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Comment by tl | Hacker News Reader

The iPad is a "pro machine" or a "personal computer" when 17Lands[1] is usable on the device. Having article after article try to pantomime the details of what Apple is missing here is futile. Not only is Apple not listening, even implementing 100% of your personal wishlist isn't enough.

[1]: https://www.17lands.com/ - 17Lands is a website that tracks win-loss (and other) data in MtG: Arena games by installing a small program that reads logs from the game itself. It's the perfect example of the iPad's failings: it's too esoteric for Apple to provide directly and covers the kind of program extensibility needed to make hardware pro-usable.

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An app like this, that interoperates non-consentually with another app to modify or augment its behavior, is complete anathema to Apple's desired model of computing. In their view app developers have more right to control how your iPad operates than you do. Of course, Apple themselves have more control than app developers (and you), but don't worry, Apple will use their position to make sure that only good developers take control of your iPad!

That's why the iPad isn't a personal computer. It's a computer that Apple lets you use, for purposes they approve of, only if they get paid a percentage of any commercial transaction that happens on the device.

It's a nice reader and portable second display, though.

They were setting the goalposts for a “pro” computer, though, not a personal one.

I mean this is a site for programmers. Surely everyone here has the experience of bumping their head on annoying IT-approved vendor-supported software limitations, right? It could be a pro device where your company locks down everything inside an Apple provided framework. They could even (since they are going to need to put together the plumbing for this anyway to comply with EU) have an internal IT department provided company store.

People here want iPad libre. I want that too. I don’t think that’s what Apple means by pro, though.

From the parent's description it sounds like it just parses log files, doesn't seem like it would augment the behavior of the app generating the logs at all. Curious to know more about why something like that isn't possible on ipadOS though.

In this specific case it's because the log file (if the iPad version of MtGA even generates a "file" for its logs as such) exists in a location only accessible to the app, not to the user or other apps. And the iPadOS model means that there is no way to reach into that app's data to convince it to cough up the data you want.

> Apple's desired model of computing.

That is, complete control over what the users can do.

> An app like this, that interoperates non-consentually with another app to modify or augment its behavior, is complete anathema to Apple's desired model of computing.

And yet, 17Lands works on a Mac!

> Of course, Apple themselves have more control than app developers (and you), but don't worry, Apple will use their position to make sure that only good developers take control of your iPad!

That's a prosecutable abuse of power by Apple.

I don’t really know what pro means I guess, but generally I’d expect professional apps to provide some sort of plugin API to integrate with them in an officially supported manner.

Hacking around these sort of barriers is more of a gamer thing I think.

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