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I'd suggest that for a lot of users, Procreate is the closest thing to a "killer app" that's iPad only and emerged organically from a third party.

I'd second this.

I'm an hobby artist and have played with various drawing programs on the ipad (and gone through a few mid-level wacom tablets before that) and Procreate is simply amazing. It's an app that couldn't exist without the ipad and it massively increases its usefulness. Procreate is good enough that I don't feel the need to bring any further art supplies (even a sketchbook and pencils) when traveling.

Procreate is on everyone's iPad I know. I kinda blows my mind how affordable that app is. People would definitely pay 2-3x more or a yearly sub for it.

I am very scared of Adobe buying it like Figma and doing that to it

Did they ruin Figma already?

What has Adobe done to Figma?

Procreate and Goodnotes for me.

Using the Apple Pencil with either app gives me the benefits of analogue work and the benefits of digital work. Handwriting helps me remember things, but since the product is digital, it's trivial to move/undo/etc.

And Procreate + Apple Pencil is way better than any other art solution I've found for digital art. Granted I've never tried a drawing tablet with a screen, but an extremely cheap option is still $200. For one that works as well as the AP + iPad you'd probably be looking at near the same price point.

For me, it's Shapr3D. It has the most intuitive CAD interface I've ever used and it's all based around the pencil. Pretty killer app, especially if you have a 3D printer.

I've seen some clips of it in action, and it seems like magic. What do you use it for?

For anyone who makes art, absolutely. I even use Procreate for brainstorming sometimes, because it's so much faster and more intuitive than any other app I've used.

Another thing that IMO is way better on iPad/Pencil is PDF editing and annotation. I happily pay for a subscription to PDF Expert[0] and I just use it for school.

[0]: https://pdfexpert.com

Yeah, I bought my iPad for grad school because I was reading and annotating copious amounts of PDFs.

For a few users, music sheet apps are also killer apps.

I don’t really draw so I haven’t used it as much as I wanted to but that was one purchase that I never regretted. Also helps that it’s not subscription type. To this day anytime someone gets an iPad, I make them try the app.

Why did you buy it then? How could you not regret spending money on something you don't use?

They said they use it, just not much.

And given that it was a non-pricy one-time purchase, and not a subscription, why would they regret it? The cost per hour of usage is only going to keep decreasing over time for them, as long as they keep using it in some capacity occasionally.

It's like $5. Even if you don't use it, you can tell it's a great app, updated often for free, etc. I've regretted apps I've paid $5 and $10 for and were crap, or baited me and turned to subscriptions etc. Procreate is not that.

Why do you need to regret spending money if you don't use what you spent it on?

Because I was using it to practice making digital art which I just don’t have time for right now. I use it to make Christmas cards and doodle probably 5x in a year.

I don’t regret it because I can see that what I paid for is worth the value of the app despite not using it as much.

This. I was sad when FiftyThree's Paper was made subscription :(

Also worth checking out https://www.goodnotes.com Everyone in my school(including the teachers!) uses it for assignments and textbooks

Probably, yes.

And they added an incredibly dumb limitation: You cannot use any pen tablet (e.g. a wacom tablet) on Freeform for OS X. Drawing with a pen is only supported on iOS.

Yep, this has kept me from recommending Freeform. Popped it open when it appeared, broke out my tablet, realized it was useless, reopened Notability.app.

I won't argue whether it this app should allow drawing from a pen tablet, but there are exactly none of you left. (I have owned three pen tablets in my life).

If it's free-from-Apple, the software is there to drive or enhance hardware sales.

Really? Are you saying professional drawing tablets have been completely replaced with iPads?

I noticed the same with the annotation tools in Preview, despite drawing tablets on macOS being exposed to apps through Apple APIs.

You can’t do any “freeform” drawing on Freeform on Mac OS. You can only use the pen tool for vector lines and splines. There is no pencil/marker tool.

I understand that a mouse or trackpad are not the best tools for drawing but many of us have used them for that since the original MacPaint app in 1984. Why remove this feature from the Mac version? Let alone for someone with a pen-based tablet.

> the reason iPad lacks a “killer app”

You're just hugely mistaken. iPad has several killer apps, but the one that is probably the most important is Safari, followed by Mail, followed by Maps (and Google Earth), followed by a combination of Camera and Photos, followed by a tossup between Contacts and Calendar, then Books, Reminders, etc. That these applications are not original doesn't matter. The tablet form-factor and iPadOS platform makes them all earth-shattering for anyone who has previously been tied to a desktop or laptop with a conventional OS. Prior to iPhone, it was as it is today in that most computer users were not power users. They used web, email, and consumed media. iPad does all that better than anything that came before. It's annoying for more complicated tasks, but it does web, personal email and displays media better really than anything else available.

For email, I assume you mean reading emails or using the external keyboard?

Software keyboards suck for writing longer texts.

Those are ‘killer apps’ compared to the phone for instance.

I played a bit with an old chromebook we bought for our kid’s school a while ago, and the browsing experience is definitely better than on my iPad Pro. Having actual arbitrary window management, tabs don’t get lost between the instances, video can actually play in the background, extensions work. The list just goes on and on.

I still prefer the iPad for reading long form and comics, but as the Kindle app is crippled, the overall experience isn’t that far either.

>> iPad has several killer apps, but the one that is probably the most important is Safari, followed by Mail, followed by Maps (and Google Earth), followed by a combination of Camera and Photos, followed by a tossup between Contacts and Calendar, then Books, Reminders, etc. That these applications are not original doesn't matter. The tablet form-factor and iPadOS platform makes them all earth-shattering for anyone who has previously been tied to a desktop or laptop with a conventional OS.

None of those are killer apps.

A killer app is an application that is so unique and so useful that it sells the hardware:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application

Web browsers, mail clients, maps / navigation, camera software, photo software, contacts management, calendaring, ebooks, and todo list / reminders software are available on iOS, MacOS, Android phones and tablets, Windows desktops and tablets, and even Linux desktop environments.

Are you really saying that the iPadOS version of those applications is so superior to any of the other competitors that people buy iPads just to use the iPadOS versions?

Before the iPad came out - when Michael Arrington at TechCrunch was talking about the "CrunchPad" - the dream app was a browser. People were talking about laying on the sofa reading the news, watching videos, checking emails - without the bulkiness of having to interact with a keyboard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

I’d definitely agree with the parent comment that Safari is one of the iPads killer apps.

Safari on a 12.9” iPad is like having an ergonomic MacBook browser. It’s powerful enough to render almost everything the web has (save for chrome specific experiments).

But as mentioned above the killer application isn’t software, it’s the form factor. While I have a decent TV, most of the video content I watch is on my iPad. It’s just more convenient.

To add one more, iOS is powerful but simple enough that I’ve recommended an iPad to most older people I know. They can do almost everything they need on it, and neither of us have to worry about it getting into a bad state like a desktop PC can.

And for most of them, the main thing they use on it is the browser.

> Are you really saying that the iPadOS version of those applications is so superior to any of the other competitors that people buy iPads just to use the iPadOS versions?

It isn't just these applications providing all too common functionality, it is the application centric iPadOS that makes them more than the sum of their parts, also. Apple's implementation of iPadOS and their tablet implementations of these common applications cause each to rise to the level of killer app, and, definitely, beyond all doubt, massively drive sales of the hardware just to use those particular yet common apps in Apple's implementations of them on a tablet. There's no great reason Android on third-party tablet, or whatever is running on Amazon's tablets, can't achieve the same, but they simply haven't. Android more or less sucks. Apple sucks, but with iPadOS + tablet app implementations, much much less.

> Safari, followed by Mail, followed by Maps (and Google Earth)

MacBook does all these better and the rest of your list too with the exception of Camera, which the iPhone does better.

Disagree. there are cases where safari on a Portable tablet is far better than Safari on a MacBook that I have to lung around. It just feels better walking around with a light weight but good size tablet for basic web browsing. The form factor of touch is superior for maps and mail

To me, yours is a strange ordering. I would have thought (i)Books would be #1.

> ... because the app ecosystem is too dysfunctional

I suggest that it’s even deeper than that. By dragging the iPad kicking and screaming in to the “pro” demographic, Apple has killed the very thing that made it compelling for “killer apps” in the first place: it’s focus on your app.

“When you open an app it becomes [whatever that app tells it to]” - My very rough paraphrasing of Steve Jobs during the original iPad era

When was the last time you could use an iPad for a single task without having to be precious about multi-touch gestures, and without notifications interrupting you? What ‘killer app’ can serve the now-fragmented demographics while also competing with everything else trying to steal your attention while you’re using it?

Yeah it makes a great demo! But perhaps they also looked at the success of Miro & Figjam and realised a whiteboard is an essential part of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote suite?

iPad lacks a “killer app”

It does have a killer app: The form factor.

Lots of devices do lots of things that the iPad does. But they all have screens that are too small, or keyboards, or other things that make them too thick.

ipadOS apps aren't as powerful as computer programs, but they're good enough. And when combined with the iPad's form factor and simplicity, there's a reason that — according to Wikipedia — Apple's sold a half-billion of them.

That's strange, the form factor is the worst part for me.

There is no comfortable position to use an iPad in. In bed you're craning your head over, or propping it on your raised thighs. The keyboard cases are flimsy or super heavy.

I love the user interface on the iPad, it looks the best of iPhone, iPad, and Mac. But a MacBook is so much more ergonomic than an iPad.. :(

This is true. One place where the iPad’s form factor beats a laptop’s is the kitchen counter. It takes up less space but still gives a decently sized screen. Another is when reading PDFs in vertical orientation. It is very close to the experience of reading a printed sheet of paper.