Tablets

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A Decade of iPad
https://flip.it/bBeP6L

Personally, I think that netbooks worked out far better than anyone should have expected; and I feel that the rise of the iPad and Chromebook is due to realizing that you don’t need to make a netbook that is a piece of crap. Nor do you necessarily need to spend several grand of laptop just to update Twitter.

Tablets are a remarkable option that is mostly hamstrung by software and accessories. As a docked machine, it’s just a matter of software. My iPad Pro runs circles around my aging Core i5, but docking an iPad doesn’t change the software into a Windows desktop, nor should it.

I find that tablets tend to serve best when you are doing general computery things rather than highly focused tasks. If you’re a heavy user of keys other than alphanumerical, such as modifier based keyboard shortcuts then you’re not going to like typing on tablets. The more efficient you must be at manipulating text: the more you will require a full sized physical keyboard, regardless of your device’s form factor. Likewise if you need pixel precise interaction, you’re probably going to make a middle finger gesture if anyone tries to replace your mouse or track ball with a touchscreen, lol.

In many cases, throwing a keyboard and mouse, or even an external monitor works far better with tablet or phone like software than desktop like software. Don’t believe me? Try using Windows 95 with only your fingers, and then try using your phone with only a keyboard and mouse.

The whole windows desktop paradigm and software designed around a desktop PC does not adapt to a tablet as well as it did to notebooks. But software that doesn’t suck on a tablet, does not necessarily suck on a delete desktop. Software is what you make of it but hardware determines how you physically interact with it.

Most of the negative aspects of my relationship with desktop oriented software is mired in antiquity. I’m sure we would all have done things differently if you landed an Intrepid class star ship on earth in the 1960s than if you tried to grow CP/M into NT, and a host of other histories.

Most of the negative aspects of my relationship with tablet oriented software is mired in quality. I’m sure bug free software does not exist, and will never be the result of Google or Apple, lol. Typically my groan at my iPad is the buggy operating system, much as with Android my problem tends to be Google’s additional  software.

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Chrome OS has stalled out
https://flip.it/ung6rA

Personally, I’ve come to have mixed feelings about Chromebooks but that mostly owes to a mixture of my own tastes and Google’s performance.

Pretty much if you’re happy to live in a full screen browser session, or can’t remember the last time you dragged anything other than a browser window around—Chrome OS is for you, and the appliance factor is a win. Just buy a better model with a better processor than average.

By contrast I’d like me, your interest is largely in an Android powered laptop: you will be disappointed or suffer the same slings and arrows that iOS users do. That is to say things work pretty well but you must avert your eyes from the problems more often than you should have to.

Android actually works pretty well with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. I’ve done that a crap fuck ton since Honeycomb. Chromebooks offer an easier path to the docked experience, and a tremendously easier path to a laptop style form factor.

But by in large Android on my Chromebook has been far more buggy and glitchy than any Android tablet that I’ve ever connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard; and I’ve done that to more than a few! The flip side is that the hardware strain of running Android apps tends to be less than heavy, complicated web applications.

So there are times that a cheaper Chromebook running an Android app can be more ideal than throwing the web app at the same hardware, or more appealing than buying a Chromebook that has a Core M or i series processor instead of dinky Celeron and Pentium processors.

Combined with the limited choices for high end Android tablets, not to mention ones with a true hardware stylus, my Android experience on my Chromebook is chunk of why I decided to buy an iPad Pro—because a Chome OS tablet won’t replace my Android tablet the way it could most people’s Windows beater.

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Yay, it looks like iPad OS 13.3 fixed the holy-crap-the-packets-are-gone level of lagosity when combining Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Me thinks this will get some use.

And I’ve yet to cry bugs, bugs, bugs everywhere and not a fix in sight as hard as < 13.2.2~13.2.3. As far as I can tell the only knew issue is the mouse wheel scrolling is broken, and that’s hardly a problem compared to can’t effin’ type ‘it.

Some random numbers

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If I run a split screen on my 23” at a usable font size, I arrive at approx 119×52 characters of display.

Comparably, if I SSH into my machine with a font size easy on the peepers for the 11” screen, the results are a very respectable 109×32 characters display. Which is probably the Shelly app’s default, or a notch or two above.

Running iVim locally, with a default font that’s hard on the peepers unless using the external monitor: 149×47 characters.

Generally, I aim for about 80×35~45 characters as a terminal. Going around 160 is when I start consider :vsplit windows viable instead of relying on regular :split windows. Maybe I’m weird but I tend to like having a source file | header file combo in my vim session, when I’m afforded a big ass editing surface.

Thinking about these numbers, I kind of hope that Apple fixes the brokeness for keyboard/mouse support. I can use my keyboard, or I can use my mouse, but the moment that both are connected, iPadOS 13.2.3 decides that keyboard I/O should become like packet flow over a smoke signals modem. Which makes me less thrilled to dock my iPad until OS 13.2.4 or 13.3 happens, and cross my fingers that I won’t be stuck waiting until iPadOS 14.

I suppose that I could try pairing another Bluetooth mouse to see if for some reason, it simply hates my Logitech mouse, but I don’t imagine that I’d be that lucky with how much of a buggy mess iOS 13 has been.

Damn it, fruit co!

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Reasons to look forward to a knew iPadOS version: if I connect my keyboard or my mouse individually, they work excellently. If I have both connected: the keyboard lags at a rate of 5+ seconds per character with frequent drops and repretitions.

So basically, Apple seems to have broken the ability to use a keyboard and a mouse at the same time in 13.2.3. Nevermind that that mouse support and productivity are cornerstone goals for iPad OS 13 o/.

On the positive side, disconnecting the mouse fixes the keyboard distruption about as instant as the connection terminates. And restores it as fast as the mouse reconnects.  So unlike most issues I’ve experienced with iOS 13 bugs, reboots aren’t required.

I find this less amusing when you take both the fact that I am more inclined to use my tablets with mouse/monitor/keyboard than most people, and that the touchscreen keyboard vs the physical keyboard is a delta of about 40~50 words per minute in my typing speed. And Apple’s floatly keyboard with the pen input is one of the buggist mother fuckers ever shipped.

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Signs that you’re a tablet whore:

  1. When you get to work and realize your tablet is still sitting on your desk.
  2. You wonder if forgetting your laptop would bother you less than forgetting your tablet.
  3. You’re pretty sure forgetting your tablet is worse.
  4. When you get home, you snuggle your tablet after hugging the dogs.
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One thing that I actually do like about using an iPad with a mouse is the spell check.

PC’s typically follow the model of right click → menu → suggestions or right click → suggestions on top of the context menu. Where the particulars of everything are application specific and very non portable, usually.

My iPad? Click the word → just give the suggestions and make you click again for the menu. Subsequent clicks toggle between spell check suggestions and the menu. Android usually just opens a context menu when you click the word, and keeps text selection different from spell checking. +/- some OEMs like to disable that by default (and Samsung used to remove the feature, way back when), iOS and Android mostly make it the OS’s job for text input things.

HDMI extension and switching time

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Well, it’s taken about six years, but I think I’ve finally found something the first generation Chromecast is good at, aside from demonstrating the meaning of choking hazard. They came with these little extension cables, so that you could put a bit of distance between your display’s HDMI port and the device itself versus shoving the Chromecast G1 into your TV.

Simply put, my old Asus monitor only has two real problems. One is the speakers are utterly and completely crap—that audio should never and under no circumstances have audio routed through them. Thankfully, Asus put a 3.5 mm port that let’s me hook up external speakers to handle the HDMI audio input. The other problem that is less easily solved: is there is only one HDMI port. It’s from an era where even a nice monitor only had one if any. Thus with my conversion to HDMI all the things around 2013~2014 thereabouts, It has been the real sticking point.

To swap cables: I’ve got to either blind man finger for the port until the HDMI goes in, or flip the monitor forward so I can get a visual on the port. Yeah, my top request for HDMI 3.0 is going to be a reversible connector like USB-C.

Today I did a bit of experiment. I connected my old HDMI switch, so I could check if my 780GTX or iPad took offense to it. At least under Linux, I’ve not been able to use Skylake or Braswell graphics with the switch, so it’s mostly been underutilized since my Xbox and Fire TV went to different displays. Much to my happiness, the GTX doesn’t care about the switch and my iPad Pro 11 -> HooToo adapter setup doesn’t seem to mind; although I didn’t test HDCP on either, I doubt that’s an issue here.

As a follow up, I decided to test if doing a hotplug from the iPad end would be smart enough to trigger the switches input auto switch behavior and it is not. Since the Chromecast G1 extension cable makes it easier to swap cables on my Asus monitor, I think what I will do is just toggle cables and spare myself wiring up yet another thing with an idiot light.

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Final signs that the tablet has won:

  1. Posting from my desk usually means my tablet is between my keyboard, and monitor, and the keyboard is paired to the monitor.
  2. If it doesn’t involve video playback, Direct3D games, or compling code, I’m probably going to use my tablet when I’m at my desk more than my desktop.
  3. The urge to hook up my HDMI switch again, so that I can share the monitor with my tablet.
Yes, I’m weird.
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I think I’ve finally found something my iPad truly does better than my Androids, lol.

By in large, my many years of using my Android tablets docked to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor has been a pleasant experience. Enough that the only real beefs I’ve had, have been when apps (read Google’s) break the scroll wheel support. Mostly, it just works(tm).

One sore spot however was anything that involves a pinch gesture. Like trying to zoom in and out on Google Maps, which did not always have eat double tap and slide gestures to it. Everything else worked pretty well.

Well, I think I finally smiled. Apple binds the right mouse button to penning the accessibility menu, which is an artifact I guess, of mouse support being more of an accessibility minded thing then a general feature like Android’s support. But when you open this menu and goto Custom it offers the ability to trigger a pich. Which changes the cursor and left click behavior to let you navigate pinching in multiple axis of movement. It doesn’t suck, although naturally it might be a tad confusing.

That’s kind of cool. Good job, Apple. I know I rarely say that instead of four letter gestures, but this one made me happy.