@jsnell “I can’t rip the screen off a Mac and use it as a touch tablet.”
Gah. Yea. This. I say this so often yet people don’t get it. The iPad is the best thing I have for composing music. It’s the best for browsing the web. It’s the best for reading comics. It’s the best for drawing. Writing? I’d default to Mac. And most of my paid work is writing. Design and coding? Mostly Mac too. But everything else…
However, that has got me wondering about tomorrow. And what to buy.
@jsnell as someone who adores the audio set-up on the Pro, I would dearly miss the four speakers. I do a lot of music sketches in portrait and the Air is terrible for that. But beyond that, I’m wondering if the iPad I didn’t want to exist (because it further complicates the line-up) is the one I’ll ultimately buy. (The 12.9in Air.)
@craiggrannell@jsnell This is why I think Apple should make a new touchscreen MacBook form factor instead of just iterating the iPad Pro which despite all the iterations has not really evolved.
The issue I have with the iPad Pro when trying to use it as a laptop is there are too many compromises, too many limitations! (1/2)
Despite that I’d like a touchscreen tablet without a keyboard sometimes, when I have to attach an iPad to a bulky/heavy keyboard/trackpad it makes the iPad far less compelling for me and iPadOS is also too limiting for laptop work for me.
I’d like Apple to make a real hybrid device, not something that can become hybridish by attaching a bunch of accessories… maybe we’ll need to wait a few more years for that though. (2/2)
@vanitalo All of it’s kind of a mess now. The Mac is awash with dreadful iPad ‘ports’ because someone at Apple thought it was a good idea to bolster the Mac with mobile apps. And then some stuff goes the other way but can get hamstrung due to minor but important details, such as a lack of text keyboard shortcuts or fast window management. (Stage Manager is fiddly and slow. The Fisher Price of window management.)
@craiggrannell@jsnell 100% agree. The difficult bit comes with the extension of the argument: does MacOs on a touch-first device also have to be touch enabled? Apple thus far has balked at that for obvious reasons. I think that MacOs can (maybe should) stay keyboard and mouse only on iPad and be worth having. But it would still be slightly weird.
@grievousangel@jsnell I mean, if you have macOS on a touchscreen device and cannot touch the on-screen elements, that to me feels broken. You either go all-in or don’t go in at all.
Ultimately, I do still wonder if the thing that Apple and pundits keep saying will never happen – merging macOS and iPadOS – will soon enough be reality, albeit in a manner that’s perhaps ‘layered’ so certain features only exist on specific devices.
@jsnell@craiggrannell One would hope so. Presumably in the labs for years. When you can buy a low-ish end PC laptop with such a big feature, it gets untenable for high end Macs not to have feature parity. My kids expect touch on computers, files access on handhelds, and universal sync. The objections expressed by older generations just melt away.
@grievousangel@jsnell Yep. My kid’s the same. Honestly, I absent mindedly prod my MBA display now and again. It’s just ingrained. My iMac remains mercifully free of fingerprints at least. Although I actually can’t quite reach the screen from where I sit, and so that’s perhaps why. :D
@grievousangel@jsnell Cue: certain people thinking they’ve got a gotcha when Apple contradicts something it said previously, as though it’s the first time.
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