11 ms·

They want to sell you two devices, and a monthly subscription to iCloud to interoperate between them.

dmonitor 3y ago
I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much. I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.
- gtvwill 3y ago
  Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    You are just speculating - having a 2 in 1 device is not as easy as “osx on an iPad” or “iOS on a Mac” Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice
    - hu3 3y ago
      > Until the m1 is was 100% not possible. Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could) https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Spooky23 3y ago
        Sure, and they don’t sell particularly well. That whole segment of the Microsoft ecosystem is a dusty corner that doesn’t get a lot of respect. Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.
      - katbyte 3y ago
        different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood. ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
    - afavour 3y ago
      Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it. (before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
      - katbyte 3y ago
        the os isn't the hard part, its the app ecosystem and navigating how do you ensure they all run properly on x86, and not with a huge performance or battery hit. i would be rosetta2 in reverse, and as great as rosetta2 is it has limitations & does come at a cost. sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.
        afavour 3y ago
        > how do you ensure they all run properly on x86 Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices. > it would be rosetta2 in reverse It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.
        katbyte 3y ago
        You seem to be forgetting that every app in the App Store would need to be rebuilt.. and developers would need to buy in and do so
        afavour 3y ago
        Make it a requirement in order to ship a new version, developers would do it in an instant. Just like they did with 64bit builds. Sure, a small number of apps would fall to the wayside. But it’s not like Apple has hesitated to do that before.
  - nomel 3y ago
    > they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience. [1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus-pc-in-the-enterprise/ https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus... edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?
    - gtvwill 3y ago
      Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
      - nomel 3y ago
        As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do. > made all their software offerings over the last 20 What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection. The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party. > they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now. > plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer. I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    > Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
    - zakki 3y ago
      The problem is most other devices are cheaper so no complaint for the shit-show. With Apple’s prices, I want more.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  > I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. "They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."
paulcole 3y ago
Yeah, this is why they’ve pushed so hard for people to carry both iPhones and iPods.
nomel 3y ago
What is this in reference to? I have an iPad and a MacBook. I don't pay a subscription. I usually use Microsoft OneDrive, so I can sync between/to my non apple devices, though I usually just use airdrop. Are you referring to extra cloud storage? edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?
- zeven7 3y ago
  I haven't owned an Apple device in 10 years, but I think they're talking about iCloud.
  - nomel 3y ago
    I don't understand. There's no iCloud subscription to enable all the cross-device interoperability. The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.
giobox 3y ago
And in the case of the iPad, try to sell you them individually for each family member... It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  You can if you're a school! https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/edua714f0cdx/web https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/e... The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member. For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others. EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I've heard that the multi user feature for schools is pretty skin deep and that it basically just acts as an auth for apps which store all data remotely. Not at all something you could just drop on regular consumers.
- behnamoh 3y ago
  The thing is: I can't even do media consumptions and web browsing on iPad. Browsing the web without uBlock and a few other extensions is a battle I'm not willing to fight. And so many video codecs not supported on iPad makes it unusable for media consumption. And have you tried opening your videos in other apps? Guess what? The file gets copied to the other app, meaning that now you have two versions of the same movie/whatever. The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
  - mattl 3y ago

I really don’t buy these kinds of explanations when it comes to Apple products. They would love to sell you a 2-in-1 device for twice as much. I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. 2-in-1s are just terrible UX experiences that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with.

gtvwill 3y ago
Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.
- katbyte 3y ago
  You are just speculating - having a 2 in 1 device is not as easy as “osx on an iPad” or “iOS on a Mac” Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice
  - hu3 3y ago
    > Until the m1 is was 100% not possible. Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could) https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106 And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      Sure, and they don’t sell particularly well. That whole segment of the Microsoft ecosystem is a dusty corner that doesn’t get a lot of respect. Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.
    - katbyte 3y ago
      different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood. ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device
  - afavour 3y ago
    Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it. (before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)
    - katbyte 3y ago
      the os isn't the hard part, its the app ecosystem and navigating how do you ensure they all run properly on x86, and not with a huge performance or battery hit. i would be rosetta2 in reverse, and as great as rosetta2 is it has limitations & does come at a cost. sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.
      - afavour 3y ago
        > how do you ensure they all run properly on x86 Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices. > it would be rosetta2 in reverse It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.
        katbyte 3y ago
        You seem to be forgetting that every app in the App Store would need to be rebuilt.. and developers would need to buy in and do so
        afavour 3y ago
        Make it a requirement in order to ship a new version, developers would do it in an instant. Just like they did with 64bit builds. Sure, a small number of apps would fall to the wayside. But it’s not like Apple has hesitated to do that before.
- nomel 3y ago
  > they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience. [1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus-pc-in-the-enterprise/ https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus... edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?
  - gtvwill 3y ago
    Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.
    - nomel 3y ago
      As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do. > made all their software offerings over the last 20 What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection. The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party. > they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could. Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now. > plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer. I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  > Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.
  - zakki 3y ago
    The problem is most other devices are cheaper so no complaint for the shit-show. With Apple’s prices, I want more.
housemusicfan 3y ago
> I just don’t think the UX is good enough for their standards. MacOS is poorly suited for touch interactions, and iPadOS is poorly suited for mouse cursor oriented interactions. "They've developed utter shite over two decades but only did so because of their impossibly high standards and they care about you, the customer."

paulcole 3y ago

Yeah, this is why they’ve pushed so hard for people to carry both iPhones and iPods.

nomel 3y ago

What is this in reference to? I have an iPad and a MacBook. I don't pay a subscription. I usually use Microsoft OneDrive, so I can sync between/to my non apple devices, though I usually just use airdrop. Are you referring to extra cloud storage? edit: A response would be appreciated, so I can understand what's going on with this comment. This is a genuine question. What subscription am I missing out on here?

zeven7 3y ago
I haven't owned an Apple device in 10 years, but I think they're talking about iCloud.
- nomel 3y ago
  I don't understand. There's no iCloud subscription to enable all the cross-device interoperability. The cloud subscription just gets you more than the 5Gb of free storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive for extra cloud storage. Handoff, shared clipboard, airdrop, sidecar, and all the other nice stuff works without extra cloud storage. You do need to have an iCloud account.

giobox 3y ago

And in the case of the iPad, try to sell you them individually for each family member... It's 2023, and you still can't have multiple user accounts on any model of iPad, "Pro" or otherwise. This is a feature you can just take for-granted on virtually any other "computer" too.

wlesieutre 3y ago
You can if you're a school! https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/edua714f0cdx/web https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-education/e... The feature has existed for years, Apple just won't let you use it because they'd rather sell separate devices to every family member. For all the talk about environmentalism and their elaborate phone recycling robots, they're not too concerned about the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Never mind that it's the most important one that you're supposed to do before the others. EDIT - I'm aware a local users system without a network login system would require a slightly different implementation from schools, but a small 2.8 trillion dollar company like Apple could figure it out if they wanted to
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I've heard that the multi user feature for schools is pretty skin deep and that it basically just acts as an auth for apps which store all data remotely. Not at all something you could just drop on regular consumers.
behnamoh 3y ago
The thing is: I can't even do media consumptions and web browsing on iPad. Browsing the web without uBlock and a few other extensions is a battle I'm not willing to fight. And so many video codecs not supported on iPad makes it unusable for media consumption. And have you tried opening your videos in other apps? Guess what? The file gets copied to the other app, meaning that now you have two versions of the same movie/whatever. The iPadOS is so broken in basic ways that I can't even.
- mattl 3y ago