Love this from @ismh - I haven’t written much about the new iPads yet because if I buy one, it will probably be so I can hand my 2022 M2 Pro to my mom (since trade-in is less than a 10th gen iPad with 256GB and cellular costs…which is insane. Not for the trade-in but the iPad 10th gen price) and not b/c I need to upgrade. B/c the software means I still use my iPad primarily as a media consumption device. No matter how great the hardware, the software is the rub. https://512pixels.net/2024/05/the-problems-never-the-hardware/
@film_girl mild pushback: I use my iPad for a lot of writing, and I'm worried about the "more laptop-like" new keyboard (my 2022 has the now-retired, much lighter, fabric keyboard). But I do worry about the software situation; in particular it kills me that Arc isn't on iPad and (at this rate) likely never will be.
@luis_in_brief I use mine for writing too — and pre-Apple silicon, it was the best Teams/Zoom device I owned. People can use it for more than content consumption, I’m just saying I don’t right now. I hope that if the new keyboard is too much, there will be third-party options.
@film_girl say more about the "pre-apple silicon" bit? Still works fine for Zoom for me, and I expect better with the new camera position (though I do most of my zooming from a much more elaborate camera setup).
@luis_in_brief I mean, I agree. But almost no one has the luxury of choosing what meeting software they can use. Very few of us are in a position to refuse to use the solution our employer chooses. My employer at the time (Microsoft) obviously used Teams. My current employer (GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft but run independently) uses Zoom. I still have to use Teams for some intra-team collabs but at least now my laptop doesn’t overheat when using it.
@luis_in_brief pre-Apple silicon, using a non-desktop Mac for video calls was a nightmare b/c of how poorly Zoom and especially Teams ran on macOS. That’s a combo of bad software engineering on Teams’ part (I didn’t have a choice. Most users have no choice of what meeting software they can use. Apple employees have to use fucking webex I think) but also the state of the late-model Intel Macs. Apple silicon changed that so that my laptop doesn’t overheat on a call or run out of battery.
@luis_in_brief ohhh gotcha yeah no, sorry for not being more clear. I think @jsnell nailed it when he wrote about the Mac’s renaissance putting iPadOS in a tough spot. Pre-AS, even with the extreme limitations, I could make more of an argument to spend $1200+ on an iPad Pro with accessories, just b/c it did some non-consumption tasks so much better. For me, it’s harder to do that now. I still love my iPad but the great hardware doesn’t overcome the software limitations.
@film_girl I wonder how representative you two are, though. Like @jsnell I also have gone back to traveling with both a mac and an iPad but I use the Mac only when I absolutely have to (specific lawyerly invocations of MS Word, quite rare) and don't want the iPad to get more Mac-like.
@luis_in_brief@jsnell I think for the group of people who consistently buy iPad Prod and accessories, we’re probably a lot closer to being representative than the people Apple shows in its announcements. I think the average iPad user is an iPad Air user. And the new iPad Air is basically the old iPad Pro. But for iPad Pro, I think we’re probably fairly representative. But even yourself, you still own both an iPad and a Mac b/c of limitations you run into.
@luis_in_brief@jsnell now, Apple might lose a future MacBook Air sale for you if they did what Jason and I want. But they’d also potentially get you to spend more on an iPad Pro, which might negate that lost income. And I said this in a reply to someone else but if they did this, I think they could absolutely charge another $100 or $200 for the iPad Pro just for that feature. B/c as Jason pointed out, the beauty of the iPad is the flexibility. But the software limitations hinder that beauty.
@johnhood@ismh sadly, I agree with Stephen that we should expect that trajectory. Look, I’m of the opinion that they should have added touch support to the Mac years ago. And frankly, now that you can run iOS apps on Mac, I don’t understand why they don’t just make iPad OS as we know it as the default launcher for iPad Pro that you can exit and then use standard macOS with a mouse and keyboard. But that is clearly not what Apple wants to do.
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