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Comment by shreyshnaccount | Hacker News Reader

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

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I'm not defending Apple here (I'm not an iPad or iPhone user) but why would you expect a tablet to substitute for a general computing platform? My "tablet" is a Boox Nova Air C that runs full Android on an e-ink screen, but I only use it to read books, sketch, and to hand-write notes. I don't let it connect to any website I have to login to, because I don't trust the software. I don't even have a keyboard for it. Once you're planning to use it for productivity, you have to carry a keyboard. At that point, what's an extra couple inches of screen size to just use a high-performance laptop?

Because a surface does that and so have all tablet pcs since Windows XP times.

> once you are planning to carry a keyboard.

Apple sells you a keyboard cover, Samsung does, Microsoft does. They are ridiculously expensive for what they are (buy a few HHKBs), but seem very popular.

> at that point.

That is the point. After adding all that, you would expect your tablet to do all that. Hardware wise it totally could, but it is not "allowed to" unless you put a linux VM on it or something.

The vast majority of people can do everything they would ever want from a desktop computer on an ipad. Programming is a niche usecase.

You should stop supporting Apple or hoping they would change. Lock-down is their approach to everything. Microsoft is behind but following the same direction. GNU/Linux smartphones and tablets do not restrict what you do and run desktop OSes. Connecting a keyboard turns them in full laptops.

This is a fair point, but Apple addled the iPad with those limitations from its inception. The stated reason back then was that it wasn't powerful enough - which I disagreed with even then. If it had been able to boot Linux or OS X, I would have snapped one up. Now the only real difference is form factor, pricing discrimination, and touch screen (although I still believe that on some level it's a point of embarrassment for Apple that their desktop OS is completely unusable by touch, hence their endless reluctance to bring a touch-enabled Mac laptop to market. However that may be the factor that saves Mac OS from going completely down the consumer road of iOS).

So you're right that these categories of devices and capabilities are completely artificially imposed at this point, but the question is, why have an iPad at all?

> why would you expect a tablet to substitute for a general computing platform?

it already is one, just with an OS that locks down its ability to function as one

why would you expect the OS to do that when it could also give the user the option to use the general computing platform as a general computing platform?

Apple has never marketed iPad as a general computing platform. (Well, except that weird “what’s a computer” ad.) No version of iPad has ever been able to run any other OS than iOS/iPadOS and the device itself was introduced as a user-friendly alternative to the clunky and ugly “tablet PCs”. When a product reminds you of a different product, or has the same amount of hardware inside as the other product, it doesn’t have to be that other product.

maybe, maybe not, but that doesn't change the fact that it's already a general computing platform, just with an OS that locks down its ability to function as one

so, why would you expect the OS to do that when it could also give the user the option to use the general computing platform as a general computing platform? Just because of marketing? Just because that's what they've always done? Neither are good answers imho

I dont think that expecting that the device I own runs code I want it to run is unreasonable

If you buy a hammer do you feel like the company that made it is forcing you to not use it as you want when you try to fit it in a Torx head?

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