I’ve said I’m done with the Mac vs iPad debate, and it’s true. I’m absolutely tired of this shit. Nothing is going anywhere, it’s a stupid kind of endless trench warfare. But Ben Brooks’ latest piece about the iPad was hard to ignore in that it’s just a disheartening read and, in a few places, a fair representation of a certain type of Reality Distortion Field at work.

In case you were unsure whether he attempts to be balanced or not in his analysis, look no further than the third sentence of his post:

Good for [the iPad], best computer ever made by a laughable margin.

I just shrug here. Everyone is entitled to be enthusiastic about their preferred device. What I take issue with is that it’s not necessary to insult all the people who have a different opinion about the iPad, are critical of some aspects of its OS, or simply don’t share the same enthusiasm — which in this case becomes outright fanaticism. His ‘TL;DR’ summary reads as follows:

I start with how great the iPad is, touch on the media sucking, and end with an explanation of a new virus called ‘Mac Brains’.

I frankly don’t get this kind of antagonism towards the Mac platform, Mac users, or simply towards those who just don’t see the iPad as ‘the best computer ever made’. Over the past few years I have never read an article written by a Mac user (with a minimum of authority on the matter), where they stated that the Mac is the best computer ever made and the iPad is a piece of hot garbage. I have indeed flashbacks of the Mac-vs-PC wars of the late 1980s up to the early 2000s, where Mac people used to make fun of Windows people and their ‘poor excuse of operating system’ (not my words), and I saw my share of battles over forums, mailing lists, usenet groups. But apart from truly extreme cases, these ‘wars’ rarely featured the levels of vitriol I have noticed in the Mac-vs-iPad debate, most of it coming from iPad fans who constantly feel their beloved platform to be under attack from all fronts. 

Yes, the iPad’s tenth anniversary has seen a fair amount of articles taking a look at the status of the iPad ten years after its introduction, and the predominant tone has been of a certain disappointment. But no one has said that the iPad isn’t a serious device for work. What has been pointed out is that ten years is a long time, technologically speaking, and the iPad’s development could have been handled better, so that the potential the iPad clearly showed in 2010 could have been expressed at a fuller degree today. 

Back to Brooks, I understand the impulse of writing something with the intention of counterbalancing the criticisms, but if one views even the most reasonable criticism aimed at the iPad through paranoid glasses, the response will hardly sound reasonable, balanced, or honest:

In other words, when someone the likes of John Gruber at Daring Fireball starts saying that the iPad can’t be used seriously, then the massive Apple developer community which reads his site will in turn shy away from developing anything serious for the iPad. This is the larger media and bloggers stigmatizing the device in such a way that, well, it becomes exactly what they complain it is. Because these writers make it a no-win scenario. Developer cannot make money without bloggers and the media alike promoting their software as worth the money. It is that simple, trust me I used to accept money from these companies for this site.

First of all, Gruber has never said that the iPad can’t be used seriously. Secondly, for the sake of argument, even if he said that, I highly, highly doubt that “the massive Apple developer community which reads his site [would] in turn shy away from developing anything serious for the iPad”. This is a flat-out insult directed at iOS developers, as if they weren’t capable of making decisions on their own, easily influenced by a bunch of tech pundits. Conversely, I have only praise for iOS (and Mac) developers: the amount of extra work they have to put in to deliver anything useful via the App Store nowadays is simply staggering. Their collective effort, admirable.

Thirdly, “the larger media and bloggers stigmatising the device”…? oh come on. I have yet to find an article (from someone worth reading) where the iPad gets utterly bashed and stigmatised. Unless you count as bashing someone saying that Apple could provide the iPad with a better, more consistent user interface. Come on, just re-read that paragraph: it’s a gross overreaction stemming from a false premise (Gruber saying that the iPad can’t be used seriously).

To kids today, the iPad represents what the advanced GUIs of the mid-90s did for most of the audience reading this. Asking todays kids to use something like a Mac or a PC is akin to me telling you that you should go grab Linux and use the Terminal because the power there is way amazing dude.

Ah, the kids argument. The kids always win! The iPad is so easy to use that even a kid…– But wait, we’re talking about the deeper features of iPadOS. Can a kid figure them out right away? 

Seriously, very few people are asking today’s kids to use something like a Mac or a PC, but this was also true before the iPad existed. Kids of the 1980s and 1990s had simpler computers, 8‑bit computers, and game consoles. People of my generation will likely tell you they grew up with Commodore or Sinclair home computers, or machines like the Apple II which — while extremely versatile — could be used in simple, kid-friendly ways. You won’t find many people saying, “Oh, my first computer when I was little was an IBM workstation”, or a high-end Mac laptop.

But with regard to intuitiveness, one thing I can safely say after much observation and after so many help requests, is that while the first generations of iPads were devices people of all ages mastered extremely quickly basically without external assistance and guidance, today’s iPads are different beasts. They do maintain — thankfully — a surface layer of intuitiveness that is enough to operate the device at a basic level; but the amount of hard-to-discover features and gesture combinations has been steadily increasing. And it’s problematic exactly because it hinders the iPad’s potential. 

Because ‘intuitive’ doesn’t just mean “Ah, I see this icon, its meaning is immediately clear to me! I recognise this shape, it’s a button, and so I can tap it to achieve a predictable result”. It also means “Ah, I see why things are placed like that on the screen, I see what you did there… I’m sure that if I swipe my finger from there, the content will move that way, or this other thing will happen”. In other words, ‘intuitive’ isn’t just limited to what it’s clearly presented to the user; it also has to do with what it’s implied, hinted at.

But if a new feature gets introduced, and it’s supposedly a feature that makes the iPad a bit more versatile or simplifies something in the user’s workflow, and this feature is hard to discover or figure out, you’re doing something wrong. The user simply won’t have the immediate opportunity to take advantage of that feature, which will go undetected. You don’t want this to happen to a device that is supposed to be more intuitive to use than a traditional computer.

Multitasking on the iPad today leaves a lot to be desired. I think John Gruber’s criticism on the matter is constructive and fair. Multitasking is awkward and poorly thought-out. It should be handled by a much more intuitive user interface, not by a series of gestures and behaviours that a seasoned, tech-savvy person struggles to execute consistently.

Ben Brooks’ defence is just ridiculous:

But what also needs to be kept in mind is that this level of multi-tasking is incredibly new. It’s not a 10 year old paradigm that we are still trying to wrap our heads around, if that were the case he would be spot on, but in fact is: the iPadOS stuff came out less than a year ago. To be fair Apple dipped its toes into the water in 2017 with iPad multi-tasking, so it is not all new. But what people are really complaining about are the iOS 13, or iPadOS, multi-tasking features. These were introduced June of 2019, and released publicly in September of 2019. Or to put it more directly: we have barely had 4 months using this new system, so it is far to early to judge this one.

Actually, the first iPad-specific multitasking features — such as Split Screen and Slide Over were introduced with iOS 9 in 2015. After more than four years, and after four iOS releases, Apple hasn’t been able to improve on those iOS 9 features by building on them organically. The concept of iPad-specific multitasking is far from new, it’s almost five years old. And I’m not going to cut Apple any slack on this: a company that always prided itself on its user interface design prowess should have come up with something much better than this array of gestures that feel like a last-minute addition.

Brooks seems to suggest that, since “this level of multitasking” is ‘new’, it only appears confusing and difficult to master because users are simply not accustomed to it. He says that it’s “far too early to judge”. His argument here appears particularly disingenuous to me. Even other iPad-only people have admitted that multitasking on the iPad is an awkward, inelegant affair. Brooks seems so enamoured with the iPad to not even admit to certain flaws in the operating system everyone is seeing. 

No no, he says:

Multi-tasking on the iPad isn’t bad or hard, but it is very new. And if you are someone who simply doesn’t use the iPad as their full time/main computing tool, then it will still be a jarring system to you because of that newness.

Ah, the ‘blame the user’ argument. 

Here’s the thing: when you have a well-designed user interface, learning a new feature or behaviour may take a moment the first time, or the first few times. But when you grok it, it stays with you no matter how often you use it. Instead, as Gruber describes, with iPad multitasking we have this (emphasis in bold is mine):

Launching the first on-screen app with a simple tap, but the second on-screen app with a tap-and-hold-then-drag-to-the-side-but-make-sure-you-drag-it-all-the-way-to-the-side-or-else-you’ll-get-Slide-Over is inconsistent, incoherent, and requires unnecessary dexterous precision. iPadOS should be less finicky than MacOS, but all of the multitasking features are the other way around.

It’s just new, you’ll get used to it; and when you do, everything will be better, is just a poor response that refuses to acknowledge the obvious, insults people’s intelligence, and ultimately contradicts the previous stance that [multitasking’s implementation in iPadOS] is far too early to judge.

The fact that a user can eventually get accustomed to performing certain operations doesn’t mean that the way such operations are designed is inherently good. From what I have learned after studying user interfaces for the past 25 years or so, the opposite tends to be true: the mere fact that you have to get accustomed to performing a certain action through constant repetition suggests that that action is not entirely easy or intuitive in the first place.

I know how to multitask on a current iPad, but very little about the process is natural or becomes second nature after a few tries. Every time is an exercise in repeating the various steps mentally, and executing them with patience and precision. When you’re working at a desk or table, it’s tolerable. Everywhere else, when for instance you’re holding the iPad with one hand and you can only perform gestures with the other, the process becomes halting. 

Around the end of his tirade, Brooks quotes Lukas Mathis, but instead of emphasising the central insight of Mathis’s piece (more on that later), he decides to focus on a less relevant remark, and again offers a poor, hasty response. Brooks chooses two bits from Mathis. The first is this one:

The iPad is now ten years old, and people still have to write articles about how, no, really, you can do real work on an iPad!

And that’s true. The second is this one:

There was no need to write articles about how you could use Macs for real work, because for Macs, it was – and still is – actually true.

This appears to greatly annoy Brooks, who retorts:

Bullshit. Like, for real, you really want to say that there was no need to write articles about using Macs for real work? First, there were, and are, entire magazines written expressly to tell people how to do this. Heck, there were even classes being taught in person to do this. […] PCs were the tools of the Fortune 500 where real work was done, and Macs were the tools of a select group of misfits who contorted everyday to get them to work with the PC driven world. Yes, different tact that what Mathis means, but you have to compare apples to apples, and when you do that, Macs have long fought the real work battle.

Mind boggling defense.

My turn to call bullshit now. The articles and entire printed magazines dedicated to the Mac (but also to computers in general) weren’t written to prove you could use a Mac for real work. They often included tutorials on how to make the most of complex applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, etc., which everybody knew were applications for serious work. Then there typically were software reviews, hardware reviews, opinion pieces, and ‘tips and tricks’ sections in response to readers asking for help. For ten years I have translated several articles from English into Italian from magazines such as Macworld, MacUser and MacFormat, and I don’t remember ever stumbling onto pieces that said No, really, you can do real work on a Mac!

Historically, the Mac was considered a toy at the time of its introduction, but thanks to a few software companies that believed in the Mac’s potential for doing serious work, the Mac soon revolutionised publishing, which was a pretty big deal. For a long time, Macs weren’t considered business machines, but at the same time Apple never really showed much interest in entering the enterprise sector, so…

Another little gem:

Macs were the tools of a select group of misfits who contorted everyday to get them to work with the PC driven world.

I really laughed out loud when I read this. Sure, and we also never went to the moon, it was all staged in a film studio. Microsoft has made Mac versions of its Office applications since the 1980s. There were file format translation tools like the excellent MacLink Plus which greatly facilitated Mac/PC file exchanges. I have done ‘serious work’ on Macs since 1989 and, while there could be the occasional document formatting issue, or some driver-related incompatibility, there certainly were no ‘everyday contortions’ to get the Mac to work with the PC-driven world. As I said more than once, there is no need to rewrite portions of the Mac’s history to extol the virtues of the iPad, especially if you weren’t even using a Mac before the 2000s. 

The really interesting part of Lukas Mathis’s piece is this:

The thing that truly hurts the iPad is the App Store. 

When the original Mac came out, it didn’t have multitasking, either. But it also didn’t have an App Store. There was no gatekeeper deciding what was allowed on the Mac. So when Andy Hertzfeld wrote Switcher, he knew that he could sell and distribute it.

Who is going to write something like Switcher for the iPad? Nobody, because it can’t get on the App Store, so it can’t be sold.

Who is going to write a real, truly integrated file manager for the iPad? Nobody.

Who is going to invest a year — or more — into creating an incredible, groundbreaking new app, the killer app, the desktop publishing equivalent for the iPad? Knowing that Apple could (and probably will) just decide to not put in the App Store, destroying all of that work?

Nobody.

The biggest obstacles to the iPad’s growth are the App Store and ultimately Apple itself and its whims, not the people who dare point out how inadequate iOS on the iPad still is in a few key places after ten years, especially compared with the stellar hardware quality and performance. 

iPad fans should understand that nobody is attacking their precious device out of spite. Nobody is driven by the burning desire to see the iPad fail. And even if there were someone out there writing bitter blog posts on how shitty and useless the iPad is, they would have zero impact on the iPad’s fate. Behind all the constructive criticism towards Apple’s questionable design choices in iPadOS there is genuine concern and the wish that the iPad may become even better than it is — even more versatile and powerful. Not a device you can truly take full advantage of once you’ve learnt the secret handshakes and accumulated dozens of Siri shortcuts.