I just don’t see how an iPad Pro could ever really work as a computer replacement for true professional workflows. I’m talking about multitasking between final cut, building a website, creating assets in photoshop, taking screenshots, downloading things from an email...these are daily tasks for me. An iPad would struggle to do one of these at a time let alone all of them at once. iOS is just too limited to ever make it a real “pro” machine. For limited things like a photography workflow or photoshop workflow, maybe, if that’s all you do. So I think it’s time to give up on the idea of an iPad as a true pro machine. It will never replace your laptop and Apple doesn’t want it to. It’s a shame though because the hardware is certainly capable enough. It would require Apple basically throwing out iOS for iPad and designing a whole new way of interacting just for iPad. iOS is great for iPhones but not great for professional applications. It would be cool, but I doubt Apple will do it.
I’m an artist who owns one and I totally agree despite it now being an essential tool for me. Lots of airdropping files back and forth with my MacBook is the reality and it works great.
You quickly realize just how crucial a mouse and it’s modifier keys are for efficient design work. It’s great for early stage thumbnailing. I’ve actually never been able to thumbnail as effectively as I can with the pro and it’s solely for the fact that I can use it as a sketchbook with integrated google images. Once a project gets rolling it’s mostly used so I can shuffle over to my comfy chair and do some detail work with the pencil.
That said, I wouldnt put it past a young person who hasn’t been molded by a desktop to blow me away with it. It’s not like my desktop workflows don’t have hacky and annoying steps along the way to a final.
Right it can work for part of the workflow for specific things like detail work with the pencil. What I find challenging is actually finding a smooth workflow that it’s not wasting time trying to get the iPad to do what I want. I feel like I spend most of my time working around it’s limitations so it’s hardly worth it (for me). Maybe that will improve with time though.
I also don’t really use iCloud Drive, maybe that would make things easier as one of the biggest problems is simply getting the things you want on the iPad ON the iPad. Importing photos for example, you have to import into photos and then double import to Lightroom.
Adobe seems to be putting a lot of effort into Photoshop CC for iPad to make sure that moving back and forth between the desktop and iPad versions is effortless if you choose to work that way.
>the biggest change of all is a total rethinking of the classic .psd file for the cloud, which will turn using Photoshop into something much more like Google Docs.
“The beauty of it with Creative Cloud and the Cloud PSD and the innovations there is that you can just pick up where you left off, and you can be somewhat agnostic,” Belsky says. “You can always go back in history. You can share it and have other people be able to go back and undo things you did.”
I just have an ssh window and web browser open, both of which the iPad mostly handles fine. For me, it was a no-brainer because it's light and easy to travel with, and doesn't require 40 minutes of updates every time I open it (hello, Surface Pro 4, my previous laptop). Does it replace two 32" monitors? Nope. But I never had those when I was travelling.
I also draw and edit photos on my laptop. The iPad handles that fine. I have a Cintiq Pro 13" and it's a piece of garbage that made me hate drawing. I am glad it's gone from my life. The Apple Pencil is way better. (I hate Lightroom/Photoshop on the desktop, so I am trying to deal with Affinity. We'll see how that goes after I go on a trip where I take some photos.)
All in all, there are many tasks that can't be done on any laptop. That is why you can buy desktops. If the primary goal for your mobile computer is to not have to spend 40 minutes disabling Cortana, the iPad is perfect, which is why I bought one.
My only complaint is that Safari requests mobile sites instead of desktop sites. That is super annoying. I have a desktop-sized screen and a keyboard. Give me the desktop version.
> My only complaint is that Safari requests mobile sites instead of desktop sites. That is super annoying. I have a desktop-sized screen and a keyboard. Give me the desktop version.
Hold the refresh button you can reload the page as the desktop version
Which is a good thing. Adapting layouts to all those different, wildly varying screen sizes is essential and responsive webdesign is solving this problem.
That's fine, but what I don't like is when websites make certain features unavailable on their mobile websites and provide no way of getting around this restriction.
There are iOS browsers that let you change the user agent and request desktop site. I'm not sure how well they work though since I haven't had a need for that feature. But you should check them out at least.
> An iPad would struggle to do one of these at a time let alone all of them at once.
You haven’t touched a modern iPad, have you? Not only do they not ‘struggle’ to do one of those at a time, they’re butter smooth at it. The workflow/task juggling aspect is definitely an issue, but there is nothing preventing an A10x or A12x iPad from doing any of those things with all the performance you’d expect from a $3k+ MacBook Pro.
GP is talking about how the design of iOS is preventing one from doing all those tasks in a satisfactory way, but not the hardware.
For example I could be editing a movie and waiting for it to export. Then I switch to a different app and start editing my photos. There is a Task Completion background API to allow the former to continue to run, but there is no guarantee nor any notification when iOS decides my new photo editing app is consuming too much resources and jettison or kill the movie app. It contributes to this nagging feeling of needing to switch back to the background app so that iOS would keep it alive.
It's just an app management model ill suited to professional work.
I own an iPad Pro for reference. I should have been more
Clear: while the iPad can do some of those things and certainly the hardware is good enough, iOS dowsnt fit my use case well (doing lots of things at once).
I'm with you, but we have to remember that most people including most "pros" meaning working professionals do not do coding. For 95% of working professionals, the iPad may actually be more than enough.
Right. My use case is probably not the average one. I suppose if I did a lot of just emails and word processing/web browsing it would work. But it kind of defeats the purpose of all that horsepower.
Until Apple puts its own pro applications (like final cut) on the iPad, it’s not a real pro machine in my view. If it’s so “pro” then make your own apps work on it!
It always takes a few decades for UIs to catch up with new hardware. We still don't really understand how to design touch UIs yet. We basically just squish WIMP interfaces a little so you can fat finger them. There has been no radical reimaging of UI toolkits for touch yet.
The software industry is so crippled by finance thinking right now anyway, everything research-y moves extra slow anyway. We're in the second dark age of UI.
People are doing weird pointless stuff in VR UI right now, so I think that might be where the ideas get worked out. That's how it worked before, we got out of the WIMP stagnation because a whole new paradigm (hypertext) emerged.
I'm not sure why you'd expect a radical reimagining of UI for touch. Touch UIs look largely the same as WIMP UIs because there isn't a radically better way of presenting information and affordances on a screen.
Have you interacted with many professional UI designers? They almost universally have no time, they are forced to rush out mediocre work on a strict timetable.
I have a design background myself, and frankly, you're not going to do much better for flat screen-based UIs than buttons, scrubbers, tables, lists, scrollviews, etc. This has little to do with touch, and everything to do with 2D design for screens. Better/worse design will depend on how these idioms are used/organized, rather than a radical rethink of those idioms.
That's not to say there aren't good undiscovered idioms for 2D UIs, but there's no shortage of designers trying to find them, especially outside of their dayjob. Designers love trying to invent new and novel ways to interact.
It is, however, actually an advantage for touch UIs that they aren't radically different from WIMP, because users don't have to learn a completely different UI, at least in terms of visual organization/affordance.
You can also bet the Apple designers/engineers who were prototyping iOS UI idioms before the iPhone was released explored a range of different idioms, and they continue to do so.
It works fine for me besides having the right software. The multitasking actually works in my favor; I am more focused on the iPad and organize things differently (less messy) because I know multitasking is bad & buggy (switching between terminal programs and browsers often have buggy side effects, so I make sure I have what I need before I use the terminal and then only use the terminal until I'm done). It is far from perfect, but the Windows updates (how do they get away with it) and low battery life of laptops are worth it for most of my work.
