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The mini is what I had the last time I needed something from Apple-land. That was a few years ago now, and I didn't plan on using it for anything but testing and development. Being required to use it just to read documentation probably would have annoyed me also.

derFunkenstein wrote:

BTW a Mac Mini is a fine hardware dongle

A fine hardware dongle indeed.

My 2012 2.3GHz quad-core Mac mini was a fairly stout spec. I upgraded it to a SSD a while ago and it performs very well to this day (6 years and still going strong). Let’s hope Apple does not wait another 6 years before it releases a decent spec bump to the current mini.

Derfunk wrote:

I agree it's a little weird, but you basically can't do anything for enterprise without a Mac. And if you're hard up for an iBook reader, an iPhone or iPad will do.

No, I am saying that if you want business to really switch over, you don't start by assuming they already have.

Redocbew wrote:

but if you're going to be developing for a platform, then you really should have the hardware around that it's going to be using.

Essentially everyone in my company has a company-issued iphone. So we have the hardware we'll be using.

No one, to my knowledge, has a Macbook.

If it weren't for the fact that my superiors would have to cause headaches for their superiors by bucking that (because if -we- get macbooks, why doesn't -everyone- get macbooks? <- This is large part of the reason *why* we -all- have iphones now), I'd almost certainly be supporting some iOS apps now.

What I am getting is that Apple has very little interest in making iOS go beyond those "limitations"

End User wrote:

Android fanboy flames Apple fanboy in a thread about Apple products in the Apple Sanctuary section of the forums.

In what earthly sense am I even remotely an android fanboy?

I don't even really like smartphones. Mine is five years old. The iphone is obviously better.

Don't be ridiculous, how broken are you?

Derfunk wrote:

Want to develop for Apple? You need Apple hardware. So why would you be unable to read their tract?

Because the "Apple hardware" everyone in my company already has is an iphone SE? You know, the one with the tiny 4 inch screen? That I now have to pick up, type a url into, and then read a 47 page book on just to get answers to incredibly basic questions about what this is?

This is not how you seriously try to sell something: "Assume the sale" doesn't mean you assume that they've actually already bought it!

Again, you are looking at this from a self-directed developer or as part of small company.

I'm part of a billion dollar corporation. If you want me to argue the advantages of this to my boss you can the effort to make a PDF like #%(#$^@ everyone else.

*I'd even take a .PPT over this, and I *HATE* powerpoint.

----

Again, the point of this tangent is that Apple has -extremely- limited interest in ever removing those "limitations" on iOS.

They're clearly not even trying.

Glorious wrote:

I don't even really like smartphones. Mine is five years old.

So no Android Pie then.

End User wrote:

So no Android Pie then.

Why don't you back up what you said and demonstrate how I'm an android fanboy? Not going to do that, are you?

Because, in reality, I had to google to even know what that was.

Glorious wrote:

They're clearly not even trying.

Clearly.

Glorious wrote:

Why don't you back up what you said and demonstrate how I'm an android fanboy?

I don’t have the energy at the moment. I’m still recovering from the fact that you have a 5 year old phone.

Redocbew wrote:

A fine hardware dongle indeed.

I have no real quibble with hardware dongles.

I have several on my desk at work. I have a parallel port one, even.

We also have ones from vendors that cost a lot more than a completely decked out Macbook Pro. Plus, you know, the special "Key servers" (i.e. networked usb hubs) they're physically installed in.

So, no, I don't any specific objection to "buy a macbook if you want to develop for iOS". I'm just stating that this is indicative of a particular attitude by Apple, which means we shouldn't be holding our breath for Apple (which is obviously just too constrained to develop solutions) to end these "limitations" that everyone speaks of.

End User wrote:

I’m still recovering from the fact that you have a 5 year old phone.

1) It makes calls!
2) It has Chrome!
3) It has Plex/Netflix

Why do I need a new phone? What would your obscene spending habits actually buy me?

Please regale me with stories about how you're such a power-user.

I'm clearly no such thing, right? After all, I don't spend thousands of dollars a year to festoon my person with gadgets.

That's "power", right?

Glorious wrote:

End User wrote:

I’m still recovering from the fact that you have a 5 year old phone.

1) It makes calls!
2) It has Chrome!
3) It has Plex/Netflix

Why do I need a new phone? What would your obscene spending habits actually buy me?

Please regale me with stories about how you're such a power-user.

I'm clearly no such thing, right? After all, I don't spend thousands of dollars a year to festoon my person with gadgets.

That's "power", right?

Festoon! Brilliant word and you used it so well.

I do like to obscenely festoon my person with gadgets.

How am I an android fanboy, again?

Glorious wrote:

How am I an android fanboy, again?

I think we all get it. You are not a fanboy. I am a charlatan.

One thing I am not looking forward to with the new 12.9” iPad Pro is the new keyboard. With the previous gen keyboard you can pull the iPad away from the deployed keyboard and leave the keyboard ready to quickly receive the iPad again with a satisfying click. The new keyboard attaches to the back of the iPad. If you want to remove the keyboard from the iPad one has to unattach it from the back of the iPad and then watch it flop down. Bummer.

Glorious wrote:

Derfunk wrote:

I agree it's a little weird, but you basically can't do anything for enterprise without a Mac. And if you're hard up for an iBook reader, an iPhone or iPad will do.

No, I am saying that if you want business to really switch over, you don't start by assuming they already have.

Apple markets its enterprise stuff to non-techies. Chief officer levels. It's born out of the way Apple (no hyperbole) reinvented the smartphone in 2007. The wealthy had to have it, and now they're demanding their IT departments integrate with it. They know you're going to switch over your stuff because you don't have a choice. It's integrate or literally lose talent over it.

The most important part of that is that the iphones really are pretty nifty. If you're going to market to a non-technical crowd, then yeah you can talk it up and gloss over details that a technical person would know to ask for, but it's got to work well, and be simple. The opposite is true also. Most people won't care how it stacks up against the competition in terms of clever engineering if it acts weird, or appears over complicated to them.

All this talk about photo and video editing on tablets is just a lame attempt at glossing over these same details, but with no way to make it work the way we're supposed to believe it's going to work.

Redocbew wrote:

All this talk about photo and video editing on tablets is just a lame attempt at glossing over these same details, but with no way to make it work the way we're supposed to believe it's going to work.

The keyboard shortcut thing that y'all brought up a couple days ago is big. I've tried to use Garage Band on iOS and quickly abandoned it for anything other than just simple recording. I know first-hand how powerful keyboard shortcuts are. I still have Pro Tools embedded in my fingertips. I long ago gave it up because of pricing reasons, but even now I still use those same shortcuts in Logic Pro X (fortunately it's a preset built into the app).

derFunkenstein wrote:

Apple markets its enterprise stuff to non-techies. Chief officer levels. It's born out of the way Apple (no hyperbole) reinvented the smartphone in 2007. The wealthy had to have it, and now they're demanding their IT departments integrate with it. They know you're going to switch over your stuff because you don't have a choice. It's integrate or literally lose talent over it.

I think that is a tad insulting. I have friends in lofty positions who are not “techies” yet they have a clear grasp of technology. This smartphone shlt is old news.

Is it only the wealthy? The 1%? I think not. I can get an iPhone 8 Plus for 0$ on a 2 year plan. Check your local provider. Then there is the used market and the hand me down family route.

Implying that iPhone is the purview of the wealthy is fake news. The latest and greatest iPhone is not the only iPhone.

I'm talking about what they did a decade ago. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Apple markets its enterprise stuff to non-techies. Chief officer levels. It's born out of the way Apple (no hyperbole) reinvented the smartphone in 2007. The wealthy had to have it, and now they're demanding their IT departments integrate with it. They know you're going to switch over your stuff because you don't have a choice. It's integrate or literally lose talent over it.

Well, as I said years ago myself:

Glorious wrote:

Apple figured out that it was better to get into Corporations from the top-down instead of the bottom-up, to the degree they want to get into that market at all.

To be clear, instead of presenting themselves as a total solution with servers, services and corporate-oriented configurability for every user, they just position themselves as having the coolest and most desirable devices to certain users.

Why? Because when a top executive wants the newest iphone, guess what he gets even if the standard is blackberry and blackberry ONLY. Oh, right, he gets an iphone.

This isn't hypothetical, it's my Fortune 500 company and many others like it I've witnessed personally.

Why should Apple compete for the corporate space when by ignoring it entirely they get the best possible inroad to the premium users they might actually want?

^ I clearly don't disagree with almost all of what you said, the only thing that even differs, I think, is our interpretation of the word "enterprise."

Maybe I'll put it this way: Doing the kind of stuff that would be necessary for what I'm talking about would actually involve decreasing the attraction to C-Level executives.

So Apple doesn't do it, and iOS will therefore have these "limitations" for the indefinite future.

This isn't an anti-Apple point: If Apple rightly determined that kind of stuff is a turn-off or a liability for their customers, which it is -VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE- to argue they didn't, why are these "limitations" even a bad thing?

Hundreds of millions of people use these things. Anything I'm talking about, however big, is still niche by comparison.

I've made this point to other people grousing about how Apple doesn't do X or Y (but I'll apply to myself): Apple doesn't want me(in this professional capacity) as a customer!

That's totally fine. That isn't even what started this, it's people claiming that iOS is holding back the new tablets. No, if anything is, it's Apple.

Don't hold your breath.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe it's Apple holding back iOS, which in turn holds back the hardware. But now we're so deep into semantics that I had to put on a life jacket because I never learned to swim.

I mean, sub-optimal "enterprise" tools is kind of the way of the world. Nobody gives you control over everything you need to control these days. Certainly not the Big Three (Apple, Microsoft, and Google).

derfunk wrote:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I feel the same way, I guess.

I'm not sure what we even disagree about.

You're the one writing tomes on the internet, I figured you were disagreeing somewhere.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I'm talking about what they did a decade ago. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.

A decade ago I had an iPhone 3G. I got it on a plan that maintained the same monthly fee as the phone it replaced (HTC Touch). For a single person on a lowish income it was affordable.

Wealthy is this.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Maybe it's Apple holding back iOS, which in turn holds back the hardware.

The 2018 iPad Pro is equipped with USB-C yet iOS does not recognize external storage devices. It took Apple 7 years to bring Multitasking to the iPad. Major iOS overhauls don't come along that often. That being said I don't think we will have to wait another 7 years before the next major iOS for iPad milestone release.

End User wrote:

Wealthy is this.

Only in a few global economies, and given the stats on Canada's economy and debt levels, where you live, that's not true here.

That's EXTREME wealth.

I see End User has accepted a definition of "everybody with more money than me is wealthy and I'm clearly middle class without regard for the rest of the society around me"

Derfunk wrote:

I see End User has accepted a definition of "everybody with more money than me is wealthy and I'm clearly middle class without regard for the rest of the society around me"

End User, as I've been saying, is completely delusional.

A 2 million dollar concept car as the demarcation of "wealthy" is totally absurd.

It's not even "more money" than him, it's simply juvenile fantasy with no connection to reality.

Glorious wrote:

Derfunk wrote:

I see End User has accepted a definition of "everybody with more money than me is wealthy and I'm clearly middle class without regard for the rest of the society around me"

End User, as I've been saying, is completely delusional.

A 2 million dollar concept car as the demarcation of "wealthy" is totally absurd.

It's not even "more money" than him, it's simply juvenile fantasy with no connection to reality.

I totally missed this. Awesome post.

I had a chance to try out my friends 11” iPad Pro. My takeaway is that it is much better from the point of view of heftability vs the 12.9 although I still prefer the larger display of my 12.9.