Comment on Apple introduces M4 chip
efstajas@lemmy.world 6 months agoIt’s a really good point though, it is a bit of an odd device with all that power and the significant limitations in software. Yeah it’s marked at artists, but if you’re talking about drawing with pen input, it’s actually pretty overpowered. There’s Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro but they benefit a lot less from a touch screen, and there’s a bunch of workflow issues due to iOS’ lack of a file system.
I really wish Apple would add some kind of “windowed mode” like Samsung Dex or the Surface Tablets. A $2.5k super high-powered device that can’t even open two Excel sheets side by side is quite strange.
iarigby@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There’s procreate which introduced advanced animation and effects thanks to the new chip. I also know people use it heavily for 3D modeling. “Drawing with pen input” is the use case for the rest of the line up, Pro is specifically for computation heavy professions.
ipads have side by side window view and float over view, of course it should be much better but viewing two apps or tabs side by side hasn’t been an issue for me. Maybe excel just doesn’t support opening a second window or a separate tab.
efstajas@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah for sure everything you say makes sense, but at the same time there is a definite lack of software that makes use of all that power for a broader range of professionals.
Personally, I’d love to replace my aging MacBook with an iPad Pro that I can also use for note taking on the go, but the problem is a complete lack of a (viable) software development IDE, and that’s despite things like VSCode being web-based and with that theoretically capable of running on iOS. I know some of my friends are in the same situation; one of them relies on Blender, the other on Ableton.
The inability of running two instances of Word / Excel etc. may very well be Microsoft’s fault, but that doesn’t change the fact that as a user you can’t do it.
In theory I guess a Surface is exactly what I’m looking for, but switching to Windows would be a bit of a hard pill to swallow. Which is why I’m left wishing that Apple would offer some kind of hybrid tablet / laptop device like the Surface, capable of running full desktop apps and full desktop-style multitasking. I understand that that’s “not the vision” or whatever, but it creates an awkward situation where the hardware of this lineup is more than adequate but the viability of the device as a whole is limited by software.
iarigby@lemmy.world 6 months ago
yes I completely agree, especially on the development part - doing masters now and basically have to choose if I want to take notes or be able to code, and it’s annoying. The funny thing is I have both macbook and ipad, but I don’t want to carry both because I’m weak af.
It’s just wild that there are literal billions being poured into monkey parrot gpts while we can’t have the simplest issues resolved.