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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

> 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.)

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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 think it’s generational. In Berlin I see plenty of students that now actively use it while studying in cafés for example.

Yeah it's amazing how many iPads + Apple Pencils students have these days. I notice this in Thailand universities as well.

Almost all of the students in the undergrad engineering courses I teach seem to use them. 10 years ago, I had a Samsung Note tablet that was great for coursework: it made comparatively trivial the then-daunting task of keeping all your coursework organized and having it with you when you needed it. It was great back then, and now they're significantly cheaper with Apple. If the Samsung options were comparably cheap and sporting reading-friendly screen ratios, I would've skipped Apple altogether.

I'm seeing an increase in college students in Japan with iPads and Apple Pencils. And most of the visiting students from other countries have them for sure.

I notice it more on airplanes when people want to watch their own movies.

I would also say that about 1/3 of people that work primarily from their laptop, and travel a lot (no easy access to a desktop monitor), will probably have an iPad as a second display as well.

iPads are often used by students for note taking, they seem to excel in this niche

I see plenty of them around (Spain).

I have plenty of American friends who (including their kids) use iPads all the time, almost everywhere.

I’m in the UK. Yesterday I watched an eighty-plus year old woman settle her similarly elderly, physically-impaired husband into his seat on the train then get out her iPad to write an email.

On my journey home in a more crowded train I saw half a dozen iPads just from where I was sitting. They are extremely useful devices for train journeys.

Only Apple iPads or are you using the term generically? I'm guessing you're in London or another major city?

Similar to the parent I only ever see iPads in two places, the hands of rich kids in restaurants, and in primary schools.

In the UK you basically only see iPads (95%+). Android tablets aren’t common

Kindle Fire excepted; loads of those in the hands of kids all over.

I see a lot of Surfaces in commuter hours.

Only Apple iPads as far as I could see, but by no means only the most expensive or newest. Non-Apple tablet devices really are not often seen in the UK (some convertible PCs, the occasional Samsung tablet).

If you spend a lot of time on public transport, an iPad isn't really that much of a luxury item. It's a really pragmatic choice, and at least in the UK an entry-level or recent secondhand iPad is not much more expensive than the cheapest usable alternative.

Most seats on British trains are not at tables, and while many (by no means all, depends on the operator) have a seatback tray table, it is generally not the right shape for all but the smallest laptop, and the proportions are not such that they work well with convertible PCs that use screen-cover keyboards.

We really get crammed into trains.

An iPad is large enough to read a book or emails even if you are stuck without a seat, the on-screen keyboard is practical enough to write reasonable emails or edit small documents on, watch a film on, etc.

So is a very cost effective way to make use of what might be 2+ hours of every working day.

(Train travel is pretty expensive over any distance, too. An entry level iPad is only about ten times the cost of an ad-hoc journey into London from where I am -- and that's only an hour away.)

    So is a very cost effective way to make use of what might be 2+ hours of every working day.

Here is the first mistake. Get rid of the ridiculous commute. Then, you will not need an iPad!

Two hours of commuting in the south east of the UK is as little as thirty miles each way in the overground part alone. Quite a common commute. Far from a ridiculous one, and if you get a seat, not really very uncomfortable.

You can either drive it and do nothing but listen to something relatively simple, or sit in a train and read/work/draw/listen/play games/sleep.

(It’s not my commute; I work from home. But I visit clients sometimes; yesterday involved six hours of train/tube travel. I wouldn’t do that every day but I could do it once a week.)

30 miles is an outrageous commute. To put it another way, there are 2800 square miles of land closer than your job.

2 hours each way is indeed not a very sustainable commute. I had a 90 minute one about every other day for a bit over a year and I wouldn't have wanted to do that long-term.

However, 30 miles is significantly under the average US commuting distance. And, unless you live and work near an urban downtown, 30 miles probably doesn't get you to a lot of appropriate professional jobs. I live in an exurb outside a major metro and my (nominal) office is the nearest tech job I could physically commute to and it barely squeezes in under 30 miles.

No, the average US commute is 16 miles one way, whereas OP was saying 30 miles each way:

https://hbr.org/2021/05/that-dreaded-commute-is-actually-goo...

I was basing it on this data: https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-commute-time-statistic...

But, yes, other numbers seem to be lower (and are generally more likely to quote commute time rather than distance which is probably more relevant for most people).

Should clarify that I say two hours per day above. I don't think I'd spend two hours going thirty miles, or even necessarily choose a job that involved driving thirty miles every day.

But thirty miles in an hour on urban/suburban rail isn't particularly unusual. And this time is time you can use, if you have even a little bit of method about it. I know people who have done all the reading for entire higher education degrees in that period of time.

At any rate, the notion to which you're responding regarding the area of possible commute being 2800 square miles is foolish. You have to go to where the jobs gather, and there are all sorts of complex reasons why they don't distribute evenly across that area that a rational person should not spend time weighing up when they consider whether an iPad might be a useful thing for the train.

In my case, if I made the commute into London on a daily basis, knocking down the distance to this hypothetical US average of 16 miles might save, I think, about a third of the journey time in practice. It would knock off half of the price of a season ticket, which might be useful. But it would add easily 40% to the cost of a house, which is the overriding concern. And even then I'd still buy the iPad for that journey.

Have you tried buying a place in London?? Not sure if this is sarcasm or not!

It's non-intended sarcasm. Lot's of people who work in London spend 2 hours (each way) a day travelling through open countryside in order to have both a decent job and somewhere basic to sleep at night.

People who actually live in London tend to be either very rich or unemployed.

I used to commute 2-3hrs/day living in LA. It was just normal. Now that I can work from home, it irritates me even more that companies want to force that back on us.

The traffic in LA is insane. I never understand why people live there for it. Or they should live within walking / biking distance of their job. Car traffic is hell on your mental and physical health.

>We really get crammed into trains.

Sincerely, from someone in the third world who has taken UK public transport. You don't.

I don't say this to disparage your message, but hopefully to give some gratitude for the nice things you do have over there.

I found it most amusing how people would get antsy and annoyed when a train was more than 5 minutes late in the UK. For years of me taking South African trains, if there was any delay worth being mad about, it would've been after 2 hours had passed.

People here don't really get upset about trains being even ten minutes late. That's normal.

And as far as safety is concerned, when every seat is full and there's already very little seat-to-seat distance, the aisle is crammed with people face to back with nothing to hang on to, and the vestibules are all full to the point that people are standing with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard, that is a crammed train. Dangerously so -- indeed, often illegally so.

And this is quite normal, routine and unexceptional at commuter times, and that is not talking about the underground, where it is routine to be packed in to the point that someone's nose is against the window (mine was, yesterday).

I'm sure there are trains elsewhere that are worse. There's nothing I can do about that; it doesn't really change my observation.

(I'm not sure there's a really good point about gratitude here, either, when the people paying for these services where they don't get a seat have to take out substantial loans to afford the annual ticket, whereas you can travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg, with a sleeping car berth, for about 20% more than the amount it costs me to travel an hour into London at off-peak times. But that's a separate point.)

Back in the 80s the trains still had guard's vans. When you've stood in the middle of a crammed, unlit, violently shaking box with nothing for anyone to hang on to, a place in the aisle seems like luxury! On the other hand, the intercity seats were more comfortable in those days, the windows opened and you didn't have to wait for the train to stop before you got off.

Yeah. I went to school on the train and did that a couple of dozen times over seven years. Also remember being horrifyingly crammed into the corridor of a former first class carriage.

> when every seat is full and there's already very little seat-to-seat distance, the aisle is crammed with people face to back with nothing to hang on to, and the vestibules are all full to the point that people are standing with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard, that is a crammed train.

That was the Metra BN line in Chicago when I lived there, at least the rush hour departures at around 5:00pm. I was on a train so full that I could not even fully get into the vestibule, I had to push people in with my body so the door could close behind me. Many times the CTA trains were similarly full.

> with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard

Generally speaking and especially when compared with trams or buses, mainline trains don't really do "hard" braking, though. Though I concede that the jerk of coming to a full stop with the brakes fully applied (during regular braking drivers and/or the train control system will ease off the brakes before stopping) may be somewhat borderline in terms of keeping your stability.

I’m sure you’re totally right, but try getting a cross-country train in the UK on a Sunday when the two trains in front of you have been cancelled. And paying £110 for the privledge. You really do get crammed in.

Also try the Tube in London’s rush hour - more like stuffed in than even crammed in. Full armpit-in-the-face experience.

I've been on one or two London trains during rush hour. Yeah, it's cramped.

I've also hung out of Cape Town trains because that's the only way to get on - all doors forced open by commuters so we can get a few more people to work.

The UK is becoming a third world country at a rapid pace, don't you worry.

I was in Malaysia in March and there was a big public artwork showing Malaysia’s commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and I thought “Sh*t we need those too!”

https://sdgs.un.org/goals

I once did a project (not freelance I hasten to add) for a wealthy and shady company based in a very expensive office in a very expensive old money postcode. They are involved in immoral, and probably illegal, activities, some of which received attention from national press. They were the sort of organisation that has disaster comms skills in house. They also had a document that proudly proclaimed how they met every single one of the UN's SDGs. Never understood how they managed to keep a straight face on that topic.

This sounds fascinating!

I’ve no doubt they did. Shame about the illiterate plebs begging nearby though.

I literally can't remember the last time I took a laptop out on a train or a plane. If it's a short trip, I may get by with just my phone (or phone + Kindle) but for longer trips I like the iPad as a media consumption and note taking device even if, to the OP's point, it's not really a laptop replacement.

That said, I'm going on a few week--mostly recreational--trip in a bit and I'll just take my phone and my iPad. It will be fine for note-taking at the conference I'm attending and I really just want media consumption and a browser on something bigger than my phone for everything else.

An iPad is probably one of my more optional devices but I've gotten almost 10 years out of my current model so it doesn't feel like an unreasonable luxury even if I mostly use it when traveling.

Thanks for expanding on your experience. Not commuting, and coming from a relatively poor small city, when I'm on trains I only ever see people on phones and occassionally laptops for people doing actual work.

Same; except I also do south England to Scotland by train … the one thing is the 4/5g reception or Wi-Fi is really no good. Have to download things before (Netflix) or make sure the book you want to read is actually in the book app. Then 7 hour is ok. Notebook as said is too big.

> … a seatback tray table, it is generally not the right shape for all but the smallest laptop …

As someone who very much prefers having a physical keyboard, the only workable solution I have found for UK trains is an iPad with the Magic Keyboard, whose cantilever design is relatively shallow, and which provides a firm base for balancing on your legs.

There is no reason this form factor couldn't be achieved with an android tablet, but it feels relatively uncommon. Most keyboard cases I've seen are only really suitable for stable table/desk scenarios.

Commute Chelmsford to London (27 minutes), annual ticket is $6,000.

So cost of an iPad isn't a huge concerns at that point

https://www.thetrainline.com/season-tickets/chelmsford-to-lo...

We have an 87 year old who is a real fan of her iPad for staying in touch, reading and audio books. I personally use 3 ipads - I hate to throw stuff away: 1) old 9.7 pro as main device 2) old Air 2 for Zwift (this will sadly retire when updates are no longer available 3) Even older Air for connecting to FlightSim for charts

iPads dominate the "premium" segment worldwide (something like 70-80% market share of tablets from US$300 - US$1000). Below that, it's all versions of Android - Apple doesn't sell non-premium tablets. Above that, Surface has meaningful share, although iPad still plays significantly.

(Source - worked at Google in Android)

I use an iPad exclusively at home on a couch/in bed. It's really great for low effort media consumption/web browsing, but I couldn't imagine bringing it with me somewhere instead of just taking a laptop. Even for media consumption on a train or airplane, I prefer a laptop because of it being easier to prop up in a cramped space.

Yep. I have an iPad (cheap, not pro) on my nightstand.

I take the laptop when traveling because who knows what I'll need it for.

Why a "cheap" iPad instead of a much cheaper Android tablet?

Because android ignored their tablet UI for years and are now optimising it for folding phones.

Because it's been working just fine(tm) for at least 5 years. Maybe more, i forgot how old it is.

Tablets have been first class members of the iOS ecosystem for a decade. Even more so after the release of iPadOS.

Android tablets don’t get any specific APIs or special treatment on Android.

These days my parents based in Asia use the two iPads I gifted them almost exclusively. They watch YouTube videos, Netflix, Facetime the kids and browse the web on them. The only time my dad boots up my old college MacBook is when he has to do important document editing - never more than once every month. To my surprise, he's even using the iPadOS Files app extensively. We're just not the target market.

I'm a physicist in Germany, my supervisor got iPads with Apple Pencils for the entire group, we find it very useful for note taking especially since we can share screen on zoom to use them like digital whiteboards. When I give tutorials I notice at least a quarter of my students are usually using either iPads, remarkable or a windows convertible with pen support

I own an iPad but mostly use it at home, so you wouldn't see me using it at an airport or on a train.

In US, I hear it's a common "computer for non-tech-savvy people, who you want to set up with once, and have them not bother you for the next couple years" choice.

As for the form factor, I do travel with a tablet. More specifically, a 2-in-1 device, with a stylus. An x86 one, though (specifically, Dell Latitude 5290, which has specs like MS Surface, but was 3x cheaper) - because I've learned from experience that iPads and Android tablets are just large phones without the phone call function, and not suitable for any productive use. Meanwhile, my Dell hosts a touchscreen-optimized Windows 10, which hosts a Linux distro, which hosts the actual OS - Emacs.

(I also learned to love the Ribbon. On a 2-in-1, it's very obvious what Microsoft was going for, and why it's a good design - for touchscreens.)

Android Tablets with Mobile Internet are perfectly fine phones. I've used a LTE Samsung tablet exclusively as my only "Smart" phone for a while, and had a Dual-Sim to share the same Phone number as on my "Dumb"-phone, (Nokia 8110 4G) ...

From 2015-2019, my only mobile device was an Android tablet with no SIM card. At purchase, I signed up for a Google Voice number, and I sort of got by with VoIP service over WiFi wherever I could.

Since then, I've purchased a proper mobile phone, and I transferred my landline home phone over to that SIM card, and it's my main line now. I use my Voice number very rarely.

One of the drawbacks to SIM cards is that you can't really get the phone service mirrored or transferred to a regular computer. Sure, you can "link" the phone if it's nearby, but the service itself stays there.

I've had a number of times where I'd really like to have voice/SMS service on that number available via computer (some people I know are actually creeped out by my having two phone numbers at once), but what can you do.

I haven't traveled since the Before Times anyway, so boarding a plane with devices is the least of my worries.

I’ve got a fair number of family members who use them as their routine browsing devices. They don’t have laptops tho.

Maybe it is an American thing. iPads here are nearly as ubiquitous as AirPods.

More for planes than trains though. Most people just read their phone on a train commute.

Do you not know poor or working class parents? Do they not use iPads or other tablets?

My 80+ year old dad uses his iPad+keyboard 90% of the time. He’ll use the computer when he needs to print or scan something.

I’m not American and both my mother and my mother in law (both over retirement age) use an iPad as their only large-screen computing device along with an iPhone.

It’s not a “rich parent” thing, it’s a “this device has actual support from the manufacturer for years” thing. Android tablets are still an afterthought with Samsung the only one bravely attempting to bring large screen support to the OS.

I have one that I use for my grad school studies almost exclusively as an e-reader for textbooks and a notepad.

I could similarly just invest in a cheap e-reader device and a physical notepad and it wouldn’t disrupt my studies but I shelled out a little more for a used iPad for the longer than typical device support and because I’m already in the Apple ecosystem.

Most of my family in Germany have an iPad. In fairness many households I know have one. Especially for elderly people it’s the perfect computer (as in laptop, desktop) substitute.

Canadian here, iPads are really common amongst (uni/college) students as well, from my experience - they make good notetaking/general course work devices. Off the top of my head I think like 40-70% of students in my classes had an iPad.

And as another comment said, iPads are pretty common options here for some people who aren't really power users that essentially want a phone experience, but bigger. I've set up my mom with an iPad + PiHole for home use and she's super happy with it as a video and browsing device that is generally reliable. She does have access to a PC I built as well, but an iPad is much more portable around the house for her (e.g. she needs to follow a recipe while cooking).

Mine works great as edoc reader but the pencil doesn't have full mouse functionality and the mechanical switch BT keyboard i need to do non trivial inputs adds a lot of bulk.. so still has a lot of potential.

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.

Do-it-all devices tend to not really satisfy in anything. I got a Lenovo Yoga that was meant to be “convertible” between laptop and tablet and I never really did use it anywhere near as much as the technically much less powerful iPad Air I bought after.

I keep old Yoga 13 in a drawer. I think it happened still too early for its time - too heavy as tablet, fans, small screen vs form factor, font hinting quite bad in vertical mode, Windows8 clunky interface, battery...

I think today's Macbook Air M2 with 360deg hinges, touch and some iPad like UI-mode would be a holy grail for the article author.

I find the Microsoft Surface Pro works in this niche much better than the Yoga devices - they're lighter, smaller and the keyboard cover can be removed entirely for a tablet experience.

That would help but some of what I found annoying was the delay in transitioning between modes and software generally not designed with tablet mode in mind. Not sure if the situation has improved in the last few years on those points.

Not sure if that's changed over time or not but transition speed is more or less the same between the two in my experience. There's some software which does a decent enough job at tablet mode (enough that I don't feel the need for a separate tablet - basically media consumption type activities - ebook readers, Netflix, etc are covered well enough and web browsing works for me) and the surface pro form factor feels much better for things like note taking using the surface pen in my experience (my work laptop is a Yoga, personal laptop is a Surface Pro so I use both regularly). On the negative side, the Surface Pro does make some different compromises - particularly the type cover isn't quite as good as the Yoga laptop keyboard (though of course any laptop keyboard is never that great) and the stand which folds out of the back isn't as good as having a laptop supported by the base if you have it on anything other than a decent desk. But overall I'd say the Surface Pro gets much closer to a true 2 in 1 device.

You can't even turn off the touch screen when in laptop mode, so every time you brush the screen when typing (it happens a lot, the device is tiny) you end up messing up something.

Microsoft, for all its qualities, truly does not care about the finer details.

A 360 MX Macbook with all the benefits of an iPad (run iOS apps, cellular data, both cameras, excellent touch response, maybe even lidar) would absolutely kill iPad sales, but it would also be the best all-in-one device Apple ever made.

Your dream is an interesting thought experiment. Let's reflect on if Apple would provide all these experiences.

0. 360 MX. This is the least likely. I'm sure Apple has been testing flippable hinges for decades at this point, but even if they could make the best one, they need a marketing reason for users. What's the point in a flippable laptop if you can't use everything when it's flipped like Windows?

1. Running iOS apps. macOS with an ARM chip already runs iOS apps, the problem is that most developers are chickenshit and don't allow people to run their apps on macOS. Apple needs to reverse course and remove the ability to deny running on macOS.

2. Cellular data. By this point, Apple would have done it. There's a valid argument that Apple doesn't want to even entertain negotiations with Qualcomm about how much it would cost them to put modems in their laptops, so I believe our last hope is that the modems currently in development by Apple themselves are someday destined for Apple laptops.

3. Excellent touch response. Every Macbook already has the best touch response in any laptop. Their trackpad is best-in-class. I don't know how Apple could even fail at that.

4. Lidar. What? Why?

Ok, let’s go.

0. You bring up some points I fully agree with. Since we’re talking about Apple who can’t do anything mundane, for the hinge let’s just assume they come up with a new tech (maybe a single pivot point and the keyboard spins freely, or a mechanism that detaches it entirely so it can be snapped in flush on the back, or some other solution I can’t imagine yet)

1. Agreed

2. I can’t imagine this would actually stop them if they decided to cannibalize the iPad and build an MX 360

3. Agreed

4. Personally I would probably never use it, but it’s a notable iPad feature and might as well have them all

I miss my Moto X too! Which phone did you move on to?

I used the original Moto X as long as I could. I can't even remember what I got after. I'm now sporting a iPhone mini.

Obviously the market just isn't there for smaller phones, but I actually think the iPhone 3GS had the best form factor of any phone I've used, and it's smaller screen encouraged information density, which I like.

I say I use an iPhone mini now, and it's true, but only because Apple requires you to use an iPhone with their Watch. I've given up on the phone form factor, and use an Apple Watch with an ear bud and cellular, and keep the phone in drawer most of the time. Actually is was the Moto lineup that got me onto that: they had that short-lived earbud that was marketed as requiring zero screen in order to do all your mobile computing (I never got one though).

You might wonder why one wouldn't just use an Android watch that could do all of it without the bullshit Apple tax across multiple devices. It's for similar reasons for why I didn't end up liking the Galaxy Note, even though it still, to this day, feels like a miracle that they could cram so many features AND so much quality into that device, and that it could legitimately perform in all those categories.

The iPhone mini still feels too big, but at least it's mostly usable with one hand, even if it's not comfortable to do something like pull down the control panel shade on the top right corner with your left hand.

I know I'm just a weirdo though. I thought the Windows Phone UI was brilliant, especially the audio design.

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)

The iPad is a much better tablet than the Surface. The art and note apps are incomparably better. The ebook reader apps too.

iPad OS is limited, but it's fine for reading, writing and sketching. It's good to do that on a separate device that is not connected to work stuff. I can bring my iPad in the bedroom because it's just a fancy book.

Windows is also far too needy for this sort of device. I returned my Surface after a day because of updates, notifications, tracking and a complete lack of respect for the user. My iPad is such a calm device by comparison.

It comes down what you actually want to do. My time spent on the iPad was defined by what I couldn't do, and it was extremely frustrating, I ended up not doing it instead of go getting the laptop from across the house.

Windows is not refined nor optimized for tablet use by any measure, but it actually does the job, instead of showing a cute and extremely refined middle finger half the time.

The breaking point for me was the reader apps, where I'd have a file and just no way to read it, short of taking 10 min on a desktop to somewhat convert it to what the iPad can handle (see below). Since they're also in a pissing match with Amazon, the reading experience is just subpar. What's the point of a simple and elegant interface if I'm still babysitting what's going in there and have to constantly think about work-arounds that also end up clunky and broken ?

> Art and note apps

Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version. Same for One-note, obsidian etc., there's no lack of them on Windows while it was a fresh market on the iPad.

> ebook reader apps

I think iBooks is the only reader you don't get (is there a web version ? I have no idea).

Granted I buy most of my books on kindle, the in-browser reader works well enough (in the end, I'm full screen turning pages, so makes no difference). I'd argue getting the read the book straight from the page I bought them is pretty great.

I didn't bother with the android subsystem version but it would be an option if there is any limitation on the web part. I also have a bunch of old ebooks and scans from way before there were stores, and of course they were better handled by the windows apps (at some point I was using CloudReader on iOS, and it just disappeared).

I don’t know about anyone else but my expectations are not for my iPad to be suitable for serious development work or whatever. I want to read books and magazines, surf the Web, and watch videos. And for that it’s arguably better than a laptop. At least I find myself using it for those things much more.

Right, but the inability to do serious software development is an arbitrary limit imposed by Apple. The hardware is quite capable, but the vendor has decided that we need to use multiple different devices. It's their platform and they can do what they like with it, but as a customer those artificial limitations rankle.

They’d have to do something more than just throw XCode on it for it to be in any way usable without full on keyboard and mouse, which would cut against what they’re trying to do. So there is some justification beyond just market segmentation.

Why? Having xcode usable just with (their 350€+) keyboard seems perfectly acceptable.

For the same reason they deliberately made iphone apps look bad -- they want applications designed to work with the device to make it a good experience and not applications designed for something else shoehorned in. I see some real wisdom in this approach considering how poor some of the alternative experiences are. Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?

> Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?

Right now it’s inferior not-a-laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach and people still buy it.

Not really. It’s instead a different device offering an experience that doesn’t require a keyboard or mouse at all.

Why would it become worse if they add support for keyboard and mouse on top of it?

It does offer support for a keyboard and a mouse but what you're proposing is adding features or programs that would only work (or at least only work well) with a keyboard and a mouse, which would be a pretty big departure from the current design of the device.

If they don’t take anything from general experience, why do you care? Core of the system will still be touch oriented.

I am contesting the idea that it's possible to compromise the design philosophy that had guided it up till now and NOT "take anything from the general experience."

> Ultimately why would you buy it if it's just an inferior laptop with a touchscreen that you can detach?

For the same reason you carry an "inferior" camera, pda, navigation system, cellphone with very short battery life and undersized movie screen: a smartphone does all that okay-ishly. Or why ultrabooks are vastly more popular than gaming laptops. Convenience and form factor trump "inferior" all the time.

If you have to use the keyboard for certain tasks and so basically must always keep it attached to one it’s now heavier and more awkward than a MacBook Air. So you’re making my point here.

You still hit weird limits. Perhaps the M1 is a better value proposition now, but with the A series transcoding videos was choppy at best, and you'd have to choose to "share" them to VLC every damn time.

Youtube playback would stop everytime another video starts playing somewhere (additional fun when it's just a video ad that actually had no sound in the first place).

SMB file management is still an afterthought, so you end up needing a plex server dealing with all the complexity the iPad can't deal with.

Browsing is the same, outside of the Safari limitation, extensions are few and tab management a pain in general.

For books and magazine it's kinda the same. It works fine for light use. It becomes frustrating if it's something you actually care about.

In the end, I realized I actually care less about visual polish and more about having complete functionalities, at the price of dealing with Windows and managing a computer instead of an appliance.

I believe you but in the end I use it a lot more than my laptop despite its limitations and generally don’t want to try and do the things you’re talking about with it (I’d probably be sitting at my desk with my real computer if I wanted to).

> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version, and not some compromised "on the go" version

This is what made me sell the Surface. I wanted to replace a paper notebook I bring everywhere. What I got was tiny buttons, menus, and a save dialog every time I wanted to close the app. My drawings were not drawings in a sketchbook, but files I had to manually sort and access on a filesystem.

After spending a whole day installing updates and turning off ads and tracking, I couldn't just unwind and doodle. The Surface constantly reminded me that I was operating a computer, not drawing.

> ebooks

The in-browser reader is not a replacement for an offline book reader. This tablet is offline most of the time.

> obsidian

I want to write and doodle, not edit markdown files. Otherwise I'd have no use for a tablet. This tablet replaces a paper notebook.

My surface is a whiteboarding tool.

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/sketchpal/9MVT92NRF5...

Does a pretty good job

Sketchable literally works on the "my drawings are a sketchbook" idea. Apps like CSP on iOS use the file save dialogs too.

For what it’s worth, you can have ishell installed, put the file you want to convert into its drive, download almost any x86 binary to convert it, and you can use it, all from your ipad.

Sure, not the most convenient way, but there is no replacing something like pandoc.

> > Art and note apps

> Adobe suite, ClipStudio etc. are all there, in their actual, professional, full-blown version

Speaking of those, does the Pencil still feel somewhat half baked for Apple? The display front panels on iPads aren't "optimized" for pens, like, given rigidity and texturing for front panels. I don't own the iPad kit nor am I a digital artist, but the Pencil as a physical object almost feels like poking acrylic panel with laundry hangars, and most third party feeling among all third party pens. and I didn't understand how they could sell it as a serious thing.

Ironically, whatever the other advantages of the Surface Pro as a tablet, it's so hampered by physical dimensions for reading to make the rest of the question moot. I had a SP3 for 6 years as a primary laptop, but it was not a good offering for reading. Maybe more recent ones have improved the aspect ratio, weight and distribution, and bezels.

That's just software, though. In a decent ecosystem you would be able to run any software you want on any device you want.

Oftentimes being able to run whatever you want makes it harder to provide a cohesive, consistent experience that’s pleasant to use. Look at X vs. Mac or even Windows to see what I mean. The inconsistency of that experience has imo been a major factor holding back desktop Linux (notably, locked-down Linux-derived environments seem to do fine).

the two aren't mutually exclusive, apple can give the consistent experience and also have an "okay, you're the owner of this device, you make the rules, not Steve Jobs" setting that isn't as beautiful but also doesn't try to boss around the user

The other competitors have just as much tracking, just windows makes it more transparent to opt in (to some of it), so it's more visible.

Incomparably better? Nebo on Windows is more or less the same as the iOS version, ditto apps like Liquidtext and Noteshelf. Plus there's full fat OneNote and MS Journal which I like.

For art apps, Procreate is very good but it's still kinda limited. Windows has the full Photoshop, CSP, Art Rage etc. experiences.

And with WSA you can just grab the Android versions of Kindle or whatever.

And is really respectful of the user to artificially kneecap a device from doing tasks?

> The iPad is a much better tablet than the Surface

but useless as a computer?

I needed to apply for a visa -It can't even handle that simple task!

Like all I had to do, is collaste togesther a few dozen documents (bank statements, utility bills, etc.), merge all them into PDfs and organise pages cronologically. Couldn't even do that.

whats the point of having a great processor in an iPad if it's all wasted.

This is a deal braker for me, handling official documents is a normal thing normal people have to do every day.

That's the point. I tried unifying those devices and couldn't. Now I carry both.

That sounds odd. Even without installing any apps from the AppStore it can do that.

Open the PDF (or print the webpage to PDF if needed), tap to insert other PDFs into that one (so assembling / merging the documents).

Drag any pages into the order you want, save the file.

What’s missing?

>but useless as a computer?

LOLNO. Many, many people use an iPad as their primary or only nonphone computer.

Sounds like you had a tool chain problem, not an iPad problem.

You forget that vast swathes of us are never going to risk buying a Microsoft/Windows device ever again. They blew it too many times with BSOD / updates kicking in during work / viruses / whatever horror this week.

> 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.

Apple people, and people who have shifted away from "texting" to using some other platform (e.g. whatsapp) often shift between computer and phone for this job.

But in the US at least, people outside those groups typically don't. I don't think you can (easily) send SMS from a laptop as though it were your phone.

(Yes, it could be argued that the two groups in the first paragraph are actually ONE group, since Apple "texting" is silently-to-the-user shifted to iMessaging, i.e. another app.)

>I don't think you can (easily) send SMS from a laptop as though it were your phone.

Sure you can--at least with Macs. I do it all the time to both Apple and non-Apple users.

Those days are over. I’ve been using Intel Unison on my 11th gen desktop for a long time now. Microsoft Phone Link also works but isn’t limited to Intel, it’s inferior but it does the job. Both work with iOS.

I mean, the point of my post was that it IS easy for Apple users; just not people outside the group.

Messages for Android (the Google SMS app) has a great web interface.

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.

Netflix seems to provide an app for Windows Laptops to watch titles offline.

Chromebooks here too.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/54816

MacOS is absent, but I'm sure it's not too far off using an Google Chromebook emulator with Google Play Store in UTM if it's a must.

the M1/M2 macs should be able to just run the iOS app. Not sure if it allows storing stuff. Or if netflix lets you run the ios app on a mac (probably not lol)

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like Netflix has allowed their app to show up in under the "iPhone & iPad Apps" section in the MacOS app store.

While the underlying silicon might share similarities I would love to get an idea from where you've seen the ability to arbritrarily run iOS apps on M1/M2.

I did consider an emulator in xcode, but that's not quite what I'm after.

That's what files are for.

Ah but the new generation doesn't know what a "file dialog" is. I wish I was kidding

Seriously. Just started bumping into this.

Files are so basic...

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.

I came close to purchasing a fold this year but I find the decision to have a camera bump absolutely bizarre. If they just added a few extra millimetres to the case it would then sit flat on the table rather than rocking about, which means you could then use the pen with it properly as a note taking device. I can understand having camera bumps on phones, but it seems really weird here given that this is meant to be a phone that can also replace your tablet.

The case that fits the pen remedies this I am told. I'll have to confirm.

I have an older Samsung phone, and have basically the same experience.

One can do a LOT on Android.

There are days when my phone can do all I need.

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.

> maybe it could via an emulator

As a programmer with serious mobile experience I fully understand it. But it sound a bit crazy that a powerful and more superior (and open! In both hard and sometimes soft - if with an opensource OS) platform need so _emulate_ an embedded one (mobile, usually at least partially proprietary one) to provide turn-by-turn nav: what appears to be a first-order need of anyone in the modern world.

Navigation from Google us not free.

You can run OSM in navigation mode, I suppose.

I used to have a pink netbook that ran Microsoft Streets and Trips that I used together with a Bluetooth GPS. I had a power adapter that plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car and also a line in cable for the stereo. I could play music with Windows Media Player and have turn-by-turn directions work flawlessly. It was particularly good for road trips with a navigator in the passenger's seat as it had a great user interface for managing large numbers of points of interest and making routes that hit multiple points. It was the best satnav I ever had.

I remember the time I was heading south from Syracuse in an area notorious for state police speedtraps when I had pulled alongsides a greyhound and my son had logged into the WiFi on board the bus. The bus driver got pissed at us and got up to 95 mph to shake us. I gave up first but I figured he'd have a lot more to lose from getting a ticket than I would.

Why would the bus driver know or care that you’re using their WiFi?

The bus driver probably didn't know or care about the wifi, just this car that kept strangely in pace with him. Maybe the driver thought OP was going to intentionally get in an accident for some insurance scam.

Most laptops don't have GPS or accelerometer / gyroscope. Would be useless for turn-by-turn without those.

Bluetooth and USB positioning radios are dirt cheap and run on ancient stable standards.

If your laptop has 3G (or better) radio, it has also positioning bundled in.

However, although the devices might run on ancient stable standard, but that does not mean, that operating system is not playing silly games there. If you had an app that talked to them via serial port, you could throw it away once Microsoft introduced GNSS subsystem.

Long before mobile smart phones, truckers were using apps like copilot gps on their offline laptop for just this. I used to have it on a laptop for install work I did. In fact, I continued using it in areas with no cell coverage. Another app I used was Microsoft Streets and Trips. In 2006, they added a GPS version that did turn by turn nav.

That said, the point still stands. I did some searching, and Streets and Trips are discontinued. Copilot was bought by Trimble and AFAIK, you can only get the mobile app versions (they still have offline support). I think their truck fleet software will still run on laptops, but are sold as part of a bulk purchase.

I did find MapFactor, which I've never used, as being something that will work on Windows and Linux (via wine) and it provides real-time GPS navigation.

https://www.mapfactor.com/en/products/navigation-software-st...

There are still more than a few great turn by turn navigation libraries that run on ruggedized windows tablets. There were two that escape my mind.

Quite often they work completely offline, and also cover more information related to topography and driving routes that may not be traditional roads on existing maps. For example, the path to a location in a farmer's field, etc.

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