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Grombobulous • today at 2:13 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

I don’t think the examples I gave were particularly specialized.

Enterprise is running what I assume to be a web-based CRUD application and the trial attorneys were displaying PDFs and other documents on a projector.

Besides code compilation I can’t really think of anything an iPad can’t do. Can you list out some examples?


Replies

xp84 • today at 4:04 PM

Sibling to you gave a dozen examples. But your first paragraph is exactly the point of what an iPad’s correct use is: Enterprise’s use case could be done by any portable device with a camera, and doesn’t need a keyboard. iPad is perfect for that.

Ditto for drawing on or highlighting PDFs with only a single mirrored screen being visible to everyone. You couldn’t ask for a simpler task.

It’s tasks that are more complex than this where iOS (including the hilariously-named iPadOS which we all know is just iOS) is a joke.

I’ll give you some things that I would never bother to try on iOS. To be fair, an android tablet is just as bad:

- There’s a folder full of files and I want to organize them by moving them in a few groups into different folders. A mouse and multiple selection in various varieties, and opening several finder windows makes this trivially easy. Doing this in iOS is painful.

- I need to extract three files from a zip and modify one of them and then zip them back up. A few clicks on macOS. An afternoon project on iOS.

- I have a movie file and I want to add a subtitle track to it. Or maybe change the container format to be compatible with my Apple devices. 10 seconds with the terminal and FFMpeg. I’m sure someone will sell me an iOS app with a weekly subscription cost, which might do it.

I could go on all day.

I got rid of my last iPad about 7 years ago and haven’t missed it. My M1 MacBook Air is more useful to me than the latest iPad Pro (even with its $300 keyboard accessory) would be, and I’d never trade it.

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