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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Grombobulous 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I did respond to that sibling and you can peruse my response there. Maybe it's a crazy response, I don't know, but I hope it makes sense.

We could also go on all day about things that your Mac can't do like illustrating with Procreate, connecting to a cellular network, FaceTime with a rear camera, etc, but this whole debate centers around this idea that the iPad is just this useless thing that can't be used as a general purpose tool. That idea is not grounded in reality. It's grounded in user preferences, but if we go down that rabbit hole we can definitely nitpick various things that Windows/macOS/Linux can't do.

Regarding your examples:

I'm confused about what's difficult about these file management and zip/unzip tasks. It works exactly the same as macOS [1]. You can even use a mouse with an iPad. Sure, you lose multiple Finder windows. [2] This costs a small amount of time. "Afternoon project" is a wild exaggeration. [3]

Unlike your Mac, Files centrally manages multiple cloud storage connections. For example, Filen shows up right in Files, but on a Mac you have to do some weird "mount to network share" stuff as a workaround.

You can literally run ffmpeg in a shell on your iPad: https://shaunhevey.com/posts/how-to-use-ffmpeg-on-ios/

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102532

[2] We can also argue that my desktop with 3 monitors is more capable at this task than a laptop computer at a coffee shop but I can't exactly put that in a small bag and take it with me, so the iPad is just making an expected trade-off.

[3] We might even make the argument that file system manipulation has been shown to be a failure in general purpose operating system UX for the general public and that file folder organization is far too difficult for the average person. I know this idea sounds a little insane but if we really think about it I think there's some merit to the idea. How many relatives do you know who have misplaced files in a sea of folders or dump all their stuff on the desktop with hundreds of desktop icons everywhere because they don't know where else to put them? I have at least one elderly person in my life who is only able to find documents on their computer via their physical graphical position on the desktop. I submit the idea that the average person may prefer the paradigm where apps and services "contain" the data and present the data in a way that makes logical sense for that data (e.g., photo albums for photos, message feeds for messages, project structures for documents) and the data moves around between applications via the share button.

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xp84 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I appreciate your big picture thinking with files in (3). I have seen as well how most of the people I have “helped with computers” have no idea how to organize their files. But the iOS paradigm where the files just “live inside the apps” only works for the happy path. Create Procreate document. Edit document on this device. Using iCloud Drive by default and then you can also edit it on the other device. Everything fits in your storage (cloud or local) at once.

It immediately collapses when you don’t have enough storage space for everything at once. Or potentially the bandwidth to transfer it to and from iCloud. As the person who’s called in to help when someone doesn’t want to have to add an expensive higher iCloud tier, or buy a new $1400 phone to get higher storage, it is painful that I can barely even help solve these problems myself on that platform.

The Files app is occasionally useful and is better than the first decade, where iOS didn’t have one. But the Finder (or even Windows Explorer) absolutely embarrasses it.

	▲	Grombobulous 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've definitely seen the "why do I have to pay to store my files now?" friction play out in this situation. Some of my relatives are highly anti-cloud. I know they're also at risk to lose their data, as they don't back up anything. When I set up a backup the workflow isn't followed, the time machine drive gets unplugged, etc. My other set of relatives recognize the concept that they are paying for someone else to handle this data for them and not have to worry about it. They're on the 50GB iCloud plan, so it's not a huge deal. As far as paying a lot or not a lot, I think it's just a personal question of "is this data important or not?" It either is or isn't. The avenues for saving money if you really want to keep storing a lot of stuff are limited. I should know, I have my own home NAS, and I can tell you it definitely hasn't been a money-saving exercise. I definitely agree that Files is behind the rest and can be a whole lot better.