Yesterday. I used Windows 10 with my 1440p monitor. I had three terminal windows open and a browser. I used two terminal windows and the browser for reference while I worked in the third terminal cross-referencing information from the other three sources. This type of workflow is not atypical for me, and probably many others.
I know when I'm coding it's not uncommon to have multiple windows open as well. And certainly having to switch between them would be exceedingly frustrating and slow down work.
You would think the training wheels could come off, except that Apple in recent years keeps changing how the UI works.
Sure. It's one thing to tap, swipe, and pinch. That's pretty basic with touchscreen user interfaces after 10+ years. But it's entirely another to swipe with three fingers left or pinch with three fingers twice in a row, or drag up from the bottom-left with a stylus... (Assuming you're using the latest operating system.. otherwise those don't work and the gestures are different.) It's another to know which parts of iPadOS Music are actionable. Before you used to swipe up for more options, now you tap somewhere. Apple keeps changing things beyond the basic tap, swipe, and pinch; so training wheel are very much needed.
All fair points. Like I said, I came in to say my piece from a Devil’s Advocate point of view, not as an iPadOS apologist. There are plenty of use cases where its just not going to cut it, but I maintain that it is much more learnable and capable of heavy productivity than it is given credit for. Understood that coding, for example, is a particularly challenging use case for iPadOS.
Also agree as pointed out by others that the real let down of iPadOS is the native apps themselves Rather than the ability to multitask with them. The productivity apps are all so woeful, that the iWork suite is by far the superior set of apps on iPad, which if you tried to say that on a desktop OS, would be absurd. That is what iPadOS really needs more than anything else, is proper full feature parity desktop level apps.
The only reason I am able to use iPadOS in my demanding work environment is because all of our ERP, productivity, and financial software is web-based. We don’t have local installs of any of those things on our hardware, or if we do they are portable, like Slack for example. I unfortunately think this will only change once Apple starts releasing their ARM Macs, and Apple’s custom processors start overlapping in the product lines.
Yes, I do have to switch tabs back and forth more often sometimes, and usually am using keyboard shortcuts for that stuff on iPad, but have made adjustments to my workflow so that this kind of thing is less of a choke point than it would have been if I refused to change my workflow from my macOS norm.
I also, despite fully agreeing with your last paragraph, stand by the idea that a lot of criticism comes from not wanting to take the time to learn a new way of doing things, instead trying to fit that square peg in a round hole, or don’t use the iPad enough to become used to the navigation for more advanced multitasking and productivity use.
One of the tools cursor based UI’s have that touch based just don’t is cursor hover contextual cues. This is actually a huge deal and challenge for touch UI design, as you can’t make an expositional instruction pop up in the UI by hovering, and long press is already taken for other functions.
Ultimately I would love to have a Samsung DEX like solution, where I could just have my foldable iPhone with me and connect it to an external monitor with a keyboard and mouse, and macOS UI just appears, unfold it into a 10-12” tablet when on the go and iPadOS UI presents itself...
