I find my iPad Pro quite useful but it refuses to load up AutoCad and other software that is a requirement for me. Some will not need a full computer while other do!
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what does ipad/ios need to make it a full computer replacement?
- Thread starter mrklaw
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I find my iPad Pro quite useful but it refuses to load up AutoCad and other software that is a requirement for me. Some will not need a full computer while other do!
agreed. mine helps nicely in paying off my mortgage in it's own unique way for my work.
but for the masses? the majority? i suspect it's more entertainment consumption device than a fee earner that pays it's way in life.
Well, that's what I mean. You need a "full" computer to get your work done. Many people find a less powerful device meets their professional needs, including, apparently, Tim Cook.
Considering I bought an early 2015 13" retina MacBook Pro for $1100 with 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 2.7GHz Core i5 with an SD card slot that I have a 128GB SSD card in that works like another drive I don't think I need a iPad at all. Forget the iPad. Buy the 13" MacBook Pro.
For what little notes I take while walking around I use my iPhone with the reminder app using speech recognition.
It's hard to gauge who is the majority. My guess is that people needing AutoCAD to do their jobs isn't the majority. People needing complex Excel spreadsheet that iPad version of Excel doesn't handle, maybe. For people who do a lot of writing, the iPad could be their main device, with a computer doing supplementary functions that the iPad doesn't quite handle.
as a professional artist and designer myself I'd never consider using AutoCAD and Photoshop and any other 3D drafting and design software to the exacting standard i need it for. I'm sure it would eventually do what i need, to a small degree, but what a complete frustration and a faff. but then, thats where desktops meet my need nicely. (see my website for examples - iPPro couldn't even think about this line of work).
image creation for me needs to be of the most highest level. the Pro cant cope with this demand for me. Artistry on the Pro is a past time, again, for me. Where it does completely earn it's keep is in admin, book keeping, demos/client presentations etc etc. words and writing stuff and display stuff in basic. all the stuff a laptop would do for me in the past. (even the most powerful laptops can do what i require of them)
We use excel a lot at work. Excel 365 on OS X works about 90% of the time but there are somethings in the macros that the OS X version can't duplicate. This is of course fine because I have my bootcamp machine open with VMWare Fusion or am running directly off of the bootcamp install.
Ok, so image creation on the iPad isn't up to what you need professionally. But you said the iPad is not enough to meet the professional need for the "majority." But I think there are more people who do admin type stuff for their work than there are people who do image related work for a living.
it's a shame as image creation is probably a way Apple would ideally like it to perform in a professional context.
also, i didn't actually say the Pro wasn't up to the professional need of the majority, i actually said i suspect the majority use it for entertainment than fee earning. as for use in the professional field, then yes, more people do admin type stuff than drawings, which is where the Pro can excel, but as sales go, i'd highly suspect the majority of sales are stacked in the favour on non pros, ie, entertainment and consumption, than fee earning pros.
this last point i do not know of course, it's just speculation.
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also, i didn't actually say the Pro wasn't up to the professional need of the majority, i actually said i suspect the majority use it for entertainment than fee earning. as for use in the professional field, then yes, more people do admin type stuff than drawings, which is where the Pro can excel, but as sales go, i'd highly suspect the majority of sales are stacked in the favour on non pros, ie, entertainment and consumption, than fee earning pros.
this last point i do not know of course, it's just speculation.
Yeah, well, we are all speculating away, of course.
But what's your reasoning for speculating that more people buy the iPad Pro for entertainment purposes than for work?
My feeling is that while the iPP is a great entertainment device, it's priced high enough that most people would try to justify its purchase by telling themselves they'll use it for work. And it is in fact useful for work, especially for office / admin type work. For example, more than half the time I spend on my iPP is for fun, but I do get my work done much faster since I got it.
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I think it's more like they left it out on purpose. They are trying to move people away from the desktop/files metaphor. Then it turned out the file metaphor is too ingrained to get rid of, so they've been dragging their feet backtracking.
I once read somewhere on this forum that somebody said the File Managment was "Barbaric". Admittedly, the debate was on whether to use files & folders to store and manage pictures versus the iPhoto or Photos style library structure which the user is totally isolated from the file structure.
I may be an old school computer user. Therefore unless I have full access to the file structure, I won't be comfortable.
Apple (this started with Steve) on the other hand wants to isolate the user from the file structure as much as possible. Considering how many people have a hard time trying to figure out where they put their files and how to find them again, they may have a point there.
As much as we would like to have a file structure and manage our own files, Apple does not see the future in that direction. This is why they will never bring a user accessible file managment to IOS.
No, you aren't an old school computer user. Old school computers didn't even have a file structure.
File structures aren't what they are cracked up to be. At work we have files that are, I kid you not, nested more than ten folders deep. Try and find that file!
There are times and places where my beloved Dropbox does not work on my Air 2 as there is no cellular or WiFi in many places I work in the field. The ability for my iPad to be able to hold all of my customer contracts would be of great help.
There are many apps that you can use for that. GoodReader, I believe, allows you to keep a folder in sync with a folder on your network computer.
Reading this thread is interesting. It's clear people have vastly different needs and opinions about what is or isn't needed for a full computer replacement. If you don't go out of the normal email, browser, lighter office work type of things, it would do fine. If you need peripherals or local storage, file system access, or specialty software (audio/video/photo/etc.) it's clearly not going to work for you.
I started using Commodore computers in the late 1970s and there was no file structure nor was there a hard drive. Your files were on 5 1/4" floppy disks and they were all in the root directory -- there were no folders.
While my use of the Apple II was limited, I'm pretty sure there was no file structure there either.
I think DOS was the first OS to have a file structure and that came later on.
The purpose of having a file structure was really to keep the system files organized by application and separate from your data files. Early computers had each application on a separate floppy disk, so that was your structure right there. Later on when hard drives were introduced, it would have become messy, so they introduced the idea of having folders to put the files for each application.
As computers have become more complicated over the years and the number of files on a computer now number in the hundreds of thousands, both Windows and OS X have tried to hide the system files from the casual user, just leaving a "Documents" folder accessible, and now on iOS it's not just hidden but is actually not accessible at all.
iOS seems to be going back to the idea that each app keeps its own data files, and since they are kept separate from the system files for that app, they are easy to find. I think people are just used to working a certain way and do not realize that simple is sometimes better.
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You know, just because 35 years ago people used to work with rudimentary operating systems using rudimentary ways to organize files, that doesn't mean it was a good thing or that we should go back to that. Things have evolved since then. Simplicity was good on iOS as long as it was only an operating system for phones. Now it's more than that. It has to evolve.
