The frustration is not that it's different or less, it's that it could be better if apple was actually willing to try.
You don't need to sacrifice composability just because of the tablet form factor. You need to be careful with the input methods, sure, but composability on a tablet could actually be better than on a PC if designed well, but we'll never know until someone bothers to try.
I'm in the camp that thinks Apple made a mistake adding multitasking to the iPad. I don't want my iPad to be more PC-like. The changes were significant and iOS is less stable now than it used to be. Even if they get all the bugs ironed out, I'm still a little sad that they clearly want to take the device in that direction.
For similar reasons I thought Microsoft made a big mistake dumping the Windows 7 UI for Metro (or whatever it's actually called).
If I want to do PC-type stuff, I'll do it on my PC. Tablet stuff I'll do on a tablet.
I don't really like the multitasking implementation, and I definitely don't need it. Multitasking was never one of the things standing in the way of my iPad being a PC replacement for me.
I can use my PC for all those things if I really want to; it's just less convenient and less compelling a form factor. Those things are the big reason the iPad sells despite not being a fully-capable PC replacement.
But you can use your iPad for all these other things too. That’s the point of this. There are work arounds in both directions.
Nothing is stopping you from using an iPad to VNC into a Windows PC on AWS to access that website. It’s inconvenient and complex, just like using your PC on a treadmill, but it’s certainly possible.
Or I could hire an assistant to sit in front of a computer, follow my directions issued via Facetime running on my iPad, and read back the results (or not, if I only care about side-effects).
Is that interesting in the context of a frank discussion of the iPad's capabilities as a general-purpose computing device? No, it isn't.
Well people are asserting that they can use a PC - by which I mean a laptop with traditional form factor - on a treadmill, and they clearly can't - not without a bunch of hardware to help them out. And while I haven't done it, I'm pretty sure I can just spin up a desktop PC in the cloud and remote into it; it's not that hard, but it is inconvenient.
The point is that PCs have got use cases, iPads have use cases, and they both help people do "real work". In both cases there are situations where the form factor or operating system is an impediment to getting "real work" done.
The fact that one aspect of iPad - multitasking - is rough around the edges, doesn't deduct from the overall proposition of iPad or the ability for it to be used in "real work". The form factor itself is a huge benefit to certain types of job, the OS is built to work with that form factor, and this is something that iPad does better than anything else (at least if sales are an indication).
The PC is not remotely the best tool for every computing job, and just because you're, say, a pilot, doesn't mean you're not doing real work.
> Well people are asserting that they can use a PC - by which I mean a laptop with traditional form factor - on a treadmill, and they clearly can't - not without a bunch of hardware to help them out.
I feel like perching it on the control panel would work pretty well, or perhaps a tall side table if you did it a lot. Not sure what's so hard about any of that, but it's not really all that relevant IMO.
> And while I haven't done it, I'm pretty sure I can just spin up a desktop PC in the cloud and remote into it; it's not that hard, but it is inconvenient.
Can my mom do that? I mean, she's intellectually capable of learning how, presumably, but I wouldn't even bother with that rigamarole. I'd just buy a PC, and so would she. Both of us own PCs and iPads, but it's pretty clear which one we'd choose if we could only afford one or the other, and that's the point of all this: if you are a person who sits down at your computer and makes things, if you can only afford one or the other, without any other information (and most people will really have to dig into it to be sure, and still risk getting burned in the future), it's obvious which one you should buy.
> The point is that PCs have got use cases, iPads have use cases, and they both help people do "real work". In both cases there are situations where the form factor or operating system is an impediment to getting "real work" done.
I never said you can't do "real work" on an iPad. I do "real work" on mine all the time, and the whole point of my original post in this thread was that people are—as you are now, to me—talking past each other, using this "real work" phrase as an excuse to do so.
I'm typing this comment on an iPad. I love my iPad and I have a very good idea of what it can and can't do. All the things it can't do (for me, at least) are 100% imposed by the operating system and apps-over-files model.
> The fact that one aspect of iPad - multitasking - is rough around the edges, doesn't deduct from the overall proposition of iPad or the ability for it to be used in "real work". The form factor itself is a huge benefit to certain types of job, the OS is built to work with that form factor, and this is something that iPad does better than anything else (at least if sales are an indication).
Multitasking isn't the thing that stops me from totally replacing my PC with my iPad, and it's not the only thing the author of the OP article brought up (if he even brought it up at all).
See above re: "real work".
> The PC is not remotely the best tool for every computing job, and just because you're, say, a pilot, doesn't mean you're not doing real work.
See above re: real work. At no point in this thread have I suggested that you can't do "real work" on an iPad, and, again, I am personally a counterexample to that claim.
I don't think remoting in to an entirely different device really counts as a workaround, that's just using a different device because the iPad can't do it.
