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"My decade-old and very well-travelled Toyota Land Cruiser finally died, and I hoped my new-ish ebike could replace it."

How that article sounds. I don't care how fancy they make them, iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work.

Except in this metaphor, the "ebike" has en engine as powerful as a new "landcruiser", and attachment points that could allow quickly/easily adding extra seating or cargo capacity. That such a thing seems absurd illustrates how poorly the metaphor fits.

The only reason that "iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work" is because Apple chooses to limit them.

I have a laptop which I only rarely use as a laptop - it moves between being connected to external monitor/keyboard/mouse in an office to being connected to external monitor/keyboard/mouse at home. I could get an iPad with a faster processor (my laptop is a few years old), that could connect to the same peripherals. The only reason it couldn't replace my laptop is because I can't run the same software on it.

Now, I understand why this is so. MacOS (or any other desktop OS) would not work at all well on a tablet interface, it would take a lot of work to make it work well, and those changes would make it less well suited to desktop use. Look at Windows 8, when Microsoft tried moving their desktop OS towards something that could also work on a tablet (or phone), and how unpopular those changes were. But that doesn't mean I have to like it (or wish iPads weren't so locked down, so I could run a different OS anyway even if Apple wouldn't support it).

Let’s not pretend that Apple could come up with some sort of dual windowing system (or just dual boot) scheme. We’re not limited by drive space anymore.

They don’t because it would hurt macbook sales.

Maybe they don't because they've seen what happens when Microsoft tried to build an OS that was both touch screen and mouse & keyboard.

It works pretty nicely on linux, you have "mobile" environments like phosh, KDE mobile and that are pretty seamless between handheld and docked "desktop" usage. They have support in app toolkits like gtk and qt for applications that change based on screen size to accommodate mobile users. It's pretty nice: https://tuxphones.com/convergent-linux-phone-apps/

The reason why it didn't work for microsoft is because adobe, valve, and aren't going to whatever framework just because microsoft wants them to. But in the linux world you can just fork and fix. Even apple has a lot of leverage to force developers to act in a certain way if they want that app store $$$.

Obviously the hardware isn't all there yet in the open source world (the pinephones are pretty underpowered), but in terms of software all of the right stuff is there. And don't tell me the UX is too complicated for new users. Gnome's design is literally a ripoff of MacOS and KDE's interface is pretty much Windows.

In addition, Android apps and Debian Linux VM can co-exist on the same mobile display and there are rumors of desktop convergence between Android and ChromeOS on Chromebooks.

KDE interface it's better than the current Windows. And if you don't like, you can customise easily to your taste. Even mimic OSX if you like.

KDE have constantly been better than Windows interface.

And I don’t even use KDE (but I still like it and it was my first DE on Linux like 20 years ago).

Windows doesn't have anything similar to kirigami.

Nah, it's just corporate greed on apple's part. They want to sell you both the MacBook and the iPad.

Apple is the only major notebook manufacturer which still doesn't offer touch on any of their notebooks.

Yes, Windows 8 was a failure, but Windows 10 and 11 are successful products and they are also built around touch + m&k.

GNOME and KDE on Linux also support touch input.

Take a look at this device:

https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-2025/

In terms of practicality, ergonomics etc., I think it's a much better proposition than either a MacBook or an iPad.

> still doesn't offer touch on any of their notebooks

Is that a feature people actually use? My last laptop had it, but I eventually disabled it in the BIOS because I never really used it, except by accident. I didn't find it comfortable holding my arm out at that angle, and I didn't like having all the fingerprints on my screen.

Windows 10/11 it's a shit show. The last good Windows was 8.1. And the last great Windows was 7.

Oh, totally. Windows 10 and 11 suck for a great many reason.

But how they handle touch input is not one of them.

> Windows 10/11 it's a shit show. The last good Windows was 8.1. And the last great Windows was 7.

Yeh I think there's this weird stigma that stuck after Windows 8 was a bit iffy but 8.1 was fine.

I preferred Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 (and MUCH preferred it to 11) because at least it still had all the old core Windows control panel stuff under the hood. Windows 10 feels like a way more awkward mismash of things because they seem to have simply just taken a bunch of stuff away.

The zillions of different UI paradigms smooshed together started in Win8 but Win10 is where they really seemed to pile it on.

Anyway, I'm not a Mac user. But I absolutely see why they want to keep touch interface separate from keyboard & mouse. It's hard.

No; the last great Windows was XP.

7 started the regression in earnest, especially in the GUI.

XP was just an ugly skin on top of the magnificent Windows 2000.

Oh right; I always forget that XP shipped with the insulting and horrible Fischer-Price motif enabled by default. The first thing I did was switch it to "classic" mode, which was the last revision of MS's GOOD windows GUI.

The GUI in 7 was so much better than anything before or since.

Mmm, pretty sure 7 was when they introduced stupid junk like "transparency." A quick search pulls up this gem: https://www.rossul.com/2009/blog/vista-and-windows-7-gui-mys...

They also started obscuring the color-scheme editor, the eventual removal of which was a major blunder. By the time people finally realized that inverse color schemes are dumb, the color-scheme editor was gone and they had to wait for Microsoft and everyone else to implement hard-coded "dark mode" all over the place.

From Windows 3.1 through XP, I had simply created a "dark mode" color scheme at the system level; all properly-written applications inherited the system color scheme in Windows. Such an obvious, useful mechanism that Microsoft "forgot" and Apple to this day has never learned.

Even '90s Unix GUIs let you set up a color scheme, if I remember correctly.

Imho the samsung dex approach is a fine concept (not saying that was fully developed or as extensive as what would be required to do it seriously for a proper desktop os)

Two totally seperate UIs that can run at the same time, a desktop one and a phone one.. it worked shockingly well imho.

Maybe an additional case where you can use the tablet as an extra screen, but honestly that could probably manifest as an app in the mobile UI.

Apple has already done that to iPadOS. It's not the best either. Honestly if they just let you run a full speed Mac VM, even if it was only while a KB/M was attached it would be a massive massive improvement.

Microsoft Surface?

What happened?

(I've seen them. Thought that they were pretty cool as hardware, pity about the OS. I'm not aware of what's transpired, though obviously it hasn't dominated the mobile/tablet market.)

They don't because they don't take a 30% cut of everything purchased on your MacBook.

I'm guessing that you meant "iPad" not MacBook, and you are referring to purchase of apps from the App Store, not online shopping?

Do you mean dual-booting macOS and iOS? If so, they probably don't because it would work like crap. The tablet is a touch based device and macOS isn't optimised for touch. Unless they want to release something very janky they'd need to invest a lot of time making macOS more touch-optimised and I think the number of people that would care about that or use it is miniscule. The tablet and laptop are completely different form factors and have completely different use cases. Making both devices capable of doing the same things would just unnecessarily compromise the design of both.

See Samsung DeX. It's not dual booting like 2000 with Windows and Linux. It's instant, switching from touch to desktop mode when docked. In the case of an iPad, it would switch to desktop mode if a keyboard is attached. It would allow people with an iPad to have a proper desktop experience when docked or connected to a keyboard, and an iPad experience when handheld. It would really be the best of both worlds. To make it easy, the touch display could even be disabled while in desktop mode.

I do think there will be better convergence over time. The magnetic keyboard for the iPad is definitely a step towards that although I'm still debating whether to take that or my old MacBook on an upcoming month-long trip.

I also don't really disagree with your basic point. And I don't write it off (just) to Apple wants to sell more hardware. A lot of people like essentially a plus-sized iPhone and don't want a laptop. Probably hard to believe for many people on this forum but I heard people at work tell me that they have kids that don't want a laptop and are fine with just using their phones, much less a tablet.

Microsoft really tried to converge the different form factors from an operating system perspective and it never really clicked with people. Would I like a device that really a converged a 13-14" laptop and a tablet in the same general size range? Probably, in part because I wouldn't travel by air with both. But I don't think we're really there today outside of very casual tablet use outside of a browser or watching media.

Dude the keyboard case with trackpad… they should let you put macOS on it. The ipad is worthless with iOS.

I don’t even think they need an entirely new windowing system, just a tweak of what they have on macOS.

Have the iPad run macOS, but instead of the desktop, always show LaunchPad, and force the use of Stage Manager or full screen apps. Have developers optimize their full screen view for touch. That’s basically the iPadOS experience without the limits.

Given how much of a premium Apple charges for storage, it's still a limitation even if not a technical one.

What do you mean by dual windowing system? If you mean having multiple windows open at the same time the iPad does support that either simply having two windows sharing the screen (Split View/Slide Over), or having multiple windows on the built-in and external monitor that you can move around (Stage Manager).

I would love to be able to run a linux VM on my iPad though, it would make travel so much simpler for me. I know there are hacks to get it going with UTM etc. but there are too many compromises for my use case.

They aren't afraid of hurting MacBook sales they're afraid of breaking the app store chains. You can get software outside of the app store on the MacBook.

> The only reason that "iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work" is because Apple chooses to limit them.

That’s their choice to make. As consumers it’s on us to make the right choices. What the author wants is a laptop not an iPad if they want a general purpose computing device

The article is just a way to poke the giant that is Apple just like we used to when we wrote Micro$oft

What the author wants is a 2-in-1. The iPad is that, it's just hobbled to be a really bad laptop. All the hardware pieces are there, the power, the keyboard/trackpad accessory, the touch screen, the pen. If you go look at the marketing for the iPad line it really does seem like maybe you can do anything with them. It's only once you get serious that it all falls apart due to the software.

The iPad Pro was designed to compete with the Surface Pro and it simultaneously does and doesn't. Anybody who expects more than a tablet with pen input will be disappointed or frustrated eventually.

So get educated on its limitations and shop accordingly. Not sure why that’s so hard for folks.

I wish my iPads were more like laptops. But I’m not Tim Cook and I bought one anyway. So I didn’t vote with my wallet and I don’t have enough money to buy enough shares to vote with my money.

What I can do is buy something more appropriate or even something else entirely like a Surface.

> As consumers it’s on us to make the right choices.

Which involves more like this, so that consumers can recognize kinds of dissatisfaction and share that it exists, rightly or wrongly.

Exactly.

Folks downvoting my comment are effectively saying “no I think everything thing should do everything. It has a CPU that can run MacOS then it should! Open up the os, let me do whatever I want. Let me impose my thoughts on a private company. Rawr!”

When instead just don’t buy the iPad if that’s what you want. The MacBook Air is what you want. Or… adapt your computing to use the iPad as it was designed.

The spoon doesn’t bend you bend ;-)

We live in a world where the production of computers is largely guided by economies of scale, so if a handful of big companies lock down their hardware (and they do) that reduces my options significantly.

Apple is one of the largest computer companies and sells some of the fastest hardware on the market, yet it's totally gimped by their market segmentation. That space could easily be occupied by a different kind of company.

iPads are a waste of silicon. Yes, I do know better than the consumer.

And? You could go protest in front of Apple holding signs saying open up the iPad or make the iPad run macOS. Or… buy a laptop.

They’re both called Pro (iPad Pro and MacBook Pro) but thermals, RAM, etc are different.

I think it’s fair to say an iPad Pro and a MacBook Air should be capable of similar-ish things, and that iPadOS could have way more “power” features. Eg a terminal app to start with. But I’m not sure iPad Pros can really replace MacBook Pros.

But they could absolutely replace 2005 or even 2015 MacBook Pros in terms of hardware capability.

Or even 2024. Nobody is disputing the hardware.

Just software. Kinda odd, given how much more interest there is in iOS app development than in Mac OS app development; but it is what it is.

Outside of probably Adobe apps in particular (and a variety of utilities) along with dev tools for the relative niche that does that sort of thing and local AI these days, most Mac OS users basically live in the browser.

> e.g. a terminal app to start with

If the rumored convergence of Android and ChromeOS happens soon on Chromebooks, including support for Debian Linux terminal VM, then iPads will finally have real competition from touch-screen Chromebooks with both desktop & mobile UX.

It's really a fundamental design limitation of iOS/iPadOS (same thing, let's face it).

It's ground-up a super efficient, wonderful media consumption platform. It's really good for media consumption, like so much so it's kind of a problem. So I think the metaphor still fits, in that sure the ebike has a crazy engine but the tires don't have the contact patch to make the engine nearly as useful.

The problem is the UI is absolute trash for real work. I'm sorry, I know you can bolt stuff onto it to make it kinda usable, brilliant minds are doing their best, but I absolutely want to chuck the device across the room doing the most trivial work on it.

They could make it into MacOS, they don't, and they won't because they make way more money on these devices when they're used for media consumption.

Pretty much nailed it. Touchscreen devices are not for creating; they're for taking what you're given. They require big fat buttons for big fat fingers, which you poke like a trained pigeon to get your food pellet.

Largely true, although I'm still blown away when I read about someone who has written whole pieces of software from their phone, on their bus ride to work or something.

I think it's somewhat of a generational thing. I'm still somewhat blown away when I hear stories of kids writing school papers on their phones. I want to turn to a laptop for even more extensive searching or longer emails.

Absolutely heroic to do that in spite of the multiple, aggressive attempts by Apple (etc) to try to make that effectively impossible.

Except you can easily add a keyboard and mouse.

Drawing is better on my tablet, an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. I also like StaffPad’s Apple Pencil interface for entering music notation better than anything using a trackpad or mouse. And I like taking handwritten notes using Quicknotes and the Apple Pencil, especially when I need to move around.

The new land cruisers are actually really weak compared to the old ones.

> the formerly beefcake Landcruiser went from a beastly guzzling v8 in 2021 to a weaker v6 in 2022-2023, and now, in 2024, a weak 2.4L supercharged 4-cyl sipper.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43031218

That's the LC250 Land Cruiser Prado in the global market. They still sell the flagship LC300 abroad with both a V6TT gasoline engine, as well as a diesel.

For what it's worth, the previous generation LC200 also sold with a gasoline V6 in the Middle East, producing a whopping 240 HP, which was later increased to 271 HP.

The I4 engine in the Prado (sold as the Land Cruiser in the US) is more powerful than the V6 it replaces.

Win8's UI was terrible because Microsoft are terrible at UI, not because of the duality.

It was bad because they did research studies about the UI and then lied about the results of those studies so they could push the terrible Win8 UI forward.

I had friends who worked on the UX team for 8 and they reported general malfeasance all around. Microsoft was very scarred that tabled were going to take over the world (that was common wisdom in the trade presses at the time) and iPad sales used to be absurdly high. Win8 was the result of a scared company that needed to release something.

No, it was bad because of the duality. Windows 8 was actually pretty good on touch first devices like the Surface RT and was IMO considerably better than the iOS and Android alternatives at the time. It only really got awkward in mouse land.

They ARE terrible. They used to be very good at it. Microsoft advanced GUIs more through the '90s than anyone else. Tidy, efficient, and still innovative. Windows 95 through XP pretty much nailed down most of what a GUI needs.

Microsoft has since abandoned essential practices that make GUIs work, in addition to abandoning taste and organization. Windows is a sorry shitshow of defective design and defective function.

Don't agree? Then back up your objection instead of anonymously downvoting, crybaby. So tiresome.

Pretty much everything Microsoft did in the 90s with GUIs was just playing catch up with Apple.

My first job in 1990, we had a load of PCs running DOS, and one Mac with a GUI and which also played sound and could read laserdisks (as I recall). Changing the error sound to "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" never got old.

Windows 95 just about got to feature parity with the Mac 5 years later. It was really nice, but not exactly massively innovative.

I worked at a small software store (offshoot from WaldenBooks) sometime around 1990, and I remember a guy coming into the store asking whether a PC was “multimedia ready”.

I didn’t know anything about PCs, having grown up with Apple, but every Mac I’d used had sound and graphics, so I told him as far as I could tell it was all marketing crap.

Never occurred to me that PCs couldn’t do multimedia out of the box.

Yeah, the 90s and Windows wouldn't exactly be the time range I'd associate with Microsoft and innovative GUIs (although Windows was mostly better than its reputation IMO).

Where MS actually did groundbreaking UI/UX work was in the 00s, ironically for most things not Windows - Media Center, Xbox 360, Zune/WP.

And of course they had to ruin it with botched product management and their bulldozing Metro/UWP everywhere strategy. The Windows 8.1 UX on a tablet was actually pretty good. Too bad it a) sucked on everything else, b) app integration was spotty due to relegating Win32 to second class.

engines are expensive, processors are cheap. and as revamp and degerret pointed out the hardware is a lossleader for the appstore

here's a nickel to buy a real computer, as they say

> iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work.

  Video conferencing work: iPad + Center Stage unmatched for portability, audio quality, integrated cellular modem.

  Writing work: iPad with hardware keyboard and single app mode for distraction-free writing, ergonomic screen mount.

  SSH work: iPad has unmatched HiDPI 4:3 screen real estate 

  Video editing work: Lumafusion usability with M4 rendering speed, $30 one-time fee unlike subscription alternatives.

  3D planning or design: vertical industry apps for iPad Pro Lidar sensor that is absent from competing tablets.

After Apple enables hypervisor API for Linux VMs on iPad, Lenovo sidecar budget can be redirected to iPad storage.

This is exactly right. I hate seeing so many people say that iPads aren’t for “real work”, because it’s being hugely dismissive of the real work plenty of people do every day. You don’t have to be writing a compiler for it to count as “real work” FFS. Just because it’s not suitable for your work, it doesn’t mean that the work other people do on it isn’t real work.

Why is this comment being downvoted?

I needed a machine just to sketch some UIs in figma. I was going to get a Chromebook but my wife insisted on the iPad.

I thought it could sure handle that use case, I quickly checked there was a figma app. I was expecting some quirks.

A day later I returned it. Turns out that figma app for iPad can only "view" designs, not create them!

I feel like there's a very narrow market for iPads. I'm surprised they still sell.

Yeah I don't think I've found a good substitute for vector art.

There's stuff for more expressive creative raster art with procreate, I think the capacity is there to deliver a good experience here but the first one to do it will have to solve a few problems relating into a more professional workflow and take on quite a bit of risk seeing as the consumer base (most companies) probably don't issue iPads to their employees. There's very little incentive to this when their consumer is content with existing tools.

They sell like hot breads for kids in school.

Who immediately

1. Turn them into toys 2. Break them 3. Lose them

Gargantuan waste of money that does nothing to advance education.

I mean tablets genuinely have advantages for note-taking, I'm tempted to get one myself

Recording math notes or diagrams with a keyboard just sucks, and a phone is too small.

Exactly. The author is “using it wrong”. The iPad is an appliance much like the phone is. Get a MacBook Air and call it a day. The article is clickbait at best because everyone knows iPadOS is not as open as macOS.

> The article is clickbait at best

To be fair, "theregister" is a big hint that you're going to be opening unsubstantiated clickbait 50% of the time (rising to 90% if it's relating to Apple.)

(Also Pesce has been banging the "ipads should be computers" drum for a while - e.g. https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/23/apples_got_a_good_thi...)

Such a dumb drum. iPads are inherently unsuited to the tasks for which we pull out a computer: work requiring precision, rapid text input, or I/O.

Absolutely. The entire "article" insults the reader by expecting him to believe such a stupid premise, or makes the author look stupid. Nobody who wants to do stuff at the command line would seriously buy a TABLET, especially not one from Apple.

Pfff, downvoted by the author, twice, no doubt...

If you're an artist who draws, I think they're serious computing devices.

An iPad is an interesting device. It has many uses where it is indispensable, but most of them are unknown to most people.

I often see a sound engineer with an iPad on music gigs. The form factor allows you to walk around the room and adjust the sound easily to tame resonances and such.

It’s not so good for typing text or programming, but where it makes sense to have a portable slab of screen that works reliably there is probably an app that does it.

Lots of musicians use iPads for their sheet music. Vastly superior to carrying around several kilograms of paper, and you can use head gestures to turn pages.

> If you're an artist who draws, I think they're serious computing devices.

An artist who draws might consider iPads to be serious drawing devices.

That's high praise since it's basically what Apple was going for with the iPad, getting out of your way to let you focus on the task at hand.

WRT drawing, specifically: no, they dragged their feet on introducing a pen/stylus for years. They insisted it be a "touch-only" device (Wacom's patents on display digitizers surely did not factor in /s), which sucked for those of us who couldn't afford a Cintiq, but who had a perfectly good iPad 2 lying around. There were several valiant, if flawed, stylus efforts befor the Pencil, but with awkward connection, pressure, and power solutions, they were DOA.

the supreme art of software marketing is convice your users that even your bugs are features.

the supreme art of product development is understand when lack of some feature is a feature in itself

Better description: agreed

That’s a revealing comparison: a largeish chunk of SUV owners really would be better off with a cargo e-bike. Lots of people on the road every day driving solo in an SUV with nothing more than some grocery bags in the trunk. They could be riding a cargo e-bike, saving a ton of money, and having a better time.

I see them more than laptops among actual people out in the world doing real work. Phones, too.

[edit] non-office-workers, I mean.

What is this "real work?"

Not the Orange Site bubble...

Construction, for one.

> iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work

At the risk of invoking no true Scotsman, I think you need to define 'real' work.

According the author of the article he seems to consider 'real' work is any work the requires "terminal windows, root access, and the ability to type "python" to get into a REPL".

Man. I thought you were joking, then I read the article. Yeah, I will never spend so much on an iPad. It's not even the same OS. I don't know why anyone would think an ebike compares to a Land Cruiser.

I dunno why anybody thinks a computer with a 10 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16GB of RAM and a TB or two of storage is "an e-bike".

None of the machines I do the work that pays my salary exceed those specs. Apart from the 16GB of RAM none of my work machines meet any of the other specs.

If Apple would let me plug a couple of HDMI screens and a keyboard and mouse into a iPad, and let me run macOS (or even Linux) on it, it'd be a more capable development machine that any I've ever used.

Every time I hear the iPad vs Mac debate, I cannot help but feel people are trying extra hard to avoid Microsoft's Surface devices which meet these qualifications. I love my Surface Book 2, its one of the best laptops I've ever owned.

> I dunno why anybody thinks a computer with a 10 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16GB of RAM and a TB or two of storage is "an e-bike".

Because it's marketed as an e-bike, shaped like an e-bike, and sold in the e-bike section of the store. If Apple put that e-bike engine into a land cruiser, then you could drive it like a land cruiser, but that seems like a weird expectation to have after you bought it.

Why don't you just get a MacBook Air then? Or a Mini?

MBA or Mini don't also have a touch screen and pen support. iPads are a lot more flexible in form factor than anything else Apple sells.

The stupid thing is that the oversized trackpads on Apple laptops don't support the Pencil. WTH.

Reduce

       <-Somewhere between these 
         two.

.

.

Recycle

--

Redundant consumption is not a virtue.

Perhaps this metaphor doesn’t work in the US, where heavy vehicles are incentivised by regulation & most population centres rely on car transport.

But only a few people really benefit from a full featured Toyota land cruiser. The value added of additional features not available in more affordable cars (or transport options) is low relative to the cost of other uses of the same cash.

Given the ability to make a trade off for a cheaper option that meets the core transport needs without paying the premium for the features they won’t really use (or the user doesn’t value for the price they have to pay), most would probably go for the cheaper option (rapid transit or smaller more fuel efficient car).

Same can be said for many features on laptops not already found on tablets.

I’m not sure if you’re referring to software engineering specifically or all workflows that require computers, but I don’t think it’s that silly for most other professions to use tablets more once they provide more specialised workflows.

For example, I recently went back to university and I find it easier to do revision on my iPad using the pen tool, the second best option is pen and paper but that has limitations, the 3rd is computer but that has input limitations.

It may not include everyone, but I don’t think it’s so silly to think iPads and tablets will play a more prominent role in the Office in the future. That said it’s possible this will never include software engineers due to the workflow being highly dependent on features that may never be available on iPads or tablets.

I have to agree here. I do a lot of written work and thinking still. If I put my “lowest common denominator user” hat on, the iPad seemed like an obvious choice to throw all this at as it has a reasonable “paper” implementation. Cue buying an iPad Pro, Noteful and using the files app to replace reference books and physical notepads.

It just didn’t work. There are so many constraints and it’s not just the software but the fact it has only one screen. I need about 4-5 iPads to be equivalent and that’s not even remotely practical or possible.

This is notably not unique to the iPad. No tablet would be good for this work.

As for the generic computing stuff it’s not even good for consuming content - the screen is too shiny. If you add a keyboard case to it you might as well buy a MacBook Air.

> iPads are just unserious computing devices for real work.

But are they? Because of the hardware, or because of the restricted operating system?

Most of my work is connecting to other things. With modern devices, it's not as much the hardware, as it is the restricted operating system and closed ecosystem that would limit me. That, and maybe my eyesight...

How do you figure? The compute is serious, it is using a real CPU.

Make that "two-decades-old" at least for a Land Cruiser ;-)

"My decade-old and very well-travelled Toyota Land Cruiser finally died, and I bought a Land Cruiser that has the exact same body and engine but with a different steering wheel... the engine also has a limiter applied to it that prevents offroading and driving faster than 20mph.

I think Toyota should remove the limiter."

Now imagine the ebike was built on the same basic frame and had the same engine. I'd be pretty annoyed if there was some little part in there restricting its use.

> real work

Almost always stated by nerds who are unable to fathom people do things with devices they don’t.

I know people running their entire business from iPads. Last I looked running a business is real work.

[dead]

This was all over the place. The article itself seemingly bares no relation to the headline. Replacing your laptop with a tablet and then complaining that the tablet cannot do the same things as the laptop was a slightly interesting take in 2010. The iPad has now been around for 15 years. A tech journalist being surprised it doesn't have a terminal with root access at this point is baffling.

I remember about a decade ago setting up an iPad Air as my main driver for work (coding mostly). I got it to work by SSHing into a VPS to use Vim w/ a bluetooth keyboard.

After about of month of stubbornly working like this, I finally admitted it was just a shittier MacBook Air, and that I preferred the keyboard, touchpad, and form factor of the laptop much better. I also don't care to have a touchscreen laptop. There was even an 11" MBA which is just as portable as a tablet (more so if you're carting around a bluetooth keyboard).

I think I was just trying to find a use for a tablet, and there simply wasn't any for me. I haven't bought a tablet since... although it's hard to get a phone that isn't as big as a tablet these days.

Google Pixel tablet now has a Debian Linux terminal VM that is isolated from the host Android OS. Apple iPad had VM capability three years ago, but removed it. They could restore that functionality in 2025 to compete with Pixel tablet, which has weaker hardware.

Wait, they HAD VM capability but removed it?? That’s somehow so much worse…

> Apple iPad had VM capability three years ago, but removed it.

It definitely did not.

It did, kinda, they shipped Hypervisor.framework in some builds of iPadOS 15 and 16: https://x.com/utmapp/status/1708907045314035986

But you needed a private entitlement for it to work that no app (save UTM after a jailbreak) had, so the pet theory at the time was internal Apple engineers were running around with Linux on their iPads.

It’s not “being surprised,” it’s being frustrated with the user hostile decisions of a multi-trillion dollar profit maximizing machine.

I don't understand the resistance to understanding this point littered all over this thread.

Yes - an iPad is a different form factor than a desktop. That doesn't excuse crippling a powerful general purpose device by taking control away from the owner.

---

Here is an alternate example:

My Jeep is in the shop, I need to pick my kids up from their friends house, but the last mile is a dirt road.

My minivan isn't ideal for that, but it'll almost certainly work. Except... the manufacturer has locked it down via GPS so that the second I leave roads paved to their satisfaction, the accelerator stops working.

---

That's the fucking hostility of Apple. It's not that the device can't. It's that they won't allow it.

And folks... buckle the fuck up because this road is JUST getting started. We are going to witness a complete and total war on general purpose tools. No one is going to let you use their tool unless they're extracting rent from you.

One time purchases, ownership, novel use? Fuck that noise. Pay them your rent. The company store is thirsty.

15 years later, still can't open it, still don't own it.

The register and ars technica have essentially the same relation to truth as the onion.

I am very puzzled. Apple has locked you in a cage because you bought an iPad to replace a MacBook? What is the cage, and why weren’t you the jailer?

I mean the author explains his thoughts in the article, you should read it again.

The author's thoughts don't make sense, though. He's expecting a locked-down tablet appliance to suit the same needs and use cases as a laptop running a general-purpose OS. Or at best, he's not expecting that, but is at least complaining about it, which feels a little pointless.

He can get what he wants by buying a new Mac, as he suggests. It's not like what he wants doesn't exist. He's just complaining that some other random product doesn't do what he wants, even though it's not designed to. Pointless.

"Even though it's not designed to"

It is designed to, though. That's the thing. The line is arbitrarily drawn at not getting CLI/root access to your iPad.

His point is that over the years, Apple has blurred that line a lot. You can use keyboards and mice. You can do all your daily computing on an iPad - email, spreadsheets, YouTube, whatever.

But it's still locked down, for whatever reason, despite being a perfectly capable computer that doesn't necessarily need to be.

It's honestly really obvious what he's saying. iPads have changed over the last 5 or so years, and people on HN clearly haven't used one in a while. The author isn't _wrong_.

Apple spends all this effort to blur the lines between personal computer and a device you can compute on, and it mildly tricks users who don't necessarily realise there's a difference between the computer and the tablet, especially amongst younger generations who grew up on tablets ("iPad kids").

> It is designed to, though. That's the thing. The line is arbitrarily drawn at not getting CLI/root access to your iPad.

An XBox's hardware is designed to run general purpose Windows software.

However, it's been clear for a decade that Microsoft is selling the XBox as a game playing appliance, and has no intention of allowing you to run general purpose Windows software on it.

If you choose to buy an appliance instead of a computer, that's your call.

You gain ease of use and freedom from having to manage device complexity, but lose the ability to do whatever you want.

Just because it's commonplace doesn't make it any less hostile to users. The tradeoff argument is legitimate, but it would be easy enough to have a yolo-mode button somewhere that voids the warranty and unshackles the user.

This is why I prefer Android. Google is evil, sure, but at least they don't treat me like a child. If I want to take one of their devices and shoot myself in the foot with it, that's fine with them (and thanks to nix-on-droid, there's plenty of ammo for such adventures).

> Just because it's commonplace doesn't make it any less hostile to users.

Sure, game consoles are user-hostile. They're also great for playing games, and they tend to "just work" with less configuration and customization than a typical gaming PC.

Less configuration tends to mean fewer problems and easier tech support, but the primary business reason game consoles are locked town is to make it harder to play unlicensed commercial games on them.

It seems you're advocating for the benefits of having a door when the objection is to locking the door.

By all means have a some kind of verified/sealed mode and refuse to support anything that's not in that mode--but there are negative consequences to normalizing a lack of control over the technology that people interact with.

Take the crowd strike incident for instance. Millions of people unable to do jobs that they're relied upon to do, and we can't even hold them accountable for that because it turns out they were never in control of their tools in the first place--locked out of the section necessary to carry out the repair.

You wouldn't tolerate a screwdriver that refused to be used to pry open a paint can. I don't see how it should be any different with a phone. I want to be able to rely on users of tools--not vendors of tools--to do things, and I can't. Not because the people are authentically incompetent, but because some vendor has made a dumb decision about what they're now not allowed to do.

Crowdstrike is software that IT departments install in an attempt to mitigate the security threats that come hand in hand with having the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.

In thus case, it was Crowdstrike that shot them in the foot.

Managing complexity has a cost that some people don't want to be bothered with.

They are allowed to choose an appliance instead of a PC, even if you would make a different choice.

> but the primary business reason game consoles are locked town is to make it harder to play unlicensed commercial games on them.

Which is user-hostile. The user bought the hardware, so they should be allowed to play whatever they please. Hiding the true cost of the hardware by inflating game prices using licensing fees is monopolistic and an attempt at misleading the consumer.

This is the exact same business model as printer companies reducing the price of printers by inflating the price of printer cartridges and locking down the ability to use third-party ones. It is unbelievable to see people on a site called "Hacker News" defending that business model.

If there were no way to know in advance if you were buying a gaming appliance or a gaming computer, you might have a point.

Some people prefer the simplicity and reliability of an appliance.

Some people embrace complexity in the name of having the freedom to do anything (including the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot).

The notion that consumers shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that are different than your own... THAT is user hostile.

> The notion that consumers shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that are different than your own... THAT is user hostile.

Having the choice is fine, but if there's no way to opt-out then it's not a choice. While far from perfect the Xbox One is a good example of the video game platform that offers an opt-out. And it works, it is one of the most secure gaming consoles on the market and yet it still offers consumers the ability to create their own game software for it.

There is, in fact, a very simple way to opt out of buying an appliance.

Don't buy it.

At some point that means not buying any modern technology because it's all been locked down. We're already most of the way there.

There are plenty of other choices.

Linux isn't going anywhere.

You just don't think people should be allowed to make choices you don't approve of.

> You just don't think people should be allowed to make choices you don't approve of.

This is what Apple believes, not the person you're replying to?

Most of the time people aren't stupid, if they care about where they are spending their money they aren't buying devices on the split of a second and complaining later.

People aren't stupid but there is no way to escape this bussiness model unless you go to PC. And the PC is only begrudgingly still an open platform. If something is ever going to successfully replace the PC it will be a walled garden as well.

I am appalled by how easily people dismiss the importance of open platforms as insecure and inconvenient. How will people ever learn technical skills if all the technology they own is locked down and glued shut?

They buy Android, Windows, Jolla, Pinephone,.....

How long before Android and Windows are also walled gardens that are completely locked down? They're certainly moving into that direction.

If you buy a device you should be allowed to fully own it. You shouldn't be forced to buy niche inferior alternatives or pay a huge premium.

One more reason to support Linux and BSD OEMs.

The Tuxedo, System 76, iXsystems, Pinephone, Jolla, SteamDeck (with native apps, not Proton),... of the world.

He says in the article that "But even if I could somehow get macOS running on my iPad Pro, would that resolve this tension? I don't think so. A tablet lacks a keyboard and trackpad and even if I buy models designed for the iPad, tablets are all about push, poke, and drag."

So in the end, even if he could get CLI/Root access to his iPad it wouldn't matter anyway because of their perceived quality of the iPad accessory peripherals, that are built into the Macbook.

So he should just buy a damn Macbook. He wants an iPad that runs MacOS and has a quality keyboard and trackpad, so buy the product that has all of those things built in and don't complain you can't jerry rig the iPad to do the same.

This topic comes up a lot when Apple release a device with the “pro” label.

So sure it contains an M2, but it’s also a fanless device that combines its entire componentry, including the screen, into a package that is just a few mm thick. On top of that it also has a much smaller battery.

That kind of heat envelope makes it suitable for burst work, but poor for enduring workloads. Unlike the Mac it’s not going to allow limitless multitasking while exporting video and other processor heavy tasks. This hardware limitation is recognised in the types of software that the device runs competently.

So I partly blame Apple’s marketing, but I also think caveat emptor - why would the buyer assume that all of these other Mac shapes and sizes exist if they can actually all be squeezed into a 5mm thick enclosure.

> But it's still locked down, for whatever reason, despite being a perfectly capable computer that doesn't necessarily need to be.

Consider that some people (and I guarantee you that they vastly outnumber the "my iPad should run macOS/Linux and be a full laptop-equivalent" crowd, probably by several orders of magnitude) may want a locked down perfectly capable computer if it means they don't have to waste their time and brain energy on dealing with things outside of their goal.

Your concept of designed is very different from mine. The iPad is capable of providing a shell interface, but it is clearly not designed to. It is designed to provide a secure media consumption experience. There is nothing arbitrary (from a mass consumer security perspective) about not providing a shell. Providing a shell makes it much easier for bad actors to dupe unsophisticated users.

> and people on HN clearly haven't used one in a while

That applies to a lot of the tech that's talked about here.

My understanding is that the post is essentially a complaint about deceptive marketing.

iPads are marketed as capable of "doing all the things you love", how it's "so versatile it's up to any task" and so on - leading to perception that it's like a computer, except in a different form factor. While, in reality, of course it's not.

Personally, I never found any subjectively meaningful use case for iPads except for portable media consumption (aka watching movies on the Porcelain Throne, and even then it's not a great option as it lacks multi-user support). Every time Apple announces a new one, I have this feeling of cognitive dissonance between what the device actually is and how it's marketed.

(I'm sure there are lots of good use cases for iPad - just nothing I personally need or care about. Aka "I'm not in the target market")

Apple is marketing to everyone and not just the HN crowd. For many people their phone is their only computing device and for them an iPad is likely a big upgrade. When I have to proof photos or do a bunch of office type work, an iPad has become my goto device. When I'm programming, not so much. But I don't think that's a big secret to this crowd.

I agree overall, but I don't think it's a secret to anyone, except, possibly, for people new to iPads, who haven't researched about what it really is.

YMMV, but I don't find this situation funny or deserving a sarcastic remark. What happened is that a person had seen an ad for a device with very good hardware specs that they cannot use because it doesn't work for them software- and policy-wise, and they're unhappy about it. I can understand if that person would make fun of their unhappiness (a perfectly valid way to handle the discomfort), but I wouldn't make fun of them as a bystander.

I think it's perfectly natural and expected to voice discontent if you saw an ad but the product wasn't a good fit for you and ad failed to disclose it (for obvious reasons, but still creating a conflict of interest). Especially because Apple is marketing to everyone, including software developers.

Are you telling me people use computers for different reasons? No I won’t believe it. My specific workflow is all that is important and if that doesn’t fit to every form factor of device out there, then the manufacturer of that device is a fraud who is deliberately trying to spite me.

> then the manufacturer of that device is a fraud who is deliberately trying to spite me

That's a weird conclusion, even for a sarcastic remark.

Is it a fraud - is the marketing deceptive? Possibly, yes, I personally believe it can be said so. I think it could be the case because it fails to mention the nuance that iPads aren't a good device for certain tasks. If an ad says "for everyone" without any asterisks and small print to it, it's valid to complain that this is not true. It could be the norm, but it doesn't change the fact that there's a gap that may affect uninformed person's decision making towards purchasing the device that is not a good fit for them. I mean, anecdotally that's what happened to the author after all.

Is it a deliberate fraud, though? I haven't been in a room when that ad was discussed, so I cannot possibly tell. I'm not versed in marketing, but I believe I've heard that it's quite a common practice to not include any negativity (aka "when or why you wouldn't want our product?") from marketing materials, for the money doesn't smell. I have respect to the people and companies that do so, for I perceive it as a signal they respect me (aka not wasting my time researching). But whenever it was actually discussed and dismissed ("Should we mention if developers should rather get a Mac? Nah, we want them to buy an iPad too, even if it's useless to them!") or if the idea haven't even been mentioned (e.g. if it's simply not a thing in Apple culture) is unknown to me.

Are they trying to spite anyone? I don't have any evidence that suggests so, so I find it highly unlikely. While Apple has different system of beliefs and values, drastically different from some freedom-loving software crowds, I don't think I've seen signs of any significant deliberate hatred towards those who don't share their values, or willingness to make their lives worse somehow. There could've been some less than great attitudes (but my memory fails me here, I only have a vague idea that I might've possibly heard or read something that didn't resonate well with me), but I don't recall anything seriously hateful.

All this said, I would love for us all have more discussion about ethics in marketing. Honest, open, and ideally without any sarcastic remarks (for they rarely help and frequently discourage civilized discussion).

"He's expecting a locked-down tablet appliance to suit the same needs and use cases as a laptop running a general-purpose OS."

Which is a perfectly valid complaint since it doesn't need to be locked down. It's an entirely artificial limitation. An iPad pro is like selling a Ferrari that can only turn left at 30mph.

I don't understand the "buy something else" mentality. Freedom of computing on hardware you own used to be core to the tech community, but I guess it's now cooler to side with monopolists.

An iPad doesn't have the thermals of a laptop. They are not the same device.

People who want root on everything and a command line are a tiny minority of the population.

Most users don't even know what root is. They don't want to know. It doesn't interest them. They don't find it a limitation because command line computing is something they're actively indifferent to.

Having a powerful engine (for burst computing) changes nothing. They still don't care. They want something that runs CapCut or whatever, and that's the extent of their interest in technology.

I read it and don't understand it at all.

He's bought something whose limitations and target demographic are well known.

And then complaining when he hits one of those limitations.

You've never bought anything you knew could be improved?

To paraphrase MKBHD, only buy devices for the features they have right now. Otherwise you will often be disappointed.

He's complaining because Apple of the year have started to blur the line between a personal computer and a device that you can personally compute on.

The infuriating thing is that a huge number of those limitations exist as a few bytes that Apple does not let you flip, somewhere in the OS's code or configuration.

It would be unreasonable to buy, say, a flip phone in 2007 and complain that it can't replace a graphics workstation. It didn't have the hardware for that workload. Today, it's the artificial nature of the limitations that make the device akin to a cage.

Yes because flipping those bits would make the iPad a Mac.

And the whole point of an iPad is that you have a simple and consistent experience.

I don't recall which WWDC it was.. They had a slide with the largest text they ever used.

The question was "will ipadOS and macOS merge?

"NO"

Found it.

it was iOS and macOS but still...

https://youtu.be/DOYikXbC6Fs

For a phone, you really do want a different interface. (unless you're tethering it) That's much more justifiable.

Because that would either mean locking down MacOS or opening up iOS. Apple would love to lock down MacOS, but it'd be incredibly bad press to admit to that publicly.

It's fine that Apple wants to ship with those bits unflipped. What's unreasonable is that Apple stops you from flipping them.

>a simple and consistent experience

Has that not been Apple's entire marketing thrust since 1984?

I guess this kind of article always gets attention, but they always seem so stupid to me.

A thing exists that I don't want.

I could:

(1) ignore the thing; or (2) complain that the thing isn't something I want

(1) seems so obviously the right thing to do. This goes double when the thing you do want does, in fact, exist.

But, no, the internet opts for (2). I guess complaining just feels good, even when it's about something that has zero actual effect on you (or on anyone, even).

If ignoring the thing would work then people would do that. The problem is not that anti-consumer products exist along side pro-consumer products. It is that anti-consumer products out compete pro-consumer products to the point that all that remains (within reasons) are anti-consumer products.

There are market reasons for this behavior. Asymmetric information in markets (lemon markets), true cost obfuscation, hidden terms, platform capture, manipulations in form of anti-patterns, monopoly behavior, to just mention a few of the very large ones.

How would ignoring the ipad not have solved OP's problem?

They could have just replaced their old macbook with a new macbook.

Not that there's anything wrong with trying something new, IMO. But if you do so without doing any research, and it turns out to not be what you expected, there's nothing to complain about. Hopefully OP just returned the ipad and got a macbook upon realizing their mistake.

You seem to be suggesting something deceptive is going on here, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of that.

I would agree with you if computing devices were trivial aesthetic devices, instead of central to a lot of what we do.

I would agree with you if 1000 vendors of versatile computing tools put out 10,000 products with all kinds of uncorrelated options.

I would agree with you if even one vendor put out high-end quality, safe but ungated, customizable products for all form factors. (Safe out of the box, but all safeguards opt-out enabled.)

But neither wonderful extreme exists. Unfortunately, not even scaled down, bad caricatures, in a dark room, if you spend a mint, versions of that reality exist.

Instead, due to increasingly locked down devices, we are all left making tradeoffs we wish we didn’t have to make.

And not because guardrail opt-outs would be hard or costly to provide, but because manufacturers work hard to eliminate technically trivial opt-outs, or even any hero level effort opt-ours, and tell us they are doing this — for us!?!?

“We want you to be safe.” I don’t want to be safe. “No, we want you to be safe.” Help, let me out! “No, we want you to be safe.” Can my family and friends at least visit me? “No, not those family and friends. Would you like to see our menu of family and friend options? We want you to be safe.”

If each of us only chose devices on one dimension, it is likely everyone could find a product they like. But we choose devices to balance many concerns, and the artificially inflexible offerings can feel bleak. Because they are! (Both artificial & bleak).

This is essentially the reason open source software exists. Providing ungated alternatives - enabling self-serve specialization by customization - and keeping closed/gated software on its toes. But the real economic conundrums of open source are nothing compared to the *practical* economic conundrums of open hardware. And increasingly, wide appeal operating systems are low-level integrated with hardware defenses - for good reasons. But without opt-outs.

All of the limitations of the iPad are coming for your macbook, too. Already, it's difficult (not yet impossible) to install software outside the confines of Apple's app store. Already it's difficult (not yet impossible) to develop software for a mac without paying Apple for the privilege of "signing" your code.

Already, it's difficult (not yet impossible) to install software outside the confines of Apple's app store.

My installation of arbitrary software onto my MacBook via Homebrew, Nix, mise, downloading a DMG or .pkg via browser, or even the dreaded curlbash feel just as uninhibited by MacOS as they felt to me in 2015.

At most I have the one-time check-a-box about unsigned software to contend with, or a per-install approval step if I used more security-conservative settings.

None of this was either difficult or forbidden to me.

Haven’t people been saying that since the Mac App Store was introduced in 2011?

> All of the limitations of the iPad are coming for your macbook, too.

No offence but people have been saying that since about a month after the iPad launched and yet.

> Already, it's difficult (not yet impossible) to install software outside the confines of Apple's app store.

What's difficult? You download the DMG, open it, drag the app to Applications, job done. Or you install Homebrew if you're mostly after CLI tools. Or compile it yourself if you're happy going that route. (I use all 3 on a regular basis.)

> Already it's difficult (not yet impossible) to develop software for a mac

No, that bit is easy.

> without paying Apple for the privilege of "signing" your code.

That bit can be problematic, yeah. But you can ship unsigned apps and people can install them just fine.

(AFAICT you also have to pay if you want to sign your apps on Windows. It's the cost of providing the infrastructure, I suppose.)

All the downvoters and replies: "I don't live in a cage! They give us exercise time in the yard twice a day as long as I'm on good behavior."

Honestly embarrassing reactions from people pretending not to understand the difference between a machine you control and a machine Apple generously (for now) allows you to use in the way you wish.

Has something changed recently that all of your theoretical concerns are now in play when they weren't for the last 14 years?

This article seems a little ranty, but you could definitely be forgiven for thinking that iPads are general-purpose computing devices. There aren't any hardware limitations, and for years (haven't checked the last year or two), Apple was heavily advertising them as being just that, especially with keyboards and other add-ons. If you weren't intimately familiar with the goings-on, had brand loyalty from a MacBook that previously did what you wanted, and only spent an hour or three of research (a few hundred dollars of your time, or a 10-30% tax on this upcoming purchase) after seeing those ads, an article about how you were swindled would be appropriate.

I don't particularly care for the limitations Apple puts on iPads. Instead, I have a Windows Surface that I use to mostly as a laptop and occasionally as a tablet. That being said, Apple has a 14 day return policy [1]. If you feel swindled, which should be immediately obvious, just return the device.

[1] https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/help/returns_refund

Tablets and phones have been criticized for a decade for being limited artificially, locked down and more oriented consumption than production.

Mac products are especially famous for restricting the users in what in can do in exchange for whatever peace of mind that brings.

If you are going to spend hundred of dollars on a product without doing even a basic research about it, you are 100% responsible of the outcome.

> definitely be forgiven for thinking that iPads are general-purpose computing devices

The iPad is about to reach its 15 birthday.

No one should be forgiven for confusing it with a MacBook.

The author literally just bought the wrong device for their needs.

Probably 95% of people who own computers do not need root access and should not have it, possibly ever. The iPad is a great device for all the people who need what it offers. It's an amazing graphical tablet, it's a cheap way to watch movies and play games, and it's an amazing system to use while standing without a desk (e.g., for retail and outdoor situations). All of these use cases have nothing to do with gaining root access.

Heck, I don't even think most of my development tasks on a real desktop computer involve elevating into root privileges. I'd sure like the ability to but if it was taken away from me I'm not sure it would affect me all that much.

"I don't consider any system without root access to be a real computer. So anyway, I decided to buy a Roku streaming box as my main computer and it sucks! What's wrong with the world today!?"

> Probably 95% of people who own computers do not need root access and should not have it, possibly ever

But they should be able to take it to someone else who can use root access to fix it

The idea that a person should not have any access to be an admin of a physical device that they own is ridiculous

They might not need it, they might not ever use it, but they should absolutely be able to if a situation calls for it

The concept of "admin" is not a black and white concept, it's a spectrum.

Every iPad user is an "admin" of their device. Apple isn't stopping you from "administering" it.

There are limitations to the device but every device has limitations somewhere.

On that spectrum, the iPad is a much less limited device from a software and hardware standpoint than a lot of other devices, such as game consoles, point of sale terminals, medical devices, etc.

A lot of devices are intentionally designed with safety guardrails for very good reason.

For example, an inexperienced end user should not be able to freely reprogram the firmware on a robotics system used for surgery. A system like that is very intentionally shipped with guardrails that prevent the owner of the device from making dangerous modifications.

Other guardrails exist for other hardware where the end user is given some freedom but still kept from destroying the hardware or harming themselves. For example, your processor or graphics card won't let you fry the system by exceeding thermal limits, but they may still allow you to change settings like clock speeds and voltages. These limitations generally make sense and I would not really appreciate if AMD allowed me to accidentally fry my processor. A car infotainment system that allowed you to play videos or games while you drive or disable driver attention monitoring during self-driving would be grossly negligent.

I personally think the "everything should and must be open source" crowd takes a good concept way too far and essentially wants to dictate business models and approaches to safety and security.

I would support a more moderate approach that would force Apple to support more of a level playing field for things like alternative app stores, interoperability, and fair competition with alternative software, software/hardware end of support anti-e-waste regulations, but forcing them to divulge schematics and allow you to modify sensitive parts of the hardware like the secure enclave is not particularly beneficial. Just my opinion, though.

And finally, I’m firmly in the camp that I’m not going to tolerate a shitty solution just because it’s open source. No, I’m not going to use a $1000 Librem 11 tablet that’s at least 4x-12x slower than an iPad Pro that costs the same amount of money.

> For example, an inexperienced end user should not be able to freely reprogram the firmware on a robotics system used for surgery. A system like that is very intentionally shipped with guardrails that prevent the owner of the device from making dangerous modifications.

Comparing an iPad to a device that controls matters of life or death is almost as ridiculous as pretending these "guardrails" exist to serve the user.

The guardrails exist to prevent the user from exiting Apple's garden. It is there to protect a monopoly, not to protect the user.

Can we stop pretending it's anything else?

Can you not pretend that my argument had zero nuance?

I specifically mentioned in my reply that Apple should be forced by consumer regulations to remove guardrails like disallowing competing app stores, and they should be forced to have more interoperability with competing standards and products (e.g., iMessage/FaceTime should be an open protocol where other vendors could make compatible communication apps).

But they shouldn't be forced to allow you to gain full root or dump the secure enclave's private keys.

ChromeOS allows you launch a Linux terminal app which runs a shell inside a VM. There are no "entitlement" limitations to what you can do in it, while the base system remains isolated. For example you can launch a MacOS vm with qemu.

Unfortunately if you give non-technical users root you are also giving root to the phishing site or fraudster that cons them into giving it root.

It's hard for technical people to get their heads around just what a hostile environment the modern scam and hustler riddled slop and spam infested Internet is. Using the net as a non-technical user is like walking around a dodgy high crime area of some third world city at night as an unarmed sixteen year old girl there on holiday.

Tech folks get so good at ignoring and skipping all that nonsense that they stop noticing it. I get three or four phishing or scam attempts a week, some of which look convincing if you don't know how to examine an e-mail domain or a URL. It's a hellscape.

An exercise for readers who don't believe me: get on a Windows machine and try to use regular web search to find and download a piece of software outside the App Store. Pretend you are non-technical and just looking for something to get something done. Be sure you do this from a VM you can delete after it becomes compromised, assuming you can actually get to a download at all behind all the popups and scam "your PC is infected!" sites.

Most techies not only know many, many people who aren't technical, they are also the ones who are called on when their family and friends get suckered. It is not ignorance that makes technical people think that everyone should be able to get root access to the things they "own," it is experience.

This is so much "you support free speech because you're a good person, but if you heard what some people say..."

> An exercise for readers who don't believe me

With the number of actual Windows installations I, and other technical people, have cleaned the slime off of, this isn't persuasive. People who use Linux generally aren't ignorant of Windows, although some extreme Apple partisans might be.

Some folks seem to be in the fashion that everything with a CPU can get a monitor and a keyboard attached to it, regardless of the original design purpose.

Apple sells keyboards with trackpads for the iPad [1].

[1] https://www.apple.com/ipad-keyboards/

Why not?

https://www.youtube.com/@BringusStudios

Personally I rather buy hardware fit for purpose.

The hardware isn't keeping a keyboard or monitor from connecting, unless it was specifically designed to prevent that.

The hardware is fit for purpose. That's what makes the situation frustrating. It's a software lock.

That wasn't what it was being sold for, so no it isn't.

Interesting definition. I would have said what it's sold for doesn't matter at all when we're taking about whether it's fit for some arbitrary purpose.

I want to probe your definition a bit. Let's say a factory makes gears. All the broken ones get recycled. After all quality checks have been done, some of the passing gears are pulled off the line and redirected to the gift shop to be sold as paperweights.

1. Are unsold gears in the factory storeroom fit for purpose as gears?

2. Are unsold gears in the gift shop fit for purpose as gears?

2a. If yes, do they lose that fit at the moment of sale?

2b. If no, do they regain that fit if the factory has production issues and brings a crate back from the gift shop to sell as gears?

Comparing Apples to Oranges.

One is a device sold with a specific purpose that the buyers knowingly paid for, the other is a piece of isolated pieces pluggable hardware.

There is no specific purpose for an iPad.

Apple's actual marketing postures the iPad as a general computing device

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ

“with iPad Pro + iOS 11, a post-PC world may be closer than you think.”

https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/16/ipad-pro-whats-a-computer-ad/

Please explain exactly what an iPad Pro is supposed to be used for. List out every possible use case of an iPad Pro.

I think you'll find that you will quickly exhaust the max character limit...

Here there you go, https://www.apple.com/ipad/

> Over a million other ways to use it [...] Turn your iPad into almost anything — from a math classroom or workstation to a professional recording studio

Sounds like a general purpose device to me.

There is no reason apart from Apple's closed-source restrictive software policies that the device is nowhere near as useful as it could be.

If it doesn't fit you, don't buy it only to complain.

There are other vendors with more open experiences.

If those vendors actually get enough market share, maybe even Apple might adopt them.

Exactly like they did with keyboards, pen, and windows management, that came before on PC and Android tablets.

If the largest vendor of computer hardware on the planet purposely locks down its devices for no apparent consumer benefit then informed users have every right to complain to the less informed how this harms the entire market in the long run.

It is the largest vendor, exactly because only a minority cares about using a UNIX shell on their tablets.

Software freedom has nothing to do with using a Unix shell and you know it.

Agreed. The iPad, from a hardware point of view, is a close approximation to Alan Kay's Dynabook concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook). It's a shame that iPads are so locked down; I'd love to use an iPad with an unrestricted operating system.

I have a Microsoft Surface 7 Pro. Even though Windows is not my favorite operating system, I enjoy using the hardware. I'm also looking forward to Framework's upcoming 12" convertible tablet; I also have a Framework 13 laptop.

Pricing will be key for that Framework 12. I hope it's competitive. Like ~$600.

Rants == clicks.

No one really cares about folks extolling the virtues of stuff. They want good, meaty, abuse.

I used to like Mr. Cranky, a lot more than Siskel and Eibert.

Ugh. Yeah. Why post it here?

Tablets and phones are for consumption, not production. End of story. This person just wrote some clickbait to generate some ad revenue.

What's the commercial depict?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjmaxCyJBc4

You are literally adding even less value than the article by commenting on how a supposedly useless article is useless.

And I don't agree. Those of us who know that markets have network effects and who believe that open computing is a value for humanity and closed systems opposite understand that it is value for new readers to know that things could be better, so as to steer at least some of the consumer choice away from these toxic, disposable products.

Are you seriously making the argument that writing to effect change is a waste of time? People do (2) because they want things to be different, and given enough writers, the needle may eventually move. Today, there's a lot more iPad-should-be-open sentiment than there was a few years ago, even from long-time Apple pundits and fans. Regulation is also quickly catching up.

I dub the distinction between a tablet and a laptop fake. Tbh they are running the same hardware. I started with Android and first things I did on my phones was to install terminal and ssh. Later it became impossible, because of the changes that were being imposed by Google ("for the sake of my safety").

What I valued Android over IOS was to have access to my files (like DVD-dumped futurama) that I could watch on them (I did it before it was trendy, before netflix came into phones, moreover before the data transfer got so cheap I could watch a whole movie and not pay through my nose).

On IOS it was possible though with VLC - I had to upload there my movies using HTTP server (yes - server had to be on a computer).

And then it began! You cannot listen to free spotify on your tablet the same way you got it on your laptop - you have to install an app and it will impose on you different limitations. HEY! This is the same thing as my laptop! HOW CAN YOU TELL!??? AH MY BROWSER WEASELED ME OUT?

so apparently I've witnessed a new device category being born. Not a mobile, not a laptop. Which has neither the rights and obligations of real computer nor of the mobile phone. It is something new (A TABLET) and will not let me handle my photos on it as I could handle them on my phone, it wouldn't let me browse pages as if this was laptop (even though I put it in the orientation the same as my laptop had) etc. etc. It caused me a lot of pain, as at that time me working at the bank, I had some limitations on the network, and I wanted to buy something on my iPAD, but the pages would detect me being "A TABLET = MOBILE DEVICE" and showing me different, broken versions of pages I wanted to navigate.

Don't most browsers have a "Desktop site" option you can turn on to tell websites you want the desktop version? It seems weird to blame your device for websites' bad decisions, especially when your device goes out of its way to allow you to force websites to correct their mistake.

It’s the whole entire industry making things broken and user-hostile.

It's really sad e.g. when you look at the browser you've been using for years and know that the manifest that was introduced "for your safety" is really introduced for their income

> Android over IOS.. access to my files

Apple eventually surrendered and exposed a file system via the "Files" app, but it's woefully neglected. Google is adding Debian Linux VM to Android, hopefully Apple will come to their senses and re-enable VMs on iOS, even if it's buried in Accessibility settings to avoid scaring non-technical users. Until then, iOS users have iSH (syscall emulation) CLI to slowly run Alpine Linux and manipulate files.

> MY BROWSER WEASLED ME OUT

iOS Safari has a setting to send desktop/MacOS User Agent string, but cloud services have a range of techniques for device fingerprinting.

they used to find it based on screen resolution (DPI) -> calculating size

What's wrong with terminal on Android? I'm regularly using Termux and it works. Don't use ssh there, but it offers to install openssh for me.

I use ssh on Termux pretty regularly. It's about as smooth as I can imagine a touchscreen terminal being, and took about zero effort to set up.

It's really nice with a phone stand and a folding Bluetooth keyboard. All fits in the pocket!

Can even run desktop environments with VNC server in Termux and Android VNC client on localhost.

Full local desktop apps on a phone, and yes Bluetooth mouse also works.

I don't understand these articles, they've stumbled upon what many of us have known which is that the iPad just doesn't feel the same as a Macbook laptop. The iPad just doesn't suit what they need, some people it does suit them better, others not.

They could've just gone back to the Macbook and left the iPad for others, but felt the need for an article.

I was telling people back in 2012 that whilst the iPad is a shiny new thing, it doesn't fit the bill like a laptop and subsequently our staff wanted both laptops and iPads once they realised that.

There's a lot of loose connections and frustrations in this article whereby the Surface Pro not being able to upgrade to Windows 11 being another source of issues, whilst this also impacts Desktop users it still wouldn't fix the keyboard and trackpad issues.

If you like the Macbook and its functionality, keep buying a damn Macbook then. Apple didn't lock you into anything, you tried to use a different Apple product in the same way you use your Macbook and found out they're not designed to work that way.

> not designed to work that way

Owners of unmodified M1+ iPad Pros and iPadOS 16.3 can run performant Linux/other VMs, e.g. Linux web server and iOS client.

Owners of unmodified M1+ iPad Pros with iPadOS 16.4+ can very-slowly run Linux/other VMs via UTM emulation.

Owners of jailbroken M1+ iPad Pros can run Linux/other VMs by adding hypervisor entitlement.

So then why doesn't the writer do that?

It's mostly limited to those who own older iPads and operating systems, rather than 2025 buyers of new devices?

>they're not designed to work that way.

It would be more accurate to say that they are designed not to work that way. In modern times, every limited-purpose internet-connected gadget is actually a general-purpose computer that has been deliberately crippled.

The reason you can't run arbitrary software on "your" iPad is because they have locked it down so Apple owns the hardware, not you.

I think we need to look at this in terms of what was the stock product originally designed to do, as opposed to with unlimited skills and expertise what COULD I do with this general purpose computer that most others wouldn't be doing.

A Macbook is a laptop, an iPad is a touch screen tablet. It doesn't matter how much I COULD rip it apart and reshape it, they were originally intended to be used differently. Buying one and expecting it to function the same way as the other is fine, but if it doesn't who is to blame.

I could buy a hatchback to travel and sleep in, but I'd probably need to buy a caravan and perhaps replace the engine to tow it and add a tow bar. Whereas I could just buy a caravan. Complaining I can't convert the hatchback into a capable van is beside the original point.

> Complaining I can't convert the hatchback into a capable van is beside the original point.

This is Hacker News. A hacker is someone who tries to find a way to make toast using a coffee maker.

Right, but we're not discussing an article written by someone on Hackernews but The Register

But we are discussing the article on Hacker News. :-)

The form factor is irrelevant: an iPad, a macbook, a tivo, a smart fridge, a raspberry Pi - they're all Turing-complete systems that can (in principle) execute any arbitrary code that can be compiled for that architecture.

It has nothing to do with ripping out engines or tearing anything apart. If Apple didn't deliberately prevent you from installing unsigned software or operating systems, you'd be able to do that.

A much better analogy would be the engine governor installed by manufacturers to prevent a car from going as fast as the hardware otherwise could.

Yes, the iPad is a vending machine, owned and run by Apple, but paid for by you, the customer.

I have the option of paying for every subscription service I use on my iPad without paying Apple a dime - ChatGPT, Google drive, Office 365, every streaming service, Kindle books etc

So do I, I just don't sign up for the subscription through Apple's services but natively through the provider.

Yes. But if the price is the same, it’s much easier to manage subscriptions through Apple.

Many don’t allow you to subscribe through Apple.

That's because the content provider is forced to pay Apple, and they are doing it with your money of course.

That’s just the point - when you pay outside the App Store, Apple gets no money for the subscription

Can you even use an iPad without an Apple cloud account? Can you install anything on it?

What’s wrong with using thier “cloud account”? The issue I was addressing is that subscription based services and software can be paid outside of the App Store and a lot of them don’t have an option to pay through the App Store like Netflix and Spotify.

> In modern times, every limited-purpose internet-connected gadget is actually a general-purpose computer that has been deliberately crippled. The reason you can't run arbitrary software on "your" iPad is because they have locked it down so Apple owns the hardware, not you.

So you also blame Microsoft or Samsung for not letting you do this on an xbox or some fridge with a screen?:)

Yes, of course. I try to avoid buying nerfed toys. I'm mildly concerned that general-purpose computers able to run unsigned code will disappear from the marketplace in the next 15-20 years.

>Will we still have just three operating systems to choose from - of which only two are really suitable for a worker's desktop?

That's going to go down poorly with the Linux enthusiasts

I'm not even a Linux "enthusiast". I simply find Windows to be a terrible product and Linux to be a better product. I simply use the least terrible option.

Unfortunately many people rely on proprietary software packages that don't run on Linux, such as Microsoft Office, the Adobe Creative Suite, and other desktop software tools that serve various niches like CAD, music, video production, desktop publishing, etc. There are often FOSS alternatives that run on Linux, but sometimes these alternatives have shortcomings that hinder adoption, such as lacking necessary features, having imperfect file format compatibility with proprietary file formats, having a less intuitive UI, etc.

With that said, the desktop Linux ecosystem has come a long way over the past 20 years that I've been following it, and I think desktop Linux serves the needs of people who are not reliant on the Windows and Mac ecosystems.

Even if the alternatives were just as good or better, their workflow is likely entirely different. Different keystrokes, different ways of doing everything, slightly different quirks than the "brand name" software.

I like some of the Linux alternatives more than the "brand name" software, but I don't work in media or document creation. If I had all the keystrokes for Adobe Premiere memorized, it would be a pretty tough sell for me to drop that to move to something like Lightworks or something.

The thing is that they're just tools. Having some keystrokes memorized does not mean you can't learn new keystrokes or, in some cases, you can't change them.

When I worked at uni I saw people rescinding when applying for a web design job because the computer they gave to them didn't had Photoshop installed - not that it was required to do anything super special, they just needed to crop images and export them to a given size. People, specially in the media sector, are incredibly dependent on "brand name" software.

I don't disagree, people can learn new keystrokes and workflows, but it just makes it a tougher sell.

Imagine that you've been using Windows for twenty years. You have been doing paid professional work with Adobe Premiere for twenty years. You have a workflow with the two that has worked for about twenty years. Linux might be better, but it's probably not that much better than the setup you have right now, and the applications you have built your business on don't exist on that platform, and there would be a pretty steep learning curve to pick up the new stuff.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I probably wouldn't move to Linux at that point.

Now, if I were already using the Windows version of Lightworks or Resolve, that might be different; a lot of my knowledge would transfer over, and that might be enough for me to change over.

That's why I run a Windows VM on my Linux machine. I get the advantage of snapshots, a better firewall, and control of how many resources it gets.

luckily the software I need to use works only on RHEL.

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I've been using Linux for a good 25 years. In that time, I've gone from having to tinker endlessly to get things working in a basic manner on a desktop machine, to running on a laptop with essentially no tinkering, and fewer issues cropping up than most of my Windows- and macOS-using friends complain about.

Sure, if you require a piece of software that can't run on Linux, then you're stuck wherever you are. Otherwise? ::shrug::

As former Linux enthusiast, I am alright with it, I rather game, watch hardware accelerated videos, got access to the tools I need, and I need to reach out for GNU/Linux, can always start a VM.

I mean, unless you work in software or extremely high-budget movies, Linux is a pretty tough sell.

A lot of the "mainstream" apps simply do not exist on Linux. LibreOffice isn't so bad, but most people simply want Microsoft Office. Lightworks is decent software, but most people want Adobe Premiere. Gimp is alright but most people want Photoshop, etc.

This isn't to say that Linux software "worse", I actually like Lightworks more than Premiere, and there are some applications that are competitive with the "brand name" applications like Krita, but "having good software available" is only half the battle. People get used to certain workflows, and if Linux doesn't support that workflow most people aren't going to think it's worth it to switch over.

I do work in software, and I run NixOS, and I like it a lot, since programming tools on Linux are generally very good (especially if you work in server-land like I do). I'm just saying that I don't really blame people who don't want to switch over.

LibreOffice is pretty bad. It doesn't tend to hold up past very basic use, and that use case has long since been taken by Google Docs. For serious work - e.g. legal services word processing, or many accounting workflows - LibreOffice doesn't hold a candle to Excel and Word.

The problem with desktop Linux software is that it generally doesn't have the demands put on it that would push it to develop competitively, so it tends to get stuck spinning in circles for decades. LibreOffice Writer isn't really a competitor to MS Word - it's more of a bloated Wordpad. Ditto The Gimp, etc. It's just not there.

Well at least Google Docs works just fine on Linux, I use it all the time, so I don't think that alone would be a deterrent to switch to Linux.

I don't work in law or accounting, and I can only speak to my own experiences, but I have generally thought that LibreOffice Writer is fine. Even back when it was OpenOffice, I edited and formatted a weekly newsletter in high school with it, and it never really bothered me. I admittedly don't use it a lot now, I'm one of those irritating LaTeX people. I've heard that OnlyOffice is better, but I haven't used it yet.

I definitely agree that LibreOffice Calc is considerably worse than Excel though. It works ok most of the time, but even the free online version of Excel is generally better.

I think that Krita is pretty competitive though. I don't work in art but I've talked to people who do and they've said Krita is pretty ok, and at least one person uses it for paid work. There's also Blender, which is (I think) being used for "real" movies now?

I'm curious, do you maybe have an example for each of the "legal services work processing" and "accounting workflows" that LibreOffice can't handle?

Heck, that's going to go down poorly with those who will correctly point out that not only are there a gazillion Linux desktop environments which equates to a lot more than 3 "operating system" choices ("Linux" is just the kernel and a set of included/bundled/related technologies) but that there are also other systems you can daily drive like FreeBSD that aren't even Linux.

I don't understand how the author managed to connect iPads running a toy operating system with Microsoft's serious business operating system not being supported on older hardware.

The connection is these vendors are artificially restricting users from running the software they want on their own hardware.

That's why I am still using iPad Pro from 2018. There is nothing in their new iPads that is interesting to me. I don't think I'll upgrade unless any of the following happens: (1) the iPad dies (2) it stops getting any updates and cannot install any apps (3) it can rust Python/Rust/Go/vscode natively at raw performance, without all those stupid, unnecessary sorcery just to make things run at a fraction of real hardware power.

Voting with my wallet.

While I think everyone has more than covered the contents of the article, the title is rather ridiculous in itself.

(Note original title in source: "Hardware locks us in Apple's and Microsoft's monopoly cages")

> Microsoft won't let users upgrade their older boxen to Windows 11.

OK but this does not put you in a cage with your older devices. Windows 10 machines are still general computing devices (or personal computer / PC). Eventually, the blocked upgrades will mean the consumer has to choose between installing Linux or buying a new PC.

That's a very different choice from what you have as an iPad owner (if it's your only device.) And as others have pointed out, buying that device was a choice. Arguably misinformed if you thought it was a PC when it is, in fact, a closed-source and locked down tablet.

You mention a Surface Go - so OK you know what a "tablet" that is designed to be a convertible between laptop and tablet looks like and how it works. But just because Microsoft did that, and Apple kind of advertises the iPad that way, doesn't meant Apple and Microsoft put you in the same cage. In fact, they are quite the opposite!

To address that original "monopoly" title - in fact again I think the opposite is happening. Microsoft "forcing" you to purchase something new because you can't "upgrade" to Windows 11. Well actually it drives some people to Linux or Apple. And it's software that is responsible for the issue, not hardware. No wonder you changed the title, but it still doesn't work with your article.

I have two iPads Pros. I still can't figure out where I can use them. I realize that they are overpowered entertainment devices for me now.

To buy one device that one can't figure out any use for may be regarded as a misfortune. To buy two looks like carelessness.

-- Lady Bracknell

They are solid for audio production too, with a lot of fairly powerful DAWs. (Like AUM or Loopy Pro.) you can even connect MIDI instruments from other apps into the DAW and then play them with a connected midi controller, add USB audio interfaces for multitrack recording and live performances, etc.

Or it can be a glorified PDF reader for sheet music (with a nice pencil to boot)… and it’s also great for drawing.

They’re very powerful devices. Sure, iOS is limited, with poor multitasking workflows. But you can still write very powerful apps for iOS.

My Samsung tablet replaced my dead netbook, it is perfectly fine for the occasional computing needs I had during travel, that I originally bought the netbook for.

I get to watch hardware accelerated videos, that the Linux distros on the netbook never managed to after Flash was gone never managed to get VAPI working.

I get to play games, designed for Android, without needing to translate Windows/DirectX on the go, because studios can't be bothered to port Android/NDK into GNU/Linux.

I get to read ebooks and take notes with the pen.

The detachable keyboard is good enough for short sessions of writing documents, sheets, travel planing, playing with shader code, python and C# development snippets on the go.

Care to share your preferred e book reader application that supports notes?

My ebook reader app is Moon+ Reader.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flyersoft....

You misunderstood the notes part, it is in general, not tied to ebooks.

I use mostly Google Keep.

Ah thanks anyway! I’d be after a pdf note taker that allows me to scribble on pages then later review scribbles :)

I am an avid iPad Pro user (on #3) but it took me making a concerted effort to unlearn over three decades of my understanding of what a computer is to me, my old standby app favorites, and to be willing to force myself to use the new instead of leaning on the comfortable old. Prior to that I’ll admit that it was an entertainment device. Now it can basically serve all of my computing needs.

What caused me to make the switch is the portability, battery, immediacy, and cellular option. For me it provides the utility of a smartphone and laptop, but with a better form factor

I hated it at first but its use quickly became second nature. Caveat here is I no longer write code or require total configurability into the bowels of the machine…and to date, for me, I haven’t found a computing task that I need or want to do that it cannot handle.

I bought the iPad Pro 11 (M4) on its release day and did the same thing you did: throwing out what I knew to adjust to new paradigms. I regret its purchase. It is still fundamentally a device that cannot handle code-based workflows, although it's OK for some media creation.

For software development, the canonical advice consists of excuses that rely on a "Pro" device to be a thin client. Remoting out to a workstation somewhere else defeats the purpose of having an M4 in the tablet itself. I can't even run a VM with native virtualization. A Chromebook with Crostini offers more functionality in this regard.

You are also a consumer in another way: iOS revenue models are optimized for rent-seeking, whereas that is only partially true for macOS - even for Apple itself. As an example, I use Logic on the Mac and I pay for it once - Logic for iPad is subscription based.

I don't hate the idea of the iPad overall - I have an iPad mini I use to read and mark up papers, and it's great for that.

Yeah I am probably the perfect customer for it. It ticks all the boxes I need and I don’t mind the subscriptions.

I also don’t get hung up on the whole “What ‘pro’ should mean” debate. I bought a new 11 pro M4 mainly for the screen and its usability in bright daylight, but I also don’t mind having excessive horsepower either. Rather have too much than not enough.

Yeah, I have a 2018 12.9 model and I haven’t really felt the need to upgrade. The tablet still feels snappy and all I do is draw, and markup papers.

I tried programming on it but without a shell and proper file system API, what can you even do?

I see visual artists and musicians having some decent use cases for them. Everyone I know who has an iPad that isn’t one of these professions is usually using it as an expensive portable streaming device

I think pastors and politicians have quite some use of them as well.

Or anybody that stands a lot without a desk handy, that doesn't want to use https://a.co/d/aqI3SvI and try type into a laptop.

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I use mine all the time for taking notes, keeping up with my calendar, and just for staying organized in general. The Apple Pencil is so smooth and natural.

>> Will we still have just three operating systems to choose from - of which only two are really suitable for a worker's desktop?

Such an intriguing statement. Firstly there are at least 5 major operating systems in play (windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS and Android. ) Plus a lot of "minor" ones (BSD etc), and any number of tiny ones.

But assuming he meant mainstream desktop machines, let's focus on Windows, Mac and Linux. I can only assume the "not suitable for workers desktop " means Linux. Now lots of techies use Linux for desktop, and there are lots who say it could be used as a general desktop, but it hasn't gained much traction there.

Linux of course reigns on the server, with Windows Server also strong.

Indeed you see this "choice of 2" (with sometimes a distant 3rd) in pretty much all hardware spaces. iOS and Android. Windows and Mac. Windows and Linux. PS5 and Xbox.

Notice how it starts first with the function - what the machine is designed to do. Then the mainstream coaleses around 2 players. But often with other minor alternatives.

This approach works well. We don't need 5 desktop OSs to choose from. Or 5 servers. Or 5 tablets.

> Or 5 tablets.

Two would be nice. Pixel (7) Tablet with GrapheneOS was a good start, but V2 was cancelled. Lenovo Yoga x86 is higher price tier.

I think there's a difference between Microsoft refusing to support completely operational hardware for their new OS, and Apple not adding extra features / support into a pre-existing product just because the underlying tech is now more powerful.

It sounds weird, but going OS #1 -> OS #2, you don't expect your hardware to impact it from a computer point of view. But going from iPad #1 -> iPad #2, why would it all of a sudden have a completely different OS and support when iPad #1 is even still receiving updates?

We've reached the age where you need 16GB ram to even keep some tabs open on Mac + Windows, and in terms of versatile computing and gaming I think cloud-based Linux really is the answer. Once it comes time for my next gaming computer upgrade, I'm pretty confident with just using a game streaming platform vs. paying $500 for a new graphics card + anything else (since my current MB doesn't support Windows 11...). Same goes for coding, just connect the IDE to your dedicated cloud box and away you go, all the power and scale you could ever need from $10/mo and up.

In my attic is a Dell PowerEdge T320 - it used to run VMware. That got as far as ESXi 6.5 and then it went out of support completely by VMware.

Last year I migrated all my VMs to Proxmox. I have two RAID volumes on it, so I moved the lot to the second volume, wiped the first one and installed Proxmox on it. I migrated the VMs over to QEMMU and binned the second volume (save power!)

The real point of this diatribe is that my attic server is fully supported once more by the OS vendor(s). They give a shit about me - Debian and Proxmox. Perhaps you might contrast that with your discussion about Microsoft and Apple's approaches to hardware and systems support.

"cloud-based ... is the answer", please, I hope not.

Why would you trust everything on somebody else’s computer?!

> What we see today is the outcome of almost two decades of design choices that have only recently started to accommodate keyboards and external pointing devices.

?? I've been using an iPad with folio keyboard for close to a decade and first party apps have always had fantastic support. Even third party is usually pretty good. I don't think the author here has any idea what they're talking about.

Yes? The iPad is a "content consumption" device. With the exception of a few graphics workflows, you're better off with a laptop/desktop.

Add a Bluetooth keyboard, & then the two being separate products becomes a farce.

I love the new MacBook Air's looks, but I can't help but constantly imagine how much better it would be as a detachable, or as a 2-in-1 convertible.

The thing is, the laptop is just a bad format period. Ideally you don't want to be looking just above where you type: good ergonomics requires distance between those two. An elevated tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard is a far far better option.

But Apple has these market segments that prevent actual good from being possible.

The thing is, the laptop was originally intended for on-the-go uses.

Do you know when a laptop's screen is at the right distance? When you use it in your lap. Or when you place it on something kitchen counter height and use it standing.

If you're using it as a desktop replacement just put it on a stand and use a wired keyboard. Maybe even plug in a larger monitor to protect your eyes.

It will still be cheaper than an iPad + Apple iPad keyboard and still do more.

Its still not the right height, if there are better options.

If you could elevate the screen - put it on top of a big can of oatmeal, use a cheap tablet mount clamp or stand - you'd have better results.

Coupling the keyboard to the laptop is an anti-feature. A folio keyboard cover will work better for most people. For those who actually need to do this for any amount of time, a ThinkPad TrackPoint Bluetooth keyboard & a tablet arm will make a very acceptable workstation anywhere.

> A folio keyboard cover will work better for most people.

Flexible keyboards aren't useful for people who type for a living :)

> ThinkPad TrackPoint Bluetooth keyboard & a tablet arm will make a very acceptable workstation anywhere.

Actually I think it's easier to carry around one item that doesn't need to be screwed into anything than three separate items, two out of which need a supporting object.

> Add a Bluetooth keyboard, & then the two being separate products becomes a farce.

Relevant:

Surface Tension

https://hijinksensue.com/comic/surface-tension/

> The thing is, the laptop is just a bad format period. Ideally you don't want to be looking just above where you type: good ergonomics requires distance between those two. An elevated tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard is a far far better option.

I bring a laptop to the office, put it on a stand, plug two external screens and a USB-C hub with a keyboard and mouse. But I can also use it on a train, at an airport, on a ferry without all that extra gear. In the latter configuration the distance from where I type to where I look is bigger than on your default iPad.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do also like my 64GB RAM, 1TB drive, and 12 cores.

The laptop is a perfect form for me. I'm sorry it doesn't work for you. The only thing for me "ideally" would be to be able to plug two more screens in (so... it's time to upgrade to an m4 max...)

I also bring a (Linux running x86) tablet with me everywhere. Its fantastically light and I can plug it in to two displays.

It has a very lightweight keyboard folio. More typically, i leave that at home & bring a small light clamp-mount arm that lets me easily mount it to whatever is nearby, tables or desks chairs or whatever. And use the very nice ThinkPad TrackPoint Bluetooth keyboard.

I have strictly more flexibility. And given that Mac has the same chips in both iPad and MacBook Air and Pro, it feels again like the distinction here is mostly arbitrary segmentation, not real. With ultra high end Asus Flow Z13 tablets rocking Strix Halo APUs, there's also proof that tablets can be incredibly power dense, if they want to be.

The laptop is a constrained design. That constraint is not a feature. You can do the same thing without that constraint. Just not on Apple.

I’m not competing with you here. I simply said that your “ideally” isn’t someone else’s “ideally”.

I think you've failed to substantiate why the laptop is an acceptable form factor, given that there are more flexible options that have none of the downsides.

People really need to just accept this. Apple might market the ipad as being a laptop replacement, but their actions is that it clearly isn't and won't be at least any time soon.

I admin 150 Windows machines, have set up Linux servers, TBH I am not religious about OS, though Android is my least favorite.

I recently got an iPad Air and a MacBook Air 15 to replace older devices (2018 & 2012). The MacBook is lighter and has better battery life than the iPad with Magic Keyboard, wasn't expecting that!

My biggest frustration with iOS is how it abstracts & hides away file system access. Especially for producing music across multiple apps I find it much easier on a Mac, same for any programming. Not to mention the dongle-mania for connecting peripherals! An iPad's just an overgrown phone at heart.

And...IME iOS doesn't have the same true realtime low latency performance as OSX. I have been able to flog Mac laptops, iMacs & desktops right up to the edge for audio/video production (Logic, iMovie, FinalCut, Ableton Live) and they'll absolutely keep up (within limits like reasonable audio buffer latency settings for complex projects). While iOS can definitely have audible glitches, especially with multiple apps open.

But I take the iPad out of the house much more. I think Apple could add touchscreens to laptops without destroying iPad sales, but I don't want them to iOS-ify OSX completely.

I don’t know if the author realised they proved Apple’s point: they have paid money for an ipad but they will pay more money for an m4 macbook air anyway.

Author has not tried WSL - its pretty amazing on windows and is the designated cage breaker for Windows. I run nearly everything inside WSL and all apps runs faster!

Thanks to Windows security not scanning files inside WSL, the laptop fan doesn't start spinning up when doing I/O intensive work. Can actually rest the laptop on my lap without wincing.

WSL is fine for some purposes. It just never got better.

I just wiped my 4-year install on my work thinkpad for direct Linux after wrestling with WSL2 which broke in numerous ways in every update:

- WSLg is a pile of crap, and it feels like no development was done on it after it was initially released. It is so easy to crash the display server. It still does not resume from sleep reliably. Anything that quickly opens windows or does any sort of automation (like selenium/cypress tests) are prone to breakage.

- Networking works until it doesn't. Sometimes updates break DNS. Sometimes the bridged networking just fails.

The second problem here is why I finally threw in the towel. I could not get networking working reliably in the VM after a routine Windows update. Everything feels completely hacked together.

Huh, I haven't experienced those problems on my thinkpad - sleep/resume seems to work without issues. But admittedly I am just doing simple developer work, nothing fancy.

Remember Jobs coining the phrase "Post PC era". Good times.

There was a period of about two, maybe three years where you saw nothing but tablets outdoors.

Now it's very rare for me to see someone tapping away at an iPad out in the wild, all I see are laptops.

I know a lot of people who don't own laptops/desktops at all. None in their household. They simply use their phone for everything and a few have tablets, especially the people with kids. If you go to a holiday resort and go for dinner you'll find that 90% of the kids in that place have a tablet with them. If you take "PC" as meaning "Personal Computer" I think Jobs was right. People still need a 'real' computer for work but personal computing for the majority of people is simply content consumption, ordering stuff on the web, and communicating with people and they can do all that easily on a phone or tablet.

Why did the author buy Microsoft and Apple devices and expect them to deliver their customization needs?

If I would attempt something like this today, I'd probably buy a used Microsoft Surface tablet from ebay and install Archlinux(ARM) on it, with Plasma Mobile and KDE. In the worst case I log out and log in again after I unplugged the device from its peripherals. And in second worst case I just use its mobile attachable keyboard with it.

I guess that was the dream behind the purchases of pinephones and pinetab devices back then, which were too underpowered in terms of CPU and GPU for it.

I’m personally not interested in a mishmash laptop-tablet thing. You end up with a thing that is either good at one and not the other or a thing that is bad at both.

The reasons this article cites are likely why so many of my peers, myself included I have switched to "home servers" to gain any sort of freedom. It's sad that it had to come to this, but for any device that's meant to fit into pocket or move around it's simply not efficient for our kind of consumer to have any control over the design process

I think there was a thread on Reddit recently, where the thread starter had been forced to use his iPad for work a whole day. The user concluded (paraphrasing) "its like replacing a truck with a small sedan. Sure you can still haul many of the same things, but it will require a lot more work and trips back and forth"

“Hey why doesn’t this tablet designed for “pro” web browsing replace my workstation?”

I’ve actually seen this sentiment so much from apple “pro” users. They seem to think that because the os feel is similar that it should just work the same. It’s the equivalent of expecting a gaming laptop to perform as well as a PC.

M2 has so much power, it's got more CPU power than Mac's which still do their job perfectly well, like my sister's old MacBook Pro, which she uses for design work.

Apple experimented with the iPad head to head with was also experimenting with the 12” MacBook retina which was only 12 lb.

If you want something iPad size with a first class keyboard and mouse experience there might not be a better remote terminal than the 12” MacBook (sans touch screen) compared to the iPad

The iPad is in a kind of gray landscape because it is not phone and it is not a Mac but they are treated special like the iPhone so they can put any greed-based limitations they want instead of it becaming a general computer.

"Do not buy something for a promise of what it 'could' do, but what it can currently do." I forget who said this, but you just need to follow this rule and you won't have this problem anymore.

Google Pixels are getting something akin to vm's and wsl. More than dex, but less than full visibility to all of the Android fs.

Termux is a halfway house. It's said this will be better.

Maybe iPad OS will do this too in the future? It feels like an air with a detachable keyboard is close.

> Maybe iPad OS will do this too in the future?

It did in the past, but OS support was removed. Hopefully it will return.

Apple's marketing team must be so good if they can convince HN users that an iPad is a suitable replacement for a "real" computer. No one who knows what a terminal or root access even means should be fooled by this.

iPad is a product segment, its not really comparable with legions of windows 10 machines not getting windows 11, which is vastly the same operating system as 10 with TPM2 and secure boot becoming hard requirements.

Yeah it sucks apple doesnt give you root access to your tablet. And it does suck that microsoft wont let us upgrade our PC's. But they are different unique variations on sucking for largely different reasons.

iPads have always been this way, right? They're an appliance, and only a computer in the technical sense. Did the author just learn how to program and he wants a terminal now?

> Did the author just learn to program

He is the co-inventor of VRML (1994), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pesce. Register bio says:

  Mark has worked in the technology industry since the late 1980s, and has contributed to all manner of products, from dial-up modems to 3D graphics including co-inventing VRML.

I'm 10 years in now in not running either Windows or Mac and reading these articles is so uncanny.

As a person who just entered the latter ecosystem as a matter of peer compatibility, after 10 years of Linux, it's miserable and I wish I could go back to what you have. Even with how blighted X86 feels, it feels even worse to have a computer that couldn't do what you wanted to and has the audacity to complain at you that it knows better and you shouldn't be able to alter certain parts of it

I switched my personal laptop to a M1 Macbook Pro (from a Thinkpad running Linux, also after almost 10 years) in 2020, mostly because I had switched to an iPhone a few months prior and was using a Macbook for work.

It was certainly convenient most of the time - most features I wanted worked out of the box, and most dev tools could be managed by homebrew (at least well enough).

But annoyances slowly stacked up over time. Things like so much software being closed source (and often paid), or updates taking too long, or not being able to debug why something didn't work how I expected (eg, sometimes when plugging into my dock w/ monitors, it would decide to put all the windows on different screens than when I unplugged).

I finally broke down last year and bought a new Thinkpad and immediately installed Gentoo. While I've spent a lot more time configuring everything, at least it works exactly as I expect and I can easily debug when something goes wrong.

glad to see it's not just me in this exact predicament. I'm thinking I'll switch to a device next that also supports cell modems because apple gave me a taste for it while not granting the greatest stability

I thought about a cell modem, but I carry my phone 100% of the time and can just tether

What is a computer?

Back in the 90s John C Dvorak wrote an article calling a Mac a Cuisinart. It was a criticism of Apple that they had created an appliance, not a general purpose computer. Granted the guy hated Macs at the time, but I think it’s a reasonable way to describe an iPad.

Stop. Buying. Their. Closed. Tech.

And you will be free.

This is pathetic, just get literally any laptop u want.. have one made up if u want, and put linux on it.

apple-heads have some sort of bizarre stockholm syndrome thing going on.

The mental gymnastics they do are insane. I guess that's what comes from decades of buying the same components as everyone else, but in a shiny box with a shit OS and a 4X markup.

Yet, another I've bought a tablet but should have bought a laptop to replace my old laptop "article". It's not ready, why apple does it like this we don't know... but pretending that we don't know it despite talking about it for 10 or more years is disingenuous and fails the debate at hand.

> It's not ready, why apple does it like this we don't know

What is not ready? A tablet today can surely run a full OS without restrictions [0]. Apple doesn't want it, and it's worth talking about it.

[0] https://puri.sm/products/librem-11/

Yeah but is the Librem 11 any good?

I already made that mistake with Linux phones. They were unusable crap.

Immediately I can tell you that $1000 for a tablet with an Intel N5100 (Celeron) is not a good buy at all. The processor you get in the iPad Pro is 7x faster at multi-core operations and 4x faster in single thread (PassMark).

You can play recent AAA games like Resident Evil 2 (Remake) on an iPad Pro. It looks very similar to a home console in terms of level of detail in graphics.

The 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited benchmark is a difference in performance score of 12x

You're also getting a tandem OLED display that's essentially the best display on the market.

These are not even in the same class of device. I have to seriously question what the Librem 11 is actually good at? What is the target audience going to do with it? Being able to become root and fuck around in the terminal on a potato device isn't a use case. I can just go do that on a laptop or desktop which will be a much better device for doing those kinds of tasks.

If things that tablets are good at and intended for like drawing, viewing content, and any tablet workflows (e.g. digital audio produciton or film editing) or games involving high performance are all literally 10x better/more performant on an iPad, what is the Librem tablet supposed to be good at that isn't going to be a better experience in something like a Framework or even just a Dell/Lenovo laptop with Linux installed?

People don't buy devices to read the source code.

It all depends on your use case. I'm using Librem 5 as a daily driver.

Isn't that kind of a cop out answer?

I'm sure it's a great daily driver for someone who wants to do almost nothing on their phone.

I mean we are talking about a $800 phone with no 5G modem. That's already a dealbreaker just from a carrier spectrum allocation aspect alone. This is a phone that will not get as good of a connection to do basic things like make calls and exchange texts/images/vidoes compared to any other device on the market.

> I'm sure it's a great daily driver for someone who wants to do almost nothing on their phone.

It has a full desktop Firefox with all addons, for one. Can your phone do that? See also: https://forums.puri.sm/t/nine-months-librem-5-as-my-only-pho..., https://forums.puri.sm/t/a-l5-review-1-week-to-my-ready-to-s...

> no 5G modem

What exactly do you get out of 5G? Watching 4k videos live?

I have found that keeping up with the modem capabilities of the average person's phone has been historically important for getting good signal strength and service in general.

I don't know if this is a resolved problem with 5G LTE and/or how backwards compatible 5G is with 4G (can they share spectrum? I honestly don't know, and perhaps it all depends on the particular carrier and how they allocate their deployments), but in the past you could notice that your 3G service would be a lot worse in its latter years of deployment than the 4G service simply because most customers had 4G and the carrier was allocating way more spectrum and bandwidth to 4G LTE service.

So you think about the median person replacing their phone every 3 years and you can figure that basically everyone in the US now has a phone with 5G capability, that's the service that cellular carriers are going to prioritize. That's also the level of service I am paying the carrier every month for.

And yes, 5G does get me a lot of great stuff like that. I actually tether my phone to my laptop or gaming handheld and play streamed games on it. I also work with large files so I can upload/download those large files to a server while I'm on a commuter train or in the passenger seat of a car. I can join video conference calls and things like that without issue.

I also personally switched from Android to iPhone specifically because so many carriers test iPhones so extensively (and there aren't an overwhelming amount of SKUs to test). The iPhone seems to have fewer carrier-related glitches in my experience. For example, I have a family member who switched from iPhone to Android and subsequently experienced call drops to their international calls consistently on their Android device (even after replacing the SIM card and other troubleshooting), but they resolved it entirely by switching back to an iPhone. Their carrier just didn't test out that particular Android phone that well, I guess. But the underlying reasons were irrelevant, they just need a phone that works for the purpose it's supposed to perform.

Considering that cellular service is the most expensive part of phone ownership, it seems to me that having a shitty device that can barely utilize the network's functionality is a way bigger problem than the device not being open source or not being Linux based or whatever line in the sane that Librem markets their very expensive phone under.

And of course I haven't even gotten into convenience features that depend on the proprietary app stores or carrier-integrated features like banking, transit cards/boarding passes/wallet functionality, CarPlay/Android Auto, visual voicemail, having a camera on hand that competes well with standalone point and shoot cameras, but I guess a Linux/Open Source die hard doesn't mind going back to the previous decade for those things. Still, those features are pretty damn enticing.

I can understand if you don't want those things but we have to remember that Librem is charging iPhone money for a device that does less things and has worse specs than a basic $100-300 Android phone.

So for you convenience is more important than supporting alternatives to the duopoly. I can understand that for sure, however keep in mind that duopoly is dangerous to the free market and its users in the long term. (See this: https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/). I do suffer from the lack of some features.

This is kind of like saying it would be better for me to take the train or bus to work and that car-based infrastructure harms everyone, but I live in San Bernadino or Indianapolis. You're not wrong but if you are in that environment it's clear which choice is more logical if I'm comparing a two hour bus ride or no transit at all to a 30-minute car ride.

Let's not forget also that Android is mostly open-source and that there are actual Google-free Android alternatives out there: GrapheneOS, /e/OS, LineageOS, CalyxOS...so Librem is competing with other open source alternatives that are far more capable and run on far better hardware.

That’s not really the discussion. We know that iPadOS is shit. On windows and Linux there are form factors that fit the users use case perfectly but they don’t want these products. Instead of adapting to those system they decide to rant about apple not doing what they want… yet we only see these posts from apple users that talk like there is no alternative.

Windows OS is bad for a tablet compared to iPadOS.

iPadOS is bad as a laptop compared to Windows.

Nobody yet has been able to fully square the two different paradigms.

ChromeOS balances the different paradigms reasonably well with Crostini and the ability to run Linux-based applications with native hardware virtualization. Solves for every power-user case you can't get from Android or the browser.

As soon as I'm running virtualization to get an app to run the OS has already lost IMO.

It doesn't balance the privacy reasonably well.

I recommend the starlite if you don’t depend primarily on battery power. Personally won’t be going back to Apple’s golden handcuffs, and would never consider the user-hostile MS.

Operating on battery power is usually a pretty crucial requirement for a tablet.

It works for five hours or so on battery. But I mostly watch movies on it while plugged in.

I have one, and switched to a Framework in a Cooler Master case, I carry around a portable screen to connect it to. Reason is power. Even if you get enough RAM, the CPU will peg at the slightest provocation.

/s

My life would clearly be better if all of my non-programmer non-technical family members and friends, young and old had a terminal and unix user levels exposed to them…

What a fresh and original take!

/s

> Will we have just two mobile OSes?

We already have an alternative. Sent from my Librem 5 running GNU/Linux.

This was one of the reasons I bought into the recent Raspberry Pi 5 tablet the Pilet on Kickstarter --- I'm hoping it, or a Raspberry Pi connected to a Wacom One or Wacom Movink 13 will work as a general-purpose device.

Unfortunately my Pinephone is rather dusty at this point.

The difference between them is significant, I have both. Also try SXMo DE.

You got to be kidding.

Linux is great for developer, that's all.

Everyone else is confused about it.

> Sent from my Librem 5 running GNU/Linux.

Or is that Systemd/Linux?