Hacker News Reader

Comment by raw_anon_1111 | Hacker News Reader

What doesn’t the OS do as of OS 26 that most ordinary people care about?

"Ordinary people" wouldn't care about anything above even an M1 CPU. The post is about the iPad Pro. The target audience would care about having the software features that macOS has.

Im talking about the operating system.

The ability to run Xcode? Maybe run Linux in a VM (no, emulation does not count). Maybe run nvim with python/node/rust/go/gcc toolchains on the iPad? How about Wireshark? I really liked using Nixdroid on my Pixel, why can't I have something similar on iOS/iPadOS?

Android can run Android Studio. Why can't an iPad run Xcode?

Yeah those are things most people want on an iPad with 6GB RAM…

The pros come with 12 and 16 GB of memory. That is plenty.

I would not want to run XCode let alone Android Studio with an Android emulator with 12GB RAM or a VM. Even the lowest end MacBook Air comes with 16GB RAM.

It depends entirely on your target - you don’t need an emulator if you are already running an android device.

Xcode on my macbook doesn’t need 12GB. It is of course a different story if you need to also run clang-analyzer or rust-analyzer in addition to xcode/studio, but still, 16GB would be enough to get by for a sizeable chunk of devs.

(I replied to the wrong comment originally)

I haven’t done mobile development for ages, but isn’t it always slower to have to update the app on the phone all of the time?

Not always. And there are things that just do not work on emulators.

My first computer had 48 KB, 6 GB are a lot when not juggling Electron processes.

Really? Are we going to compare development in what 1980 to today? I got my start programming on an Apple //e in 1986 in assembly and it had 128KB of RAM.

6GB is not plenty when you are expected to run an IDE and in the case of Android an emulator that is also emulating a phone with 4GB+ RAM.

iOS development has never used an “emulator”, when you ran in the simulator even on x86 computers, it compiled your code to x86 and ran against an x86 version of the iOS framework.

Really, because iPadOS fails short of being a proper Dynabook.

Who needs an emulator when running on device?!?

Now you are going to list exactly how. Just a reminder before you start playing the old guy card - I’m 51 and started coding in 1986.

You would need an emulator if you wanted to run Android Studio or use the much flowery process of updating the phone every time you made a change.

Than I wonder why you think using Android Studio on an iPad is the only reason to have a proper OS experience with the same capabilities as macOS.

As for Dynabook like experience, given our age, you can certainly find the difference on your own.

This is where this part of the thread started

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45594747

> The ability to run Xcode? Maybe run Linux in a VM (no, emulation does not count). Maybe run nvim with python/node/rust/go/gcc toolchains on the iPad? How about Wireshark? I really liked using Nixdroid on my Pixel, why can't I have something similar on iOS/iPadOS? Android can run Android Studio. Why can't an iPad run Xcode?

How much of that could you do on your Dynabook? How was web browsing? The office suites? Video and audio editing? The office suites? Even the games?

Maybe one day iPadOS users will get what using a full blown OS on a tablet actually means.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-pro

Think different.

The very first review I found

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2795490/microsoft-surface-pr...

This compact tablet runs on a Snapdragon X Plus chip and is built for casual browsing and office work. It’s not high-end

The screen has a semi-high brightness IPS panel, 2196×1464 pixel resolution, and a 60 or 90 Hz frame rate. You’ll have to set it up manually; dynamic frequency is not supported. It’s not full pro quality on the screen,

With a 12-inch screen and 3:2 aspect ratio

The processor doesn’t even stack up well against the cheap base model iPad.

That is not thinking different.

So it’s slower, a worse display, a worse aspect ratio for a tablet, and Microsoft’s x86 emulator is notoriously slow and there are many fewer ARM native apps?

Modern software is absurdly bloated, no matter how you look at it. I started programming on an Apple II, but the first computer I ran anything approaching an "IDE" on was an Amiga 500 with 3 megs of RAM. (Lattice C!)

The only reason you can't run a full blown OS on an iPad is Apple doesn't want you to. It would eat into low-end Mac sales.

Did you run an IDE and a separate emulator/simulator for a completely different computer? The video memory of a modern computer is much more than 3MB of RAM.

Why wouldn’t Apple rather you spend more on an iPad Pro + keyboard than a MacBook Air?

Different times, but software is exponentially more bloated now. Hardware giveth, software taketh away.

You have a good point. My guess is they'd rather you'd buy both. You can get an older M1 or M2 MacBook Air for cheaper than an iPad Pro + keyboard.

I haven’t done mobile development for ages, but isn’t it always slower to have to update the app on the phone all of the time?

Why should mobile development the only reason for a rich OS experience?

I replied to the wrong comment - my bad

Not true, it’s a pretty good machine to edit videos on, extra cpu/gpu power is welcome there. I connect it to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse and use Final Cut Pro to edit videos. On holidays I can connect my action cam to the iPad, download the videos and edit them, without having to bring a laptop.

Yeah… but you had to bring an iPad?

I’d choose the laptop every time as I can do all of that in addition to using a non-bullshit browser if I need to do something online.

Yes, I rather bring an iPad than a laptop, easier lighter and smaller to travel with, also better for movie watching in the plane. Laptop is hard to fit on a table.

A lot of small things. For example importing Live Photos. On macOS when you drag and drop an image and video file with the same name into the Photos app, the Photos app combines both into a single Live Photo. On iOS/iPadOS this does not work.

There is bigger things too. A proper web browser for example. Google Docs is barely usable in Safari on iPad with larger documents. The permanent banner at the top asking you to install the app is so annoying. The Google Docs app is somehow even worse. And it’s not just Google apps. Many iPad apps are just upscaled iPhone apps with lots of features missing compared to the web version. And don’t even think about support for multiple tabs or windows in apps.

For YouTube and Netflix my iPad Pro is great but anything beyond hurts. And this is the „Pro“ model. You can say maybe I’m too advanced for the „Pro“ but most users have _something_ besides of YouTube and Netflix they want to do and will feel these limitations sooner or later. It’s it not a laptop replacement and Apple wouldn’t want it to be.

Why would you use the web app for GSuite instead of just using the apps?

I use GSuite on my iPad all of the time.

A random recent example off the top of my head: view photos in AVIF format. It does work in Photos app, but not in Preview app nor in Messages app somehow. At least this the case on iOS 26 and so I suspect iPadOS 26 too. It works on macOS 26.

Edit: I realize that ordinary people might not yet care about exporting to AVIF, but they may receive such photos from other people.

No much imo. I feel more constrained by screen size than I do OS limitations

Everyone has their own hill to die on, that's the thing about personal computing. It's the same if you ask why they can't switch mobile OS. It's some seemingly trivial app or feature that almost nobody cares about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com