Computers
Bug: noun: when you slide a notification to the side with a Pencil, and tapping clear launches Apple Notes instead of clearing the notification.
On the flip side, 13.1 -> 13.1.1 has made iPad OS feel less like a buggy mess in the name of selling stuff. Also, I am likely more of a stylus using whore than most at the fruit company.
Apple’s usage of Swift more than double in iOS 13
And part of me has to wonder if this is a large contributor to why the leap from 12 -> 13 basically changes the obvious bug count to effectively zero, to I may need to start counting with a second set of fingers.
The worst culprit ironically, has been Messages—especially when used with slide over and floating keyboard.
Over the past week, I’ve generally followed a rule: Scarlett, my Tab S3 shouldn’t be routine. Hurdles and bugs aside, Nerine the iPad has pretty much been a success.
Apple’s remarks about performance have been relatively accurate IMHO. If you buy good stuff and run it into the ground, the Pros are damned powerful; if you buy cheap shit than odds are the basic iPad is still faster. My systems range between Core i5 and Celeron/Pentium processors from the Ivy Bridge and Braswell era. Basically really good and really cheap shit 😛. Hardware has been very top notch.
Software, well if you are used to a traditional computer: I’d say that Android will feel more familiar than iOS/iPadOS the further off the beaten path you go. But at least thanks to iOS 13: I no longer feel like a Bluetooth keyboard is the only way to type a lot, so much as how to type punctuation heavy text or to input and edit text at a very high rate.
From the prospect of an iPad replacing my main computer, it’s been pretty swell overall. The fact that Android has pretty much filled that role since 4.2~4.4, and before that supplemented my main computer since 3.x, it’s also safe to say that I’m not normal.
For a long time now, I’ve had no qualms about leaving my laptop behind in favor of my Android tablet. If I was going to spend a lot of time compiling or expected to need to VPN with the office then I’d consider lugging my development beast along. Other wise I’d rock Android and save like four pounds 🤣.
Seems an iPad can replace my Android tablet well enough, in the ways that matter. Which means that it can also replace my laptop for whenever the development beast isn’t required, nor my desktop’s monster GTX.
Actually given the performance A12X has been providing, I don’t think I want to study how powerful the GPU is.
Annoying differences in culture, or slow points of progress.
Android land:
- Copy files over network to Pictures/Wall Papers
- Launch set wall paper thingy.
- Copy files over…fuck that’s slow.
- Copy files over USB…gah still slow.
- Well fuck.
- Okay, Photos has no idea of how to import from my USB drive.
- Jack in to desktop.
- Launch iTunes.
- How the fuck do you make this music player push files to applications again?
- Clicks little iPad icon that’s not the obvious one.
- Where the heck is it?
- Google it and find directions that are out of date.
- Screw it. *click Photos*, *drag and drop shit*. Nope that don’t work either.
- Files -> On My iPad -> Wall Papers/…. -> share -> save image.
- Yeah, fuck if I’m doing that ~1,700 more times!
- Launch set wall paper thingy.
Thus far, I’m liking iPad OS 13.1 pretty well.
Here’s to hoping some future 14 or 13.x version makes the swipey typy stuff work when the system keyboard is in iPad mode rather than floating iPhone mode.
Can’t say that I’d mind if hover support was added to the Pencil, since being able to do mouse hover like goodness was a really sweet aspect of using Samsung’s S-Pen. But considering that is based off stuff that Android UI has had, like for freaking ever, and iOS is still pretty rudimentary about mouse support, probably won’t be any time soon.
Really, the keyboard part is what things livable for me versus iOS 12; the other changes are mostly goodies like not needing a third party file manager. Having to use the floating mode to type the way in used to isn’t how I’d like it to be, since it requires greater precision but I can live with it more than I can without it. To quote an old Toby Kieth line, “I ain’t as good once was,
But I’m as good once, as I ever was.”
Reasons to be sad or glad: when browser benchmarks on your tablet tend to be 40~60 % more awesome than on your desktop.
As the Core i5-3570K ages, Centuari’s claim to fame points to the ample amount of memory installed and that its old ass 780 GTX card is both a beast, and probably draws more power at power on than many people’s computers… but that machine’s primary task is Direct3D gaming not surfing or compiling.
iPadOS is a definite improvement
Initial thoughts on iOS 13.1, iPad flavor.
I find it kinda curious how things work.
Traditionally, if you had a PC or a Mac: you operated on blind trust. Well, almost blind trust if you had faith in antivirus software. But by in large the architecture of these systems let your software do anything you can, so there isn’t a gap between you uploading a file to Google Drive and some random time-waster uploading your super-secret.docx file to someone else’s server. That’s just how far the security architecture got by the time Unix and NT came into existence.
More modern platforms that rose up around touch screened phones aim for tighter security. Typically applications get strongly isolated from each other instead of being peers on par with the user, and restrictive access to your hardware instead of equal to yours. That’s been real progress IMHO, and one of the things that I really like about Android.
Digging into iOS, I also find it kind of curious how this works out.
iOS seems to take a more shrouded approach to what applications can request, in favour of focusing your attention on what they are doing. You can view some top level data about what applications can touch, based on the privacy settings group. Which largely amounts to hardware features like your camera and common personal data like your contacts. Not so a technical view such as a friendly one. Trying to STFW about the perms apps have access yields rather different experiences if you swap the words iOS and Android around. So in the end, you’re really trusting Apple far more than the application, IMHO. On the upside, it’s easier for Apple to push patches to devices than pretty much anyone can push to anything Android based in practice.
Android on the other hand traditionally required applications to state their permissions in advance when the user installs the application. Thus the trust lays between you and the developer with a sort of contract like transaction. The move to runtime permission twiddling in Android 6 is a lot more like the current experience on iOS, and I assume adapted from what Apple was already doing at the time or had been planning. But it’s easy to tell what an app can do, and all the more possible to look up online what permissions exist. No perms to access your camera? Then it can’t. A little Google-fu and you can get a list of what apps can ask for, and grok at it to draw your own conclusions.
In the end though it still boils down to trust. Does a flashlight need access to your contacts or detailed location? Probably not :P. Do you trust Apple or Google to keep an eye on things? Well, if not there’s always a flip phone.
At least modern operating systems aren’t as really nilly as DOS and the old Mac system software was, in letting apps have total control over the hardware. Because let’s face it, most programmer’s aren’t super genius about every aspect of your system.
One thing I’ve observed is that iOS seems to prefer what your doing and expeditiously updating stuff rather than staying in constant sync.