@Drake
It’s been 17 years and we still can’t move a contact from one account to another except on a Mac.
Ashwin said:
@Drake
It’s been 17 years and we still can’t move a contact from one account to another except on a Mac.
God forbid you try making contact groups or any organization on iPad or iPhone!
@Drake
I think there are two main problems:
- iPadOS is just iOS and naming them different appears to have been an attempt to treat them in the eyes of the law as a separate platform and for marketing reasons. As it stands, outside of Stage Manager, iPadOS gets iOS features just later, which actually is probably the main reason. And as I detail in this comment which is just about as long as Viticci’s article quite a lot of the woes with iPadOS are technical choices.
- From what can be gleaned on the outside, Apple has extreme adhd when it comes to feature/app development and structures the company this way. The rumors are that the company often pulls engineering talent work on whatever the thing is at the moment, so we a lot of features that never really make it past 1.0. I mean, if you go back through WWDC’s for the last decade or so, look at how many things get released, slight improvement next year, then maybe not even touched for a few years after aside from minor bug fixes.
The unfortunate bit is that solutions for this aren’t exactly easy. They really need to rethink a lot of subsystems (like backgrounding and multitasking, audio, etc) that have been around 15+ years to take advantage of more modern hardware. Lots of paradigms exist that made a lot of sense for our devices when we had dinky little A4 processors and less than 512mb of RAM.
And I think they need a massive rethink in terms of how they structure things. Some features/apps need to be decoupled from the OS (mail, for example, should be getting better all the time) and more dedicated teams who’s job for like the next several years is just on these key features/apps. It feels like there is some of that, and I can’t really remember an example of where a feature gets announced for Safari that isn’t on all of the platforms. But even then, we’re back to that problem of features getting made and then not touched for quite a while.
So the “just let me run macOS” often comes from the standpoint of Apple creating a sort of dual boot or virtualization or something is often the vastly easier solution and something that seems more feasible than “just rethink the massive parts of the OS and literally how you structure your company.”
@Leslie
> virtualization or something is often the vastly easier solution and something that seems more feasible than “just rethink the massive parts of the OS and literally how you structure your company.”
Same conclusion here, right now with the legacy state of iOS/iPadOS this is the best solution: It means you keep Touch-One-Task-Focus design of iOS for iPadOS and for Productivity-Custom-Setup design of MacOS you run that when needed.
The only other solution is an entirely new OS hybrid “AppleOS” or something that merges ideas of both or allows settings to initiate advance features more MacOS and resource-intensive etc - but then my M1 and M4 that should all be possible on Apple Silicon… and for the record could be done ONLY on iPad Pros or Ultras (a new line) distinct from the standard tablet-only option so everyone is happy and those who want more pay more which suits Apple.
@Leslie
I think you’re missing the entire point. you’re trying so hard to jam the ‘I need a damn one ton pickup truck and you need to change this Ford focus into THAT’ mindset into this.
95% of what you mentioned just means those customers should be buying MacBooks and using macOS. Turning a simple, clean and powerful consumer machine that minimizes the computer OS complexities and back end issues that come with it was the game changing success of the iPad, not its failing.
Fredrico is right on the money with the iPad and iPad pro market and the features that market would be 98% satisfied with if these changes happened.
In other words, Apple doesn’t need to leap across the canyon. They need to shift lanes to catch an even wider tablet audience with low hanging fruit.
The fact that you can’t record a podcast easily because of the audio system is mind blowingly bad.
@Drake
This sounds like you’re having an argument against yourself and missing the actual point. These two statements in particular:
> Turning a simple, clean and powerful consumer machine that minimizes the computer OS complexities and back end issues that come with it was the game changing success of the iPad, not its failing.
and
> The fact that you can’t record a podcast easily because of the audio system is mind blowingly bad.
You’re taking one use case and describing it as “mind blowingly bad” which I don’t disagree with, but adding in this functionality takes your “clean and powerful consumer machine” and adds complexities. As Federico points out, the problem is that there isn’t one thing, there are a thousand and that’s just in the way that Federico wants to use his iPad which tbh as a writer and a podcaster, is the lowest end of the low hanging fruit. Adding this type of feature adds complexity which is not the problem, the idea is that computers help us navigate that complexity with intuitive interfaces, and even on that front I’d argue iPadOS is failing.
And finally, Federico is of course centering around his experience, but I am saying there is a larger part than that. In my comment that is linked in the one you’re replying to, I basically describe why most of what we consider “pro” workflows are in some way hampered or just not possible on iPadOS. While I won’t argue that for some use cases, iPad is truly the best way to go, the artificial limits placed on the hardware by the OS is something that just about everyone should be in favor of removing. You can both make the device useful for more people without making it so complex that regular folks can’t use it.
> 95% of what you mentioned just means those customers should be buying MacBooks and using macOS.
Right, because if you want to do really hard stuff like …make the website you might have made in 2003 on a machine with a single core processor and 256 gb of RAM, or use a calculator or be able to easily manage files, you should obviously need to add another computer to your $1000 base price. Or to add to the absurdity, the potentially multiple thousand dollar machine with a $300 keyboard attached to it that can’t run Excel macros from 1997. iPadOS needs nearly an entirely different idea in terms of how problems are solved it. Apple used to be about making hard things easy, iPadOS is about “lets make easy or hard things impossible buy a Mac.”
@Leslie
I wanted to pull out this section of what you said.
This is one area we agree. But Fredrico’s solution fixing files and preview alone solve a lot of that.
I do think the whole ‘document focus’ vs ‘file system focused’ UI issue has been going on 40 years now.
And there’s sort of a weird hybrid situation going on right now that’s much more glaring if you are coming from a file system focused desktop os to the document focused iPad. It makes you fight the whole workflow not because it’s objectively better or worse, but because it’s the opposite of your muscle memory.
On the desktop, sure I focus on finding the document to preview the picture, then open the app.
But it makes just as much sense to just know my pictures are all in photos. For every app, every need, I just to one place for my photos. I don’t NEED to see them as some folders and files metaphor. It’s just what we’re used to.
@Leslie
you’re misrepresenting what I said entirely again.
After all these years, so much of the ‘techie’ community still can’t accept that a computer can be serving 99% of the general public’s needs perfectly without doing ‘the hard work or my terminal’.
This is why when the iPad was introduced it was universally panned as ‘nothing anyone would ever buy’ in the tech community, yet was the breakthrough that outsells MacBooks now among the general public.
recording audio, doesn’t matter if it’s podcast, group work chat, or local recording, all are workflows perfectly reasonably expected on a tablet device. Simple.
Apple can accommodate that usage easily while maintaining the core of the tablet touch first experience.
The things you’re talking about would systematically destabilize and deconstruct the whole tablet ‘computer for the rest of us’ experience that the 75-80% of the tablet market wants and specifically chooses iPads for.
They don’t want the whole model of multiple app stores they can’t trust or the complications from your other suggestions.
Frederico is right in that sweet spot of keeping it a car, not turning it into a truck, but making it a touring sedan with better handling.
>really hard stuff like…
It’s not about hard stuff. It’s about 80% of the public doesn’t give a shit about those things. Nor do they need to worry about excel macros. They REJECTED your desktop os for a reason.
They bought IN to the computer revolution when computers CHANGED what defined a computer.
These devices were not intended to please you as a market. People like you had desktops and laptops.
This whole new category of devices was created for an unserved market of users who wanted what computers could enable, but they wanted computers that worked like appliances.
Apple is spot on in the right here. iPads are meant to work like appliances. If you want that one ton pickup truck, you’re totally welcome to buy that instead. I get it, and for the 15% of my time that is working on intense design, you’re right I move to my laptop or desktop.
But the iPad freed up 85% of my computer time to a device that is perfect for everything else and everywhere I want to take it.
They shouldn’t chase the 15% at the expense of the 85%.
@Drake
No, I’m sorry but generously this way of thinking is operating either in the 10 year ago space, and more directly it’s just wrong from the premise, and demonstrably so even if we just stay inside of Apple’s ecosystem and just talk about macOS. Here is a verifiably true thing:
- They added Stage Manager, which is a feature I do not want and do not like and breaks my particular workflows.
- …but I can just not use it, ignore it, and forget it exists if I ever discovered it to begin with. (sidenote: don’t get me started on how discoverable things are on iPad)
Okay, but that’s a user-facing feature that obviously is intended for your imagined audience of people who are buying $2,000 devices that don’t want to be able to extremely simple computing tasks or don’t want to be able to do them easily for arbitrary reasons (“who even uses files anymore?”). After all, people don’t want emulators because that’s just for weird nerds so why allow it… oh, right, when forced to allow them because of regulation they suddenly rocket right to the top of the app store… but anyway.
Here’s perhaps the better, possibly even penultimate example. Unix as an operating system has existed since basically the dawn of time and has both an extremely powerful, but extremely unintuitive set of tools for the average person. Every Mac since the oughts has been sold with this toolchain right there and I would hazard a guess that most Mac users don’t even know it exists. But for those of us that do, it enables all kinds of work and benefits that are simply not possible on iPadOS. This type of example exists all over macOS. “Hey I think it should work this way” and as it turns it does work that way. And 2-3 other ways because other people might want to do something that seems perfectly reasonable. On iPadOS, we’re at the baby stages of this with many features that users won’t ever discover (sometimes to their detriment because they want the feature but just can’t figure it out) but also won’t ever get in their way.
Before switching gears one more time, go back and actually read my comment. I didn’t say that Apple needs a new UI paradigm or that they should throw iPadOS away. Like I said “subsystems like multitasking” in which I meant things like hitting the home screen during a Final Cut export should not cause the export to stop as Jason Snell and Federico described on yesterday’s episode of Upgrade. Although, Federico and Jason both have been extremely critical of how crap window management is as well, which I think is what you’re conflating my comment with.
And the final gear switch:
> Frederico is right in that sweet spot of keeping it a car, not turning it into a truck, but making it a touring sedan with better handling.
Just let this analogy fucking die, please. This is a Steve Jobs-ism (he’s been dead for nearly the entire life of the ipad) that was likely just him turning up the reality distortion field so he didn’t have to say “the iPad doesn’t have the physical hardware resources and we’re not going to put the company resources behind this.” These days the hardware is comparable at least to MacBook Air and probably even low-end MacBook Pro’s, so it’s just a pure choice or realistically reaping the debt of design decisions sown by a much smaller company for much more extremely limited hardware. We’re looking at two Jeep Wranglers, but one of them has a drop top, can only turn left, only has a hi-beam, and turns itself off if you try to drive off of asphalt. They are the same price.
Tl;dr: Customers want their computers to enable them to do things. Apple’s job is not to tell us to stop wanting to do those things, it’s to enable more of those things to be accomplished for more people. You can do this without spoiling the imagined pristine virginity of usability otherwise we still wouldn’t be able to set our own wallpaper for fuck’s sake.
@Leslie
I’m sorry you truly don’t understand this market at all. $2000 devices? The most expensive brand new iPad Pro is $1299 right now. And the vast majority of iPads people are buying are under $400.
Again, they’re clearly very happy with what they get done.
I’m not thinking 10 years ago, in fact I’m pointing out that you’re still making the same anti tablet argument that’s 10 years old without realizing it.
Stage manager is something you personally don’t want, but guess what? Single window mode on OS X debuted… TWENTY FOUR YEARS AGO. It’s literally an original desktop concept with MacOS.
They simple figured out how to make that feature handle groups of windows and Balance automatic window management with the multitasking needs.
They didn’t ’slap that iPad thingy’ on your macOS.
@Leslie
You really lost all credibility and proved my point with the Steve Jobs attack. you absolutely were one of the people who thought nobody on earth would want a computer like the iPad.
You were wrong then and you’re wrong now.
Computers leaped from the fringes to the Everyman with the iPad and iPhone os. The sales alone proved it and the ENDLESS bitching, moaning, crying and pouting from the techies with butthurt that leaps decades hasn’t eased a bit.
The analogy is spot on and hasn’t aged a day.
Everything you argue reminds me of what PC people say about Macs. They are SOOOOOOOO mad I can’t buy a new graphics card or SSD or only have 8gb ram. They cannot get it through their thick skulls that I DON’T GIVE A SHIT about what they care about.
And if you spent a MONTH at the Apple Store, I guarantee you 80% of actual iPad users don’t care about what you’re so dug in on. They don’t.
It’s not for you and you just keep proving why with every word.
@Leslie
I love your reality distortion field and of course I know that’s what snarky people called it when Steve Jobs made them rethink the possible and then deliver it.
Let’s not forget you completely forgot that what became stage manager window management was planned for the desktop long before the iPad.
I am a bit surprised you owned an iPad back then, given all your complaints about the entire purpose and design of it then. Hard to imagine if you’re this irate about what an iPad can do today, that you somehow didn’t rage to death over it back then.
You’re probably telling the truth, but it’s the internet and people will say anything to make you think you don’t have them on a point. I’m not sure I buy it.
The issues you list are ones that I think are spot on and not once is Federico saying anything I disagree with.
Did you think that was some sort of ‘gotcha’? Since I agree some fundamental issues exist, and the audio subsystem not handling multiple streams is a big deal, frankly for normal users.
Now, you’re mixing in an entirely different person, and out of context quotes I don’t agree with for a host of reasons. But I’m not going down that side road other than to say I understand the 8gb currently but I wouldn’t be mad if Apple moved it to 16gb either.
Considering I handle a whole movie in Davinci, a whole website in Blocs, Safari with 16-20 tabs, photoshop with 3000x3000 pixel images all at once smoothly on my M2 Mac mini with…. 8gb of ram, I don’t personally see the cause for outrage, but that’s not to say other users might not be experiencing a problem.
But again, here we have a vocal minority SCREAMING in OUTRAGE over something that 85% of iPad consumers don’t care about. I have heard the same ram complaints with every single generation of iPad I owned. How many times has it affected me in real use? Basically zero. So no, I don’t really care if some nerd in techsville Alabama is screaming his teeny nuts off in rage over specs he cares about, tbh.
I am capable of letting Apple know when I can’t do the things I want to do on the specs they provide in the device I buy, thanks lol.
Ticci did not hold back. I love this guy. He forgot to mention how you can’t use the speakers when you connect to external monitor.
Darby said:
Ticci did not hold back. I love this guy. He forgot to mention how you can’t use the speakers when you connect to external monitor.
Oh wow that sucks
Darby said:
Ticci did not hold back. I love this guy. He forgot to mention how you can’t use the speakers when you connect to external monitor.
I think this is fixed in the latest beta.
this is an extremely well written article and finally stops the constant nagging of “JusT BRinG MaCOs to iPAd” comments that everyone drops. People buy and love the ipad because it’s an ipad they don’t fundamentally want it to just be a mac but they would like some more desktop like features given how it’s positioned as a laptop alternative. I really enjoyed reading through this and found myself agreeing with almost everything.
@Cade
To be fair to the MacOS comments, it’s frustration concerning:
- Apple’s glacial pace of adaptation of iPadOS seems a non-starter
- iPadOS is based on iOS fundamentally and is almost certainly a non-starter eg file-manager, multi-tasking
Hence if one can run MacOS via remote desktop now it makes sense to split the functions equivalently eg virtualization for native-like option that uses the hardware and is not 100% dependent on internet and hardware somewhere else.
@Harnest
I totally get it. I think it’s just to shout out mac os on there shows people don’t fundamentally understand the ipad because honestly while it would give you more options and I think it would be better than nothing it isn’t the right fix. The right fix is making iPadOS its own computer os that is as competitive as MacOS
@Cade
I think market share of iOS/iPadOS users to MacOS is much larger so that will inevitably guide Apple going forwards ie generation growing up with smartphone-mobile-OS vs desktop-OS. That said we’re now entering AI-Voice era as well as tech convergence where phones = laptops = tablets are practically becoming as powerful as each other and the limiting factor is screen space (eg future = visionpro ie wearable tech for that solution in 10 years or so?). Hence a single tablet screen that is lighter and easier to carry while having a big enough screen is probably going to become a standard device for people using Touch/Pencil and if/when needed optional accessories keyboard/pointer along with AI-Voice (more and more integrated both OS and Cloud).
I think iPadOS will probably hit a wall for dev this gen M4 and Apple will either go virtualization or full new hybrid OS that’s modular ie can add MacOS services depending etc.
Given remote desktop is one solution, it would be nice if between now and the above predicted outcome, Apple provisioned Virtualization as they did with the Apple Silicon change-over using Rosetta…