Craig Federighi on iPad's Long-Awaited External Drive Support: 'We're Willing to Acknowledge the 1990s'

[loybond]

It's weird to me that they also introduced it at the same time on the iPhone.

iPhones have a lightning port, usb 2 speeds, and far less reasons to "act like a computer" than an iPad.

 

[RickGrimes]

Wow, so many victims here.

 

[TonyTech]

That's what happen when you call a consumer product "PRO": Macbook Pro, iPad Pro...Professional Content Creator still rely on "legacy" technology and workflows in their day-to-day operations. Apple finally acknowledged that fact and built their first real Mac Pro in six years. Now they are adding external SSD support to the iPad but joking about professionals doing things like in 1990 is just pure arrogance, it's like saying that the Apple way is the only way.

 

[prospervic]

Uh, sorry, Craig. I like AirDrop, too. But it's useless when your files are on a USB drive, and there's no Mac in sight.

 

[macduke]

Yeah Craig, because when I'm out in the field I want to wait a week for my latest shoot to upload to the cloud on some shoddy hotel WiFi in the middle of nowhere.

Hell, even when I'm at home on 500Mbps internet it's still only best case 62.5MB/s, and more often half that depending on the cloud service. Even in that best case scenario, that's as slow as a spinning hard disk from the 1990s, Craig. It's no wonder they put that garbage into their base model iMacs. Meanwhile I've got a tiny portable SSD that is about a third of the volume of an iPhone XS that is virtually unnoticeable in my bag and it is about 10X faster than the best case scenario. The cord for it is like a foot long and it's USB-C and I can't wait to use it with my iPad when I need to. It's not like it's going to be hanging off my iPad all the time, just like it wasn't hanging off my MBP all the time.

Even today I still have people who give me work on flash drives. It's just the reality of the situation. I'll probably use flash drives less, but it's still a thing, and a big part of why a Mac is so frictionless. I hope they have two USB-C ports on a future iPad. Does anyone know if you can use a splitter to directly transfer photos from an SD card to an SSD?

If Apple really wanted us to get out of the 90s, they would build out a robust iCloud infrastructure paired with a home and mobile internet experience in the 10Gbps range. But by the time that happens, our files will be even larger, and we'll probably need something even faster. File size tends to keep pace with drive speed and capacity, as well as the power of the computer working with the file. That will likely continue forever until either computers hit a wall and the internet catches up, or there are breakthroughs in internet communication that suddenly enable then-current SSD speeds that are ubiquitous. Until then, we'll always need to access drives, and even when that happens, there will always be people who want local backups of their data.

Oh, and AirDrop? Really? He must only be sending simple documents around. The problem is he doesn't work on large projects with tons of assets. He just doesn't understand. I remember when I got my 10.5" iPad Pro I had installed the iOS beta on it that came out around the same time. I was traveling and had planned to import photos using the SD adapter to dump my cards. But there was a bug with the iOS beta that prevented that. So I had to import to my iPhone (thank God they added that a couple years earlier) and my iPhone didn't have much space, so I had to then AirDrop everything to the iPad Pro. It took ages to transfer everything, and it failed multiple times since I was moving over hundreds of 42MP RAW photos. I ended up having to do them in smaller batches, and I wasted about half a day fiddling with it.

 

[RogerWilco]

Condescending butthole. As if “dark mode” isn’t something straight out of the '70s.

 

[Oculus Mentis]

How funny they also had to embrace the old & still valid ATX form factor on the new Mac Pro after all those guff talks about 'workflow this and that'...

 

[Baymowe335]

You're talking about that saturated gadget/toy market niche that failed to replace notebooks and that nobody is really interested in anymore?

Oh, you mean the $20B iPad business that brings in more revenue annually than all of NFLX?

 

[Tommo66]

Yeah Craig, because when I'm out in the field I want to wait a week for my latest shoot to upload to the cloud on some shoddy hotel WiFi in the middle of nowhere.

Hell, even when I'm at home on 500Mbps internet it's still only best case 62.5MB/s, and more often half that depending on the cloud service. Even in that best case scenario, that's as slow as a spinning hard disk from the 1990s, Craig. It's no wonder they put that garbage into their base model iMacs. Meanwhile I've got a tiny portable SSD that is about a third of the volume of an iPhone XS that is virtually unnoticeable in my bag and it is about 10X faster than the best case scenario. The cord for it is like a foot long and it's USB-C and I can't wait to use it with my iPad when I need to. It's not like it's going to be hanging off my iPad all the time, just like it wasn't hanging off my MBP all the time.

Even today I still have people who give me work on flash drives. It's just the reality of the situation. I'll probably use flash drives less, but it's still a thing, and a big part of why a Mac is so frictionless. I hope they have two USB-C ports on a future iPad. Does anyone know if you can use a splitter to directly transfer photos from an SD card to an SSD?

If Apple really wanted us to get out of the 90s, they would build out a robust iCloud infrastructure paired with a home and mobile internet experience in the 10Gbps range. But by the time that happens, our files will be even larger, and we'll probably need something even faster. File size tends to keep pace with drive speed and capacity, as well as the power of the computer working with the file. That will likely continue forever until either computers hit a wall and the internet catches up, or there are breakthroughs in internet communication that suddenly enable then-current SSD speeds that are ubiquitous. Until then, we'll always need to access drives, and even when that happens, there will always be people who want local backups of their data.

Oh, and AirDrop? Really? He must only be sending simple documents around. The problem is he doesn't work on large projects with tons of assets. He just doesn't understand. I remember when I got my 10.5" iPad Pro I had installed the iOS beta on it that came out around the same time. I was traveling and had planned to import photos using the SD adapter to dump my cards. But there was a bug with the iOS beta that prevented that. So I had to import to my iPhone (thank God they added that a couple years earlier) and my iPhone didn't have much space, so I had to then AirDrop everything to the iPad Pro. It took ages to transfer everything, and it failed multiple times since I was moving over hundreds of 42MP RAW photos. I ended up having to do them in smaller batches, and I wasted about half a day fiddling with it.

Let me get this straight, you think the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple doesn't work on large projects with tons of assets. Seriously !!!!!

 

[ElectricPotato]

My original post: "he sent the machine in for repair, it came back with a new drive"

[doublepost=1559893654][/doublepost]
If the disk itself is not physically affected you can recover the data from it.

The person no longer has the original disk, which is a severe physical effect. You can't recover something from a drive you no longer possess. My point was this person had no conception of where his data was located.

 

[Baymowe335]

Just look at the number of likes to his post and your post and use it as a data to support that.

The post is liked primarily because it's a negative post early on the thread where people see it. The echo chamber here loves negativity. The data doesn't support the negativity here, hence the market leading iPad pulling in $20B annually.

 

[Alan Wynn]

There's an easy solution to that: backing up. I have about 24 TB of stuff on external drives, half of that is the actual data I use, and the other half is the backup.

You have them all powered up all the time? Other wise worry about stiction. You keep the drives all in one place? Hope you do not have a fire, flood or other natural disaster. How often do you replace your drives? How often do you rotate your backup drives? Do you make sure that the drives come from different lots, so they are not likely to fail at the same time? You also keep them attached to different machines so that a system failure does not wipe the drives, right?

Now imagine storing 12TB in the cloud,

No need to imagine it. I have 27TB currently stored in Dropbox.

and having to wait hours or days each time you want to access it,

How often do you need all 12TB, vs. a few files?

just working directly off of it if it were on local hard drives.

And you are where the drives are. Using Dropbox and iCloud Drive, I can access any of my files anywhere I have internet access. Local storage is great and what is needed when working with video/audio, but keeping the data on the cloud as well has lots of advantages.

And not to mention having to pay for it forever, with the threat that if you ever stop paying, all your data will be deleted. No such risk with hard drives.

If you do not keep your drives spinning, you have a serious risk of data loss. That costs money. Most consumer drives have a 3 year MTBF, so one should expect to replace every drive every 2.5 to 3.5 years. That costs money.

I think the cloud is great for calendars and email, and light stuff that needs to be synced across multiple devices. But for storing massive libraries of files? What's the point? It's just going to be too slow to be of any use. Even for a backup, it's too damn slow.

Not sure where you live, but Comcast and Spectrum offer gigabit service (download) to most of their customer. AT&T has over 14.5 million fiber households that can all receive gigabit symmetric service. Adding in Century link, Verizon and Frontier’s fiber builds, most people in the U.S. now have access to high enough speeds to make cloud storage a great option for all backup and remote access.

 

[menithings]

Lots of old timey snowflake victims here.

I’m a film director and CGI animator that works in the feature film, network TV and AAA videogame market, and I have zero need for a USB thumb drive. It’s slow last-century tech. Wireless transfers are faster and more convenient.

I recently was forced to use a USB thumb drive because my Tesla requires one to record video for its new Sentry Mode software feature. It should be cloud based, but current cars were’t designed for storing user video, so the USB drive is a hack until Tesla upgrades its cars. It’s the only old fashioned thing about an otherwise futuristic car.

So yeah, thumb drives and SD cards need to die already. But unfortunately camera companies are too slow to adapt to wireless transfer, so artists (mostly photographers) still need to use physical media the transfer files to phones and tablets.

Transferring large video files are of course another story. But that’s still the domain of PC’s and Macs.

Regardless the future is wireless - not loose bits of plastic storage rattling in your pockets and bags.

 

[Alan Wynn]

I'm pretty fantatical about this. I got burglarized once and lost my Mac and its backup and I vowed to not let something like that happen again.

That is a drag. I was at one of the National Labs in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. We had a great tape back up system, that no one had ever bothered to try using for restores, until a bad set of drive failures. Guess what, there was a software problem and none of the data was recoverable.

As you said, multiple backups in different places, with different types of storage is the best way to ensure against data loss.

 

[Gasu E.]

I have a sense of humor but that's just mean and bullying. some people multitask better without dealing with ******** hung up connections and wireless problems. doesn't matter what platform. just sayin.

You feel bullied?

 

[Falhófnir]

1990s, 2000s, 2010s, looks like 2020s, probably 2030s...

 

[Gasu E.]

So many feelings in this thread over an obvious joke.

Apparently some anonymous posters here feel that have been personally singled-out and bullied. Being offended and outraged in an anonymous post online is, unfortunately, pretty commonly accepted behavior.

 

[eyeCloudGuy]

Lots of oversensitive people here.

What I found the most interesting is the way CF describes the various OS's. In reality, Apple only has 2 OS's

macOS
iOS

Federighi then breaks them down into "experiences", so

macOS

iOS, one OS divided into four different experiences

• iOS (iPhone)
• iPadOS (iPad)
• tvOS (Apple TV)
• watchOS (Apple Watch)

That actually provides a great deal of clarity to a question a lot of us have.

So just a thought....I like the iOS as the overarching OS broken into experiences....so why not phoneOS? Sort of makes sense given the break down.

 

[LordVic]

I’m a film director and CGI animator that works in the feature film, network TV and AAA videogame market, and I have zero need for a USB thumb drive. It’s slow last-century tech. Wireless transfers are faster and more convenient.

Load of bubkiss

USB-3.0 based drives, especialy if you take a standard SSD and convert it to a USB-3 or Thunderbolt 3 enclosure will be capable of easily handling 500MB/s transfer rates without saturating the USB-3 or Thunderbolt protocol, effectively giving internal performance in an external enclosure.

Current transfer speeds capable on local WiFi via 802.11AC top out at 1.2gbps, but most implementations only being 837mbps. Your external WiFi based cloud service is going to be limited in transfer speed by your wireless performance that will top out at 104MB/s (max thoeretical) which is a quarter the speed of a proper USB drive.

if you're using a USB stick (those NAND flash based ones) and thinking that's the peak performance of USB/Thunderbolt than you're mistaken. WiFi is slower than USB-3.0

So judging based off what you've claimed, and then the nonsense about WiFi being faster? I call BS on your post. Considering that most internet pipes also top out at 1.5gbps (187.5MB/s), there's no way most peoples cloud services will be anywhere close to a proper USB storage attachment.


Now, Sure, convenience is nice with wireless. But if I'm transferring 200GB, at 500MB/s read right, it will take me about 2 minutes to transfer that TO the drive and about 2 minutes to transfer from the drive. But on WiFi, that transfer is going to take you anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes. Sometimes, convenience doesn't trump performance if time is of the essence.

 

[Gasu E.]

I just don't like the arrogance. I've seen it from many folks at Apple, going back to Steve. Just because a use case doesn't work for one person doesn't invalidate it for all others.

So, I had to look up the dictionary definition of arrogance. So here it is "Having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities." My questions:

Do you think Federighi and Jobs have exhibited "an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities"?

Do you think random posters on MacRumors exhibit "an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities"?
[doublepost=1559925804][/doublepost]

Load of bubkiss

USB-3.0 based drives, especialy if you take a standard SSD and convert it to a USB-3 or Thunderbolt 3 enclosure will be capable of easily handling 500MB/s transfer rates without saturating the USB-3 or Thunderbolt protocol, effectively giving internal performance in an external enclosure.

Current transfer speeds capable on local WiFi via 802.11AC top out at 1.2gbps, but most implementations only being 837mbps. Your external WiFi based cloud service is going to be limited in transfer speed by your wireless performance that will top out at 104MB/s (max thoeretical) which is a quarter the speed of a proper USB drive.

if you're using a USB stick (those NAND flash based ones) and thinking that's the peak performance of USB/Thunderbolt than you're mistaken. WiFi is slower than USB-3.0

So judging based off what you've claimed, and then the nonsense about WiFi being faster? I call BS on your post. Considering that most internet pipes also top out at 1.5gbps (187.5MB/s), there's no way most peoples cloud services will be anywhere close to a proper USB storage attachment.


Now, Sure, convenience is nice with wireless. But if I'm transferring 200GB, at 500MB/s read right, it will take me about 2 minutes to transfer that TO the drive and about 2 minutes to transfer from the drive. But on WiFi, that transfer is going to take you anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes. Sometimes, convenience doesn't trump performance if time is of the essence.

You may be talking about different workflows. If you are working stand-alone and need to move yourself and your work to another location, you are right. But if you are delivering your work product to someone else at a different location, cloud is better. Your way requires shipping or sneakernet, which is not a big deal if you happen to be moving yourself around anyway. In your 200GB example, 15 minutes in the cloud is nothing compared to the time it takes to move the drive across town.

Also, your point is really irrelevant to this thread. The thread is about iPad external storage; I don't think you are dealing with 200GB worth of data files on an iPad.

 

[LordVic]

So, I had to look up the dictionary definition of arrogance. So here it is "Having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities." My questions:

Do you think Federighi and Jobs have exhibited "an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities"?

Do you think random posters on MacRumors exhibit "an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities"?
[doublepost=1559925804][/doublepost]

You may be talking about different workflows. If you are working stand-alone and need to move yourself and your work to another location, you are right. But if you are delivering your work product to someone else at a different location, cloud is better. Your way requires shipping or sneakernet, which is not a big deal if you happen to be moving yourself around anyway. In your 200GB example, 15 minutes in the cloud is nothing compared to the time it takes to move the drive across town.

yeah, that's speaking to the convenience factor. But I was speakign to the direct action of the poster in particular, how he was attempting to use performance of a USB stick to say that USB/ physical devices are "old" tech and that WiFi is faster/better.

Both are verifiable untruths.

The user in particular never mentioned anything about different sites. just he used a USB dive and thought it was "old fashioned" and slow

 

[I7guy]

This is part of what's wrong with Apple the last 5 years or so. They are so arrogant and don't listen to what the people who use there products want and need to use them the way they want to. Case in point, though to a much lesser importance, 12 versions of iOS before they finally changed the volume control display.

Nothing wrong with features as long as decent amount of people want to use it and external drives is a no brainer should have.

Which people? Who exactly should Apple listen to? The posters who criticized Apple on macrumors?

 

[SPUY767]

Ah, the good ol 90’s, before companies really started ripping us off with ridiculous storage tier pricing.

You mean back when I paid 400$ for a 40GB hard drive?

 

[I7guy]

Load of bubkiss

USB-3.0 based drives, especialy if you take a standard SSD and convert it to a USB-3 or Thunderbolt 3 enclosure will be capable of easily handling 500MB/s transfer rates without saturating the USB-3 or Thunderbolt protocol, effectively giving internal performance in an external enclosure.

Current transfer speeds capable on local WiFi via 802.11AC top out at 1.2gbps, but most implementations only being 837mbps. Your external WiFi based cloud service is going to be limited in transfer speed by your wireless performance that will top out at 104MB/s (max thoeretical) which is a quarter the speed of a proper USB drive.

if you're using a USB stick (those NAND flash based ones) and thinking that's the peak performance of USB/Thunderbolt than you're mistaken. WiFi is slower than USB-3.0

So judging based off what you've claimed, and then the nonsense about WiFi being faster? I call BS on your post. Considering that most internet pipes also top out at 1.5gbps (187.5MB/s), there's no way most peoples cloud services will be anywhere close to a proper USB storage attachment.


Now, Sure, convenience is nice with wireless. But if I'm transferring 200GB, at 500MB/s read right, it will take me about 2 minutes to transfer that TO the drive and about 2 minutes to transfer from the drive. But on WiFi, that transfer is going to take you anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes. Sometimes, convenience doesn't trump performance if time is of the essence.

Right assuming the optimal conditions for the usb drive and the most sub optimal conditions for the WiFi. Now let’s reverse this scenario. Great WiFi and usb 2.

It is a trend is that many companies are disallowing use of usb drives for security reasons. Maybe we should also be transferring media via 1.4 inch disks.

 

[vmachiel]

... it was a joke.