Inspired by this post and specifically this quote:

Ask yourself: if the iPad really was that good, wouldn’t that be a rather self-evident fact then? Would you need an article (or several dozen actually, published over the course of nine years) that tried to convince you of the merits of such a device? Or change perspective and ask yourself another question: did you ever need convincing about how the iPhone (or any other post-iPhone smartphone) has advantages “in the real world”? Of course not. And yet, many of the people who write about the iPad, can’t seem to stop creating pieces with titles like “the best uses for the iPad”, “six reasons to buy an iPad” or “why an iPad is worth it” – all while rummaging in their box of adjectives for expressions like “great”, “life-changing” and “fantastic” to describe it².

One of the reasons you see people, including me, write about getting “real” work done on an iPad is that it’s made computing fun again. It’s fun to write about working around some of the limitations of iOS with stuff like Shortcuts.

Secondly, the iPhone was a paradigm shift in the same way the OP says the 1984 Macintosh was. It was a total revolution on the way we did calling and was a big step towards mobile computing for the masses. In the years prior to the iPhone mobile computing was for those that wanted BBM or were going to dive deep into Palm and all the hacks it took to make those devices useful1.

I don’t think that the iPad has been a paradigm shift in the same way, it’s computing power that’s growing slowly on us. It’s something that you can appreciate after a bit of time, instead of a head slapping advancement that leaves you wondering why you ever thought previous options were worthwhile at all.

The OP also asks us to name a single piece of software that has had as big an impact as early Macintosh software like MacPaint, MacWrite, Aldus PageMaker…

I’m not sure how we gauge that in truth, but we went from many hundreds of dollars for a truly good video editor to LumaFusion for 27.99. We’re not talking iMovie good, but an app that’s poised to be as good as almost any other video editor out there running on hardware (the iPad Pro) that’s as fast as the fastest MacBook Pro’s that Apple has to offer.

So, I’m happy to keep writing about iPad software and how to do work with an iPad as your main computer. I’m also in agreement with the OP that I don’t want Apple to continue to dumb down macOS as continue to remove “developer” features like creating software RAID in Disk Utility.

HT: [mattbirchler](HT: https://twitter.com/mattbirchler/status/1134436348616761344) for pointing me to this post


  1. Yes this was totally me hacking around with an early Palm device.