Apple
After WWDC 2022 Federico Viticci was very loud in his advocacy that Stage Manager should be optimized to run on older iPads many of which had only 4 to 6GB of memory.
In his recent post about Why iPadOS Still Doesn’t Get the Basics Right - MacStories he’s complaining that Stage Manager should do more because new iPads are more powerful.
Which is it? Build features that take advantage of more powerful iPads or restrict features to accommodate older hardware?
Stage Manager is still limited to four windows at once. Despite the iPad Pro becoming more and more powerful over time… Stage Manager still forces you to work with only four windows shown on-screen at once. Imagine if a 13-inch MacBook Air could only let you see four windows at the same time.
A few observations and thoughts on the dynamics of the Apple enthusiast community in the narrative of the past 8 years evolution of the iPad and Mac as Apple platforms. A bit of attention paid to the role of podcasters/publishers in how the narrative was created and how it evolved, how it is still evolving. Not so much about the tech as it is about a community’s tension, excitement and concerns as it grappled with potential disruption. Warning! This post is very much of the inside baseball variety as it pertains to the Apple enthusiast user “community”. No, really, inside baseball here. But I think it’s interesting and I had some unexpected free time time today so, yeah.
In a recent post Jason Snell mentions the Monday’s episode of Upgrade he did with Federico Viticci:
I’ve been stunned to see some reactions to our criticism of iPadOS this past week suggest that, somehow, people like Federico and myself just don’t “get” the iPad. We’ve spent years using the iPad and pushing what it can do. We get it all too well.
I think this hints at an interesting dynamic in the Apple sphere of podcasters and the surrounding community of users in regards to the iPad and Mac. I’ll get to that in a moment.
I listened to the episode and one bit that stood out to me was Jason discussing the improvements made to iPadOS in the past few years. What I noted was that he almost seemed surprised:
I was struck by how the iPad really has gotten better over the last five years. I have not been pushing the iPad as hard the last few years since COVID really and Apple Silicon. So the MacBook Air came out, I got a MacBook Air, and I thought, well, I’ll just travel with this.
And so I haven’t had to push it in all of those other areas. But, you know, some of the apps have progressed, some of the OS has progressed…
This fits with my impression that the podcasters who’d been fairly vocal iPad users (Including both Jason and Federico) in years past seemed to reach a tipping point when the M1 Macs came along. Suddenly all of their Mac using podcasting friends were on the shiny new Macs and FOMO kicked in and in the process of jumping back to the Mac they seemed to have decided that they were done with the iPad. And as podcasters with particular needs, there’s no doubt that the Mac is the better tool for them for their workflow. Federico was especially vocal about his frustrations during the summer of 2021. Back to that in a minute.
Jason again:
“And it’s not that bad anymore, but one of the reasons I have to copy that file over is that I can’t record my microphone on iPadOS. So there’s still those walls there, but I was just reminded that with the Magic Keyboard and with the improvements that they made to Files and with, I used a lot of Stage Manager, that it really has come a long way in five years. I might argue that there’s huge pieces that are still kind of missing or broken, and we will do that after the next break. But I was flashing back to when it was way less capable than it is even today, and I was grateful that, oh yes, it behaves like a computer. If I attach a disk to it, I can look at the Files on the disk. That didn’t used to be possible. So better than it was, better than I remember when I was trying to do all of this in 2017.”
The progression of the iPad Pro really kicked up when Apple surprised everyone with the pre WWDC announcement of the Magic Keyboard iPad Pro and cursor support in the spring of 2020. They’d suddenly raised the bar and got a lot of people excited. iPad enthusiasts were excited as they saw big things happening for their chosen platform.Simultaneously, this was the peak of frustration for Mac users who’d felt their platform was being neglected.
Weeks later at WWDC Apple announced Apple Silicon for the Mac and that was to be another turning point, this time for the Mac. In the fall of 2020 the first M1 Macs were released.
Apple users could have celebrated that great things were happening for both platforms. That the Mac was getting better for those that loved the Mac and that the iPad was getting better for those that loved the iPad. And a win of course for those that loved both.
A year after surprise of cursor support and the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, Apple released the first M1 iPad Pro and then, weeks later, at WWDC 2021 announced Stage Manager and various other notable improvements to iPadOS.
For anyone that is a part of the Apple enthusiast user community, 2020-21 was a strange flip flop as Mac users were suddenly very happy with the amazing new M1 Macs but for the iPad it proved to be a year of controversy. But why? What was the big failure?
It seems to me that there was none. There was no sudden failure of iPad hardware, iPadOS did not suddenly experience a great regression. This was and is the drama unintentionally created by a group of popular podcasters and YouTubers that were steadily repeating the same message over and over. Almost in the background of Apple tech culture, a narrative was unfolding.
The tension of the narrative began around 2016 and it was that Apple was abandoning the Mac to favor a less capable iPad platform. For four years tension, anxiety, frustration and resentment smoldered amongst Mac users. Week after week they listened to podcasts lamenting the neglect of their platform to the benefit of the iPad which showed no signs of being able to replace their Macs.
But then, suddenly, not only was their beloved platform saved, it appeared to be the winner in some unspoken, quiet conflict. And it seems, from an outsider perspective that with the release of the M1 not only had the Mac won but there had to be a loser and it would be the iPad, the former threat, the “baby computer” as one prominent Mac user insists on calling it.
I imagine it all seems a bit silly from an outsiders perspective but it says something about subcultures as well as the emotional, time and financial investments that some people make in their computing platforms. For many, it’s not just a tool any more.
There were quite a few Apple podcasters that had been vocal boosters of the iPad shifted back to the Mac. Some, perhaps, just reckoned with the reality that their audio workflows were better with the Mac. Others were just giving the new M1 hardware a test run and decided they were ready for a change back to the Mac. I think Jason Snell falls into this camp. A long-time Mac using journalist who enjoyed a switch to the iPad for a few years.
Federico Viticci is a special case as he’d spent much of his career building his podcaster/publisher identity, his “brand”, as the most vocal of all the iPad ethusiasts in that community. After years of iPad advocacy, suddenly his beloved platform seemed like it might be the one in danger of stagnation. I’m not going to dig any deeper or speculate further.
Whatever the personal and social dynamics for Federico or other iPad enthusiasts, it seems like unfortunate timing that as Apple has actually increased it’s efforts expanding the capabilities of iPadOS while building and then releasing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, they’ve been met with very little praise and increased criticism of those efforts.
To circle back to the first quote of this post, I suspect the feedback Jason and others have gotten in regards to their ongoing critique of iPadOS reflects the tension-filled dynamics of the Mac/iPad narrative of the past few years.
Speaking for myself as someone who remains a very enthusiastic iPad user, I find it frustrating to see the the humans that build iPadOS get so little credit for the work they are doing and the improvements they’ve made.
The discourse around tech is deeply cynical these days. I’m all for remembering that Apple is a multinational corporation with profit as the top priority. I’m under no illusions about capitalism as a system of short term profit seeking at the expense of our fellow humans and potentially the habitability of our planet. But at the end of the day, it’s also to remember that real humans go to work there every day, real humans build these tools for us. I see and appreciate the improvements they’ve made.
There’s nothing wrong with critique, it’s how we make progress. But there’s nothing wrong with offering praise for the progress made and at least as it concerns iPadOS these past two years I’ve seen little offered and that’s a shame.
This comment from a thread at MacRumors about Joanna Stern’s iPad Pro review explains a point I’ve been trying to make for awhile:
It can be frustrating to repeatedly highlight that many tech reviewers overlook that their use of a computer is not the only use of computers. Apart from digital artists, who may prefer to use an iPad over a traditional laptop for some of their work, several other mobile professionals use the iPad Pro because, for their specific needs, it provides a superior computing experience.
For instance, if you frequently scan and mark up documents for work, the iPad Pro is a better option than a MacBook Pro. Similarly, if you conduct virtual real estate walkthroughs with clients, the front and rear-facing cameras on the iPad Pro can be useful. If you’re an event producer, the iPad Pros has a better color-accurate screen and powerful audio. Finally, if you’re an architect or contractor working on-site, having a lightweight, powerful computer to conduct integrated location scans with LiDar measurements is a feature only available on the iPad Pro.
The iPad Pro is not a limited laptop; it is a high-performance tablet computer. It’s important to note that the majority of users on these forums, as well as tech journalists, are basic iPad users. Therefore, it is important to recognize that the iPad Pro may not be the ideal device for them. Fortunately, Apple offers the base iPad at a very reasonable price, which is a great alternative for those who don’t need the advanced features of the iPad Pro.
Apple’s iPad Pro Marketing Failure — They don’t even try
Discussing Apple’s recent iPad marketing on his website Tedium, Ernie Smith discusses what’s wrong with Apple’s marketing to creatives in 2024, particularly the marketing of the iPad to creatives. He and I had had a conversation on Mastodon the day before and he mentions me in the context of this point:
I am not convinced that Apple is doing a great job targeting users like him with their marketing—there was a scene in Tuesday’s keynote where an iPad was being used to manage a video shoot that struck me as particularly off-key—but I will not deny that they’re out there and they exist. I think the real problem is that Apple has not done a particularly good job of closing the gap between iPad users, many of whom did not grow up with traditional computing experiences, and Mac users, who did and have largely been left out of the touchscreen revolution for what feel like purely business reasons.
Currently Apple’s iPad playlist on YouTube has 4 videos. Let me say that again. Apple’s YouTube playlist for iPad has FOUR videos and one of those is for the “all-new iPad Mini” from two years ago.
THAT. IS. RIDICULOUS.
Apple, make an effort to demonstrate how an iPad can be a useful computer.
Doc Rock on the May 7th episode of MacBreak Weekly is the first podcaster I’ve heard to clearly call-out the ridiculous iPad hot takes so common these days, especially in regard to the iPad Pro.
“It’s funny when a lot of the conversation around the pro or the not pro is always about productivity. The people don’t talk about what type of productivity you’re doing, right? If you’re doing everything in notion or Evernote or something of that nature, then again, maybe it doesn’t matter, right?
But if your productivity is based around SketchUp or they showed, not Blender, they showed ZBrush, some other things like that, those all count. Those all count and they do actually tax pretty hard. If you’re a logic person and you’re running pretty heavy logic action, which a lot, as an ex DJ, I would tell you, a lot of music people use iPads.
What happens, the general tech person in our circle and the general YouTuber, also my circle, they always talk about it like the way it matches them. People forget about Bechtel, who’s doing civil engineering and their iPads are running really high level tests. People forget about all the restaurants, which is why you want 128 gigabyte model, because all they do is use them for retail.
And they run one app and one app only. “People forget about education, healthcare, occupational therapies, all of the things that you use an iPad for other than you who just use it to watch Netflix. And I get that and knock yourself out player.
But like, don’t be like Apple doesn’t have the knowledge of who they’re selling to when they make these devices. And it cracked me up every time because people always have these weird hot takes. And one of the ones was, why put the M4 in this first?”
Exploring how others use and view the iPad
Buckle in, this is a longer post based on a couple of very interesting iPad-related conversations I’ve had recently. It begins with an email from Justin Harter, who is a graphic designer, teacher and writer. We had an enjoyable exchange largely focused on our workflows for image processing and file management on iPad. I had a look at his blog and knew immediately that I wanted to mention some of his recent iPad posts.
Right off he caught my attention with a post that expresses something I rarely see from fellow tech enthusiasts: A concern for the environment. Why is this so rare? I appreciate that he is writing about it and that his environmental ethics are a part of his decision making in regards to his consumption of technology.
Why is Jason Snell so confused about the iPad use case?
In the latest Upgrade Jason Snell’s just a broken record repeating his own nonsense at this point. His big storyline is the M4 iPad Pro is too expensive, too powerful for iPadOS. He wants to know what its use case is, who is it for?
But, now, wait, wait, wait. Wait. Thirteen months ago, Jason, along with every other podcaster/pundit, was asking the same question about the M2 iPad Pro. And, at that time, the big question, the demand being made over and over was: “Apple, where are your Pro apps for iPad? Where is Final Cut Pro? Where is Logic Pro? Where is Xcode?
Hey tech guy, just because some devices aren’t built around your needs doesn’t mean they are not useful to others: Jordyn Zimmerman a young, nonspeaking autistic woman uses the iPad to speak to those around her. It’s proven to be an invaluable part of her daily life and an essential tool through her education and now as an advocate for disability rights.
Jamie Wax sat down with Zimmerman in her first broadcast television interview to discuss the struggles she faced growing up, the way that a communication app on an iPad changed her life and her ability to connect with others.
A few thoughts on Apple's
While most are focused on the new iPad hardware I’ll start with what I consider the more important bits.
The importance of first and third party creative apps for professionals was highlighted by Apple and I think it’s worth a special call out as a counterpoint to the common narrative of the iPad is “Sure, the hardware is powerful but what can I do with it? It’s only good for consumption not creating.” An unfortunate story that won’t go away regardless of the many examples of real world uses by professionals creating a broad range of content.
The next month of iPad punditry is going to be unbearable. 🙄🧐🤔😵💫
Not a surprise that I disagree with much of what Jason Snell wrote in his iPad article today. In his ongoing wishcasting for the iPad to run a virtual Mac he writes:
If Apple were to accept that at the top of the iPad product line, the iPad literally transforms into a Mac, that choice would also take a lot of the pressure off of iPadOS.
I know I’m a broken record at this point, after years of investment, why would Apple back off of improving iPadOS each year? One after the other these guys just keep saying put macOS on the iPad and call it a day. Sounds like a great idea.
Does Files in iPadOS really need to keep slowly trudging toward life as an ersatz Finder? And more to the point, does anyone who has used Files over the past five and half years really believe it’ll ever get there? And should it even try, or is that stuffing way too much functionality into a much more basic, iPad-like file manager?
This one really gets me. Why do these folks keep insisting that the Files app is so basic? I did a fairly extensive comparison of the Files App on iPadOS 16 with the Mac Finder and I have to ask why they keep referring it as a basic app. Not only do I think it will get there but I think it’s pretty much there right now. Is it an exact, feature-for-feature replacement? No. But when put side-by-side with the Finder, Files does almost everything that a normal user would do and does so in a way that is very similar, nearly identical to the Finder. Go ahead, click the link and look at the side by sides.
I used a Mac from System 7.6 to the OS X Public Beta and all the way to the current version of macOS and I have no problems organizing, accessing, copying, moving files with the Files app. I’m not jumping through hoops or using work-around, it works like the Finder. And as I point out in the post above it also does a few things the Finder does not, which is to say, in some ways it’s actually more capable than the Finder.
The iPad Pro is its own thing and should never be a Mac
My M1 iPad Pro is only three years old so I won’t be updating this year but as someone who has chosen the iPad as a primary computer of course I’m interested in where the hardware and OS are going. I post often that I think most Apple pundits are wrong on the iPad most of the time because they want it to be a Mac. It’s not and I hope it never is. In today’s issue of his newsletter Mark Gurman writes that Apple Should Turn iPad Into Laptop Replacement and I found a couple of bits to chew on:
Now it’s time for Apple to take a stand. Does it want the iPad to be a half-baked laptop alternative or a real computing replacement? Consumers are confused about why they should buy an iPad versus a Mac and vice versa.
This “confusion” reflects the made-up reality and narrative of the Apple pundit looking for something to post about. Or, actually, it’s true if one replaces the word Consumers with Apple pundits: Apple Pundits are confused about why they should buy an iPad versus a Mac and vice versa.
It's only been a couple weeks since I decided to do all of my blogging/writing from One Big Text File and I love it. There is zero friction. All of my posts are in one file along with my daily interstitial notes. I'm using Textastic to do the writing though the file is in my Obsidian folder so I can easily jump back to Obsidian as desired. The method is incredibly simple, quick and easy.
Any new draft post goes to the top of the file and is tagged as a draft. I currently have three. The current day's notes are just below it. This means I can easily jump to current, in-process posts when I've got time or the desire to write.
When a post gets published I replace the draft tag with published along with any other keyword tags and move it under the current day's notes. It could not be easier to manage. Referencing old posts is also easier as posts are neatly filed under the dated notes for each day. I can keyword search or use Textastic's "Symbol List" which is a handy little dropdown list in the toolbar that lets me see Markdown header items such as the date for each day's notes as well as any hashtags which break out the various posts. I can scroll down with a flick to quickly navigate the document. It almost seems too easy.
And the file is only 78 KB. Basic txt files for the win!
A brief exploration of alternative browsers on iPad
Is text editing on the iPad a problem?
Posting on Mastodon Scott Jenson suggested that text editing on the iPad is “tedious”. My initial reaction was, no, it’s not. I read through the thread and I think it speaks more to his lack of experience with the iPad. From his various posts it would seem he decided to jump into one of those “can the iPad be my computer stunts” and bumped into a variety of bugs and differences he didn’t like. Now, I can’t speak to the bugs as I’ve found the iPad with keyboard/trackpad to be rock solid for years.
I hopped over to his very in depth blog post. He makes some great points there in regards to touch-based editing of text but it seems to be oriented towards phone-based editing.
I’ve been coding and writing with a variety hardware keyboards and text editors on the iPad for years, have I just adapted to a poor experience? Is text editing that much better an a Mac? I don’t think so but I’ll get back to that comparison in a bit.
A few spring 2024 iPad thoughts
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The always evolving iPad set-up (and speculations on the iPad's future)
The Apple pundit club strikes again
Hey hey, look, the Apple pundit club have gotten together to do their Apple report card again! Not a surprise but they’re all declaring the iPad is still dying? And then of course there are the folks like Steve Troughton-Smith chiming in on Mastodon but he and other commenters in the thread aren’t offering anything new either. It’s just a repetition of the pundit echo chamber.
Even worse, many commenters proudly proclaim that they’re still using old hardware from before 2020. One even stating he uses a 2017 iPad Pro while complaining about poor multi-tasking. They’re so busy proving that they can’t be bothered with the iPad they are that they apparently haven’t stopped to consider that 3GB of memory in a 2018 iPad might not function as well as a modern M1 iPad with 8 or 16GB of memory. Maybe base your judgment on the real-world capabilities of current hardware?
The iPad Pro, Mac and Vision Pro can all co-exist
It’s been a couple weeks since Apple released it’s iPad Face Computer and various memes are bouncing around the pundit echo chamber. I’ve not tried it and don’t expect to anytime in the foreseeable future. I have issues with vertigo that would likely make it less than optimal but, also, it’s far beyond my budget. All that said, as the iPad is my preferred computer, I see the merits of VisionOS being based on iPadOS and that brings me to the primary point of this post.
It’s been an ongoing meme in the Apple pundit and social mediaverse that Apple should bring macOS to the iPad Pro. I don’t think it will and I hope it doesn’t.
For those that want macOS on an iPad, VisionOS has the solution. Build in native support for screen sharing with a Mac. If your preference is the Mac and the iPad is a secondary device then you’ll likely havea Mac nearby and the screen sharing that VisionOS offers would likely work just fine. I’ve got a Mac as a file server and when I need to check in on it to update the OS the Screens app is perfect. I login and it feels as though I’m using macOS on the iPad. The only drawback that would likely be solved by a solution provided by Apple is that the Mac’s screen dimension is different resulting in black bars along the top and bottom of the iPad screen. I’d guess Apple would provide a full screen solution.