Thread by @hondanhon

iPadOS 15 better be a *big* change for the M1 iPad Pros to be more useful. The 2018 iPad Pros are already great and super fast, but so hobbled by the OS.

I get that they're good at single-focus workflows, but for anything involving more than one window at a time -- like, say, writing in one app and looking up references in another -- it's a slog.

I get how "I'm just doing stuff in Procreate/Premiere Rush or whatever" is great and high performance and super responsive, but some other workflows are just *hard* and needlessly frustrating right now. The UI doesn't get out of the way.

I think perhaps one way to look at the iPad is that of course it isn't just a content consumption device. People are clearly creating content with it. But it's a _focused content creation device_ right now, where your work+work product is in a single, self-contained app.

In a way, I think this might explain why the iPad is doing great in creative industries but less so in *handwaves* knowledge-worker roles? You're researching stuff, several Excel spreadsheets open, multiple Google docs? That's *painful* on iPad OS.

I say "knowledge-worker" type role, but the type of task I'm thinking about is synthesis-type work. Multiple sources, doing research, putting it all back together where you need to look at and have multiple apps/information easily, quickly accessible.

Split screen & slideover and current app multi-window support in iPadOS is _nowhere near_ allowing for that kind of flow for people used to or coming from multi-windowed systems.

It's not even necessarily about _multitasking_. There is no background process running when I have 30 tabs open, or I'm researching for something I'm writing. But I need to move quickly between sources *and* focus on creating my output.

In a way, this is kind of disappointing because the original Mac had the whole spatial metaphor going on _despite_ not being multitasking. I think this is an important point: there is no good metaphor/affordance on iPadOS for arraying your papers/sources & surveying them.

It's not a screen resolution problem, I don't think. And I don't think there's anything *technical* stopping my 2018 iPad Pro from driving the 2440x1440 display my 2016 MacBook Pro is plugged into.

I think a question for Apple here is that if "Pro" means *creative* content creation, then the iPad/iPad Pro is doing fine. It appears great for focused, single-app work. As soon as you get to knowledge synthesis, and referring to multiple sources, iPad is _not for that_.

I would love to see user research on e.g. people using Word on an iPad for writing college papers and what the experience is like. I suspect it's currently difficult and frustrating and slow compared to using a Regular Mac.

But if I just want a blank slate document, nothing else, then iA Writer, Word, whatever on an iPad - they're great!

This is a great example. When I used to sit in an edit suite and watch amazing editors do their work... they don't have a crap-ton of windows open the way I do for _my_ work that I'm good at. They have Final Cut or whatever open.

https://twitter.com/doriantaylor/status/1385314106832429057?s=20

Here's another example: it feels like iPad (and also the iPhone tbh) excels at traditional applications that are the kind that have custom keyboards, the kind where the keycaps are all colored, etc. If what you do has this kind of image, then an iPad could be really good at it!

And that image above _makes sense_. Think about when the iPad/iPhone was introduced. SJ effectively said that the device _becomes the application_. The whole software/screen keyboard meant "You Get The Controls That Make Sense For What You're Doing."

I don't think there is any UI paradigm on iPadOS that caters for "the application is synthesizing information from multiple sources". Even e.g. MS Word has difficulty letting you look at more than one Word doc at a time.

Actually, I just realized I have a fantastic example of what I'm talking about. Gimme a couple minutes :)

Ok, here’s my 1994-era Mac LC III with 14in monitor on 7.5.5 showing 3 open Word documents compared to 3 open documents in IA Writer (split view and slideover). But for the LC III’s redraw speed...

These are different models & modes of work.

If the LC III were faster -- say, it had a 4GB GPU and a bigger screen, I could array as many documents open as I wanted to.

And importantly, ***I don't need even need pre-emptive multitasking***. I need *visibility*.

So in this way, the iPad inherits a vision of The Device Becomes The Word Processor which is totally fine if you're sitting in the Overlook in front of your typewriter and you have your Moleskine notebook next to you...

One way The Device Becomes The Thing For The Task might be "What's Scrivener like on iPad"?

Scrivener gives you mgmt inside the app, like this - but you can't move the cards around etc or see more. Should Scrivener eg also have a webview/browser *in the app*? (pls ignore novel)

Anyway, I need to prep for a mtg and do a bunch of research. Which I'm going to do... on my Mac.

Thanks for reading along! I have a newsletter where I write about this subject and more (not a Substack!) at newsletter.danhon.com :)

Also I hope there's at least one person at the Spaceship experimenting with how iPadOS could be better at supporting synthesis work and maybe they're even hiring...