Apple Event 10/30/18 (new iPads, Mac bump)

Yup. The philosophy behind the device hasn’t caught up as quickly as the hardware. At a certain point, they will have to just realize this artificial split just doesn’t make sense. Sales of the surfaces and Yoga’s of the world may help that. Or will they? Was Microsoft right with their tablet oriented move in Windows?

The surface pro is legitimately popular, but I’ve never seen anyone use one without the keyboard attached except on a plane watching movies. It’s really a laptop.

My kids, 8 and 13 have a lenovo and a dell that can flip the screen around and use the device as a tablet. They do that all the time. Games, Videos and Web-Browsing. All computing tasks.

Hey, maybe it’s a learned behavior for adults. I don’t hang around kids.

For sure they grew up in the age of smartphones. For them, there is not the same split between laptop / tablet.

edit: growing up

My objection to Stusser’s stance is basically centered around two things: 1) the idea that a “laptop replacement” is a failure if it doesn’t have the same interface as a laptop; and 2) the suggestion that the only people who should use an iPad Pro are casual users or Apple douches.

It’s like having a discussion about the benefits of a toaster oven, and how it can really help with your cooking while using much less energy. And then someone comes in and says, “You can’t cook a whole turkey in a toaster oven, so a real chef would never use one! A toaster oven is for inexperienced cooks and babies!” But some people don’t need to cook a turkey very often if at all…and if they do, of course their existing oven isn’t going away.

That’s what an iPad is: A laptop replacement for 90% of what you might use it for, but of course you can always fall back to a laptop or desktop when you need to. And people for whom an iPad won’t work at all already know that.

I don’t know about 2), but number 1) is about right for the masses who grew up computing with a mouse and file system. That’s learned behavior though. I’m sure text selection and whatnot could be done plenty fast with touch or a pencil if that’s how you grew up with it. Same dealio as console fps control but at a much grander scale.

So in short, the limitation isn’t necessarily about the hardware/form factor, but more the people using it. Might be wrong about that though. It’s really interesting seeing the kids grow up with this stuff. Apple said I should do what? I don’t care, I’ll do what I want…

edit: MS Office works great on Ipad. With Photoshop coming out software for the “masses” is close enough on tablet. The mouse is still an obstacle. Not sure about the file system. The last file browser system I bought for ipad kinda sucked. I forget what it was called; the best reviewed on the store. Haven’t dug into their new system yet really.

My wife (same age as me) also grew up with a mouse and a filesystem. On her Mac, I don’t think she ever moves files around. Everything gets saved into one giant Documents folder, and maybe she uses the sidebar view for Recent Documents. Email attachments get saved there, new documents from Word or Excel or Powerpoint get saved there, and she generally uses the Recent Documents from those apps to open things up. I’m not sure how this usage is any different from using an iPad.

I guess what I’m saying is, I really don’t understand how not having access to the filesystem is a significant limitation. I use the iPad for 99% of my computing needs, and I’m not sure what huge functionality I’m supposed to be missing. Can someone provide a specific example? What exactly are you doing when you’re moving around files and organizing them?

Well…

Same reason you organize your stuff in file folders at home? Dumping everything into one folder doesn’t seem like an easy way to find or reference it very quick. I’ve got so many projects I work on and I’m referring to those documents years later. Say, I have to forward a contract in email for a query, or I have to send x person a jpg logo or I have to get my kids medical records and send them to a school. I don’t always remember exactly what I name them…

This seems basic organization 101. How did you two ever get through school?

Hey hey hey…first of all, I’m talking about how my wife organizes things, not me! Let’s get that out of the way right off the bat.

For something like medical records, I recently had to forward a school transcript to my insurance company. I made the request, got the transcript, then emailed that to the insurance agent. There’s nothing I need to save or organize myself, and I don’t need a long-term folder of “that thing I had to send out once”.

But for general file organization for projects, I will generally archive those to Dropbox when I’m done with them so they’re backed up, or upload them as I’m working on them so that other people can collaborate. So for long-term organization, I have Dropbox so I can access those files from anywhere, any time I need them. Then again, I’m not doing a lot of work with contracts or anything that I need to keep track of locally.

Anyway, thanks for the info! That really does help.

Did you watch the Apple Event? They said that AutoDesk is bringing the desktop engine of AutoCAD to the iPad. It’s around the 1:00:00 mark if you want to take a look.

I think the limitation of tablets is just data entry. If you enter or manipulate a lot of data keyboard and mouse is more efficient, flat out.

That said there are some things tablets do better. They tend to have much better battery life, they’re more portable, the Apple versions can have their own internet connection (you can do this with laptops, but seems marooned on enterprise business stuff now), and, and, it’s much, much better for drawing. Or signing documents.

However i’ve tried to use AutoCAD-ish things before on tablets and it makes me want to pull out my hair. I need to zero out objects, make them 0,0,0 distance from their position with other objects. This is… difficult to impossible with previous CAD tablet attempts. I’m fact most professional CAD users exclusively use the command prompt for all their commands. The idea of drawing features perfectly with exact measurements on a tablet sounds terrifying. If all you want to do is move furniture around a house layout, well, what’s a few inches between friends?

It’s also traditionally been a pain to have a decent storage backup solution with tablets. If i edit a ton of photos on a tablet, how are edits being preserved? Can i back these edits up to offline storage, etc? Even the iPad version of Scrivener is stripped down for my tastes.

I didn’t even think about this! Seriously, why isn’t cellular data a thing for laptops?? I honestly can’t believe it’s 2018 and we don’t have Wi-Fi+Cellular as a purchase option. I’ve used my phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot before, but it’s not a great user experience.

Anyone played that Assassin’s Creed game they demoed on stage?

I saw it. The screen shot is exactly the same as the existing AutoCAD app.

This is the biggest problem I have with the AutoCAD app on iPad. I learned AutoCAD in 1991. The iOS version isn’t even feature complete with THAT version.

I think this review sums up my feeling about the new iPads:

The headline sums up exactly why I don’t need to read the review. It’s an iPad, I already know everything I need to know about it and whether I want one. :-)

I agree with this review. Software needs to catch up before I upgrade.

Yup, yup.