nicholfd

fastasleep said:

nicholfd said:

spheric said:

Mail merge!? 

It took them A DECADE to reinstate this? 

It used to be that you could just drag a contact group directly from Address Book and drop it into an address field in any Pages or Numbers document, and - presto! - it would auto-generate a mailing to all of those recipients, including the proper salutation. 

No, I'm not imagining this — they removed the feature (along with super easy trackpad-based resize and rotate) back when they feature-synced iOS and Mac versions of iWork. 

So cool that they finally re-implement this essential functionality, years after it has almost entirely ceased to be useful, as paper mailing lists have long died for anything except weddings and funerals… 

You must not realize that mail merge is also used for e-mail, not just paper mail...

I haven't used it for paper mail in ages.  I do use it periodically for e-mail.

Why would you be mailing personalized documents generated in Pages via email? Can Pages send emails? I'm confused. 

tht said:

Right now, in June 2022, it looks like the release of Web Push in 2023 will be good for users and developers.

Hopefully Apple will have a flag to turn off Push notifications from web apps and web sites.   

I've taken quite the dim view of these "pro competition, pro business, pro consumer" rationales. GDPR pop-up notices are like a modern rendition of ActiveX pop-ups, and it didn't do anything to actually protect people. This Web Push stuff sounds like it is going to amp up notification marketing by increasing the surface area of who and what can send a push notification by orders of magnitude. Eventually a few "bad" players will blow up all the goodness and just trash everything. Like, all it takes is one "web app" to mess up your phone or PC and you will have to go through some cleaning activity.

Every single communications medium we have eventually just turns to shit. My mail box is 99% advertisements, and probably 99.999% by weight. Just the thought of the gas and diesel used to deliver that shit pisses me off. My landline phone is nothing but telemarketing and basically shit calls. My cell phone is getting there and I really should just turn on the flag to only allow my contacts to ring the phone. Email? Our email apps have the work of multiple PhDs to filter that stuff out, on multiple nodes of an email's path to your input. Text messaging? I think text messaging costing money way back when actually delayed the inevitable, especially now that regulators want "compatibility".

spheric said:

Mail merge!? 

It took them A DECADE to reinstate this? 

It used to be that you could just drag a contact group directly from Address Book and drop it into an address field in any Pages or Numbers document, and - presto! - it would auto-generate a mailing to all of those recipients, including the proper salutation. 

No, I'm not imagining this — they removed the feature (along with super easy trackpad-based resize and rotate) back when they feature-synced iOS and Mac versions of iWork. 

So cool that they finally re-implement this essential functionality, years after it has almost entirely ceased to be useful, as paper mailing lists have long died for anything except weddings and funerals… 

danvm said:

canukstorm said:

dewme said:

foregoneconclusion said:

This article is written as if Apple doesn't have any ideas for the iPad themselves and are just grudgingly following the demands of tech media. 

I get that sense as well. 

It may be a shock to some folks to know that Apple actually knows how to build a fully functional desktop/laptop operating system that has everything that is being requested. It's available today and it's called macOS. The iPad was never intended to be just another form factor device capable of running macOS. As great as macOS may be, it's still very much rooted in being an operating system layered on top of a piece of industrial machinery that requires the user to adapt to its needs, not the other way around. People are not born with a notion of files growing on trees or burying personal documents and photos in deep hierarchies of folders. The PC paradigm and many of the UI interactions are based on getting the user to conform to the needs of the machine, or at least to conform to artificial paradigms created by operating system programmers, in some cases, many decades ago. Calling industrial machines that require trained humans to operate "personal computers" was wordplay and a total croc. 

The iPad was intended flip the script on the relationship between people and computers. The iPad attempted to make a version of a computer that conformed to the needs of the person who owns it without bringing along the industrial baggage. When a person writes a letter they just pick up a piece of paper and start writing. When they are done they put it back down on the desk, or maybe slide it into a drawer or a file cabinet. They may turn on some music at the same time, or pick up a newspaper or magazine. I doubt many people are going to lay out 16 magazines on their desk at the same time, alongside the partially completed letter to grandma.

These are probably not perfect analogies, but I believe the original intention of the iPad was to remove as much of the machinery and claptrap that we've had to conform to in order to use computers effectively from a computing device centered around serving our more personal needs. Calling even the original iPad a consumption-only device is disingenuous and narrow minded. It's always had a built-in ability to produce personal and sharable content including documents, drawings, schedules, reminders, inventories, and other such content. Being considered a "production" or "work" tool doesn't have to involve industrial-scale content creation, application development, movie editing, etc. Planting a shrub in my yard is productive, but I don't need a backhoe or excavator to do it, just a hand shovel.

Final point - the iPad never was intended to replace traditional, or what I'd call "industrial based computers with trained human operators." As pointed out in the article, Apple isn't trying to merge iPad and Mac. They may have touted the notion that the iPad could in some cases replace the need for an industrial computer for some folks. But merging one way or the other, including putting a version of macOS on the iPad, would effectively destroy either iPadOS or macOS.

I think the real question boils down to - did Apple succeed in making its vision for what the iPad should be something that a lot of people really want to buy? I'd say yes, and especially so with the massive push they've gotten from the iPhone side. But it's not 100% or universal. The allure of industrial computers is as strong as ever. Generations of people born after PCs and Macs became pervasive have acquired the training and skills to operate those machines. They've made the investment and are motivated to continue to leverage their acquired skills not only in their work but in their personal life. I feel that way at some level too, just like I very much miss driving a car with a manual transmission. At least with Apple I feel like I have the best of both worlds. The Mac and macOS is still around and as exciting and challenging as ever, but so is the iPad, which I vastly prefer for things that are more personal and more immediate and needing a bigger screen than what the iPhone makes available. 

I think iPad is growing toward being a viable laptop replacement, but in a way that is unique to what the iPad is.  This article does a good job of explaining

https://yourappleupdate.substack.com/p/why-running-macos-on-an-ipad-isnt?s=w

If you ask me, that unique way is not good at all compared to a full desktop OS.