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Comment by etempleton | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting that the most common criticism of the iPad Pro is that it is hard to fully leverage the hardware capabilities. Part of that is iPad OS has always been a bit of an afterthought compared to iOS, but part of it is probably just a limitation of the form factor. There are only so many things a tablet is good for before you need to connect a keyboard and pointer device. You can see this with the extremely expensive keyboard case that essentially turns the iPad into a laptop.

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This complaint is as old as the iPad itself.

> Apple iPad Pro review 2018: the fastest iPad is still an iPad

> And the one thing Apple didn’t really change on the iPad Pro is iOS 12, which has all of the same capabilities and limitations iPad users have come to expect. Apple wants you to think that the iPad Pro is the future of computing, but if you’ve already used iOS 12 on an iPad Pro, you know exactly how you feel about that idea.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/5/18062612/apple-ipad-pro-r...

It’s even there in this 2013 review of the first iPad Air - fast hardware held back by the software https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5062826/apple-ipad-air-re...

With a bit of work, Apple could make iPad OS a much better system for tablets. I don't like newer iterations of GNOME, but it is a really decent user experience on a Surface Go.

Given that an iPad Pro is a much better piece of hardware and linux-surface is made by some enthusiasts, there is no excuse for this.

iPads are great, some apps are great, but the overall experience is simply not there. It is way too constraining.

Not even just first party. My partner uses Instagram on an iPad, and the app looks like trash. Just a zoomed in version of the phone UI. Facebook has infinite money, uses Instagram to drive further revenue, and even they cannot be bothered to give the app any TLC.

It’s a zoomed in version of the phone UI because it’s literally the iPhone app. Apple lets you run iPhone apps on iPad and that’s how they look.

Probably better off adding a shortcut to the website in this case, since Instagram is so determined to not have an iPad app.

At this point I can only guess that it's an explicit decision by Facebook not to support iPad — that is, they have some reason for wanting their user base to preference their interactions with the app using their phones

I think it’s probably because photos posted there are too low resolution and/or compressed to look good filling up the majority of a tablet screen.

Thing is, you can connect a keyboard and pointer device as you note, and it's still just as hard to "leverage the hardware capabilities".

I think it gets a particularly bad rap among software developers because in a lot of areas you can do actual work on an iPad, but programming is an area where it’s still absolute shit with no signs of ever changing.

It’s possible to do SwiftUI development on device now, but god forbid you’re doing anything other than that (or even SwiftUI but it’s a real Xcode project already) then the iPad is practicaly useless.

I have that Magic Keyboard and would love to have the option to run real Linux via https://getutm.app/. The iPad is fully capable of this, but it is a pain because you have to jailbreak it. Ugh.

Yeah, they should really unlock the virtualization capabilities. That IMO would make a lot of power users happy. I would love for them to also offer some sort of dual boot option for running macOS on bare metal but that's likely not going to happen.

I'd be happy enough with virtualization, at least then I could make proper use of the hardware.

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