[HN Gopher] Unifying iPadOS and macOS
___________________________________________________________________
Unifying iPadOS and macOS
Author : fallenhitokiri
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-08-14 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.screamingatmyscreen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.screamingatmyscreen.com)
| sangd wrote:
| iOS is undeniably the one that would lead and determine how the
| future would be. In terms of money, iOS makes almost 5x more
| money than MacOS excluding all the services and wearables the iOS
| brings in as well. It makes lots of sense to continue invest
| heavily on iPadOS to attract more advanced users like devs.
|
| iPad Pro M1 is the baby first step to start bringing in more
| MacOS compatible pieces to iPadOS. Eventually it would suck some
| or even most of the MacOS users into the iPadOS.
| api wrote:
| I need a real computer. I don't mind a few UI ideas being
| borrowed where they make sense but if I can't run anything I want
| on it and can't multitask or combine things together it is not a
| real computer.
|
| iOS works fine for a phone. It's worthless for my job or my
| personal interests.
| criddell wrote:
| That's kind of the beauty of an iPad. It isn't for everyone. It
| hasn't been designed as a lowest-common-denominator type of
| device. There are a few things it's great at and those aren't
| necessarily the types of things a lot of people want.
|
| I have a 2018 iPad and it's easily my favorite computer to use.
| With a keyboard, it's lovely to write on. With the Pencil and
| Good Notes it's a fantastic note taking device. Get ProCreate
| and it's an amazing combination for sketching and drawing. By
| itself, it's a great device for reference manuals and videos
| when I'm doing something like fixing my washing machine.
|
| I don't read much on it because I have a dedicated e-reader. I
| don't play games on it because I have a console that's better
| for gaming. I don't write software on it because I have a
| workstation and laptop configured exactly for that purpose.
|
| I think as they make changes to broaden the iPad's appeal, they
| may be undermining it.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| iPad is the same iOS like iPhone, just with bigger screen.
| It's not a real device for work. There's no bash in iPad.
| There's no docker in iPad. There's no accessible filesystem
| in iPad. You can't connect arduino and program it with iPad.
| You can't install Java IDE and use it. It's infinitely far
| away from being usable. And making it usable means turning it
| into macOS.
|
| The only possible way for iPad to become slightly useful is
| to provide a proper macOS in a some way. But it's still
| useless because of terrible thermals and will throttle on any
| serious load. Even laptops are barely able to keep up with
| ever increasing demands from developers. Tablet is just not
| made for work. It's good to read a book, that I'll admit.
| Even browser is barely usable, there's no developer console
| to kill that annoying div.
| cwizou wrote:
| Interesting take, there's 0 doubt that iPads are incredibly more
| intuitive to use, and anecdotally, I've also seen the same
| observations regarding young and elderly. I think a good portion
| of that is the indirect pointing method (mouse or trackpad) that
| takes some use to, but there are certainly inherited conventions,
| features based on past limitations and other things that look
| just weird to a new audience picking it up.
|
| It's certainly not impossible but one could argue that some
| oddities could be cleaned up. Releasing software as dmg on Mac is
| really terrible for new users (and I hate that I did it for
| Aerial's companion app), it's inherited from the olden days of
| CD-ROMs and the fact that you have to unmount it is really
| something that could be improved on.
|
| Now, one could argue Apple has very low incentive to provide
| something better and push for a new norm (most software nowadays
| does zip and detect if user launches from the Downloads folder,
| complaining/moving the file in Applications for you), but that's
| definitely a relic of the past that, while you can still support
| it for legacy reasons, should be phased out for something better
| officially pushed by Apple (that is not just the App Store).
|
| The Apple approach to feature changes/simplifications on macOS
| though seems solely based on design. Hiding the document proxy
| icons on windows in Big Sur is a good example of this [1].
|
| If you've seen Monterey betas, Safari tabs are also losing
| functionalities (favicons worked a bit like document proxy icons,
| that's gone now) and while they rolled back some of the most
| egregious changes (they had made a utter mess with toolbar
| buttons in beta 1), the new UI is still clunky in terms of
| general usability and readability.
|
| I guess it looks epurated and consistent with the new Safari iPad
| UI, but do those change help in any way the new users to get
| around the inherited "peculiarities" of the Mac ? I don't think
| so.
|
| And when Apple does "line up" features to make them consistent
| accross platforms, it's always the Mac that loses. The phasing
| out of plugins in Safari for app extensions killed uBlock Origin
| for example, and the alternatives are certainly not as great.
|
| [1] :
| https://daringfireball.net/2021/07/document_proxy_icons_maco...
| joshtynjala wrote:
| Have you tried creating a .pkg file instead of .dmg? Much
| better user experience, in my opinion. The developer controls
| where the .app goes, and there's nothing for the user to
| unmount when finished.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Talk to a CS professor and they will tell you an OS is what is
| deep inside the machine but not see. Read a review in arstechnica
| and you would think an OS is about appearances and the exact
| shape of each UI component, etc.
|
| My understanding is that the kernel is basically the same
| already, it is the services stacked on top that are different.
| srvmshr wrote:
| iOS always ran a stripped down XNU/Darwin based on the original
| CMU Mach blueprint. Right from the first version.
|
| For a fact, Steve Jobs mentioned that in his iPhone
| introduction keynote in 2007
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's completely practical to ship the (almost) same kernel
| with different a different userspace. That's the difference
| between desktop Linux and Android, XBOX and Windows, etc.
|
| In fact if you care about performance and reliability
| (particularly add more cores and get more performance) there
| is no option rather than build on a mature kernel. Google's
| Fuchsia, for instance, is a high risk project which might
| never reach parity with Android.
|
| (I think of Microsoft's "dual track" OS strategy that took 5
| years to merge Windows 95 and Windows NT)
| neilalexander wrote:
| > Google's Fuchsia, for instance, is a high risk project
| which might never reach parity with Android.
|
| If you write an app using the Android APIs and not native
| code then it wouldn't matter if you were really running a
| Linux-based Android or a Fuchsia-based Android, as long as
| the API contracts were met. Google knows this -- it's not
| impossible to imagine that one day Android might not be
| Linux-based.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's possible, but Google has to get all the details
| right to make it "good enough" if not better.
|
| For instance they have to get the story right w.r.t. to
| drivers and the needs of handset vendors, carriers, etc.
| Performance has to be good. Microkernel and capability-
| based systems are notorious for having bottlenecks.
|
| Personally I liked the original WSL from Microsoft a lot
| but Microsoft didn't feel it was good enough because
| filesystem metadata operations are much slower in Windows
| NT than they are in Linux. If you do something that
| involves an excessive number of files (say build the
| Linux kernel) some people find the performance of WSL
| unacceptable. Yet, nobody complained about the slowness
| of filesystem metadata operations before on Windows --
| people figured that was just the way it was, might not
| even have known some operating system was faster, and
| they stuffed data in SQLLite and otherwise reduced the
| number of files that they handled.
|
| Microsoft felt they had to do something about it and came
| out with WSL2 which is inferior to WSL and to just
| running a normal Linux kernel under Hyper-V, VirtualBox,
| VMWare and the like -- because it is still closely
| coupled to Windows in ways that make "it just works"
| elusive. (e.g. just requiring that you install it from
| the Windows Store means you can't install it if your
| Windows Store is b0rked, which mine often is)
|
| So Fuschia might be the future, but getting there
| involves confronting a lot of details that they might not
| want to confront. If there are ten critical "non-
| functional requirements" and they only get nine of them
| they are doomed.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| I bought an iPad Pro recently, and I hate the fact that I can't
| run any of my favorite macOS apps on it despite the fact that the
| hardware is more than capable. And no web browsers / browser
| extensions / PWAs?
|
| It feels like a toy. Very disappointing.
| lostgame wrote:
| Return it and get a MacBook for around the same price.
|
| I don't understand the _point_ of iPad Pros being so powerful
| when they can't - y'know - run even _Apple's own_ Pro software.
| (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro)
|
| They're mind-numbingly expensive toys, for sure.
| dagmx wrote:
| They make a lot of sense for creatives.
|
| ProCreate, various image editing tools, even video editing...
| I know a lot of talented professionals who've switched over
| to iPad Pros for most of their work except 3D.
|
| A large part of that is the Apple Pencil and very low
| latency, but they appreciate every spec bump because it does
| help their type of work out.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| The only use I have for an iPad is Foreflight. If it ran on
| any other operating system I would not use Apple products. I
| dislike no fingerprint reader on the iPad Pro too.
|
| Still, it is nice for consuming books, blogs and video.
| walterbell wrote:
| The latest iPad Air has a fingerprint reader on the power
| button, which is nice. Hopefully this makes its way to
| other Apple devices.
| freediver wrote:
| This. Not only that but newest M1 is a league on its own and
| a clear path for Apple to dominate the desktop market. What
| Apple should do is entrench their hardware position with M2
| and M3 and heavily invest in macOS for desktop compute
| purposes.
| comex wrote:
| At least browser extensions will be a thing as of iOS 15.
| paulcole wrote:
| You knew what it was when you bought it right?
|
| As far as I know, Apple never said "you'll be able to run your
| favorite macOS apps on it because the hardware is more than
| capable."
| _ph_ wrote:
| There is a lot of reason for having different UIs to start with,
| between a tablet and a laptop or even a desktop computer. Though
| I think productivity could be better on the iPad in this regard
| too.
|
| But the very basic problem is file handling. It somehow seems to
| vary across apps. Some have local storage to themselves which is
| hidden from everyone, some have visible local storage, others
| support files/iCloud. While files can be cumbersome on its own,
| if at least all apps would share the data in a way accessible by
| files, it would be a start.
|
| Best example which keeps bugging me: music. I ripped my CDs into
| my iTunes library and consequently into Apple Music. Now, Apple
| Music decided to delete some of my tracks from its library. How
| to get them back? I even was able to put them into my iCloud
| drive, but there is no way to add music to your iPad this way. Is
| there any other way you can add tracks to Apple Music? Is there
| any way to cause iTunes, which still has all of them, to upload
| them to Apple Music again (never mention that I do need my Mac
| for that, destroying the notion of the iPad being stand-alone).
|
| Same situation with videos. How to copy videos from iCloud onto
| the iPad apps? And of course, none of these apps open something
| like an "open file" mechanism.
|
| I quite like my iPad Pro. But I never figured out, how to really
| "do" things with it. The only positive exception seems to be the
| "Working Copy" git client, which enables some apps to be used
| productively.
| thrower123 wrote:
| This was dumb when Windows 8 did it, and it remains dumb.
|
| Unifying an OS and it's GUI/UX layer across devices with
| fundamental differences like this gives you lowest denominator
| crap.
| defaulty wrote:
| As a power user on MacOS, I dread the merge. I can only suspect
| that MacOS becomes less power-user friendly in the name of
| "intuitiveness". I hope I am proven wrong
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I agree. My personal plan is to ride it out and then maybe find
| a machine that works well with Linux. I can't go back to
| Windows unless MS rereleases Win7. Win10 is crap and win11
| appears to be more of the same kind (i.e even worse).
|
| More to the point, this seems to be a general trend: we have so
| much better technology by now, but a worse society. That is
| something I don't know how to get out of.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It's just lazyness / QA problems at Apple that prevent high
| quality apps
| bluescrn wrote:
| No, it's more about the inherent limitations of touch-centric
| UIs, combined with limited multitasking (full-screen apps),
| and trying to hide the filesystem from the user.
| aikinai wrote:
| The file system hasn't been hidden for years. Unfortunately
| the app and components that interact with it are completely
| anemic, so it's still a pain to work with.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Maybe they just can't afford QA? Shareholders are demanding
| sometimes, but end-users aren't mostly.
| bonestormii_ wrote:
| LoL @ "Perhaps Apple can't afford..."
| FredPret wrote:
| Apple can afford a small country, and shareholders will
| certainly support an Apple management that insists on
| adequate QA.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Apple can afford anything in the world, except degrading
| quality / reputation.
| eddieh wrote:
| _> I can only suspect that MacOS becomes less power-user
| friendly_
|
| That's pretty much been the trend for years now.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| I saw this coming in '19 or earlier when they deprecated 32-bit
| software. I started moving away from Apple then. Now I still
| have my functioning 2017 Mac but I mostly use newer Windows/WSL
| computers, and my new work computer is an X1 running Linux. It
| is not hard to switch except for the lack of emacs keys for
| cursor control. (Unix user since '88.)
| tandav wrote:
| is macOS scans users data like iOS? (and reports to gov)
| lostgame wrote:
| No it does not.
| 130e13a wrote:
| for now, that is
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| iOS does not do this.
| tehabe wrote:
| macOS 12 will also scan uploads to iCloud and I'm pretty sure
| iMessage for minors will also have the backdoor active. So,
| macOS is as vulnerable as iOS.
| derefr wrote:
| Y'know Samsung's DEX, where you plug a Samsung Android device
| into an HDMI output and the output is not a mirror of the phone's
| mobile UI, but rather a full Android desktop UI?
|
| There's little reason that Apple couldn't do the same thing with
| iPads, where the "desktop UI" is macOS. Unify the
| kernels/userlands, keep the "Desktop Environments" distinct, but
| ship them both on iPads, with the macOS DE just waiting around
| for you to plug your device into a monitor.
|
| Apple are already training us for this with the new version of
| Continuity -- there's little difference between "control your Mac
| from your iPad" and "control the macOS DE container running on
| your iPad, from your iPad."
|
| The only real differences in interaction paradigm between
| Continuity and a DEX-like approach, now that I think of it, would
| be:
|
| - a shared filesystem
|
| - [possibly] moving iPad/Catalyst apps freely between screens,
| where they swap between being fullscreen on iPadOS and being
| windows on macOS
|
| This would also be a (rather-charitable) explanation for why
| iPadOS has never done anything smart so far when plugged into an
| HDMI display. If they were planning to do this, they wouldn't
| bother with half-steps like giving iPadOS apps multi-display
| support.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Adoption rates of these new features is too low to train a
| substantial portion of users.
| walterbell wrote:
| Many people were expectantly waiting for this to be announced
| at WWDC 2021, especially with the M1-based iPad including
| silicon support for hypervisor/virtualization and the 16GB RAM
| / 1TB storage model. Yet nothing was announced, suggesting that
| the only use of 16GB RAM will be upcoming memory-consuming
| Adobe "Pro" apps.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| IMO this is the first future-proof mobile device from Apple.
|
| Apple has bad habit to install absolutely minimum amounts of
| RAM into their mobile devices. iPhone had 2 GB RAM when
| Androids (with similar price) had 8 GB RAM. It means that RAM
| will be main issue for supporting those devices in the future
| iOS versions and eventually they'll be dropped, despite
| extremely powerful CPU and huge storage.
|
| But with 16 GB it won't be the case ever. And, of course, CPU
| will not significantly progress in the future and certainly
| will not the limiting factor. So this tablet should easily
| last for another 10 years (if battery could be replaced with
| reasonable efforts).
| walterbell wrote:
| Agreed, but not worth almost $2K for the 16GB/1TB model.
| Until Apple un-cripples the iPad Pro, it's better to buy a
| lower-end iPad + MacBook.
| hexe wrote:
| I want this, but not limited to only tablets.
|
| I want to own a single "pocket computer" and that's it, no more
| syncing, just a single device. I can drop it into a dock on my
| desk, that breaks out the I/O into a 30" display, keyboard,
| trackpad, speakers, and it activates the Mac desktop
| environment.
|
| Unplug from the dock, it pauses everything I'm doing on the
| desktop, and it goes back into my pocket and uses the touch
| screen.
| derefr wrote:
| You mean like this: https://nexdock.com/samsung-dex-laptop/
| hexe wrote:
| Yeah, but have it power all the peripherals of a full
| desktop. It could hot swap by dropping it into a magnetic
| dock/cradle whenever you need to "do some work", and then
| pick it up and walk away and all the desktop peripherals go
| back into hibernation.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| It's not about the touch screen, the UI, the hardware or "casual"
| vs "professional" users, but simply about the ability to
| create(!) and combine small specialized tools into something
| that's bigger than the sum of its parts.
|
| The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for this,
| and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are extremes.
| It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be achieved
| inside an ecosystem that's optimized for passive media
| consumption and online shopping though.
| linguae wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree; the app-centric model of today's
| desktop environments is the antithesis of the Smalltalk vision
| of composability. In an environment where everything is a live
| object, programmers can send messages to those objects. Thus,
| in the Smalltalk environment you end up with something even
| more powerful than Unix pipes and redirection.
|
| Now, Smalltalk provides the infrastructure for composability,
| but Smalltalk by itself doesn't provide us the full-fledged
| desktop environment and applications that users have come to
| expect; they would have to be implemented in Smalltalk. But
| where things get interesting in a Smalltalk-implemented desktop
| environment is that the live object environment is still there,
| leading to interesting possibilities. Imagine being able to
| control a word processing program through scripts written
| outside the word processor, without the word processing program
| itself having to implement something like Visual Basic for
| Applications? Imagine being able to control a spreadsheet with
| Smalltalk methods on cells instead of having to learn the
| spreadsheet's language or having to learn Visual Basic for
| Applications? The possibilities become even more intriguing
| when objects can interact with each other in ways that are far
| more general than Unix pipes. This is the desktop environment I
| dream of using, the unification of the ease of use of GUIs and
| the flexibility and programmability similar to the Unix shell.
|
| Oddly enough, in the mid-1990's Apple implemented a less-
| ambitious (but still very ambitious for its time) version of
| this vision known as OpenDoc
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc). There are some
| wonderful videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFJdjk2rq4E
| (a three minute summary) and at https://youtu.be/2FSFvEIpm5o (a
| 50-minute demo). OpenDoc was released in 1996, if I recall
| correctly, and there were some applications written with
| OpenDoc, most notably the CyberDog web browser
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog). However, once Apple
| bought NeXT in late 1996, Apple committed itself to building
| its next-generation operating system on NeXT, which had its own
| collection of object-oriented APIs. The cancellation of OpenDoc
| led to this famous spat during WWDC 1997 when a disgruntled
| developer questioned Steve Jobs on Apple's decision to cancel
| OpenDoc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o).
|
| Why was OpenDoc cancelled? One can argue that OpenDoc's
| cancellation was due to Apple needing to have a tight focus
| during its very vulnerable period in 1997. The proof is in the
| pudding: mid-1990's Apple before the return of Steve Jobs was
| an unfocused beacon that was able to produce many interesting
| technological demos (the Dylan programming language, SK8,
| OpenDoc), but there was no single coherent vision. The Taligent
| and Copland projects, which strove to replace the classic Mac
| OS with then-modern underpinnings, were disasters. OpenDoc was
| just one out of the many, sometimes competing, visions that
| Apple had during this time. Steve Jobs was able to turn around
| Apple's fortunes by having Apple focus on one vision for the
| Mac.
|
| However, another way of looking at the cancellation of OpenDoc
| is that its success would have completely upended the software
| industry. Instead of software vendors selling apps, software
| vendors would sell components, which users can integrate to
| create custom workflows. While I believe that this would have
| led to a lot of flexibility and user-empowerment, OpenDoc would
| have also been seriously challenged by major software vendors
| like Microsoft and Adobe, whose empires were built on selling
| large, proprietary software packages. They were not going to
| give up their moats without a fight.
|
| Still, I dream of the modern realization of component-based
| software, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about for
| the past few years.
| musesum wrote:
| > another way of looking at the cancellation of OpenDoc is
| that its success would have completely upended the software
| industry.
|
| Ironically, that was the main interest of Brad Cox who, with
| Tom Love, created Objective-C, which was acquired by NeXT,
| and became the way forward for Apple.
|
| In my experience, it is very hard to build a business around
| software objects. I spent a couple years trying to build an
| App around the Apple Watch. But, Apple only allows 3rd party
| complications. It is essentially a component. Apple
| recommends focusing on doing only one thing.
|
| Moreover, as a component, you the developer often have less
| control over the UX. On the Apple Watch, when a user opens
| -say- Spotify on the iPhone, your app is kicked out.
|
| So, a couple weeks ago, I decided to put the Apple Watch
| development on hold and do something else on the iPad.
| linguae wrote:
| I concur; I believe selling software components is a
| difficult business model for the reasons that you
| mentioned. This may have contributed to Steve Jobs'
| decision to cancel OpenDoc in 1997: Apple needed the
| support of its existing base of software vendors,
| especially Microsoft and Adobe, in order for the Mac to
| survive, and OpenDoc, which was designed with the express
| purpose of challenging the types of monolithic, large
| applications that Microsoft and Adobe developed, was not
| going to win the support of Microsoft and Adobe. Even when
| it came to the question of whether Microsoft Office and
| Adobe Photoshop would be ported to NeXT's APIs (later named
| Cocoa), both Microsoft and Adobe balked, which forced Apple
| to develop the Carbon API to make it easier for software
| developers to port programs written for the classic Mac OS.
| If Microsoft and Adobe balked at having to use Cocoa,
| imagine the howls that would have came from a demand to
| port their software to OpenDoc.
|
| However, I believe that component-based software is a
| natural fit in the FOSS community. One of my favorite
| Hacker News comments of all time is
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573373, where the
| author makes the case for why component-based software
| would have been a better fit for the Linux desktop than the
| standard approach of trying to build a FOSS replica of
| large, commercial platforms.
| wrs wrote:
| You forgot Newton: applications are components written in a
| memory safe language all running in the same address space
| with full access to each others' objects. The "imagine..."
| scenarios above are entirely doable (indeed, were done) in
| NewtonOS.
| fallenhitokiri wrote:
| This is IMHO a really good point. Somewhere in between App
| Groups, Share Extensions and custom URL schemes I really hoped
| at some point we would see a way to make this happen.
|
| My wife is currently using Affinity and Adobe products to work
| on illustrations. It works mostly the same for her as on her
| Mac. She does not care about small, specialised tools, she
| wants one app that does everything she needs. The iPad is doing
| a great job running those apps.
|
| I am not sure how many users (outside of the ones who got used
| to it) want UNIX-like flexibility vs "give me an app that does
| everything I need". If the later group keeps getting larger the
| walled garden approach to apps might actually work.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Even in Unix it's not like everyone is satisfied with small
| and specialized applications, or Emacs, let alone modern
| IDEs, would never have been created.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I am not sure how many users (outside of the ones who got
| used to it) want UNIX-like flexibility vs "give me an app
| that does everything I need". If the later group keeps
| getting larger the walled garden approach to apps might
| actually work.
|
| I think this is crux of the matter. Even outside the Apple
| ecosystem I see a tendency in people to not think about
| composing multiple tools but to look for an app that does
| everything.
|
| I'm talking about my colleagues, working in IT, but in a
| Windows environment.
|
| And on Windows there's PowerShell, which, although slow and
| to me not as flexible as bash, still allows one to do quite a
| lot of things. But people seem to see using it as a last
| resort, when there's absolutely no way of doing what they
| want by clicking around some window.
| emodendroket wrote:
| It's hard to remember all the arguments for a passel of
| command line utils. Discoverablility is much better for a
| GUI, and only someone who wishes to do something unusual or
| specialized will chafe against the limitations.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| UI discoverability has massively declined with the advent
| of touch UIs though. You can't hover a UI item to see
| what it does, and there's a lot of non-intuitive "magic
| swipes" and hidden UI elements in smartphone UIs which
| you just have to know about.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Touch UI items tend to be larger by necessity (and to
| have surrounding padding as a safety factor, which
| increases their "effective" size even further), so you
| don't really need to do the hover thing. Just redesign
| them to be more self-explanatory as opposed to wasting
| that space.
|
| "Magic swipes" could also be redesigned to be more
| intuitive, e.g. with some background soft-3D effects that
| make swipe-sensitive areas "stand out" from the neutral
| background.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Aren't magic swipes basically the analog to keyboard
| shortcuts?
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Your argument applies to all kitchen sinks, regardless of
| whether they are considered one application like VSCode
| or an operating system withs collection of applications
| like Unix. Both still have all the capabilities for text
| editing, syntax highlighting, version control and
| executing scripts. You can spread complexity around in
| different ways but you can't eliminate it.
|
| Personally I find GUI discoverability to be like the
| hunt-and-peck model of typing, vs touch typing being CLI,
| and I don't think it's a coincidence that touch typing
| and CLI go hand in hand: you never leave home row. You
| think about what you want to do and type the command,
| instead of looking through panels of icons or more
| exotically arranged buttons (which in the newest web
| apps, constantly jump around as the page lazily loads,
| new elements appear forcing layout changes, fonts load
| causing text reflow... I frequently tap the wrong menu
| item because what I really wanted got pushed down by a
| new appearing element as my finger approached the
| screen.)
| emodendroket wrote:
| Maybe with something like PowerShell, with very
| consistent command names and arguments, this model is
| believable, but I don't know what other than memorization
| is going to tell you that "less" is for reading a file
| and "dd" is for copying one disk to another.
| eecc wrote:
| Uh no.
|
| Take clicking around a Microsoft ISS configuration on
| Windows 2000 vs an Apache httpd config file and it's
| online doc.
|
| I briefly tried both, and didn't look back
| emodendroket wrote:
| For a task like configuring a Web server you're right.
| But do you think most tasks people do on a computer are
| like that? I don't think that they are.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I agree with you about discoverability, but in practice I
| find that tasks aren't completely new every time, there
| usually are _common principles_. With usage, you kinda
| get to know what is and isn 't possible, even if you
| don't recall the precise details of each and every
| command. So you can look them up, knowing more or less
| what you're looking for.
|
| On Linux, `--help` usually... helps. Or there's the man.
| On Windows, the MS docs are usually usable to find
| things.
|
| Of course, it may not work 100% of the time, but I find
| it's a question of philosophy. I'm not a Windows user, so
| I generally approach it with a mentality of "it would be
| nice to be able to do this, let me check real quick if
| there's a way". I usually manage to not have to click
| around for two hours when I have to do something
| repetitive.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Hm, well, part of the problem is, what man page are you
| even looking for? You already have to at least know the
| command you want. Honestly I usually end up resolving my
| queries with Google instead.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| I think I saw a command line tool that would show the
| documentation for all flags when you pressed tab... I
| don't remember it's name, though.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| But for anything non-trivial, that app that does everything
| person A needs doesn't do what person B needs, and vice
| versa. It mostly does what person C needs, who is a
| whiteboard made subset of the most used features and doesn't
| match anyone.
|
| It's not just UNIX-like flexibility, it's human uniqueness,
| and the uniqueness of the tasks they perform and the ideas
| they have. It's also the difference between owning and
| knowing how to use a tool, versus renting someone to do it
| for you who might help you today, but could rob or hurt you
| tomorrow.
|
| Just consider how we spend decades to teach new humans to
| read and write as well as they can learn it, versus just
| giving them a bunch of emoticons to signal when they're
| hungry or sleepy or bored. Because we expect them to become
| full peers, and architects of their world, responsible for
| the next generation, not just consumers picking options
| others prepared for them. And we don't care if they want
| that, because we know what they don't know, yet. We base our
| judgement on the information we have, not the information
| they lack.
|
| Making an exception for computer literacy just because it is
| hard (as if language and reading and writing aren't until you
| get used to them) set us on a terrible path.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> Just consider how we spend decades to teach new humans
| to read and write as well as they can learn it, versus just
| giving them a bunch of emoticons to signal when they 're
| hungry or sleepy or bored. Because we expect them to become
| full peers, and architects of their world, responsible for
| the next generation, not just consumers picking options
| others prepared for them. _
|
| Thanks for this summary of the case for general purpose
| computing.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Why should the average person learn these skills in
| particular rather than plumbing, cooking, woodwork, auto
| repair, or any number of other useful skills they could
| also learn?
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| Because most of those skills are relatively easy to be
| picked up at any stage in life, whereas computer literacy
| - or even a new programming language - is quite hard to
| introduce into people after they are 30 or so.
|
| Take this with a grain of salt, as it is based mostly on
| my own experiences, although I remember at least an essay
| from Paul Graham talking about how rare it is to have a
| programmer switch languages after some age.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I have changed languages every time I started a new job
| and sometimes just switching projects on the same job. I
| don't think learning a language is really that big a deal
| for a programmer.
|
| I'm sure it's hard to learn to be a serious programmer
| past a certain age. But it's not easy to learn a new
| (human) language or get really good at many of the other
| skills I mentioned that quickly either.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I don't see your point. I think people should learn those
| too if they want. And we do need people to learn them.
|
| But nobody would suggest that someone that can only put
| together an IKEA nightstand is qualified for carpentry on
| the level of house building or fine cabinetry. Just
| because you can water a garden with a hose doesn't
| qualify you to work on water mains.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Right. But most people do not work on water mains or as
| professional carpenters, nor does society need them to be
| able to start at any time.
| Glide wrote:
| Counterpoint to this, is that I've seen people be reluctant to
| click where they are not reluctant to touch. That barrier is
| vital for people who did not grow up with tech to interact and
| experiment with it.
|
| Here's one question: hover on focus vs click to focus?
|
| Hover makes sense if you think of the pointer as a finger.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Those are just different input paradigms that have evolved
| over time, one isn't inherently superior to the others. Cars
| have a much more difficult UX than kbd+mouse, touch, gamepad
| or (Wii-style) point-and-wiggle interfaces, yet the relative
| difficulty of driving a car for "technical" vs "non-
| technical" people rarely comes up in discussions.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >That barrier is vital for people who did not grow up with
| tech to interact and experiment with it.
|
| Who are you talking about? Senior citizens? Or maybe people
| outside of the US in developing countries? Because anyone
| under 50 in the US has grown up around tech.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Don't just assume that default. Remember more than 10% of
| the US still doesn't have internet, and a shocking portion
| of the US has smartphones as their only method of computing
| and would be dumbfounded at a PC.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Yeah, I don't buy that, unless you are talking about the
| Amish or someone willfully avoiding technology. And in
| that case, we are not really losing "future techies" are
| we?
|
| Regarding the smartphone point, again, you might be
| talking about elderly people or self-isolated people.
| Otherwise all people under 50 have used computers in
| their school classes and would not be dumbfounded at a
| PC.
| amelius wrote:
| iOS is also great as a software copy protection scheme. You
| can't have that in an open OS without compromises.
| amelius wrote:
| It's basically like DRM at the device level.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Assuming enough apps expose functionality through it, Shortcuts
| is the bridge between walled garden apps and UNIX pipelines,
| and Apple made a very clever move in making Shortcuts how Siri
| discovers functionality.
| walterbell wrote:
| Is there a way to version-control shortcuts and import/export
| them between devices, especially for those unwilling to use
| iCloud and associated keyring upload and content scanning?
| jon-wood wrote:
| Not that I can see, but frankly if you're not willing to
| use iCloud, give up on Apple devices because it's what
| makes basically all the good stuff work. (This is not an
| invitation to get into yet another debate on recent events)
| walterbell wrote:
| There are enough good iPhone/iPad apps to use Apple
| devices with self-hosted storage (WebDAV, CalDAV,
| SMB/SFTP/DLNA, Git).
| ratww wrote:
| _> the ability to create(!) and combine small specialized tools
| into something that 's bigger than the sum of its parts_
|
| Funny, the possibility to do that currently exists in a walled
| garden, for audio apps: https://audiob.us . This is used by
| creators and live performers, exclusively. I don't think anyone
| uses applications in this ecosystem for "consumption" purposes.
|
| The problem was never was the current OSs, it was just about
| app makers not willing or not knowing how to collaborate
| amongst themselves. It was also never about open vs closed,
| since AudioBus is proprietary and 99% of the apps that support
| it are also proprietary.
|
| The thing about UNIX pipes is that they use plain text.
| AudioBus uses audio. Those are two things that naturally impose
| limitations. Developers seem ok with those "natural
| limitations" but whenever you want to impose limitations to
| something else you immediately get pushback.
|
| You wouldn't be able to do that in a business CRUD app for
| example. The amount of wheel-reinvention is too big on those,
| compared to audio/video/unix-tools.
| zepto wrote:
| > The "walled garden app ecosystem" is exceptionally bad for
| this, and the UNIX shell is exceptionally good, but both are
| extremes.
|
| Very true.
|
| > It's hard to imagine how a UNIX-like flexibility can be
| achieved inside an ecosystem that's optimized for passive media
| consumption and online shopping though.
|
| Unix-like flexibility is also extremely insecure and easy to
| screw up.
|
| It's fairly obvious that the App Store ecosystem can and is
| becoming increasingly flexible. Things like shortcuts and
| safari extensions are obvious examples.
|
| Unix-like flexibility will likely _never_ come to iOS, nor
| should it, but it's easy to imagine a steady drumbeat of easy
| to use managed points of flexibility that ultimately provide
| 80% of what people use Unix-flexibility for but without the
| insecurity or brittleness.
|
| It's not so easy to imagine how ease of use, security and
| robustness can be retrofitted to unix any other way.
|
| Remember iOS _is_ Unix. It's just a matter of what they build
| for end users.
| simonh wrote:
| Are Windows, Linux and MacOS really better platforms for lots
| of tasks, performed by mainstream and professional users for
| daily tasks, principally because they are used to pipe text
| between command line tools? This is delusional.
|
| I have good news, iOS user's productivity woes are solved.
| Using iSH you can pipe text between command line tools all day
| every day. Finally the power of the iPad is unleashed!
| imiric wrote:
| This must be sarcasm... There's much more to being productive
| with an OS than piping text on the command line in an
| emulated and highly restricted environment. The command line
| is a management interface to the OS, not a sandbox you get to
| play in with the tools the manufacturer allows you to.
|
| I would like seamless interoperability between CLI and GUI
| apps, a unified file system, the ability to run virtual
| machines, containers[1] or maybe just nginx[2].
|
| And then you have the usability issues of the iPad(OS) like
| external displays being mirrored only, or only recently being
| able to actually access files from a USB drive...
|
| The iPad is a great media consumption device, that has some
| limited professional use (art, video editing maybe), but
| let's not fool ourselves that it's anywhere near being a
| replacement for a fully functional computer.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/63
|
| [2]: https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/137
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The text piping is just one small part and not the most
| important, instead its about sharing and processing any type
| of data with small tools that can be combined like lego
| blocks (and if there isn't the right lego block for a problem
| you can build your own). The UNIX shell is just one very
| primitive implementation of that idea (and yet it's still
| much more powerful than anything we have on iOS or Android).
|
| In the "mobile app ecosystem", each application is more or
| less an island. It _would_ be possible to achieve something
| similar on iOS /Android devices, but the entire "value
| proposition" of walled garden ecosystems isn't compatibel
| with this idea of open and creative computing. One
| prerequisite is that I actually own my device and can do
| anything I want with it, without the platform owner getting
| in the way.
| simonh wrote:
| On iOS now we have all the same interchange mechanisms
| between applications we have on desktop. Decent file
| management, rich content cut-and-paste, side-by-side
| applications. Share sheets are great.
|
| The main limitation is the interaction model, and that's
| just down the the mechanics of touch interfaces. Firstly
| fingers are imprecise big fat squishy blobs. Secondly the
| tablet form factor doesn't afford a large physical
| keyboard. These are the impediments and they're just facts
| of the form factor. the new multi-tasking interface in
| iPadOS looks like a great step forward, but it's always an
| issue.
| adrusi wrote:
| That's just it. The future is very likely most people using
| iPad-like devices. They will need some kind of keyboard, so I'm
| not sure it's going to be tablets mostly, but the software will
| resemble that of smartphones.
|
| But no desktop operating systems are well suited to being used
| primarily by professionals, not even Linux. The desktop
| paradigm is fine, but it was designed with the idea of making
| computers more accessible, and it inhibits composing different
| pieces of software together, which is what a professional-first
| operating system should optimize for.
|
| I'm not sure how viable a good professional OS is. It would
| arguably require graphical software vendors through the biggest
| design paradigm shift in their history, to serve a relatively
| small market. The transition to the desktop paradigm wasn't as
| demanding -- you just switched from taking control of the
| graphics hardware and controlling the entire screen to doing
| basically the same thing, just with the OS as a proxy so that
| you're rendering to a smaller rectangle. Composable graphical
| interfaces means abandoning the idea of having complete control
| over your rectangles.
| f6v wrote:
| > But no desktop operating systems are well suited to being
| used primarily by professionals
|
| I love macOS and I'm a professional. I mean, I get paid for
| what I do. I'm a professional, right?
| adrusi wrote:
| Well it's roughly as good as your other two options, none
| of which are terrible. I'm not trying to insult the people
| who use.. literally any operating system available today.
|
| But surely you can imagine ways that macOS could be better
| suited to your needs. Why (to give an example that's easy
| to explain briefly, not necessarily the most important one)
| are the various things you have open organized primarily by
| which application can open them, instead of which task
| they're relevant to? You can organize your browser tabs by
| task by using multiple windows, but why can't those windows
| hold anything relevant to the task they represent _except_
| browser tabs? Why can 't you have your terminal and text
| editor grouped with your webpages? It's because less
| sophisticated users expect each window to belong to exactly
| one "application," and because software vendors assume that
| their job is to make self contained "applications," and not
| composable graphical components.
| woah wrote:
| You can use separate desktops. I don't bother though
| adrusi wrote:
| Yes. And yet people who use workspaces still use windows
| with multiple tabs, and have the layout of windows in the
| workspace dictated by application-level sorting.
|
| I actually used a desktop that let you group content from
| different application in the same group of tabs for a
| couple years in college, by using i3/sway and a custom
| Firefox extension. It's an upgrade over just workspaces.
| I stopped working this way because I switched to tree-
| style-tabs and there's no window manager that gives you
| anything like that, and it was on net a workflow
| improvement.
| diegof79 wrote:
| > The desktop paradigm is fine, but it was designed with the
| idea of making computers more accessible, and it inhibits
| composing different pieces of software together,
|
| The Xerox Parc and Smalltalk are the ancestors of today's
| WIMP UI. If you look at Squeak (or Pharo) you'll see how is
| possible to make a desktop UI that's more composable than the
| usual Unix shell. The problem is not the desktop paradigm,
| but a lack of commercial interest.
| adrusi wrote:
| I wouldn't call smalltalk systems part of the same paradigm
| as mainstream desktops, although if historians call them
| both desktops then we can use that name for both.
|
| I think we can do better than squeak/pharo, but they're
| fine, really. They're at least the kind of thing I'm
| talking about.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| The Unix shell was exceptionally good for its time. Powershell,
| IMHO, go it right by not sending strings but objects around.
| This gets you around the issue of spaces and means you can send
| more than one value.
|
| I haven't been able to play with the shortcuts functionality
| because I don't have an iPhone, but if it is what I think it is
| it, it is a powerful tool to do things with.
|
| We shouldn't fail to acknowledge that most, if not all, spend
| more time consuming than creating.
|
| Then you have the group that isn't served with something as
| powerful as a real computer. My grandparents would be much
| better served with an iPad instead of a computer, since all
| they need is a browser and a system to do video calls.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| And that's exactly why the "great unification" doesn't make
| sense.
| indymike wrote:
| It's no surprise that inexperienced computer users can get more
| done with a mobile UI than a MacOS (or for that matter, most
| classic computer UIs). The big difference is that to operate a
| mobile device, you don't have to be able to read and understand
| what the words mean. That doesn't mean a mobile UI is the right
| one for every laptop, or for a Macbook.
|
| We've seen many tries at unifying the design language between
| mobile and computer. ChromeOS, Windows 10, Android Desktop Mode,
| Ubuntu's Unity all are mobile/desktop UIs. What makes them work
| (to the extent they do work) is that most devices have touch
| screens (well, not so much with Android in desktop mode). Without
| the touch screen, optimizing the shape of UI components for touch
| is actually a bad experience as a pointing device works very
| differently than does a touch screen.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| If the latest iPhone chip is as powerful as the Intel chip used
| in MacBooks, why shouldn't I be able to connect a hdmi to usb c
| cable to my phone and get a full MacOS machine on the external
| display? (Like Samsung dex does this or so did Ubuntu phone from
| 2014-15?)
|
| Same question with Android phones and Chrome OS.
|
| What's the technical challenge?
|
| I feel the only reason Apple won't do it is because then instead
| of buying 2 to 3 devices, people would buy just one, which will
| hurt their revenue. (Doesn't explain why Google won't)
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| They can't get rid of a general purpose OS. They have to have
| products that allow you to write software for the iDevices, and
| web applications, in general. You need macOS for these things.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| Virtualization.
|
| I have never needed to access the shell on my iPhone. But to do
| dev work I obviously need it on my Mac. But if you look at the
| rise of Docker and other such things, running stuff on the core
| OS is not always very optimal. It would be just as good to have
| a virtualized machine in whatever OS I want and be able to take
| that around with me. When I can have that, I don't really care
| how locked down they make the OS as long as I can stay
| productive.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Not really. They can set up cloud boxes for that (with pre-
| installed libraries and simulators) and let Microsoft, HP, Dell
| etc serve their beloved developers with crappy low-margin
| hardware.
|
| All the development goes to the cloud nowadays. The local
| machine will soon become irrelevant.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Maybe the future will be 90% of normal users using dumbed down
| touch devices, and the rest of us "power" users who need to
| develop stuff will be using a normal OS.
|
| Maybe the normal OSes that we all grew up with are actually
| overkill for these other users and they dont even want it. Why
| would they need a shell? Or the ability to install some arbitrary
| programs? They only need email and word and thats it.
|
| Maybe this is not a bad thing in the end? Who knows.
| lisper wrote:
| It depends on whether you think computers should be tools for
| empowering people or subjugating them.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| But isnt that too far fetched? Most people dont care about
| anything else than checking emails and playing candy crush.
| They dont think about empowerment or subjugation or changing
| the world.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Even if it is not done daily, not being able to tinker with
| your system is fundamental. You don't have to be an expert
| yourself, but most computer users know someone with in-
| depth knowledge or just follow step-by-step instructions
| from the web or, imagine the concept, a computer book :)
| This allows a lot of control of your computing environment,
| you just don't get on an iPad.
| lisper wrote:
| Beware of self-fulfilling prophecies, especially this one:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's sad that we can only think of touch screen interfaces as
| "dumbed down". The affordances of a touch-centric interface
| have yet to be fully explored; at least in principle, there's
| no reason why they could not be made just as capable as a
| keyboard+mouse.
| canuckintime wrote:
| It all comes down to text input. Steve Jobs launched the
| iPhone with only a touch screen but he launched the iPad with
| a hardware keyboard accessory (discontinued after a year but
| then reintroduced with the iPad Pro). So with iPadOS it's
| always really been touch+keyboard and frankly mouse+keyboard
| is better.
|
| If Apple managed to offer a revolutionary input for the iPad
| (perhaps subvocalised speech input or a a redesigned
| touch/pen input) it would be the first step to a touch-
| centric interface as capable as keyboard+mouse
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Gestural text input is very much a possibility. It was
| available on palmtop devices some 20 years ago, and these
| had far worse touch sensitivity than any modern tablet or
| even a modern phone.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I've written about this before, in "The Mac and the iPad aren't
| meeting in the middle yet":
|
| https://micro.coyotetracks.org/2021/04/21/the-mac-and.html
|
| While I won't repeat myself _too_ much, my basic point is that
| Apple sees iOS (and iPadOS) devices as application consoles and
| Macs as general purpose computers, and there is no good business
| case for changing that any time soon. The Venn diagram of "users
| likely to walk over such a drastic change to the Mac" and "users
| likely to spend boggling amounts of money on Apple hardware" is
| close to a perfect circle, and the accounting department would
| probably not be super keen on taking the bet that the increased
| service revenue from shoving all app sales through the App Store
| would make up for the last hardware sales. You need 15-30% of a
| hell of a lot of apps to make up for a single lost 16-inch
| MacBook Pro sale, let alone a Mac Pro.
|
| Furthermore: given all the radical changes Apple made to the Mac
| in 2020, that still feels like the "now or never" moment. I wrote
| back in April that "if M1 Macs and macOS Big Sur didn't lock us
| into an App Store-only world, it's pretty unlikely macOS Pismo
| Beach or whatever is going to." Well, it's a year later, and
| macOS Monterey still isn't. Maybe in a year or two macOS Fresno
| will come along and prove me wrong, but I'm pretty confident it
| won't.
|
| The flip side of this is that I don't think iPadOS is going to be
| opened up. I also wrote that I didn't think we would be able to
| run macOS apps on M1 iPad Pros the way we can run iOS apps on M1
| Macs; that's holding true so far, too. I'll note here, though,
| that the Hacker News crowd has specific ideas about What Makes a
| Real Computer that I don't think are widely shared by the non-
| engineer crowd, and that honestly a lot of you don't have a clear
| idea of how much automation and app interoperability is possible
| within iOS's restrictions. I _prefer_ using the Mac, in no small
| part because I 've been using Unix for close to three decades,
| but it's startling how much I'm able to do on the iPad even with
| its current nerfball limitations.
|
| And, sure, the obvious objection is that "application console" is
| arbitrary, and it is. But isn't "game console" just as arbitrary?
| I mean, a PlayStation 5 has an 8-core CPU with 16GB of RAM; you
| can't develop software on it because Sony won't let you, full
| stop. We're more annoyed about that limitation being on the iPad
| because the arbitrariness feels more obvious, because we didn't
| buy the iPad "only" for gaming. But on a _technical_ level, there
| 's not a whole lot of difference.
|
| The linked article makes the prediction that Apple is going to be
| trying to drive more and more people to the iPad and away from
| the Mac. I don't buy that, simply because the evidence just
| doesn't support it. They have literally just reported the
| strongest quarter of Mac sales in the company's history. It's not
| just that they're moving to their own CPU architecture, it's that
| they're in the process of rolling out new industrial designs for
| the entire Mac lineup. This is not what you do if your business
| goal is to have Mac sales taper off!
|
| My feeling now remains the same as it did, er, all the way back
| in April: iPadOS and macOS are never going to merge. _In the long
| run,_ there is going to be an operating system that replaces both
| of them, and the groundwork for that new OS is being laid out
| now. But it 's not going to be here any time soon, and nobody
| (including me) should be making confident predictions about what
| that new OS will be -- what it will and won't do, what it will
| and won't allow, how locked down or open it will be.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Locking users in AppStore will not happen for Macs, because
| users just won't upgrade and buy new hardware. Who needs
| computer which he can't control. That's absurd. They might hide
| that switch to enable full control over computer, but that's
| about it.
| gosukiwi wrote:
| Funny the author suggests defaulting to showing all apps as if it
| was mobile. Windows 8 tried that, didn't work out too well.
|
| I do think it would be great to unify though, maybe find a way to
| keep everyone happy. It would be great to just have an iPad (or
| any tablet device) and be able to just use a bluetooth mouse and
| keyboard, and be able to run any IDE, game, or app you want.
|
| As computers get more powerful, it might not even be necessary to
| have a full-blown desktop PC for regular personal use.
| retskrad wrote:
| I think iPad is the one product that Apple is the most proud of
| and it shows. The 2021 iPad Pro is the most sophisticated product
| in Apple's lineup. It's the smoothest, fastest and most elegant
| software they have ever made.
|
| I know some people who used to work at Apple and they said it was
| clear that Apple wanted to let the Mac die and focus primarily on
| iPadOS and iOS but regular users and professionals kept buying
| Macs so they were forced to revert their attention to it again.
| john_minsk wrote:
| I would argue that this is just "timing" thing. If we look far
| enough into the future I would bet that almost 100% of regular
| tasks should be done not only on iPad, but on iPhone.
|
| Human comes to work => docks/AirPlays their system to external
| monitor => does work in browsers/office apps. We are pretty
| close to this reality tbh. Mostly software is a limiting
| factor.
|
| As for computer pros...we probably will be forced to use some
| other vendors(sad) or use remote systems for compute tasks
| while using our phone/tablet as thin client.
|
| Thanks Apple for not jumping into that train just yet!
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Yes indeed, this makes a lot of sense for customers but then
| Apple would lose money only selling one device to most people
| (and also maybe a watch).
|
| The last time I visited my Dad, I tried plugging my iPad Pro
| into his new Apple 6K monitor - really nice! Some apps like
| Mosh use two displays fairly well.
|
| Even with limited multiple windows, it was nice. Then playing
| Apple Arcade games on the 6K monitor was visually stunning
| and fun.
|
| If I had only one device that could function as you and I
| want it to, it would be an iPhone or new iPad Pro that also
| functioned as a cell phone. I use the smaller iPad Pro, and
| it really is portable. Probably an all in one iPhone would be
| best.
| fallenhitokiri wrote:
| > Human comes to work => docks/AirPlays their system to >
| external monitor => does work in browsers/office apps.
|
| This sounds like Samsung DeX?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| OQO had much of this working ~14 years ago, but I don't
| think it met much of the phone replacement functionality
| that it would have needed.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If they would put macOS on iPads or iPhones it could be a
| reality today, but I see no indication that iOS/iPadOS are
| going to be suitable for this any time soon.
| tehabe wrote:
| Depends on what you mean with unify? Apple locked up macOS more
| and more over the years and I guess or fear, it is just a
| question of time until you can no longer install apps outside the
| App Store. After that the difference between macOS and iOS is
| just the UI.
| memetomancer wrote:
| I for one ain't bothered: It's clear to me that Apple needs tools
| to engineer these spectacular devices and there would be little
| or no sense to them designing away the power of MacOS and landing
| on a product range limited to simple consumption. Does anyone
| foresee a time where Apple migrates to something like Lenovo
| Laptops or Windows or some scraggly Linux desktop environment?
| Apple won't be losing these tools any time soon. At worst we
| might see dual mode macbooks that can be switched between MacOS
| and iOS paradigms.
|
| Above and beyond that fairly self-evident conclusion, there is
| plenty of room for more sophisticated interaction with iOS
| devices that maintain the basic interface but also provide
| extremely sophisticated data manipulation capabilities. Perhaps
| even more powerfully than our beloved UNIX shells - think
| something like AI assisted voice interaction where you can easily
| state a pipeline verbally: "take results from A that contain N
| and modify them by X and then sort them by I and make a graph and
| paste it to my document". (e.g., grep | sed | sort | gnuplot |
| paste >> example.doc)
|
| That sort of thing is potentially just a few iterations away and
| simultaneously more powerful and more useful than text mode
| pipes, if only for the fact that the user wouldn't be required to
| memorize thousands of cryptic flags/switches. The same interface
| could be used to string these directives together to form scripts
| and set jobs, etc.
|
| This isn't meant to be a specific prediction, by the way, just
| one glimpse into the idea space. There are so many good ideas
| that people haven't had yet... it just staggers the mind to
| consider the potential. I'm just skimming the surface but surely
| there are so many ways to marry the insanely intuitive
| discoverability of something like iOS with the equally awesome
| power of the UNIX philosophy.
|
| But it's up to us to find them, rather than get inflexible and
| grumbly and say it can't be done, or Apple is stupid, or whatever
| nonsense take you might jerk your knee towards ;)
| pininja wrote:
| I've pretty excited for the day I can do my programming job on
| an iPad in addition to my laptop. Apple has captured the
| software engineering market very well. Even the Microsoft F#
| shop I worked at had Apple hardware on most desks running
| Parallels or Boot Camp, and the two jobs I've had since were
| standard-issue MacBook Pro.
|
| The pipeline you described reminds me of Apple Shortcuts - it's
| easy and useful. Most recently I made a GIF out of a bunch of
| photos on my phone, which is a simple task that used to require
| a far from ideal app (ads, black-box that could be hiding
| analytics and tracking tasks).
| villgax wrote:
| appleOS
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| The signs are all in the air, MacOS will not exist maybe even 5
| years from now.
|
| The merge will absolutely happen but it will be less of a merge
| and more of a takeover. iPadOS apps running on MacOS is just the
| thing to ease you in, eventually at a WWDC down the line the
| words "Most of our legacy MacOS users are spending most of their
| time in iPadOS native apps..." and your old versions of Photoshop
| or whatever will be shifted to be the ones living in the
| emulation layer like Classic OS9 apps to eventually be removed
| completely.
|
| If you think I'm wrong, forget your own opinions and prejudices
| to iPad and walled garden computing and imagine you're an Apple
| exec who gets to see earning charts, iPhone, iPad and MacOS. One
| of these things is not like the others in both usage numbers and
| profit.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I'll believe it when Xcode runs on iPad OS without comprise.
| CDSlice wrote:
| > imagine you're an Apple exec who gets to see earning charts,
| iPhone, iPad and MacOS. One of these things is not like the
| others in both usage numbers and profit.
|
| You are correct, one of those is not like the others, but it
| isn't the Macs. According to their latest earnings report,
| iPhones made Apple $39.57B, iPads $7.37B, and Macs $8.24B [0].
| I wouldn't be surprised if iPadOS and MacOS merged in the near
| future, especially since they are running on the same chips,
| but it won't be because iPads are the ones making all the
| money.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/apple-aapl-
| earnings-q3-2021....
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >According to their latest earnings report, iPhones made
| Apple $39.57B, iPads $7.37B, and Macs $8.24B
|
| These are just device sales right? You have to remember iPads
| have the App Store revenue and the cream scooping of
| IAP/subscription revenue of most applications running on
| them.
|
| Apple doesn't get a cut of my Photoshop subscription on Mac,
| it absolutely gets a cut when I buy Procreate on iOS.
| shadilay wrote:
| In this case if the Epic lawsuit is successful and drives
| down the 30% Apple cut it may save macOs as an open-ish
| platform.
| schappim wrote:
| Apple is getting services revenue on the Mac.
|
| At least half the Mac GUI Apps I use are delivered via the
| Mac App Store. That number moves towards 100% for my non
| tech friends.
|
| I continue to use iCloud because I have a Mac.
| warning26 wrote:
| Not necessarily disagreeing, but my key question here is: how
| will Apple handle lower-level development cases? It's not
| difficult to imagine a watered-down iPad XCode shipping, but
| what about the tooling they use to build iOS itself?
|
| After all, Apple has to use _something_ to develop iOS, and I
| think it 's unlikely they'd create a special in-house operating
| system for the exclusive use of their OS development teams
| that's totally different than what they ship to consumers.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'm sure that they could just use Linux for that. I wouldn't
| be surprised if they're using Linux right now.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Why are you assuming iPadOS wouldn't support low-level
| development?
| simonh wrote:
| It's amazing to me that Apple made a very strict distinction
| between touch UI systems and keyboard/mouse UI systems, right
| from the start, has maintained that rigorously, and has been
| right all along.
|
| Their competitors and the pundit-sphere saw this as a fatal
| weakness, but every attempt at unifying touch and keyboard/mouse
| interfaces failed miserably.
|
| So I'm not concerned about Apple trying to merge iPadOS and
| MacOS, because they already know it would be a mistake and are
| sticking to their guns until maybe our eyes and fingers get about
| 4x as sharp.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Is it really amazing? Everyone has been saying the same from
| the start about wanting separate mobile and desktop UIs.
| simonh wrote:
| Microsoft's tablet strategy was literally to implement a
| touch first tablet UI in their desktop OS. Meanwhile loads of
| companies have been trying to merge desktop UI modes into
| phones since well before the iPhone. Check out Android
| desktop mode for a recent example. I remember loads of
| friends of mine for years telling me 'proper' desktop OSes in
| tablets would kill the iPad.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Their competitors and the pundit-sphere saw this as a fatal
| weakness, but every attempt at unifying touch and
| keyboard/mouse interfaces failed miserably.
|
| Only because it wasn't really tried. Heck, GNOME on a
| touchscreen or tablet PC has a better "unified" touch+mouse
| interface than any of its competitors on the desktop and mobile
| side.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I switched from a windows only company to an apple only
| company. I generally like macOS but I still touch my screen on
| my MacBook way too often expect the page to scroll or zoom in.
| MikusR wrote:
| The only reason there is a sepparation is that it allows to
| sell you two devices instead of one. That's alo the reason for
| no multiuser switching on consumer iPads
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| What do you mean? iPadOS has keyboard and mouse support. Apple
| sells a first-party keyboard accessory for iPad.
| simonh wrote:
| Like the pencil these are for specific subsets of use cases,
| they are not a primary interaction mode but more like
| specialist support for optional peripherals, the same way
| desktops support graphics tablets and trackballs. When I
| described Mac interfaces as keyboard/mouse you didn't say
| "oh, and also graphics, tablets, trackballs and VR headsets".
| They're an edge case.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yes... but it's still a very touch-focused system. The mouse
| support on iPad, you'll notice, has very little precision in
| where you click. It's a round dot like a finger - you can't
| precisely click a few pixels. They found a way to make a
| touchpad while keeping the touch focus.
| aj3 wrote:
| You can hack macOS using macOS, but kids won't be able to get
| that level of understanding how OS works on iPadOS.
|
| This is bad for IT. Maybe not as dramatic as an existential
| crisis but it's certainly a lost opportunity.
|
| My friend's daughter is 10 and she could pass job interview for a
| junior software developer any day simply because her first PC was
| running Ubuntu (it's Arch now).
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Full app development and selling apps in the App Store is close
| to being released on the iPad. You can use SwiftUI right now in
| Playgrounds, but Apple has not released app generating
| functionality yet.
|
| It is a funny feeling working on the same Playground project on
| both an iPad and MacBook, but it works. The code for reading
| data files is a bit different, but the iPad dev experience will
| get better.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Playground isn't close to full app development; it's very
| powerful tool, but I don't see many professionals jumping to
| build on that. Full app development is when Xcode and
| instruments are available.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Well, let's wait and see. Apple wants it to be easy for
| semi-technical people to write apps.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >This is bad for IT.
|
| Maybe for how we do IT. But consider the future where 99% of
| apps are developed on a tablet or phone (for a tablet or phone)
| using a cloud web interface with mostly low-code or no-code
| widget drag and drops.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Drag and drop HW drivers, or similar, in a cloud IDE? I'm
| skeptical.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >Drag and drop HW drivers, or similar, in a cloud IDE? I'm
| skeptical.
|
| Perhaps you are thinking too "now".
|
| In the future why would you personally need hardware
| drivers? Any hardware that you subscribe to (ownership will
| be a thing of the past) would have factory-installed
| drivers constantly updated from the few reified "real"
| programmers that work for a few dozen mega-corporations.
|
| For that matter, I could imagine a future where there are
| only a few dozen hardware drivers approved and any new
| hardware that is approved to be sold to the public must
| conform to one of them.
| still_grokking wrote:
| And "the few reified 'real' programmers that work for a
| few dozen mega-corporations" are organized in an union.
| Sounds like fun times!
| rambambram wrote:
| I just finished reading two articles from Agre and your
| comments literally make my head hurt now. I'm sorry.
| laurent92 wrote:
| And the path to this, is to raise a constant stream of
| vulnerabilities. Therefore you need a constant upgrade
| from upstream. Therefore insurances only cover you if you
| are using a maintained system. And since there are
| distributions with vulnerabilities, insurances will only
| insure you for public service if you use a few pre-
| approved OSes.
|
| Or just use the cloud provider who has all the
| preapproved workflows. The world just needs a little
| notch to tip into regulating the provision of services to
| the public, and at that moment, any independent OS will
| be dead, and we'll be forever tethered to the cloud.
|
| "He didn't use a safe OS", we'll say, of everyone using
| an independent Debian version and meeting a
| vulnerability. "It's only fair he's the hammer fell on
| him."
| flohofwoe wrote:
| "Low code" and "no code" solutions have existed for as long
| as computers exist (for instance to automate tasks, author
| shaders, or describe simple gameplay logic), yet they were
| always specialized niche solutions and never replaced
| "freestyle coding". If such a thing has been tried over and
| over again for half a century but hasn't had a breakthrough
| and replaced the alternatives I think it's likely that this
| also won't happen in the next 50 years.
| dagmx wrote:
| I feel like many people forget how many "no-code" solutions
| have existed over the decades. It's been the dream that so
| many people have chased.
|
| The solutions get better over time, but the issue is the
| people who can code don't consider them as anything more
| than toys, while the ones who are empowered by them, now
| make things they couldn't before.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| There's a natural limit to what may be achieved with a low/no
| code tool. Kids might be able to drag a few elements on
| screen to create charts and games, but that sort of work
| doesn't really advance the field.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >There's a natural limit to what may be achieved with
| low/no code tool. Kids might be able to drag a few elements
| on screen to create charts and games, but that sort of work
| doesn't really advance the field.
|
| Ahhh, who said the point in the future would be to advance
| the field? That is how we think. Future generations might
| be content with a few "programming geniuses" and everyone
| else making simplistic apps for work for fun.
|
| You could see this future coming. It is already onerous to
| be a desktop developer on Windows or Mac. It is purposely
| easier to develop and deploy simplistic mobile apps that
| can be controlled and monitored by the "stores" that
| distribute them.
| dagmx wrote:
| Every generation has been okay with having multiple tiers
| of skillsets and domains.
|
| That's just natural. Even in the early days of computing,
| you'd definitely have people split between low level and
| high level code.
|
| The fact is, everytime new technology comes along that
| reduces the barrier of entry, you're going to have some
| people who will be lower level developers and many who
| will be high level due to being able to do things more
| easily.
|
| You can apply this to most consumer friendly domains.
| laurent92 wrote:
| A bit like today, I feel like a toddler playing with Java
| coloured cubes, while the "real programmers" are the
| Linux contributors, people who write drivers and so on.
| Tomorrow it will be 3 layers: The C programmers, the
| people from Atlassian or Apple who build the platforms,
| and us, programming with the subset of the language they
| give us.
| Fiahil wrote:
| The article does a good job summarizing what works on an iPad and
| what doesn't ! To that, I will add that iPads are designed as a
| "single user" device. Sharing one between family members means
| you have to let them use your Google, Spotify, iCloud accounts.
|
| Now that their hardware is all lined up between laptops and
| mobile devices, I fully expect the merge to happen in a few
| years. I feel Apple's software has been stagnant for too long and
| I won't be buying new hardware until then.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I feel Apple's software has been stagnant for too long and I
| won't be buying new hardware until then.
|
| Odd. I'm still happy to use Mac OS High Sierra ... Yosemite
| even. I wonder with each OS release why I would even want the
| upgrade.
|
| Mainly because apps I use (Affinity, etc.) stop working (or
| stop trying to work) for older versions of Mac OS.
| criddell wrote:
| > I will add that iPads are designed as a "single user" device.
|
| There are tools available to schools that allow multiple logins
| on a single iPad. It would be nice if they had something
| similar for families.
| eddieh wrote:
| I see a bunch of posts about the iPad being a "consume" only
| device and that's totally _totally_ wrong.
|
| I've had an iPad since day one, generation one and took notes
| with an aftermarket stylus. I used Keynote and OmniGraffle to
| make slideshows and diagrams.
|
| I even bought an Apogee JAM and was able to record my electric
| guitar in GarageBand and used several other apps for guitar
| effects and simulated amplification. My favorite was AmpKit+
| [http://agilepartners.com/apps/ampkit/].
|
| The iPad is a great creator's device and has only improved with
| the Apple Pencil and other enhancements.
|
| That being said, if Apple keeps moving macOS towards iPadOS I'm
| out. The iPad is a complementary device as I use it. It can not
| replace a notebook computer and my notebook computer can not
| replace my desktop.
|
| There are definitely people that can get by with just an iPad or
| even just a smartphone, but I can't and will not. There are still
| many options for non-Apple notebooks and workstations and many
| more OS options too.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| To me the real question is if a machine running MacOS existed
| in a Surface-like form factor that had touchscreen and pen
| support would it be better than the iPad at the tasks you just
| described.
|
| I'm finding it harder and harder to justify that the divergence
| even needed to happen at all when more and more iPad users are
| just interacting with it via keyboard case and trackpad.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| As long as I can still sideload the same applications on macOS -
| I'm OK with this. Even if it's only enabled on the macOS "side",
| having a unified OS on unified hardware would be huge step
| forward in my opinion.
|
| Having XCode on an iPad would be convenient as well - though it's
| not the only IDE I use and would still ultimately prefer a proper
| laptop/desktop form-factor for "serious" programming.
| canuckintime wrote:
| Another paradigm not often discussed is to keep iPadOS and macOS
| distinct but offer macOS as an app (hardware virtualized vm) on
| iPadOS.
|
| This is a similar transition to MS-DOS on Windows 95
| (successful), Unix terminal on Mac OS X (successful) or Windows 8
| desktop program in Windows 8 tablet Metro shell (unsuccessful).
|
| Most people just need MacOSX for 10% of their computing needs --
| that 10% is unique for most people though -- and an iPad Pro able
| to access macOS when needed would be enough for peace of mind.
|
| On the flip side if Apple just added cellular and Apple Pencil
| support to the Mac (not even a touchscreen/pen supported screen;
| just Apple Pencil support for the trackpad) it would decimate
| sales of iPad Pro.
| grey-area wrote:
| IOS will replace Mac OS, the writing has been on the wall for a
| while now, iOS is where the money comes in and where most usage
| is, and maintaining dual development apis is painful and costly.
|
| Apple doesn't need to rush this process, but it is inevitable
| IMO, and is foreshadowed by actions like allowing iOS apps to run
| on macOS, moving Mac OS closer in UI to mobile, adding essentials
| like file handling to the mobile os.
|
| At this point the underlying OS is the same, the UIs are
| converging, the UI frameworks for iOS are almost capable of
| replacing Mac OS, and it would be relatively easy to merge them
| in the next few years, keeping some extra layers of UI for macs
| but merging most of it and certainly the dev frameworks. We may
| see touchscreen macs or dockable iOS devices first though.
| np_tedious wrote:
| Hmm. Seems likely in a way, but I don't see how to square this
| with the professional crowd like software devs
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I think you have it backwards. MacOS is going to replace iOS.
| Docking is a good reason for that. With the advancements in
| Apples silicon, we're seeing more and more features from iOS
| added to MacOS, but not the other way round.
|
| I would love a dockable iPhone, I'd pay a big premium for an M
| line iPhone that has the full MacOS in dock mode.
| spiderice wrote:
| Agreed, it's hard for me to imagine any realistic price that
| Apple could put on that product that I wouldn't pay.
| grey-area wrote:
| The money and power within Apple have all gone to iOS over
| the last ten years, and developer interest is now
| overwhelmingly in iOS. That alone will dictate the direction
| of travel.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| iPhones are apples leading revenue maker, but it's closely
| followed by their services. Absorbing iOS into MacOS makes
| the most sense, they can sell devices that are iOSish only
| and then sell the premium dockable iPhones with MacOS. It
| also will help developers focus on a unified platform
| without alienating them with an entirely new tool suite.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I think that's the best argument. To point for many
| people is the services are so good. You text someone on
| your phone and it shows up on your desktop. Even though
| macOS doesn't make as much money it makes iOS more
| valuable
| emsy wrote:
| In the article, 2 of 3 examples are about consumption. This just
| reinforces my opinion that the iPad is primarily a consumption
| device. My wife is a teacher and I asked her if her students, the
| so called ,,digital natives" hold up to their reputation. She
| declined and said they were producing TikTok videos and instagram
| photos at best (which can lead to a creative career but I'd argue
| that's the exception not the rule). Even if we improve
| productivity somewhat, it's offset by a huge increase in
| consumption. I don't see this changing in the near future, mainly
| because there are no incentives to do otherwise.
| fallenhitokiri wrote:
| Author here - first of all: I agree. I should have gone a bit
| more into detail how ,,not sure how she's related" is using her
| devices. She is also doing actual work for school on the iPad
| (research and writing papers).
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