Watch a 20-year old creative work on an iPad and you will quickly change your mind. Watch someone who has, "never really used a desktop, [I] just use an iPad" work in Procreate or LumaFusion.
The iPad has amazing software. Better, in many ways, than desktop alternatives if you know how to use it. There are some things they can't do, and the workflow can be less flexible or full featured in some cases, but the speed at which some people (not me) can work on an iPad is mindblowing.
I use a "pro" app on an iPad and I find myself looking around for how to do something and end up having to Google it half the time. When I watch someone who really knows how to use an iPad use the same app they know exactly what gesture to do or where to long tap. I'm like, "How did you know that clicking on that part of the timeline would trigger that selection," and they just look back at you like, "What do you mean? How else would you do it?"
There is a bizarre and almost undocumented design langauge of iPadOS that some people simply seem to know. It often pops up in those little "tap-torials" when a new feature roles out that I either ignore or forget… but other people internalize them.
Yeah, apparently some people book flights from their phones!? Nah man, that's a laptop activity. I'd never spend more than a couple hundred dollars on my phone. Haha
So, the product may not fit your use case or preference. That's ok. Others love it. That's also ok.
What's silly is thinking that a device that makes everyone happy is somehow trivial, or that a device intentionally made with a specific type of interface is bad because of that intent. If things were as bad or as trivial as some people suggest, someone else would have made a successful competing product by now, rather than the string failures across the industry, from those who have tried.
Just because people love it, doesn’t mean that it can’t be better. It also doesn’t mean that current way of doing things is efficient.
> What's silly is thinking that a device that makes everyone happy is somehow trivial, or that a device intentionally made with a specific type of interface is bad because of that intent.
Add a proper native terminal, proper virtualization framework á la what we have on Mac, side loading and third party browser support with plugins and you’ll shut up 99% of complaining users here.
> If things were as bad or as trivial as some people suggest, someone else would have made a successful competing product by now, rather than the string failures across the industry, from those who have tried.
Right, let me use my couple billion change in R&D to create iPad compatible system with all that I’ve mentioned before.
> Just because people love it, doesn’t mean that it can’t be better.
Better for who ? They sell like hot cakes, 50+ millions of them per year
According to google there are 25m software devs in the world, even if half (extremely generous) of them would buy a new ipad every single year (extremely generous) if they implemented what you ask it isn't going to change much for apple, ipads are like 10% of their revenues. So at best we're talking of 3% revenue increase
> 99% of complaining users here.
99% of not much is nothing for apple, they're already printing money too fast to know what to do with it
what you are describing is a certainly some kind of professional but we should look from a higher vantage point. A professional in any field will ultimately want to customize their tool or make their own tools and that is not possible with ipads or even really software on ipads. It is a massive step backwards to sit in a walled, proprietary garden and claim that these people are productive professionals as if they are comparable to the previous generation of professionals. They may be in some sense but from a more historical, higher viewpoint they all seem herded into tightly controlled, corporate tools that will be taken from them whenever it is convenient for someone else. Ipad users are effectively like vmware users who are just waiting for a Broadcom moment. The price hike will always come eventually, the support will always drop at some point. It is all borrowed time, tools someone else controls and makes. It might be necessary in a world where we all need to make money but to positively support it is something else entirely.
> A professional in any field will ultimately want to customize their tool or make their own tools
I suspect you’re a programmer. This is not the perspective or reality of most professional users. Most professional apps are not, themselves, customizable. Most professional users do not make their own tools, or want to. If you’re a programmer, you’ll understand this, because that’s why you’re employed: they want you to do it.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I feel that the distinction is important, that seems more like a UX than a programming job. Too often, UX, UI, coding, documentation, etc. are thrown together, viewed as tasks that can be handled by the same people interchangeably and it rarely yields great results, in part because programmers often start out with expectations that can differ from the vast majority of users.
Also, "most" and "any" aren't all too helpful in this discussion (not directed at anyone in particular, these can be read in comments throughout this thread) because there are going to be countless examples in either direction, but from my limited experience, I have seen professionals in various spaces, some which very much prefer a default workflow and others that heavily customize. I know talented professional programmers doing great work in the out-of-the-box setup of VSCode combined with GitHub Desktop, etc. but also have seen graphic designers, video editors, and even people focused purely on writing text that have created immensely impressive workflows, stringing macros together and relying heavily on templates and their preferred folder structures. Even on iPad OS, people can have their custom-tailored workflow regarding file placement, syncing with cloud storage, etc., just in a restricted manner and for what it's worth, I sometimes prefer using Alight Motion for certain video editing tasks on my smartphone over grabbing my laptop.
I have seen and feel strongly that any professional from any field can have a customized workflow and can benefit from the ability to customize their toolset, even those outside programming, but I also feel equally strongly that sane defaults must remain and the "iPad way of doing things", as much as I in my ancient mid-twenties will never fully adapt to it, must remain for people who prefer and thrief in that environment.
It has nothing to do with programming, I know mechanics who complain about car models where the manuals costs massive amounts of money if they are even allowed to get it at all and it takes weeks to order them. This should be a familiar story in every field. Do artists not have ateliers full of custom brushes, things they found work for them and they customized? Not to mention that artists these days are Maya, Autodesk and Photoshop users. Is that pen really powerful enough? Because a pen is really close to a mouse pointer anyway, so why even stick to an ipad then, you can simple buy a pen and board for the desktop computer. This is not about whether I am a programmer or not, this is about why some praise and use Apple devices for professionals even though they are not the best choice.
> A professional in any field will ultimately want to customize their tool or make their own tools and that is not possible with ipads or even really software on iPads.
I was responding to this main point.
Every professional drawing app, on the iPad, allows you to make your own brushes. There's no limitation there. That's just a fundamental requirement of a drawing app. They're not customizing the workflow or tool/apps itself, which is what I thought you were referring to.
> make their own tools
This requires programming, does it not? Do you have some examples?
> why some praise and use Apple devices for professionals even though they are not the best choice.
Especially for drawing, I think it would be best to ask the professionals why they chose a ~1lb iPad in their backpack with a pixel perfect stylus, over a desktop computer and mouse. The answers might surprise you.
Sure, which most professionals don't use. If you think the average professional can program, or use scripting engines, it's because you're a HN user, and probably a programmer, not an average professional, and less likely one that uses an iPad.
But, there's nothing technically stopping an app developer from implementing any of this, including desktop level apps. Compute, keyboard/mouse, and stylus is ready. I think the minuscule market that would serve is what's stopping them.
It's actually come a long way. The workflow is still… sub-optimal, but there are some really nice terminal apps (LaTerminal, Prompt, ShellFish, iSH) which are functional too. Working Copy is pretty dope for working with git once you get you adapt to it.
I do most of my dev on a Pi5 now, so actually working on the iPad is not that difficult.
If they ever release Xcode for iPadOS that would be a true gamechanger.
"Prevented from coding" is just not true. There are many python IDEs, Swift Playgrounds, etc. Pythonista, and the like, are neat because you get full access to all the iPhone sensors.
And maybe that's fine? Look at it from the opposite side. All those artists complaining about how terrible macbooks are because you can't draw on them.
This has nothing to do with age. I have an iPad Pro that I barely use because it has been designed for use cases that I just don't have.
I don't do any digital art, don't take handwritten notes, and don't need to scan and/or mark up documents very often. I don't edit photos or videos often enough to need a completely separate device for the task.
I mostly use my computers for software development, which is impossible on an iPad. I tried running my dev tools inside an iSH session, and also on a remote Linux box that I could SSH into. It wasn't a great experience. Why do this when I could just run VS Code or WebStorm on a Mac?
I also write a lot -- fiction, blog posts, journal entries, reading notes -- which should technically be possible to do well on the iPad. In practice there just aren't enough powerful apps for serious long-form writing on a tablet. Microsoft Word on iPad lacks most of the features of its desktop counterpart, Scrivener doesn't support cloud sync properly, iA Writer is too limited if you're writing anything over a few thousand words, and Obsidian's UI just doesn't work well on a touch device. The only viable app is Ulysses, which is ... okay, I guess? If it floats your boat.
I sometimes do music production. This is now possible on the iPad via Logic Pro. I suppose I could give it a try, but what does that get me? I already own an Ableton license and a couple of nice VSTs, none of which transfers over to the iPad. I can also download random third-party apps to manipulate audio on my Mac, or mess around with Max4Live, or use my Push 2 to make music. Again, this stuff doesn't work on an iPad and it never will, because the APIs to enable these things simply don't exist.
There are tons of people who use Windows because they need to use proprietary Windows-based CAD software. Or people who need the full desktop version of Excel to do their jobs. Or academics and researchers who need Python/R to crunch data. All of these people might LOVE to use something like these new iPads, but they can't because iPadOS just can't meet their use cases.
I really like the idea of a convertible tablet that can support touch, stylus, keyboard, and pointer input. The iPad does a great job at being this device as far as hardware and system software is concerned. But unfortunately, it's too limited for a the kinds of workflows people using laptops/desktops need to do.
Oh, I'm with you. But the funny thing is, they won't even want it.
I have two iPads and two pencils—that way each iPad is never without a penicl—and yet I rarely use the pencil. I just don't think about it. But then when I do, I'm like, "Why don't I use this more often? It's fantastic."
I have tried and tried to adapt and I can not. I need a mouse, keyboard, seperate numpad, and two 5K Displays to mostly arrive at the same output that someone can do with a single 11" or 13" screen and a bunch of differnt spaces that can be flicked through.
I desperatedly wanted to make the iPad my primary machine and I could not do it. But, honestly, I think it has more to do with me than the software. I've become old and stubborn. I want to do things my way.
The existence of vscode.dev always makes me wonder why Microsoft never released an iOS version of VSCode to get more users into its ecosystem. Sure, it's almost as locked down as the web environment, but there's a lot of space in that "almost" - you could do all sorts of things like let users run their code, or complex extensions, in containers in a web view using https://github.com/ktock/container2wasm or similar.
I watched someone do some incredibly impressive modelling on an iPad Pro via shapr3D, and yeah, it was a young person.
I’m into the idea of modelling like this, or drawing, but the reality is I spend most of my time and money on a desktop work station because the software I need most is there. I’m totally open to iPads being legit work machines, but they’re still too limited (for me) to make the time and cash investment for the transition.
You’re definitely right though. People are doing awesome work on them without the help of a traditional desktop or laptop computer.
It's not a matter of being young or old, it's that iPadOS is not tooled to be a productive machine for software developers, but IS tooled to be productive machine for artists.
The examples given are always artists, whose jobs are actively on the chopping block due to AI models and systems which checks notes don't even run that effectively on apple hardware yet!
Of course, SWE jobs are on the chopping block for the same reasons, but I claim that AI art models are ahead of AI coding models in terms of quality and flexibility.
Watch a 20-year old creative work on an iPad and you will quickly change your mind. Watch someone who has, "never really used a desktop, [I] just use an iPad" work in Procreate or LumaFusion.
The iPad has amazing software. Better, in many ways, than desktop alternatives if you know how to use it. There are some things they can't do, and the workflow can be less flexible or full featured in some cases, but the speed at which some people (not me) can work on an iPad is mindblowing.
I use a "pro" app on an iPad and I find myself looking around for how to do something and end up having to Google it half the time. When I watch someone who really knows how to use an iPad use the same app they know exactly what gesture to do or where to long tap. I'm like, "How did you know that clicking on that part of the timeline would trigger that selection," and they just look back at you like, "What do you mean? How else would you do it?"
There is a bizarre and almost undocumented design langauge of iPadOS that some people simply seem to know. It often pops up in those little "tap-torials" when a new feature roles out that I either ignore or forget… but other people internalize them.