jcoh

dewme said:

I can relate to both sides of this issue. There’s always been an undercurrent of belief that the iPad Pros are being “held back” by limitations in iPadOS. Apple itself has often touted how some of the iPad Pros hardware specs eclipse those of traditional laptop and even desktop PCs. So yeah, when Apple rolls out a cool new feature that many folks believe releases the iPad Pro from its supposed shackles and these new features are not terribly unlike the sort of things that are common on all of those supposedly eclipsed competitors, why wouldn’t it raise a lot of questions for owners of slightly older iPad Pros?

On the other hand Apple wants to make sure that whatever it releases meets their quality standards, which include performance and user experience. Apple owns both the software and hardware pieces of the puzzle, so anything that comes across as substandard will reflect directly on Apple. Contrast this with Microsoft, who in the past, placed very few restrictions on which systems could install Windows 10. Some of the resulting installations would yield absolutely abysmal performance and be practically useless, but that was the hardware vendor’s problem, not Microsoft’s. Apple can’t point the finger at itself - even when it’s their own fault.

I posed the question earlier whether those who feel left behind by Apple’s restrictions on Stage Manager would have been happier if Apple delayed the release of the feature a year or two so “left behind” iPad Pro owners would feel better. I personally think that doing so would be a mistake. I’d rather see Apple pushing the envelope at the cost of slight fragmentation rather than designing around a lowest common denominator. That’s just my take..

As far as the shrinkydink feature shown in the linked article, all I can say is that there’s a big difference between a prototype and a release ready feature. It’s also not uncommon for proponents of individual features to struggle to get their feature into a product release. Determining what the “release defining features” of a product will be has always been a friction point between engineering and marketing. I’ve seen supposedly release defining features dropped at the last minute, only to reappear 3 or 4 releases later or even never. Head spinning. Who’s wrong and who’s right depends on which side of the fence you’re on. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to project at the point of inception what the cost (to the customer) of holding back one feature so another one can get released will be. Maybe if Apple had a fully trustworthy set of Alpha/Beta customers who would respect NDAs and not leak like a sieve they could field test some of these things more intensely and make smarter choices. Highly unlikely.