Only allow “Mac mode” if you have a keyboard and monitor attached. Hell, automatically “sleep” it if you undock. Make it unapologetically keyboard-and-mouse first.
One UI for keyboard/mouse. A second UI for touch. One device that can do it all. That’s the dream.
I feel like we’ve had a few ham fisted attempts over the years at this, and Apple could actually pull it off. I get that it probably won’t happen though.
The author wants using the iPad to “feel like a finger ballet, your hands swooping and swiping”, but also the author seems to care a lot about emails and Claude Code and writing. Those are fundamentally at odds, and it makes complete sense that they’re very happy with a MacBook Neo instead (but they could have just been using a MacBook Air the whole time).
The iPad is fantastic for, as the author points out, “reading the news and watching YouTube and playing games”, and it’s an amazing tool for digital artists and anyone who does lots of hand annotation work. So really overall a product that’s found its niche, and when I see grandpas and grandmas and students at my local cafe using their iPad their hands are effectively swooping and swiping in a finger ballet.
I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air), and for some reason that induces some sort of frustration in them and they feel like things somehow shouldn’t be that way. I guess I get it, the iPad hardware is pretty slick. But yeah, your work makes you a MacBook person, not an iPad person, that’s just how it is. (Apple should make an 11” MacBook again though).
> iPad apps should be weird as hell, unlike anything you find on a desktop operating system […] The iPad should be a highly-focused touch playground. Weird as hell, one-of-a-kind apps
I don’t know what this obsession with “weird apps” is, but 99.9% of people don’t care about “weird apps” and so that’s not enough to justify a whole device category (and you can find weird apps on all platforms anyways).
> I think there’s just a kind of techie who desperately wishes they could do everything on an iPad, but really the machine meant for them is a lightweight MacBook (Neo or Air)
Couldn't agree more. I am that person. I spent months deliberating before buying an 11" iPad (with keyboard). Used it for a week for the novelty. But the keyboard, trackpad, and multi-tasking is so janky compared to my Mac that it's sat in a cupboard ever since.
The MacBook Air is so quick and light that it's always just as convenient to get the MacBook out instead.
And that's not even for 'techie' tasks. Basic note-taking, researching, and simple spreadsheets are all easier on the Mac. The only time I reach for the iPad is if I want to watch a video and my girlfriend is already using the TV.
That being said, the iPad mini is a perfect companion if you do want an iPad but already have a decent MacBook. Such a great form-factor and doesn't pretend to be a laptop replacement.
It always ends up playing videos or the kids playing some silly game.
Indeed - and given LLM's have made the 'command line' great again and voice isn't appropriate in every scenario ( far too public ), hard to see how text input isn't critical.
I think if the hardware differences really mattered Sidecar wouldn't exist, Mac wouldn't run iOS apps, iPhone wouldn't stream to Mac, and the AVP wouldn't stream/run apps from both platforms.
Would those devices be better if their software was strictly siloed from each other?
Yes, yes they would. You would get software actually designed to fully exploit the capabilities of the device. And not, for example, shitty lazy port of mobile apps to MacOS
Or you would just have a void where that hypothetical software could be, and this is what actually happened to the iPad (and AVP).
Compared to a hypothetical scenario where developers care to build iPad apps? No.
I don't think the availability of iPhone apps on iPad is what derailed development of iPad apps either, practically all the ROI building software for Apple hardware comes from impulse spending on the iPhone and even with 500+ million iPads in circulation today it doesn't come close.
Multi-tasking? Half-assed. Keyboard and mouse support? Half-assed. OS capabilities beyond iOS on a laptop-like device? Non-existent. This was additionally hamstrung by "just check a checkbox, and a half-assed port of your app will run on iPad".
We've now seen the same play out with MacOS: why bother creating an actual app when you can just run a mobile app? Even Apple's first-party apps do this now.
The two machines solve totally different problems. I never bothered to get the keyboard for the ipad - because typing is something i do on the macbook air. The ipad is incredible for reading pdfs that are meant to be letter/a4 sized.
Works fine with gestural input a.k.a. the old Graffiti format, originally from Palm.
The iPad is meant to be used in touch mode while in your hands generally. If they were brave they'd stop pretending, strip the iPad back to its roots and make it the best touch-first experience they could.
Trying to make iPad+keyboard case a Mac replacement is an exercise in futility. Similar size/weight to a MacBook at that point, and just not as fluid as MacOS. All the Mac-like stuff (keyboard/trackpad/multitasking/keyboard shortcuts) feels bolted on. All the battery/memory management makes it feel a little flakier and less responsive than a Macbook.
I bought a 2 in 1 and the experience is much better, simply because i can detach the keyboard and use it as a massive tablet. its not as fluid as an ipad, but most of the time its simply mildly annoying to get to the app/browser i want, then I scroll and tap the same way I would on an Ipad. On my regular touchscreen laptop, I have to lift my fingers to use the interface, which simply adds delay for... the ability to scroll a pdf, afaik.
All this to say simply shoehorning touch on a mac is a pretty bad idea simply because the hardware, in its current iteration, is not there. I wonder if they'll release a "macbook touch" thats more akin to a surface for their touch interface.
1) Consumption device People reading, scrolling, watching videos. Nice on the sofa, in bed, whatever. Also this use case has a lot of older users driven by eyesight issues that make a bigger slightly further screen interface better. Also very intuitive to young children (funny how often this elderly/youth overlap rears its head).
2) Creative (not productivity/coding!) device Artists needing pencil & touch interface for precise tactile writing/drawing/editing
You don’t think a non-artist, non-coder can be productive on an iPad?
Some jobs are heavily writing, reading, email/messaging, meetings, etc. Feel link those people can do quite well with an iPad, no?
Why would I want to touch a computer when I’m at home when I can use my iPad? Computers aren’t relaxing or fun to use.
My take is that consumers didn't want this; it was manufacturers trying to "add value" or sell something new. Same as the recent "AI PC" craze.
its useless
flexes too much to actually use it
I suggest that you watch people in cafes, offices, and libraries (especially young people) use Windows-based touchscreen-equipped laptops. There's nothing that "sucks" or is "useless" about having the additional option of a touch interface on a laptop.
You don't even have to use it! There is zero downside to having a touch input on a laptop. As a component it has essentially invisible cost or negative tradeoff in any way. You still have a keyboard and mouse. It is helpful to have for little things. Examples below:
- Resizing photos with pinch zoom
- Scrolling smoothly through PDFs
- Hitting OK on a dialog box
- Making a digital signature
- Hell, macOS runs a good amount of iPhone and iPad apps that were designed for a touch screen, so we could add "using iOS apps" to the list.
- Using handwriting to take notes...much nicer to be able to draw diagrams versus being limited to text only (in a 2-in-1 form factor on a device with pen support)
Apple just hasn't made the 2-in-1 device format that a very large percentage of Windows laptops are sold with, the kind with a folding hinge. Perhaps this is because they have had Tim Cook's operations mindset so long. They don't really care that it's a device that 1/3 of users will enjoy. They couldn't even keep selling the iPhone mini even though a device that sells 5% of the iPhone's volume is still an incredibly successful device. They just want to make as few SKUs as possible to maintain profit margins, not to deliver innovative tech that at least some customers want and enjoy.
iPhones need desktop mode. Your apps, your data. USB-C screen + Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Running like iPadOS or even macOS.
I still dream of the day when my computer lives on my wrist, and I just have a few dummy screens in different formats that can connect to it so I can consume media or be productive.
The 2011 Motorola Atrix came with a proprietary dock to connect to. Modern desktop environments can use the USB-C 3.2 DP ports on the phone to provide video out. Lapdock shells are widely available online.
MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints which makes it insecure by default. There is also serious privacy concerns, basic one would be that telemetry sends all HWID of devices by default, so if you share a USB stick with a friend, you two are automatically correlated in MS database, not really my cup of tea.
Not a big fan of an OS asking for an ID indirectly (via mandatory phone number) as well, mandatory MS account at install time (except if you tamper with the ISO, yeah sure)
Most banks on the planet manage trillions on Windows, so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by dying on this hill. Just because you wouldn't do something doesn't make you knowledgeable or right about that.
>MS employees have access to a lot of your work/data/fingerprints.
I wonder how all those companies, banks and governments manage to keep MS workers out of their work data.
Any MS workers here that can answer what are you guys doing with all that customer data you look at all day instead of coding?
the thing that annoys me is that pretty much everybody in the industry with a decent amount of understanding has known for more than a decade this was absolutely feasible.
and the most infuriating this is that i know for a fact it's not being done purely for a matter of product fragmentation.
the macbook neo is living proof that we could give people a single device (iphone 17 pro/pro max) and have that do pretty much everything. get in the office, hook your phone to a display via usb-c, start working. unplug your phone (which now is fully charged) and go home.
we could have dumb laptop-shaped terminals where we plug our phones, and get a larger display and a keyboard. or tablet-shaped "terminals". or desktop docks at home.
how cool would it be to leave for the office with just your company phone in your pocket ?
but we wouldn't need three separate devices: an iphone, an ipad and a macbook.
something similar would likely also apply to the android world, if android os developers could get their shit together and get a decent implementation working (android occasionally re-launches this, and it usually sucks again).
The part about Procreate is really spot on. If you draw on the iPad, and I do, Procreate just dissolves under your fingers and pencil. It's like working with paper and pencil. Almost. And it has Undo. Tactile feedback would be nice, but I'm not sure what that means. Paper and pencil has great tactile feedback. Trying to describe it with words is an exercise in frustration. If you don't draw, or write with a pen, ever, then I'm at a loss to explain it.
But it's there nonetheless.
We've got a long way to go to really understand UI and UX. A long, long way.
Now, please excuse me while I go and tap dance about architecture for a bit...
I can try:
There's variation, paper to paper, pen to pen, pencil to pencil, they each present slightly differently. Write with a ballpoint on some receipt paper, then write with a fountain pen on some smooth, low absorbancy paper, then whip out one of those green engineering notebooks with a mechanical pencil.
For each task with a physical writing utensil and paper, you get a distinct experience that connects you physically to the task.
Once actually writing, there's a sense of finality, even the erasable pencil leaves a mark. Your movements have consequence.
Then there's the persistence. A piece of paper doesn't timeout to the lock screen. It's there, all the time, using zero energy to continue to exist. You can prop it up on your desk and forget about it until you need to reference it. If you're constantly going between two pages, you can lay them side-by-side without reducing their size.
I've always found writing/drawing on a tablet to be frustrating. It feels like I'm looking down at a notebook through a toilet paper tube, like I can never see the full picture. I used a wacom tablet with a chromebook and Xournal for years to take class notes. Something about disconnecting the stylus from the screen fixed those frustrations for me, like it took the expectations of paper away and provided the expectations of a pointing device.
Modern Mac trackpads don’t really click, they vibrate upon sensing a certain amount of force, and the sensory illusion is good enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.
I’m only suggesting this tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps there’ll come a time when the Apple Pencil can micro-vibrate in such a way that is so convincing it will make you feel as if you’re dragging it on paper with configurable roughness.
I would still use macbook for most things but I did use my surface go more often for (deep) work than now my ipad pro (which is better for consumption).
Surface Go in app mode was not as good as ipad and many apps lacking but it shined if I had to to more work/research and I didn't have laptop with me.
I would just love to have something like even smaller size Macbook Neo where I can unplug screen and then would behave like iPad consumption device.
Right now I hate keeping everything synced in apple ecosystem so I usually even won't bother to use ipad while in train or plane.
1. Make it powerful enough so that it can be sold as equivalent to macOS
2. Keep it locked like iOS, to be sold as secure alternative to computer for your parents and kids (which rules out all the workflow customization pros need)
3. Don’t make it powerful enough for people to stop buying Macs (Tim Cook’s biggest fear is of you not buying another slab of glass - no multiprofile for you, ever)
The intersection of these is an empty set.
I use my 2018 Pro as a great browser and YouTube machine, with zero intent to upgrade until the above situation changes. It’s useless for anything else, and even if I got M4 powerhouse, I wouldn’t be able to take it as a single machine for holiday for emergency Weathergraph hotfix or server debugging.
Totally doable for travel debugging.
Technically totally doable, just give me a VS Code + local Linux container (Apple Silicon is great at virtualization) to which it can tunnel.
In practice, impossible with Apple's limitations.
In which case they already failed because I still see no reason to replace my M1 iPad Pro, it just powers through anything I throw at it including games.
(1) The (11-inch) size is fantastic: you get enough screen real estate to see what you’re reading and writing, but it still fits into an arbitrarily small bag and is light enough that you can comfortably walk around all day with it. The death of the original tiny MacBook Air was a huge fail for apple
(2) CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY FOR GOD’S SAKE CELLULAR CONNECTIVITY. Yes, you can always hotspot your phone, however, that’s still not nearly so reliable as a device with its own connectivity, some providers still limit bandwidth there, plus the last thing I need is extra battery drain on my phone when I’m already stressed about it.
TBF, if Apple ever brought back the original MacBook Air with modern specs and with a cellular chip, I would just take gigantic buckets full of money and throw them in the general direction of Cupertino until I got one, like, instantly. And there are definitely still compromises—-as an academic, I’ve been meaning to just write a command line front end to zotero and fling it onto a digital ocean server or something, because its iPad app is so godawful. But on the whole, I still reach for my iPad much much much more than my MacBook, for those two killer features.
One of these days I'm going to buy one of those old MS Surfaces with cellular and stick Linux on it. But for the installation/drivers hassles I'd have already done so.
I like that. My recent tools are mostly AI first, and therefore CLI first. I’ve been toying with adding JSON modes to them, and this is undeniably useful, but I think I’ll keep JSON under flags; it’s a way to prioritize human users as well.
LLMs excel at text, text is incredibly powerful in a cli environment.
It's not just that there's no GUI alternative, it's that the GUI itself is a bad affordance.
The only GUIs that even sort of successfully play in this space solve it by having a GUI that basically just embeds a CLI (see - all the vscode editors, antigravity, etc..).
Love having a touchscreen laptop, though I'm annoyed that Apple will lock it behind a $5k price tag for now.
Would the iPad still be that days long, cohesive device is another story.. it Apple cannot have their cake and eat it too.
They ban apps from downloading and executing code except for educational purposes - in fact very recently this has manifested in banning apps that use AI to build and publish apps - but it has always prevented VSCode and the like, at best you can have something SSH'd into something else. This also affects software that is extendable through plugins and addons.
Everything about using that app was about trying to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the screen. Now you can. Its user interface was nonsenical at the time. Now a spherical marble is sensible. Tap an object, then tap and hold; use other hand to operate the three-axis arrow control bar that swells up out of the interface into easy to touch controls. When you let go, they pop with a little spray of tri-color paint and a few speckles get left on the user interface.
Seriously, we have done almost nothing with what’s possible because everything is either Word, Letterpress, Tabletop Simulator, or cross-platform port. Meanwhile there’s an engine in there powerful enough to run Bryce with realtime rendering, but everyone wants to emulate a sheet of paper rather than letting me do the most basic things.
We could have painting with a pen and controlling z-depth with a hand at the same time. Path snap to collision avoidance margins on a slider. Negative margins and a setting to define collision handling: do you materials simulate two oils colliding at their spline velocity? Do they intersperse and blend like translucent colored sand? How far after the intersection does the aftertint continue in the brush stream?
Instead, we have, courtesy of AI, U-turned the industry all the way back to text adventure games with sentient potatoes.
Sigh.
It's frustating knowing that the ipad _could_ run mac os but won't due to intentional market segmentation by Apple.
I have a Surface Book now, that I put Linux on for a while (bad idea, super flaky with Surface Linux). I'd probably recommend the Surface Pro again over the Surface Book, and just put up with Windows (ugh x2). Using the AtlasOS variant at least, so less crappy compared to stock Windows.
I imagine the surface go 4 with an n200 is probably a good bit better but several times the price; assuming it can run Linux
Like a product I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.
Let me do that w/ a MacBook Neo and iPad Air pair which look as if they belong together and which fit nicely into a bag and afford me the option of taking only the iPad Air and Apple Pencil when I want to travel light, and maybe I'll come back to the fold (the last thing I bought from Apple was Mac OS X Public Beta, before that it was OpenSTEP 4.2, and the last thing Apple made which I truly liked wholeheartedly was Snow Leopard).
Oh yeah, make the Apple Pencil work on an iPhone....
Instead, these days, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Book 3 Pro 360 (two of them, panic-bought a spare when I though the line was being discontinued, it's now up to a Book 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (replacing a first-gen unit) and a Wacom One display connected to a MacBook (purchased by an employer) and more Wacom styluses than I can easily count....
The high watermark of my graphical computing experience was using an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint w/ FutureWave SmartSketch when mobile, and a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ --- I've tried pretty much every thing in-between since, but when things were finally getting better, Microsoft did Fall Creator's Update and everything came crashing down....
I'd really like for Apple to make a device trifecta which I would actually be willing to buy.
Apple is essentially selling the modern version of the eMac, and I would say the Neo is almost as bad of a purchase as that product. The real selling point of the device is that it's newly in box with a warranty. If you actually go to the used market, it's easy to find a gently used machine that is much better. Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
The Neo situation is the equivalent of buying a brand new $500 Acer machine versus buying a $500 eBay ThinkPad T14 or something like that. You'll get a much better laptop by buying a used laptop versus buying that brand new Acer.
The same story goes for the MacBook Neo. It'll be successful in sales, and it's a nice machine in a lot of ways, but it's one of the most overhyped devices of our present times.
It will go down in history as a device like the iPhone 5C. Save a few bucks now, but pay for it in the near future with the kind of performance you're actually getting from it. Even basic casual tasks will chug in the very near future.
Apple is selling a device that is approximately equivalent to the $1000 laptop they were selling 5 years ago and we are acting like this is a revolutionary product. And, by the way, it's not a $500 product unless you can use the education store. It's actually $600, or $700 if you are buying a configuration that actually makes some level of sense and has enough storage. $700 will buy you a 16GB/512GB MacBook Air M2, a much better machine (better screen, battery, speakers, processor, keyboard, trackpad, I/O, etc).
A huge percentage of the population (at least in the US) is completely unwilling to buy any used consumer products. For some it is the ick factor, for others it is fear of being scammed.
> Any MacBook Air with an M2 and 16GB of RAM is a better purchase.
Is this really a better alternative if it stops getting macOS updates several years sooner? I wouldn’t buy an 8gb laptop, but they are fine for many use cases.
"Today, they sit in the corner. iPadOS simply isn’t an environment for most “serious” work."
You sound ridiculous.
Half of your argument evolves around your distorted view of "serious work".
What do you consider serious work?
I analyse satellite pictures from conflict zones on my M1 Pro iPad while smoking a blunt, on my back, on a blanket in the park, right now, and probably get paid by the hour more than you make in a day. I can ENHANCE with the power of my fingers as gradually as I need on a 13" screen, not being limited by tiny touchpad space or getting a stiff neck. Try the same with a MacBook.
I’d call that serious work.
My GF put her MacBook away and does Music via Creator Studio on her iPad Pro since it released, mobile and in a creative setting without disruption by her phone, or the necessity of a table, because the iPad got Cellular, and she can live comfortably from it. She’s actually working right now on the other side of the tree.
Not serious work either I guess.
My brother is taking photos of government officials during their travels, and works on iPad Pro exclusively during shoots. It’s much nicer to discuss and touch up photos with an official on an iPad than holding your MacBook in their face like an early 2000s playboy photographer.
Not serious work either I guess.
I frequently visit the Parliament in my country. A lot of the legislation knowledge work is done on iPads. By people who rather chill with the Parliament visitors in the sunlight, thanks to nanotexture, having a chat with them, without looking unapproachable behind a laptop screen or balancing a MacBook on their knees. iPads invite social interactions and make you approachable. MacBooks put up a wall.
Not serious work either I guess.
They are more mobile. I can basically sit down everywhere and get serious work done without looking like a MacBook Moron with an external screen battleship setup and an extra mouse.
My brother’s wife is using the LiDAR sensor inside the iPad Pro for her interior design work. She can do everything on one device. Where’s the LiDAR in the MacBook?
Guess that is not serious work either.
It has GPS, good luck navigating to the next gas station from the middle of nowhere when your phone dies with your MacBook. Guess you’ll just point it at the sky and yell Connect!.
If you travel for work iPad can be a lifesaver.
My lawyer does most work on his iPad Pro. If you read and annotate documents for a living, why the hell would you do it on a MacBook?
I know people in construction who only use iPad and get work done. Not everyone is a writer, or photographer, or walker.
It’s not the iPad or iPadOS that is limited in a way that doesn’t let you do "serious work".
It’s actually your mental ability to come up with better solutions. Don't blame Apple for being unflexible and dumber than most smart people choosing the right tool for the right job in the place they want to be, rather than being tied to an office or a wall outlet or relying on a phone with a lot smaller battery than an iPad, and their laptop.
The pencil is just another plus. If coding is your way to do serious work, yeah you’re kinda fucked on iPad but there are millions of people who get serious work done on their iPad and then use it recreationally laying on the couch or sitting in the bus where MacBooks look silly and are uncomfortable.