auxio

GeorgeBMac said:

auxio said:

GeorgeBMac said:

I hear you!

But the iPad is a poor substitute for a high quality 2 in 1.

My grandson's school also gave him a small, crappy 2 in 1 -- it even uses a Celeron processor! (I thought they had been retired a decade ago!).

Fortunately, he already had both an iPad (6th gen) and a MacBook.  He uses both .  Technically the iPad could be used for all (or 95%) of what he needs, but its 9.7" screen and cramped keyboard make it a real pain to use for laptop type tasks.   So he switches back and forth.   He'll even switch back and forth on a single assignment:  his last science assignment had him graphing a something and then typing interpretations of the graph:   he used the iPad for the graph and then his MacBook for the essay questions.

That won't work though when he returns to in-school classes -- he'll need a single device.

The small keyboard is actually perfect for my son's small hands.  However, a trackpad isn't a substitute for a good mouse.  Thankfully it's simple to pair a bluetooth mouse with the iPad (which I've done).  It's also possible to pair bluetooth keyboards if you want a full sized one.

As for the small screen, I agree.  I'm going to get the USB-C to HDMI adapter so that my son can hook it up to my 4K monitor.  No need for extra devices, there are plenty of solutions for the iPad itself.

Good job!

Yeh, the regular keyboard, mouse and monitor will make a huge difference.   (I assume he has an Apple Pencil as well?)

Yeah, he loves using the Apple Pencil for his writing work.  Which is perfect because he has fine motor skill issues and would fight against doing regular writing because of that.

GeorgeBMac said:

auxio said:

For me, Windows itself just isn't a high quality experience.  I had to spend 20 minutes the other day removing stuff from my PC after my son installed a Minecraft mod which was littered with spam software that was trying to "optimize" it.  Just so much garbage on Windows that you never have to deal with on iPad.  I also had to do a Google search and dig through 3 levels of settings just to figure out how to get the volume level up on the microphone.  So much wasted time.

My grandson was the opposite:   he asked for a MacBook and I got him one.  But then he refused to use it because he found MacOS confusing (because he had been trained on Windows).   I installed Windows 10 under Boot Camp and now it gets used everyday by him and his mom.

It's not that Windows is better -- just what he was familiar with.   Call it a bias or a prejudice.

Yeah, I hear that from people a lot, and it's understandable.

I've personally always been the type who wants to try everything in order to find what really works for me (and my son has inherited that trait).  Learning different hotkeys and desktop UIs is worth the effort for me if I can find something that works well and saves me time in the long run.

Over the years I've used (roughly in order) MS DOS, Windows 3.x/95/NT/7/10, OS/2, Linux, NetBSD, Solaris, IRIX, Mac OS 9/X.  Out of learning all those, I've found that Mac OS X has been the best for my needs.  It runs all the software I need (which is lacking on most UNIX-based systems), it "just works" out of the box (no driver installs and long configuration sessions to get everything working like Windows tends to require when you first install it or upgrade to new versions), the organization of the settings is very intuitive (I rarely need to Google anything), and when I want to get under the hood and do something unique with it like set up a dedicated video streaming box, it has the full power of a UNIX system (not the half-baked command prompt or so-called "Powershell" on Windows).  It can be as easy-to-use or as powerful as you need it.  The best of both worlds.

elijahg said:

larryjw said:

sdw2001 said:

This may only be a temporary state, as there is some incentive on Apple's side to reinstate the blocks and to force users to download Mac App Store-sanctioned versions instead of the mobile-designed editions. 

Such as?  And I don't know....I find Apple's approach unsettling here.  If you have a machine capable of running mobile apps, and those apps are already approved for the mobile device (they are), why the need to control their distribution through the Mac App store?  Could there be some legitimate security or technical/performance concerns?  Or, is what I think it is...Apple demanding total authority to decide what runs on Macs?  Even that doesn't make much sense, as users can install Mac software outside the App store constraints.  The only legitimate reason I can think of is Apple is concerned about jailbroken phones (difficult to do these days, I hear) side-loading apps.  

I can think of one overriding reason not to allow iPhone and iPad apps to run on Silicon Macs -- the app developer did not give Apple and the user the license to do so. Period. 

Nor did the app developer give Apple or the user license to run iPhone apps on iPad at its introduction. And yet iPhone apps run on iPad.

And since then, Apple has added the ability for developers to specify which devices their apps are delivered for.

Being technical people, we understand that if we extract an app from one device and make it work on an unsupported device, and we encounter problems, we can't going to go crying to the developer/tech support about it.  However, the vast majority of people don't understand this.  Especially if some opportunistic developer makes the process of extracting the app and installing it on your Mac easy to do for those people.

elijahg said:

auxio said:

@cloudguy It's clear you feel strongly about Apple moving to proprietary technologies like Metal, but I don't hear the same complaints about Microsoft and Direct3D.  Sure you can use OpenGL on Windows, but no one does because it's not well supported.

Also OpenGL is used in pretty much every engineering program on Windows (and macOS and Linux).

And just as apps which don't have heavy demands of OpenGL use ANGLE on Windows, they'll likely be fine with a Metal wrapper like MetalANGLE or MoltenGL on macOS.  It's crazy how dramatic developers get sometimes.

@cloudguy It's clear you feel strongly about Apple moving to proprietary technologies like Metal, but I don't hear the same complaints about Microsoft and Direct3D.  Sure you can use OpenGL on Windows, but no one does because it's not well supported.

lkrupp said:

Human nature being what it is Apple can place as many restrictions and demands on these special iPhones as it wants but they WILL make it into the wild and black hats WILL get them and exploit them. Period.

Black hats are already jailbreaking iPhones and finding exploits.  This just adds a method (and incentive) to do it legitimately.