Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I know what you mean. ThinkPads are definitely chunky and are in the similar price range as Macs. If I didn't have the Macbook pro (16gigs with core -i5) from work, I'd probably buy a Macbook air. I feel that the Air series offer a lot of value for money. I have the touch bar Macbook pro. It's great. I use the touch bar sometimes but all I really want is the finger print sensor. Great feature. I'm wondering if Apple will ever open up the iPad OS a bit and allow terminal access and enable installing compilers and dev environments like the Mac OS. I wouldn't mind switching to an iPad in that case. The ARM Macbooks are going to be just non-touch iPads with MacOS X on them anyway. I don't do a lot of gaming. Mostly play casual games on a Nintendo Switch. So my desktop PC has been barely touched in the last three years.

I'd love to see iPads become more versatile. The iPad Pro seems like a pretty nice device, particularly because of the high refresh rate screen. But it's very heavily consumption and illustration oriented. My iPad 3 has been passable since it was new, with some degradation in performance, but I haven't found a more interesting use for it besides YouTube and Pocket. I imagine that it could be a great device for interactive systems or 3D modelling, but I'd really be trying to justify the purchase at that point. I do also agree that the fingerprint sensor is a nice addition, but along with it they made it almost impossible to recover data in the event of catastrophic failure.

Yeah, absolutely. IOS is very restrictive in terms of what you can achieve on it as a developer or a power user. But it's an amazing device for artists and content creators. Packs enough CPU power for their needs. My wife has been considering buying one for illustrations etc. Now with the new iPad Air supporting Pencil 2, the choices are even more confusing. She is torn between getting the pro or the new Air.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com