netbook for travelling, and how things have been going in desktop Linux even less so.

Typing this from my tablet in some island.

An iPad with (any) Bluetooth keyboard and mouse along with codespaces (or replit, gitpod, et al) works well. As long as you accept that what you’re using isn’t a full blown computer, it’s absolutely enough. All about managing expectations.

The author isn’t willing to ‘declare the “use iPad to get work done” experiment dead’, but I am. If a blogger and podcaster can’t use the now 13-year-old iPad platform for his work, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I'll was planning trying this out in a couple weeks. Should I bring my macbook with me as well? I don't know how much I'd actually want to code which seems like the biggest reason to bring it with me.

I just tried to go with the only iPad Pro for travel option (I really wanted this to work), but had to return it and go back to my MacBook Air. The iPad is just not as good at many basic productivity workflows. Really basic stuff like switching between google sheets and chrome is just really high friction. It’s an amazing consumption device but I just couldn’t get it to work for me

Galaxy tab S with android is going into the right direction with the desktopextension function but as long as so many buy apple and it's completly unusable they will not adapt in any way.

Sadly I agree in that I've tried to make the iPad a useful enough device to carry around with me but I just gave up and happily gave it away to a less demanding person. Mac or bust!

Did anyone try this https://getutm.app, is it possible to install it on a non-jailbroken iPad Pro M2?

UTM works much better if you can install the Hypervisor version via TrollStore. Unfortunately you can't do that with M2 iPads since they came with iOS 16.1 from factory and TrollStore only works on iOS 15.0-15.4.1

Luckily I have an M1 iPad Pro with iOS 15.3.1. Managed to install Oracle Database 19c ARM on Oracle Linux Arm 8.8.

If all you need is to carry a computer for emergency work related tasks on vacation, you can do it straight from an iPhone thin client and Bluetooth keyboard. No MacBook or iPad required.

Coworkers were always amazed when we'd be at lunch and I'd pull out my phone and make a code change or fix an issue right there. It's not that hard. Much easier with an external keyboard though.

I waited over ten years for the iPad to mature, and ended up making a bigger jump away from the Apple ecosystem to a Tablet PC running linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm...

It isn't perfect, but it's made for a more ergonomic computing experience that replaced my need for a second monitor desk setup and while being a bit large can still use it for tablet experiences of reading papers and watching movies.

I know lottts of people that rely on company provided laptops or dont have any laptop.

For them, travel ipads are perfect.

For everyone else, just leave all computers at home, or take the laptop.

When is the FAA going to let me use my laptop during takeoff and landing - that’s the biggest thing ipad has going for it, that’s an hour+ of unproductive time.

Pretty hard to enter the brace position if required in either takeoff or landing. It’s not just an airplane mode thing

Apple wants there to be a distinction between the two devices, otherwise people would only purchase one if they were equivalent.

Why not buy a Surface? This agonising over workflow is painful to read.

What' needed is a real computer, with a real OS, in tablet form-factor.

And then maybe a keyboard that can convert it into a laptop (extra battery in the k/b, friction hinges to adjust tablet angle, instead of a stand, which doesn't work on an actual lap), etc.

I'm always dreaming of a new 11in Macbook Air...

You can use it as a second display haha

I basically haven't used an apple product (outside of the ipod) since my powermac circa 2003. I got an iPad pretty much entirely for the pencil and Procreate. Both are wonderful but it's a horrible OS otherwise. I don't think I would ever get an iPhone given how inflexible everything feels in that ecosystem.

I thought I might be able to do some light development work on it.. No chance.

I don't even know why it has so much storage space. The file system is so poorly designed it's a pain in the ass to transfer anything to it.

Microsoft Surface

After around 10 years with the iPad (since the 1st gen) in some form in my hand, I've given up on it entirely this year - selling my last iPad Pro and not picking up a new one. I haven't missed it. Anything I need to do or look at on the go is satisfied by my iPhone (I am still sporting the 13 non-Pro, which is plenty fast for my needs). For everything else, I have my 3 year old Windows laptop which runs great even to this day. For anything beefier, I can wait until I'm home and use my PC. When I built the PC, it matched the 'new' Mac Pro spec-for-spec and I paid a fraction of the price (only 1500 euros!).

Apple missed the boat with the iPad AND with macOS. I use Windows now (Yes, I'm aware of the 'privacy' issues surrounding telemetry, et. al.) and haven't missed the Apple platform one bit. Gaming aside, I haven't lacked for any developer tools when using Visual Studio. For web development, VS Code and WSL2/Docker fit the bill without very many issues.

One of the biggest factor with Apple is the price. While the entry level iPad is competitively priced (550 euros for a 64gb model, or 750 euros for a 256gb model): it's also outdated (running the A14 Bionic SOC). The minute you take a peek at a more current model (iPad Air 64G @ 720 euros or 256G at 920 euros), you are firmly into laptop territory. After all this time, it's still evident that iPad cannot replace a laptop - it is still a companion device. And it's not for lack of hardware. It's because Apple still wants you to buy their laptop and then pair it with an iPad for the "complete" experience. To contrast, my laptop only cost me 900 euros for Ryzen 7 512GB SSD + 16GB RAM. Is it as fast as the M2 chip? Probably not, but you aren't using all that power on the iPad Pro the majority of the time, either.

A benchmark for the 4800U v. M2 chip:

Geekbench 6 (Single core): 1486 (4800U) -> 2536 (M2)

Geekbench 6 (Multi core): 6246 (4800U) -> 9691 (M2)

While the performance of the M2 is impressive - you aren't seeing it the majority of the time.

Another factor I've had to deal with is that Apple insist on their own way of doing things; whether that is better in the end, is still anyone's guess 10 years on. But ever the black sheep: file management; while better these days, is still an issue... lack of certain types of applications, cannot build or install your own applications without a developer ID, and so on. I can't even run emulators on it without a) building it and sideloading it using developer tools (and re-doing the steps every so often to refresh the cert) or b) jailbreaking it.

Anyways, this post went on longer than I anticipated. I know there will be defenders swooping in to proclaim that iPad Pro is the shiznit.

Let's not forget that with a screen, keyboard - my laptop costed me 900 euros 3 years ago. If I were to get an updated version of it, it would cost me 800 euros now. An iPad Pro (512G storage) with M2 and a keyboard to go with it, would cost me 1720 euros. More than _double_. And, for what?

Here’s the real problem. Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”

The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. You want to browse the web, you want send some emails, you want to watch movies. That’s it. Nothing more.

Save yourself some travel weight. Just pack your Mac. You were already packing it anyway.

I think the real world use cases for an iPad are slightly broader, but not by much. My partner uses one to make digital art; it also has a relatively decent camera, some apps for video/audio production (like Final Cut/Logic), it's also better than a phone at being an SSH terminal... But the creative applications end somewhere around right there.

It's an appliance. An appliance with mind-boggingly awesome specs - if it were a computer - but it's just that, an appliance closer in spirit to a microwave than to a PC. Treat it as such, and it will be one of the best appliances you'll ever own; but to expect it to be a computer is to set oneself up to be disappointed.

I'm more than happy with it for what it is, but don't mistake it for what it's not.

A basic iPad as a reasonably priced (~$300-$500) media consumption device is fantastic. The problem is that's not what Apple is selling it as anymore. Look up all their advertising from the last few years and they barely even acknowledge that price point. Instead you will see all the "Pro" models, fancy accessories, M1/M2 chips, LiDAR, terabytes of storage and prices eclipsing that of mid-range MacBooks. Everyone I know who ate up the advertising and bought $1500+ iPads as a primary or secondary productivity device is now regretting it as they either lay unused or are glorified Netflix and Facebook tablets.

A 12.9” iPad Pro with the keyboard case is more expensive than the equivalent 13” MacBook Pro.

Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.”

If that were the case, they’d be making much more money from laptops than from iPads, right?

If they were making just as much money from iPads, though, it would make sense to make the iPad as good as possible. Cannibalizing Mac sales wouldn’t be a big deal.

Per the Six Colors breakdown of Apple’s financial results (https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/08/charts-apple-q3-2023-resu...) Macs and iPads accounted for 8% and 7% of their revenue.

The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning.

They’ve gone back on plenty of things Steve Jobs said (in many cases, Jobs himself was the one who did it).

I don’t think they have a religious objection to making the iPad useful, as you seem to be saying; I think they think they are making it useful, that the current design (including its limitations) is the best compromise.

I do not want to do my work on an iPad. I have never understood what the Mac was lacking that the iPad might provide. The essay explains the perfection of the Mac: You can do anything with it. If you are a developer, you can really do anything with it.

For me, the iPad is the optional one (not that I would ever not take it). My MacBook is pretty close to being a perfect device for work. iPad is a perfect device for, well, everything else. Done.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com