Are students replacing laptops with iPads in 2026? | Hacker News Reader

Are students replacing laptops with iPads in 2026?

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I’m seeing a lot of claims that modern iPads can fully replace laptops for students. For those who’ve tried this in real life: – What workflows actually worked? – Where did it break down (coding, multitasking, writing, file management)? – Would you recommend it today, or is it still a compromise? Curious to hear real-world experiences rather than marketing claims.

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I have an iPad Pro with the case, keyboard, pen and even got a BT mouse. Often hard to tell from a laptop, but IMNSHO, iOS is a vexation.

1, An operation I do many times a day is to get an image's link. There is no "copy image URL", even with a control key. I have to "send" the image and grab the URL. Problem is that my iPad Pro is really dedicated to my music scores and I keep email off it. Emailing a link is easiest with Mail.

2. And the other insane vexation is dealing with webp images.

I posted two days ago:

On the desktop, Preview app (and lots of others) will open and export as ... or just right/contol click and convert image in Quick Actions.

On the phone (Apple, sometimes you bewilder me), You can convert in Files, not Photos. 1. Save a photo to FILES from camera roll or web 2. click and hold the THUMBNAIL, do not open the image. 3. Quick Actions -- Convert image. 4. You can now "save" the image (open, do not click and hold) to your camera roll.

This is BONKERS

As others have noted, "There's an app to do it".

Worst for me in daily life, when you get info on an image (in the camera roll, pull up on the image) WEBP does not even show as a file/image type. HEIC does.

(MacOS will not let you search on webp images. Only by name ".webp")

3. Ios had NO file system for so long that it took me a long time to start using it.

4. And MOST OF ALL, the GhostText browser extension works only on MacOS, not on ios. Safari is constantly losing long text areas on me (I have to repeatedly copy to or use Notes or other manually.) Matter of fact,

4a. A simple wrong touch on Safari will lose your entire text area (almost always) if you push the wrong button, which is all too easy. Less of a problem with an iPad over phone, thanks to the real estate.

Haven't used Firefox on ios because for ages, all browsers had to basically be safari. I'll give this a try.

5. I rarely use the pen, TBH. The keyboard is light years more efficient on all platforms. YMMV, of course, and lack of a pen may make MacOS somewhat useless for you.

This resonates a lot, especially the “death by a thousand papercuts” feeling.

None of these are deal-breakers alone, but together they make iPadOS feel hostile to repetitive, text-heavy, or workflow-driven tasks. The image URL point is a perfect example — something trivial on desktop becomes a ritual on iPad. The WebP handing is particularly telling. On macOS it’s invisible friction; on iOS it’s a multi-step ceremony that feels like the system actively resists you. “There’s an app for that” isn’t really an answer when the OS already knows what the file is.

Safari losing long text areas is another one that quietly kills trust. Once you’ve lost a few drafts, you start working around the device instead of with it — Notes buffers, manual copy cycles, etc. That’s usually the moment a device stops being a primary machine.

Curious: do you feel this is something Apple could realistically fix with iPadOS changes, or is it more fundamental to iOS’s design assumptions?

IPads are consumption devices meant to consume content. For that they're superior to desktops/laptops. For more than that they're not optimal though.

This exactly. I bought an iPad in 2020, thinking it would be a second laptop to port around while my primary laptop stayed at home. Turns out that while the iPad can in theory do everything my laptop does, in practice certain tasks can be cumbersome. Now I just divide tasks between different devices and accept that certain things (like any image manipulation or editing) can only be done on my laptop or desktop. Then there’s the tasks that the iPad does perfectly fine (like writing) but the thin keyboard hurts my fingers if I’m at it for more than 30 minutes or so; I need a regular springy keyboard for a proper writing session. Apparently I type hard.

In all, I thought the iPad would be like a slightly smaller laptop, but instead it’s just an oversized phone.

I imagine that a separate keyboard will work. But that's the tail wagging the dog, like the stuff I mentioned.

They could have made little things LIKE A DAMN FILE SYSTEM and all the items above symmetrical with MacOS ages ago. It had to be choice. Cannibalizing low end macbook sales? Who knows?

Really, it's not just tiktok viewers who use these.

How long did a file system take? Was Apple so certain of buying Dropbox that this was left undone?

But the point you make is a lock. These were (IMO) easy to implement long ago, easier than a lot of things we never asked for and never use.

And the only tone control I've ever seen is the equalizer hidden in Apple Music (nee iTunes) Why not a system control? How damn hard is that, given that the code is already written? I get equalizer boxes at the thrift store. Now, REALLY?

I personally feel that a great deal of value in life is creating things, rather than just consuming. So, you can say to me "Well, not everyone is talented in this area or that" and I say: "Who knows what they are capable of doing if they don't have the instruments or tools available? Or if things are so dumbed-down as to make a moat? Hypercard was genius, but without it, people had to cross that programming moat to use programming languages.

And kids? They love to create, or used to, until fed nothing but computer junk food. Even the dumbest Linux distro has plenty of learning tools (besides GCompris). All other concerns aside, the tools were free, and it was/is a sign of respect for the users to include them.

Assuming your users are dumb-asses is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Bicycles for the mind became DIY Formula 1 cars for the mind, and on the low end, we don't even have to think any more. Someone took the web design book "Don't make me think" and made it a way of life.

Secret AI man.

You're a man who leads a life of brain rot.

Everyone you meet is now a chatbot.

With every word you type, you get 10 megs of hype.

You will never have a thought, just borrow.

Secret AI man. Secret AI man.

They've given you a chatbot and taken 'way your soul. (CC, please steal)

"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools." Thoreau

I built my own S-100 computers when there were none. My point isn't that everyone needs to do that, but was excited to "do something" as in "Computer Lib; Dream Machines" I wanted to solve interesting, even bespoke problems and had to build stuff to do it (outside the IBM machine room). And at the time, one could "consume" content on radio and TV, the point being that you could get good stuff as well as junk, and I watched concerts, Bernstein lectures, and outrageously creative stuff like Ernie Kovacs and Twilight Zone. "Content" was always there, but the creative tools weren't --- until they were.

Assuming your users are dumb-asses is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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