iOS 9 on the iPad 2

January 4, 2016
by Riccardo Mori
Software

In short — it’s bad.

In iOS 9 on the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3, I wrote:

The range of devices supported by iOS 9 is surprisingly ample, the principle being that if a device was able to run iOS 8, then it’ll run iOS 9. Performance-wise, according to what I’ve been reading on the Web so far, the consensus seems to be: If you were satisfied by iOS 8’s performance on your (older) device, then iOS 9 won’t disappoint. I agree with this assessment, and I’ll go as far as saying that iOS 9 feels even smoother and more stable in places where iOS 8 stuttered every now and then. I noticed this on the iPhone 5 especially.

That, sadly, isn’t true for the iPad 2.

At the time, I left the iPad 2 out of my initial impressions because I didn’t want to be too precipitous in my assessment. I don’t use an iPad 2 on a daily basis — my wife does, so I just told her: “Let me know if you encounter any issue with iOS 9, and how the overall performance is.”

Time passed and I didn’t hear many complaints from her, so I assumed things were generally fine. However, it appears that every iOS 9 minor update released after version 9.0 has negatively impacted performance and usability on the iPad 2. I took advantage of the Christmas holidays to take a closer look, spending more time with her iPad 2. Now I can definitely say that allowing the iPad 2 (and by extension the iPhone 4S) to run iOS 9 was a grave mistake on Apple’s part. 

  • Animations and transitions are a sad spectacle to behold: stuttering, sometimes even stopping midway for a couple of seconds; it really looks like the device is struggling to complete them. Every now and then, the lock screen is unrensponsive, meaning that you can slide to unlock all you want, nothing happens. Invoking Control Centre and Notification Centre can be a hit-or-miss affair. On a bad day, even swiping from one app screen to another is comically slow. The fluidity of the multitasking interface is barely acceptable.
  • Keyboard input is frequently lagging. You type in a search field, or in Safari’s address field, or you just want to type a quick note: you start tapping the keys, nothing seems to happen, then most of the text you’ve entered is finally rolling down all at once, machine-gun style.
  • 512 MB of RAM are simply not enough to handle iOS 9. This is noticeable everywhere: Safari tabs constantly reloading; applications losing their state after you quit them and reopen them after a short while; and finally, I know the practice of entering the multitasking interface and force-quitting apps is frowned upon, but on the iPad 2 it really looks like it helps give the device a bit of breathing room to operate. Maybe it’s just a subjective impression, so take it with a grain of salt.
  • I’ve noticed that apps have taken to unexpectedly quit with an alarming frequency. Even apps that shouldn’t have any compatibility issues with iOS 9, either because they’re first-party apps, or because they’re freshly-updated apps. I’ve also noticed that in a couple of occasions the iPad 2 self-rebooted out of the blue. I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue. It all just seems so random.

It’s really a pity that Apple makes it hard to downgrade to a previous version of iOS. I know, security reasons and all that, but downgrading to iOS 8 would really help regain some fluidity and overall performance on the iPad 2 (and the iPhone 4S, I guess.)

Speaking of iPhone 4S, Rich Edmonds at iMore reports that Apple faces lawsuit over how iOS 9 negatively impacts iPhone 4s performance:

More than 100 iPhone 4s owners have asserted that the update has led to a negative experience on their smartphone to the point where it’s simply unusable for daily use. Delayed launch times for apps, slower response on the touchscreen, as well as sluggish performance overall plague said owners. Then you have the reported freezing and crashes. Not fun times for anyone.

From my recent direct experience with my wife’s device, I’d say this is also exactly true for the iPad 2.

The first Spotlight interface is still the best

December 16, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Software

Spotlight first appeared with the release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in April 2005. The first things you noticed after upgrading from Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and its Find interface were, first of all, the new Spotlight menubar icon in the upper right corner and its simple search field when invoked; but more importantly you immediately noticed how much faster Spotlight in Tiger was in finding what you were looking for. That’s because “the first time that a user logs onto the operating system, Spotlight builds indexes of metadata about the files on the computer’s hard disks. It also builds indexes of files on devices such as external hard drives that are connected to the system. This initial indexing may take some time, but after this the indexes are updated continuously in the background as files are created or modified.”[1] Therefore, when you perform a search query, Spotlight checks these indexes instead of going through all the files on the hard drive, like its ‘Find’ predecessor on Mac OS X 10.3 and earlier versions — or Sherlock under Mac OS 9 — used to do.

Find in Mac OS X Panther
The Find interface in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

 

Search in Spotlight was (and is) performed with a find-as-you-type process. Here’s a search for disk in Spotlight’s upper right field. Results are automatically divided into basic categories:

Spotlight Tiger results

 

What I really like about Spotlight under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is the separate, standalone window that comes up when you select Show All at the top of the list:

Spotlight tiger showall

 

And this is the Search interface I’ve really been missing since Apple removed it in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Perhaps the Aqua elements like the three buttons in the upper left corner or the scroll bar on the right will make you cringe, but I think this is still the best search interface ever appeared on Mac OS X. Whenever I use one of my vintage PowerPC Macs running Tiger, it’s great to be back using Spotlight that way.

For starters, the contents are neatly organised and presented. There isn’t a single obscure UI element. Everything is discoverable. Each category is clearly separated by horizontal bars, each section can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the triangle near the label. If you want additional information on a file or application, you click on the ‘i’ icon near the date/time column. Some categories provide alternative ways of displaying their files. If you look at the Images section, you’ll see three icons on the right of the separator: slideshow, list view, icon view. PDF Documents can also be displayed in icon view. It’s very useful because you can see little previews of the documents (remember, there wasn’t Quick Look under Tiger, that feature would appear later in Leopard). The pane on the right is for sorting and grouping the search results. Again, the UI is very clear, and the search results are rearranged immediately when you select different options.

Spotlight Tiger options
By right-clicking on an element, you have access to additional actions via a contextual menu.

 

If you’re using the keyboard to navigate this window, the actions are rather predictable: with the Up/Down arrow keys you move from one entry to the previous/next. With the Right arrow key, you expand the info for the selected element (like clicking the ‘i’ icon mentioned above). And if you hit Option and the Right arrow key, you’ll expand the info for all the elements contained in a category. If you have selected an application, and hit ⌘-↓ or ⌘-O, the application will launch.

The Spotlight window is persistent, so whatever you do with the search results (open a document, check a few images, launch an application, etc.), you can always go back to it later and you’ll find all the results as you left them.

 

From Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard onwards, while the Spotlight menu and find-as-you-type list of results on the upper right corner of the desktop remained essentially unchanged, this neatly organised window disappeared, and the Show All option simply triggered a new Finder window with the search results amassed in an unorganised fashion. If you didn’t find what you were looking for in the first results Spotlight displayed from the Search menu on the top right, you’d have to perform more organised searches with various filters and criteria directly from a Finder window. But the overall approach was less clean and clear than under Mac OS X Tiger. On the other hand, Spotlight got better as an app launcher and new features were introduced, like the ability to do quick calculations from the Spotlight search field itself.

When the Spotlight interface was finally redesigned with the release of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, it was great to see that Apple was revisiting that kind of search interface, with a panel front and centre, and with the results organised in categories in a similar way as it was under Tiger. Since I upgraded from Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks to 10.11 El Capitan avoiding Yosemite completely, I only started using this new Spotlight interface in recent times. And I have mixed feelings about it.

Spotlight in El Capitan

Under Mavericks, and in my experience, Spotlight was really fast, especially as an app launcher, to the point that I found myself ignoring the Dock increasingly often, even to launch apps I keep in the Dock. Why move my hand away from the keyboard to reach the mouse, when I can just hit Command-Space, type tex and Enter, and TextEdit is already launching? But after upgrading to El Capitan, the first thing I noticed was that Spotlight’s responsiveness was much worse than before. Sometimes I would start typing and nothing happened — no suggested apps, no search results as I typed, nothing. After dismissing and invoking Spotlight again (sometimes twice), everything would work, but never at the speed experienced under Mavericks. After updating to OS X 10.11.2, I must say Spotlight appears to be snappier than before — maybe still not like under Mavericks, but definitely more usable than under OS X 10.11.0.

The interface is certainly more pleasant than the one that lasted from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to 10.9 Mavericks, but I still find it less usable and less predictable than it was under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

First of all, the way find-as-you-type has changed makes Spotlight under El Capitan appear slower than Spotlight under Tiger — and sometimes it actually is slower. If you look at the following screen recordings, where I performed a simple search for disk, you’ll see that under Tiger results start appearing immediately as I type d, then get progressively refined as I keep typing i, then s, then k. Under El Capitan, as I type disk, I only briefly see suggestions for launching apps, and then, after a pause where the panel is just blank, I finally see some results.

 

Searching ‘disk’ under Tiger

 

Searching ‘disk’ under El Capitan

(The Spotlight search under Tiger you see in the video above was made on a Power Mac G4 Cube, with a 450 MHz processor and 1.5 GB of RAM; the Spotlight search under El Capitan was made on a MacBook Pro, with a 2.66 GHz dual-core processor and 8 GB of RAM.)

 

Then, while I can navigate the Spotlight window with the arrow keys, there’s not much else I can do. While it’s great to be able to select a folder in the search results and see its contents on the right side of the window…

Spotlight folder contents under El Capitan

…Image files and documents have a big preview but no additional info visible. Things like Created, Last Modified, Last Opened — which are instead displayed for other file types.

In the Spotlight standalone window under Tiger, the file path (i.e., where the file is located) was easily visible by expanding the file info, either by hitting the Right arrow key or clicking the ‘i’ icon. Under El Capitan, it’s a game of guessing which keys to press (if any), and it turns out you have to hold the Command key while the file is selected in the Spotlight window. And when the path is too long to fit, you’ll only see a part of it. Under El Capitan there’s also no way (that I’ve found) to reveal a file in the Finder — right-clicking on a file does nothing, and the only key that seems to work is Enter, which will open the file in the designated application to handle such file.[2]

There aren’t any grouping or sorting options, either. It seems that, after Mac OS X Tiger, everything related to the organisation and filtering of search results is delegated to the Finder window. And it’s not a bad option when you realise how much you can filter by selecting different criteria — here I have kept clicking on the [+] button to show additional options:

Search criteria

But every time I go back to one of my Macs still running Tiger, I realise how flexible the Spotlight window is by offering grouping and sorting options right there; these options aren’t exhaustive, but in my searches they’re often good enough to help me wade through hundreds of results because, for example, I can quickly choose to display only the files modified ‘Today,’ or ‘Since Yesterday’. Additionally, since I’ve accumulated a fair amount of PDFs and other documents, it’s nice to be able to group them by author straight in the Spotlight window under Mac OS X Tiger. It also works with Mail results, so you could quickly find all emails written by a certain person and have them neatly grouped together in the Spotlight window by simply clicking People in the Group by: section at the top of the right pane.

Another annoying thing is that, in Spotlight under El Capitan, when you navigate the results with the arrow keys, the original search term (disk in my example) is replaced with the name of the currently selected search result (e.g. DiskWarrior), so if by chance you then hit the Right arrow key, you’ll be taken to an entirely new list of search results:

Disk to diskwarrior1

Disk to diskwarrior2

Disk to diskwarrior3

I can see the possible usefulness of this behaviour, but for me it just gets in the way.

When I was talking about the Spotlight window in Mac OS X Tiger, I said that it is a great example of clarity and usability — basically everything is discoverable and there’s not much guessing when you start interacting with the various UI elements. Under El Capitan, there’s the occasional inconsistency. For example, if you hover the pointer over a category name (Images, Folders, etc.), a little “Show All…” appears on the right side of the label/horizontal bar/separator. You click it once and it immediately opens a Finder window with all the results from the selected category. But if you select the last item in the Spotlight window — Show all in Finder… — when you click it, nothing happens. You have to double-click it. Why? Who knows.

Another couple of quirky things I’ve found: 1) Some email messages get a full preview, others do not. At first I thought that only messages in HTML got a preview, but sometimes I also see previews of messages in plain text. And 2) When searching for a word in Spotlight, the Dictionary search result I get is in Japanese. I’d like it in English, but I haven’t yet found out how to change this setting.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the ‘new’ Spotlight interface that was introduced in OS X 10.10 Yosemite. The big search field in the centre of the screen, the clearer way search results are displayed, it’s undoubtedly better than before and going in the right direction from a visual standpoint, but the interface of the Spotlight window still isn’t as flexible, clear and usable as it was under Mac OS X Tiger; and the speed and responsiveness are nowhere near Spotlight’s performance under Tiger to Mavericks — at least on Macs equipped with hard drives. If your Mac has an SSD, your experience has probably been more satisfying than mine.

Addendum: Third-party software

You’re probably already aware of apps like Alfred and LaunchBar, which offer a lot of useful features and can also act as application launchers, but I wanted to specifically mention two third-party solutions that put search first and are directly related to the aspects discussed in the article.

  • If you, like me, prefer the way Spotlight handled searches under Mac OS X Tiger, I recommend you check Tembo, by Houdah Software. Its interface behaves in basically the exact way. It’s fast and well-designed. It’s $14.99 on the Mac App Store (there are two versions: get the 2.0 version if you’re running Yosemite or El Capitan, get the 1.8 version if you’re running Mavericks or earlier), but you can download a free trial by visiting Houdah Software’s website.
  • Then there’s Find Any File, by Thomas Tempelmann, which I keep recommending because, while unable to search for file contents, it is capable of very extended searches in places Spotlight usually ignores, such as inside packages, or inside system’s folders. I also like how it handles search results: it has an extremely useful Hierarchical view, so you can see at a glance where a file is located and if it’s inside an invisible or otherwise not-directly-accessible folder. As for its looks, let’s say long-time Mac users will love its utilitarian, pre-Spotlight interface. Find Any File is shareware and costs $6. Finally, the developer still offers an older version that runs on PowerPC Macs.

 

  • 1. John Siracusa, from his Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger review on Ars Technica, 2005. ↩
  • 2. A few nice and helpful readers have emailed me, and made me aware that the method to reveal a file in the Finder is to select it in the search results and hit ⌘-Enter. A shortcut that, while not uncommon, was totally non-obvious to me. ↩

 

Patronage model? Good luck with that

November 17, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Software

In Castro is now free with patronage, Samantha Bielefeld writes:

Castro was updated to version 1.5 today with some great new features like Spotlight search, in-app Safari, and support for 3D Touch. Another change that went live today? It’s now a free app, every feature is available without charge, and they added an optional non-renewing patronage model. Sound familiar? In my original Arment piece, The Elephant in the Room, I said: “What he is most certainly doing is increasing the odds that no other third party podcast app will feel viable in the market by charging up front for their offering.”

Are we now seeing this theory become a reality? Absolutely, and this is only the first of many in the category who will likely do the same. You can argue that Arment is only one developer in a sea of many, that he can’t alter the revenue model of the entire App Store ecosystem, but you simply cannot argue that his recent change doesn’t signal a fear amongst other podcast apps, and Castro becoming entirely free is proof of this.

[…][T]he fact remains that it would be disingenuous to believe this isn’t in response to Overcast becoming entirely free. Marco has indeed accelerated the race to the bottom, and he comes bearing a well made app that is difficult not to feel satisfied with as a user when faced with other apps that charge up-front. Why should I pay for an app when this developer has made it seem unnecessary? The patronage-only model is so new, and very experimental, but has that stopped others from replicating it? No, and this is because they are being forced into adopting it in order to hold onto their existing customers, and hopefully bring some new ones on as well. The only good thing about this move by Castro is that perhaps Overcast won’t remain the default choice champion simply because of having a price of zero.

This piece is worth a full read, as is the quoted The Elephant in the Room (in case you had missed it). It made me think about this new patronage model, and I’m quite sceptical about it. Just a few personal observations:

1. I’m not a particularly eager podcast listener, I only follow four podcasts currently: Release Notes, with Joe Cieplinski and Charles Perry; The RetroMacCast with James & John; John Gruber’s The Talk Show; and Covered, by and with Harry C. Marks. Apple’s built-in Podcasts app should be more than enough for my listening needs, and I also tried Arment’s Overcast. Still, I opted for ShiftyJelly’s Pocket Casts because I like the app itself, but more importantly because I want to support developers who offer reasonably-priced iOS apps that I can pay up-front (and, if it’s the case, pay any major update that might be released at a later date). I like the occasional free app like anybody else. I don’t like ‘freemium’ models, of any kind.

2. I appreciate many, many great iOS (and Mac) developers and the apps they’ve created and maintained over the years, and I also appreciate — as a struggling author myself — what it means for indie developers to try to turn their hard work into something profitable. That’s why sometimes I purchase paid apps which are so well made that I don’t really care if they overlap or replicate features of apps I already purchased. By doing this (when I can), and/or spreading the word, I express my support for this or that developer. I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I do think I’m in a minority.

3. I also think that the so-called patronage model doesn’t scale well and may ultimately be unsustainable. While in principle I could decide to offer my support by basically ‘subscribing’ to an app instead of making a one-time purchase or In-app purchase, if more developers decided to move to a free-with-patronage structure for their apps, I simply wouldn’t be able to offer my support to all of them — not even to all those among them I’d theoretically love to support.

4. I believe that the patronage model isn’t for everyone. I think it may work out for those developers who have already established an audience of fans of their app(s), and that it may work as an option after a certain amount of success/notoriety. I see patronage as a sort of pension which could potentially sustain apps that have already worked their way to success.[1] I don’t see how it could work as a starting option for any app. A lot of App Store customers are cheapskates: they look for the free app or — when there’s not a free app for the task they’re after or that fits their needs — they tend to settle for the cheapest among the ‘good enough’ apps. If you’re a little-known indie developer debuting on the App Store with a free-with-patronage app, I guarantee you’ll hardly make a penny out of it. If your app is great and gets popular, maybe you’ll start getting patrons later. My educated guess is that you have better chances if you price your app at $0.99 from the start. 

5. Finally, another aspect of patronage’s probable unsustainability is that — always assuming more developers decide to follow this route — patronage might end up working reasonably well only for the early proposers. True, App A may get the patronage support of many fans of App A’s developer, while App B could very well thrive thanks to App B’s developer’s fan club, and the same might happen to App C thanks to its supporters. But since we’re talking of already moderately successful operations (as per what I postulated in point 4), sooner or later it’s possible to find people who equally love App A, App B and App C. What are the chances of finding people willing to be patrons of all three apps? (Or five, or eight, etc.)

As a regular App Store customer who is simultaneously budget-conscious and willing to support paid apps where possible, if you’re a developer considering the switch to a free-with-patronage model for your app, my humble suggestion is to think hard about it before doing something you may have difficulties undoing. 

Some have said that, if the patronage model starts spreading, it may exacerbate the already serious problem of the race to the bottom in the App Store, but I think that its probable unsustainability may make it backfire first on the developers themselves. Because what do you do when a lot of people grab your app for free, but very few of them are willing to support it as patrons? How long can you go on updating and maintaining an app that generates little to no profit? Not many indie developers can afford that. 

 

  • 1. The only three cases I know of free apps with an optional patronage/subscription option are — in chronological order — the original Instapaper (before Arment sold it), Overcast 2, and now Castro. In Instapaper’s case, people were willing to support it because it was a useful app that quickly became truly popular and successful. In Overcast 2’s case we have another well-made app by a prominent developer (Arment again) with a huge audience and lots of fans. In Castro’s case — well, it’s too soon to say, but the app is by now well-known, has good ratings on the App Store, and has certainly built up enough audience to make support via patronage an option worth considering (see also Bielefeld’s remarks I quoted at the beginning of the article.) ↩

 

f.lux must be allowed on iOS

November 14, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Software

I’m in my living-room, after a long day spent at the computer. It’s late night, and I’ve just finished watching something on TV. The only light comes from a small lamp on the dining table across the room. I’m comfortable on the sofa, and my iPhone is right next to me. This is the typical moment in a day where I catch up a bit on some reading — it might be an ebook, or RSS feeds, or Twitter. I wake the iPhone… and I’m glad I was able to sideload f.lux before Apple asked the developers to stop providing this option. Thanks to the altered screen colour temperature, f.lux makes reading a strain-free experience for my eyes, and I’ve finally stopped going to bed with tired, teary eyes from too much looking at the iPhone or iPad screen at night.

f.lux is an essential utility (I’ve previously mentioned it here among other essentials) that I’ve been using on the Mac since day one. What it does is described in very simple language on f.lux home page:

Ever notice how people texting at night have that eerie blue glow?

Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen?

During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun.

f.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

It’s even possible that you’re staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.

f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you’re in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.

Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. f.lux will do the rest, automatically.

This isn’t hype — f.lux works. It works as advertised, and it’s great. I’m a night owl, I write a lot at night because it’s peaceful and I can concentrate better. Before using f.lux on my Macs, I always went to bed with red, teary, sore eyes. The strain was perceivable, and I had to take frequent breaks and turn the desk lamp off for a bit. And when I had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, I never ended up sleeping very well, either. After installing f.lux, everything changed instantly. At first it was strange to look at the altered colour temperature of the Mac’s screen, but I adjusted quickly, and the eye strain disappeared right away. As I’ve often said, f.lux saved my eyes.

Now, for technical reasons f.lux cannot be made available for iOS through canonical means. As the developers have written, f.lux cannot ship an iOS App using the Documented APIs, because the APIs we use are not there. If you wanted f.lux on your iOS device, you had to jailbreak it — something I didn’t want to do on my iPhone because, as much as I love f.lux, not jailbreaking my iPhone is more important to me.

Imagine my joy when the other day I saw on f.lux’s site new instructions for installing f.lux on iOS devices without jailbreaking. f.lux’s developers made available an Xcode project to download, and the idea was basically to use Xcode 7 to compile and install f.lux directly on your device physically tethered to the Mac, as if it were an app you developed yourself. Naturally, I installed it right away. The app is in beta state, but so far I haven’t had a single problem with it, and it works like a charm.

iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 with f-lux

This photo I quickly took with my iPad shows the difference in colour temperature between my iPhone 4 (without f.lux) and iPhone 5 (with f.lux). I took the photo with just one dim lamp as light source. Notice how harsh the whites on the iPhone 4 are, especially in the top rows of apps and in app icons with lots of white (Calendar, Photos, VSCO Cam, Notes); so harsh that the iPad’s camera struggled to focus properly. It’s not a great photo overall, I’m aware of that, but it perfectly renders the different impact the two screens have on my eyes at night.

 

Of course the news spread rapidly. Of course it didn’t take long before Apple intervened and urged f.lux’s developers to stop making available f.lux this way.

Well, I urge Apple to reconsider and look the other way, or to work with f.lux’s developers to find a way to allow them to ship a regular iOS app. It saddens me that something this useful is not allowed on the App Store, while a generous quantity of utter, useless crap is. If you read a lot on your iOS devices in the evening and at night, f.lux has a really beneficial impact on your health: it leads to much less eye strain and a better sleep. It deserves a place on iOS.

The death of the PC and the rise of the tablet

November 13, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Survival of the fittest

A lot of PCs that were sold in the past years (pre-iPad era) were purchased by people who actually needed simpler computing tools. But when you only had desktop/laptop computers and operating systems designed for these machines, what choice did you have? So, people who basically needed to do email, Web browsing, some word processing, and the occasional chat, bought a full-fledged computer even if it was overkill for them. 

In the 1990s and early 2000s, mobile devices were essentially PDAs. PDAs could handle some of those basic tasks, but they were limited devices: the hardware was barely adequate (small storage, limited connectivity options, small screens, slow CPUs…), and the software was often bare-bones in terms of features — but above all the user interface was just poor (remember browsing the Web via WAP?). Having just a PDA or one of the first-generation smartphones without a PC was largely unfeasible, because these mobile devices weren’t perceived as powerful or flexible, and most of them needed a PC anyway to take advantage of all their features and functionality. They were satellite, not standalone devices.

In more recent years — let’s say roughly from the mid-2000s on — new devices have gradually appeared, more fine-grained tools to address the simpler computing needs of a lot of people. First we had netbooks, then more advanced smartphones and tablets. The netbook’s idea of simplification was largely hardware-oriented: a netbook was a smaller, cheaper, and less powerful laptop. Being cheaper and even more portable than a traditional laptop computer was a winning combination for a lot of people I know and, I guess, for a lot of people in general. There was a (brief) period where every less-tech-savvy person seemed keen on getting one. In my corner of the world, Asus sold a lot of these. Obviously, as the interest for these smaller, cheaper machines rose, their sales increased and sales of regular PCs started to slow down.

With iOS, first on the iPhone then on the iPad, the idea of simplification was not only in the hardware but, most importantly, in the software. Why was the iPad an instant success? I believe because, for the first time, people needing simpler computing tools for the most basic tasks had a well-designed device in their hands, with an operating system that really made things easier to understand and accomplish, making the whole ‘computing experience’ much less intimidating. And, on top of it, an iPad was even more portable than a netbook, with a better user experience, and with an app ecosystem that was already compelling when the iPad debuted and only got better from then on.

An iPad was enough for a lot of people — especially for whom a desktop or laptop PC had been overkill previously. So again, another decline in PC sales. And specifically at this point, I’m really meaning PCs as opposed to Macs. Is it really surprising, in this scenario, that Mac sales didn’t experience the same decline? No, because adding iOS-like touches (no pun intended) in Mac OS X and shipping very portable machines such as the MacBook Air helped Macs become (even) more friendly computers for computer-shy users. (On Windows, we had to wait until Windows 8 for things to move in a similar direction.) 

The so-called Post-PC era is really becoming a ‘survival of the fittest’ scenario. PC sales have been eroded by devices and platforms that have been able to address different computing needs in a more finely-grained fashion. People who today do all or most of their computing on tablets or even big-screen smartphones are people who never needed a full-fledged computer in the first place, but they owned one when there was really no other alternative. So they never upgraded their old PC by getting a new one — they switched to another class of device entirely. Then there are new users who never had a computer, whose first personal device is a modern smartphone, and who instantly realise that they have no need for a computer, so they either update their smartphone or, if they want a bigger screen, they get a tablet.

The reports of their death are greatly exaggerated

Having said that, is the personal computer’s traditional form factor dying? And what about its role? We’re certainly in the middle of a very transformative period, yet I think the ‘death of the PC’ is going to happen later than sooner. We’re at a stage where users have an unprecedented selection of devices, platforms, ecosystems they can choose from. But desktop and laptop computers are still the best option for — I was about to say ‘professionals’ and ‘power users’ — but I think it’s better to say ‘for a category of people who are more comfortable with the flexibility of computers’ operating systems, the type of multitasking and workflows they provide, not to mention the various kinds of peripherals they can interface with.’

Lately, the debate on this subject — “mobile is the future, PCs are doomed” — has taken tones I don’t like. For some people and tech pundits, it seems that if you still like your traditional desktop or laptop computer, you’re the old guard, resisting change and not understanding where technology is headed. That if you keep holding on to your machines, tools and ways of working, not taking devices like the iPad seriously, you’ll soon find yourself on the wrong side of the fence.

I’m happy that some power users are finding new ways to work with their iPad (and now iPad Pro), and I don’t doubt that, as an operating system like iOS becomes more powerful and flexible, the devices it runs on will become even more sophisticated, modular, able to fulfill even more needs, and satisfy even more types of users. But that day hasn’t come yet, and while I’m truly open to change and to evaluate new ways to work with and enjoy the tools I use, I don’t feel wrong or short-sighted for wanting to hold on to my Macs for a while longer. 

I prefer using a traditional computer as my main machine because it has a mature, powerful and versatile operating system (Mac OS X) and applications; because lots of banal tasks and actions are still easier to carry out on the Mac (first example off the top of my head: you drop font files in a folder and the fonts are readily available system-wide); because despite the improvements in iOS 9, the kind of multitasking iOS offers is still rudimentary for how I work; because I need big screens and a spatial interface where I can keep multiple documents and apps open and visible at the same time; I also need a visible filesystem because I deal with a lot of files all the time and such files need to go in different folders, sometimes even on different volumes, and I need to have all this hierarchy visible and reachable without effort and waste of time; not to mention the whole user interface and user interaction — the great familiarity with the operating system, years of using keyboard shortcuts to carry out most tasks and navigate throughout the interface, have made me rather fast, efficient, productive when I work with my Macs.

Now, for an increasing number of pundits, the mobile ecosystem, the touch interface, and devices like the iPad Pro, Microsoft Surface, and the like, are ‘the future’ — they’re the direction where we’re headed, and the traditional PC (personal computer) is a paradigm that’s starting to see its sunset, et cetera. I can believe this. I can, in theory, even be okay with this. I have no problem in seeing myself using an iPad-Pro-like device as primary working machine in the future. But it has to be better than a Mac, it has to be worth the switch and the adjustment. Working ‘in new ways,’ taking ‘different approaches to the workflow’ is all fine and dandy; but if the user experience and the interface paradigm are inadequate, if they lead me to do things less productively because I have to jump through hoops to accomplish the same tasks I used to do on a Mac in half the time and one third of the steps, then I fail to see the advantages of leaving the traditional computer and its desktop metaphor behind.

Where do we go from here?

Let’s take iOS, this young(ish) operating system that’s full of promise. I have to generalise a bit here, but humour me: the current opinion, especially when talking about iOS and the iPad, is that iOS still needs refinements, improvements, cohesion, to make a device like the iPad Pro express its full potential. It needs an even better multitasking. It needs better, deeper, more consistent ways to interface with the Smart Keyboard and other external keyboards. It needs to be more flexible. Applications and the data they produce need more interoperability. And so on and so forth.

To recap and simplify: iOS needs to be more complex and less ‘rigid’ than it is now. And here lies the problem I see ahead: maintaining the balance between simplicity, transparency, and user-friendliness — all qualities that have won so many people over — and a certain amount of necessary complexity to transform a device like the iPad Pro into a powerful machine truly capable of replacing a computer even for ‘serious,’ professional work.

Because one of the risks I see on the horizon is that iOS and similar mobile operating systems could evolve in a direction of complexity that ultimately brings them to function — guess how? — just like the operating systems we have on traditional computers today. Following this reasoning, in ten years we could be using devices that are as complex as computers today, only with a multi-touch interface and a bit more portability/convenience. Sure, maybe more people would be using them than PCs today, and more proficiently. Perhaps that would be enough to call it a victory and a great step in the evolution of computing. To me, it looks a bit like going round in circles. We end up with personal computers anyway, only with a different form factor and a slightly different way of doing things on them. 

This vision may seem a bit extreme, but look at the iPad today. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they could switch to an iPad as their only machine if it behaved in a certain way (read: more like my computer). Look at an iPad in its more ‘productive’ configuration — it looks like a smaller laptop. Look at the new Microsoft Surface line, look at the Surface Book — do you see a tablet or a laptop computer? I find ironic that for these tablets to fully replace traditional computers, they have to behave more like them.

In the end, I think that the most likely scenario is still the one described by Steve Jobs’s famous metaphor, the one about trucks and cars. At the D8 conference in 2010, he said:

When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.

We should celebrate the diversity of the technological tools we have available, and push every one of them to do what they do best. Why not have an even more finely-grained scenario where everybody wins because they can choose whatever tool best fits their needs or their ways of working? Why — to use Jobs’s metaphor — do certain neomaniacs in the current tech debate keep insisting that in the future we should only have cars just because they don’t have a need for trucks? Better yet, the future they see is a future of hybrid vehicles — cars that can be modified to do truck-oriented work through a series of accessories and add-ons, if the need arises. But at that point, isn’t it better to have the right tool for the job instead of Swiss-Army-knife devices that can potentially carry out many tasks, but actually, really excel at just a few of them?

Tim Cook said that Apple won’t merge iOS and OS X anytime soon, and that the Mac isn’t going anywhere. More recently, talking about the iPad Pro, Cook said to view it as ‘the future of personal computing’ and, as quoted by Macworld, in an interview with The Telegraph he also said:

I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one? Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones.

I think Apple is going exactly in the direction of that finely-grained scenario I was mentioning above, offering people a wide range of different devices to cover every degree of complexity they need, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing or working on. From big-screen 5K retina iMacs, to Mac Pros, to notebooks, subnotebooks, tablets, smartphones, smartwatches, entertainment devices for the living-room (Apple TV), to cars (a real car, we’re now out of Jobs’s metaphor). “Many, many people” will use iPads as a replacement for notebooks, but there will also be people who will still use traditional computers, and perhaps iPads and iPhones as satellite devices or secondary machines. Things don’t need to be clear-cut at all costs, and I think Apple knows it. Apple is making sure that, whatever is the fittest device or platform to survive, you’ll be able to buy it from them. 

 

To conclude: use whatever device and platform you’re comfortable with, that works best for you and fits your needs best. Keep an open mind, and change habits and workflows if a different device or approach brings concrete advantages and benefits. The future of computing is marked by the hardware and software that is actually shipped, and how people react to those, not by idle talk and the topic du jour in tech debates.