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Comment by burntalmonds | Hacker News Reader

I think practically everyone is better off with a laptop. iPad is great if you're an artist using the pencil, or just consuming media on it. Otherwise a macbook is far more powerful and ergonomic to use.

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I think perhaps you are overestimating the computing needs of the majority of the population. Get one of the iPad cases with a keyboard and an iPad is in many ways a better laptop.

But the majority won't pay extra for an ipad and a keyboard, when they can pay less for an air with everything included...

I'm not sure - I just looked casually at some options and it appears one can find an iPad between $700-$900 for a pretty solid model, which includes the $250 folio keyboard. The base model MBA starts at $999. So depends on whether you want a traditional laptop or a "computing device."

yes they will

Or maybe a stand and separate keyboard. Better ergonomics than a laptop that way with similar portability.

Any keyboard you recommend? I'm looking around myself.

Something wireless would be nice for portability IMO, e.g. Apple or Logitech Bluetooth. Security considerations there though.

I wouldn't want a numpad. A track point would be ape.

I struggle with keyboard recommendations b/c I'm not fully satisfied lol.

The problem is that almost everything, including basic web browsing, is straight-up worse on the iPad. Weird incompatibilities, sites that don’t honor desktop mode, tabs unloading from memory, random reloads, etc. all mar the experience.

I have an iPad and really like it, but no, it is not.

Several small things combined make it really different to the experience that I have with a desktop OS. But it is nice as side device

I'm guessing you are coming at it from the perspective of a laptop user and likely a power user. The majority of the population just needs to scroll social media, message some friends, send an email or two, do a little shopping, maybe write a document or two. For this crowd an iPad is plenty. When I was a software developer - yeah, I had a Mac Pro on my desk and a MBP I carried when I traveled. Now as a real estate agent, an iPad is plenty for when I'm on the go.

I used to think that, not having used an iPad. Now I carry a work-issued iPad with 5G and it's actually pretty convenient for remote access to servers. I wouldn't want to spend a day working on it, but it's way faster than pulling out a laptop to make one tiny change on a server. It's also great for taking notes at meetings/conferences.

It's irritatingly bad at consuming media and browsing the web. No ad blocking, so every webpage is an ad-infested wasteland. There are so many ads in YouTube and streaming music. I had no idea.

It's also kindof a pain to connect to my media library. Need to figure out a better solution for that.

So, as a relatively new iPad user it's pleasantly useful for select work tasks. Not so great at doomscrolling or streaming media. Who knew?

There's native ad blocking on iOS and has been for a while—I've found that to significantly enhance the usability of the device. I use Wipr[0], other options are available.

[0]: https://kaylees.site/wipr2.html

I use Wipr on my phone, the experience is a lot worse than ublock origin on desktop...

Try the Brave browser for YouTube. I used Jellyfin for my media library and that seemed to work fine for tv and movies.

I just got a Macbook and haven't touched my iPad Pro since, I would think I could make a change faster on a Macbook then iPad if they were both in my bag. Although I do miss the cellular data that the iPad has.

Use Orion Browser. It allows installing Firefox/Chrome extensions. Install Firefox unlock Origin.

> practically everyone is better off with a laptop

The majority of the world are using their phones as a computing device.

And as someone with a MacBook and iPad the later is significantly more ergonomic.

I prefer MacBook to iPad most of the time. The only use case for iPad for me where it shines is when I need to use a pencil.

I don't understand why my MacBook doesn't have a touchscreen. I'm switching to an iPad Pro tomorrow. I use Superwhisper to talk to it 90% of the time anyway.

My theory is because of the hinge, which is a common point of failure on laptops. Either you are putting extra strain on it by having someone constantly touching the screen, and some users just mash their fingers into touch screens. Or users want a fully openable screen to mimic a tablet format, and those hinges always seem to fail quicker. Every touchscreen laptop I've had eventually has had the hinge fail.

There seems to be some kind of incompatibility between antiglare and oleophobic coatings that may also contribute.

Every single touch screen laptop I’ve seen has huge reflection issues, practically being mirrors. My assumption is that in order for the screen to not get nasty with fingerprints in no time, touchscreen laptops need oleophobic coating, but to add that they have to use no antiglare coating.

Personally I wouldn’t touch my screen often enough to justify having to contend with glare.

Apple is capable of solving it if they want to. They don't want to (yet at least).

Because MacBooks have subpar displays, at least the M4 Air does. The iPad Pro is a better value.

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