Sounds like the iPad Pro can do pretty much everything you can do on the new MacBook with its paltry core M processor. Makes the later pretty pointless.
While it could be a great alternative to someone owning a "PC" the HW and OSes each cater to specific usage cases. Why can't each device have its own merits?
So in other words, maybe something like a Surface Pro 4?
Many deride the Surface and its all in one approach, but seriously, isn't this where the iPad Pro is headed? It's only a matter of time before high end apps get ported to iOS.
The tablet side of the Surface is a piece of crap with next to no apps, and those that are there very bad.
The build quality of the Surface 4 is utter crap; google about that.
The solution if you want both is buy the lightest Mac and an Ipad air 2. Voila, best laptop and desktop.
The Surface is not headed there because there is no apps going for the near death tablet high end PC market.
High end graphic programs will come to IOS because that's were the users are and will be.
thankfully, the planet is not populated solely of people doing industrial design and software engineering. in fact, id bet there are more people with needs like Cooks (cars) than your scenario (trucks).
Funny how I've actually done systems/software engineering on very very large systems, with no graphical interface at all (Just many terminal screens) and was pretty much flying on computers 1/50 the speed of the Ipad pro.
Yet, the poor little babies supposedly needs a ferrari to "code" a small IOS app 1/1000 the size of those software. They should get a grip!!
I'd wager most would be impacted less than 10% in their productivity on a machine 1/5 the speed they have now and a 12 inch laptop screen, yet it's basically a whinefest if they don't have instantaneous compiles (instead 3 second compiles... ) (sic) and two 27 inch monitors .
They get what they want... The ferraris... But, do they actually need it to do the job... Absolutely not, it may even be worse in many cases.
Just like using Ferraris to commute in Montreal during the winter ;-).
I think current developpers need to look at what's actually messing their flow; bet it's not the speed of their computer or the size of their screen.
Please, please when will get an app for the aPencil that does handwriting recognition? Perhaps I should erect a shrine to Steve Jobs and put offerings before it every morning and light candles every night?
1. You're using Excel for a job that it wasn't meant for. Ever heard of Access?
2. Your case represents .01% of the computing market.
Everyone who runs a business, a sales force or doing financials needs this excel functionality, and that is more than 0.01% of the computing market. In my previous job it was about 1 of 10 employees
Access is a very poor for calculations, the calculations and the reporting/charting parts have to be done in Excel, but is not always a good thing to have vlookups to other sheets, it might be better to have lookups to a real database.
I hate RDP. It is somethings glitchy and slow and you still need two computers. Why don't you just use a Display Port or HDMI and hook up the Surface to an external monitor?
Personally I don't do any work once I leave the office and I would much rather sync my documents to the cloud. That way I always have a backup.
The convenience is nice, but I would never consider a cloud service to be a data backup. Maybe an optional possibility of rescuing something quickly and conveniently, but never a definite. It's third party. It's not guaranteed. It might not be there. It might be corrupt itself (corrupted on their end or on mine; backing up bad data is still bad data). They likely have superior resources internally, but not superior CARE for my content. I have zero faith in a company's products and services when they themselves don't guarantee them, so I would never use them in such a manner where trust is important.
Trusting local software and hardware is already an unrealistic attitude in my mind; forget software and hardware utterly outside my control.
We can be guaranteed that the day Apple announces a Mac with a touchscreen, there will be months of endless gloating by the public. I think Apple is trying to delay this as long as they can, perhaps until Jony Ive or Phil Schiller retire, because their fragile egos may not be able to handle being publicly called out and asked to explain. Just look at all the uproar caused by the Pencil after Steve put his foot in his mouth. You want to see Jony Ive lose any more hair, or Schiller go through more binge eating?
You're misinterpreting the "no stylus" statement. It's been explained repeatedly to people posting comments like yours, but here it is again:
If your device REQUIRES a stylus, you did it wrong. The iPad Pro doesn't REQUIRE a stylus. The stylus is an added tool for precision needs in special cases, not typical operation.
As for the touch screens on Macs, Apple would have to ignore their usability testing to change their mind on this. Since Apple utterly abandoned its decades of GUI usability research (looking at you, iOS 7 and flat design), I don't see it as a far-fetched notion that they'd do the same elsewhere.
Perhaps a little off on a tangent, but I was replying to a comment about Macs and what I wrote could apply to a 15" MBP as well. which is what I would work on if traveling.
Honestly, I find my iPad extremely frustrating to try to do any writing, editing, coding, or graphics. Even simply using email can be aggravating when you can't drop the cursor where you need to. There are no arrow keys and it is hard to get between two characters, so you end up having to retype the entire word in order to make an edit. Every task seems to take several extra steps.
This is all very true, but it's a choice to trade one for the other. In my case, I do an insane amount of text on my iPhone. I do it because I hate sitting at a desk constantly (bad for my arms), hate being far from my screen (nearsighted and hate the discomfort eye correction causes), and hate the heat of a laptop (on my lap or against my hands and wrists).
The text editing on iOS does work, but it's definitely something to actively fight against. Selection is clumsy and autocorrect literally fails to scale to very fast typing and uncommon or "unacceptable" vocabulary (just try having a serious text chat with someone on the subject of human sexuality or some specialized technical area; you can forget relying on autocorrect, and instead have to type slowly and precisely, and sometimes the tool still fails to get out of your way).
Edit: Autocorrect also becomes a disaster on SLOW WEBSITES.
Touching to place the insertion point is a crap shoot, autocorrect is utterly useless when inserting words unless you have a space in front of the insertion point (where choosing the right insertion spot feels actively resisted by the touch interpretation; never ever should a touch at the right margin put the insertion point at the next line on the left margin- that's an unintuitive collision of touch and invisible formatting that should be banished!), and generally seems to actively reject what I, the user, want it to do. All this auto-everything and interpretation... It is very easy to anthropomorphize. It actually gets maddening the more I try to use it for heavy and rapid communication.
I would like to try the "keyboard as a track pad" mode on newer iOS versions, for text editing/selection, but I'm not chomping at the bit to be on a version of iOS beyond 6.x, and being required to use two fingers to do it pretty much insures needing two hands on the device instead of one.
This is how I plan to travel in the Philippines next year, but with my iPad Air 2 in place of a Pro. I use an EyeFi memory card in my DSLR camera that sets up a local Wifi hotspot to transfer images in full resolution directly to my iPhone or iPad. I then use the Photo tools on the iDevice to edit and crop and then straight to the internet. Simple, portable, and an iPad Air fits in most hotel room safes, as does the camera when not in use.
Ah, yes I heard about people who go to the Philippines and edit video, straight from the action to the Internet, from their hotel rooms.
Seems like a working business.
Don't say, that, you will just be told off. People will tell you that OSX is not designed for touch input, even though macbooks, mice and magic trackpads abound to interact with the OS via simulated touching of elements.
As with Microsoft Windows Surface? It is a best-seller!
The fact that windows is a nonstarter for you makes your whole point about the surface invalid. The surface was very expressly designed for people who need the full desktop class experience of Windows in as portable and versatile a form factor as possible. Which it turns out is actually quite a few people based on sales numbers.
Sales numbers aren't that great, and they've lost a crapload of money. So, hey!
I really hopes he tries to present from the iPad and realizes he can't skip through slides with his watch.
The Apple watch still doesn't pair with the iPad, and this is really annoying... So many use cases where the watch could initiate apps on the iPad that are different than the iPhone.
Comments
While it could be a great alternative to someone owning a "PC" the HW and OSes each cater to specific usage cases. Why can't each device have its own merits?
So in other words, maybe something like a Surface Pro 4?
Many deride the Surface and its all in one approach, but seriously, isn't this where the iPad Pro is headed? It's only a matter of time before high end apps get ported to iOS.
The tablet side of the Surface is a piece of crap with next to no apps, and those that are there very bad.
The build quality of the Surface 4 is utter crap; google about that.
The solution if you want both is buy the lightest Mac and an Ipad air 2. Voila, best laptop and desktop.
The Surface is not headed there because there is no apps going for the near death tablet high end PC market.
High end graphic programs will come to IOS because that's were the users are and will be.
sounds like you need a truck. im a software dev and ive never done any of those things in my spreadsheets. sounds like i need a car.
I've always wondered why people run spreadsheats that big, when they're obviously not meant for that task (at least not the way people use them).
The way the spreadsheats are built, fostering very lazy "programming" doesn't help either.
thankfully, the planet is not populated solely of people doing industrial design and software engineering. in fact, id bet there are more people with needs like Cooks (cars) than your scenario (trucks).
Funny how I've actually done systems/software engineering on very very large systems, with no graphical interface at all (Just many terminal screens) and was pretty much flying on computers 1/50 the speed of the Ipad pro.
Yet, the poor little babies supposedly needs a ferrari to "code" a small IOS app 1/1000 the size of those software. They should get a grip!!
I'd wager most would be impacted less than 10% in their productivity on a machine 1/5 the speed they have now and a 12 inch laptop screen, yet it's basically a whinefest if they don't have instantaneous compiles (instead 3 second compiles... ) (sic) and two 27 inch monitors .
They get what they want... The ferraris... But, do they actually need it to do the job... Absolutely not, it may even be worse in many cases.
Just like using Ferraris to commute in Montreal during the winter ;-).
I think current developpers need to look at what's actually messing their flow; bet it's not the speed of their computer or the size of their screen.
1. You're using Excel for a job that it wasn't meant for. Ever heard of Access?
2. Your case represents .01% of the computing market.
Everyone who runs a business, a sales force or doing financials needs this excel functionality, and that is more than 0.01% of the computing market. In my previous job it was about 1 of 10 employees
Access is a very poor for calculations, the calculations and the reporting/charting parts have to be done in Excel, but is not always a good thing to have vlookups to other sheets, it might be better to have lookups to a real database.
The convenience is nice, but I would never consider a cloud service to be a data backup. Maybe an optional possibility of rescuing something quickly and conveniently, but never a definite. It's third party. It's not guaranteed. It might not be there. It might be corrupt itself (corrupted on their end or on mine; backing up bad data is still bad data). They likely have superior resources internally, but not superior CARE for my content. I have zero faith in a company's products and services when they themselves don't guarantee them, so I would never use them in such a manner where trust is important.
Trusting local software and hardware is already an unrealistic attitude in my mind; forget software and hardware utterly outside my control.
You're misinterpreting the "no stylus" statement. It's been explained repeatedly to people posting comments like yours, but here it is again:
If your device REQUIRES a stylus, you did it wrong. The iPad Pro doesn't REQUIRE a stylus. The stylus is an added tool for precision needs in special cases, not typical operation.
As for the touch screens on Macs, Apple would have to ignore their usability testing to change their mind on this. Since Apple utterly abandoned its decades of GUI usability research (looking at you, iOS 7 and flat design), I don't see it as a far-fetched notion that they'd do the same elsewhere.
This is all very true, but it's a choice to trade one for the other. In my case, I do an insane amount of text on my iPhone. I do it because I hate sitting at a desk constantly (bad for my arms), hate being far from my screen (nearsighted and hate the discomfort eye correction causes), and hate the heat of a laptop (on my lap or against my hands and wrists).
The text editing on iOS does work, but it's definitely something to actively fight against. Selection is clumsy and autocorrect literally fails to scale to very fast typing and uncommon or "unacceptable" vocabulary (just try having a serious text chat with someone on the subject of human sexuality or some specialized technical area; you can forget relying on autocorrect, and instead have to type slowly and precisely, and sometimes the tool still fails to get out of your way).
Edit: Autocorrect also becomes a disaster on SLOW WEBSITES.
Touching to place the insertion point is a crap shoot, autocorrect is utterly useless when inserting words unless you have a space in front of the insertion point (where choosing the right insertion spot feels actively resisted by the touch interpretation; never ever should a touch at the right margin put the insertion point at the next line on the left margin- that's an unintuitive collision of touch and invisible formatting that should be banished!), and generally seems to actively reject what I, the user, want it to do. All this auto-everything and interpretation... It is very easy to anthropomorphize. It actually gets maddening the more I try to use it for heavy and rapid communication.
I would like to try the "keyboard as a track pad" mode on newer iOS versions, for text editing/selection, but I'm not chomping at the bit to be on a version of iOS beyond 6.x, and being required to use two fingers to do it pretty much insures needing two hands on the device instead of one.
Seems like a working business.
First of all people are misinterpreting what Cook said and second why the hell is this the top news story on CNBC?
He's not a Morman.
CNBC is run by incompetents.
Don't say, that, you will just be told off. People will tell you that OSX is not designed for touch input, even though macbooks, mice and magic trackpads abound to interact with the OS via simulated touching of elements.
As with Microsoft Windows Surface? It is a best-seller!
As with Microsoft Windows Surface? It is a best-seller!
Actually, it's not selling that well, they've been losing money for years too...
The fact that windows is a nonstarter for you makes your whole point about the surface invalid. The surface was very expressly designed for people who need the full desktop class experience of Windows in as portable and versatile a form factor as possible. Which it turns out is actually quite a few people based on sales numbers.
Sales numbers aren't that great, and they've lost a crapload of money. So, hey!
...and his lucky underwear. Can't go anywhere to close a deal without his lucky underwear...
He's not a (sic) Morman.
That would be "magic" underwear.
As with Microsoft Windows Surface? It is a best-seller!
Actually, if you look at MS' latest fiscal Q3 numbers, Surface sales have dropped 26% YoY.
I really hopes he tries to present from the iPad and realizes he can't skip through slides with his watch.
The Apple watch still doesn't pair with the iPad, and this is really annoying... So many use cases where the watch could initiate apps on the iPad that are different than the iPhone.