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Microsoft Begins Beta Testing Trackpad Support in Word and Excel Apps for iPad
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Or maybe Apple will replace all "MacBooks" with iPads and ipadOS and then just have a "Pro" laptop, iMac and Mac with macOS.
no, its just showing that Apple wants to make the ipad more like a macbook and not vice versa....
and with the costs lmost the same now...i wonder why you would chose an ipad pro instead of a macbook for work ?!
macs now will run macos/ipados/linux/soon arm win10 apps....while the ipad will run just ipados and just can be touch thats all. For media consumption and browsing , the ipad is still better,but just for that why not pick the base ipad ?! but lets see how the future macs will be...if the future macs will have a better battery life also....
iOS and iPadOS 13.4 were released on March 24 of this year. Apple updated their iWork apps with trackpad support on March 31. Microsoft took over half of a year to issue updates for the significant improvements to the input interface. Microsoft almost certainly had early access to the APIs, and it still took them that long to create an update.
That does not meet my definition of "just recently".
iOS and iPadOS 13.4 were released on March 24 of this year. Apple updated their iWork apps with trackpad support on March 31. Microsoft took over half of a year to issue updates for the significant improvements to the input interface. Microsoft almost certainly had early access to the APIs, and it still took them that long to create an update.
That does not meet my definition of "just recently".
I seriously doubt Microsoft had early access to the APIs, and the general surprise of pretty much everyone I think shows that nobody outside Apple knew this was coming. Even the iWork team, which definitely had early access to the APIs and would have had them integrated into their roadmap, couldn't make launch day. Sevenish months to update an entirely custom UI across 3 different apps to support an input method that came out of the blue is, to me, entirely reasonable.
Considering Gsuite to this day is still a dumpster fire on iPad, and Google seems to completely not care about it in the least, I think Microsoft deserves some credit for continuing to support and update apps in a reasonable amount of time for a device that is a direct competitor to their own Surface.
Excellent. Glad to hear it.
Mind you, proper trackpad/mouse support should have been on the iPad 3 years ago, with MS support for it 6 months later.
Mind you, proper trackpad/mouse support should have been on the iPad 3 years ago, with MS support for it 6 months later.
Most people tend to use the mouse or pad rather than the touchscreen because the way to the touchscreen is more cumbersome. Actually all people who have a PC with touchscreen have confirmed this to me.
iOS and iPadOS 13.4 were released on March 24 of this year. Apple updated their iWork apps with trackpad support on March 31. Microsoft took over half of a year to issue updates for the significant improvements to the input interface. Microsoft almost certainly had early access to the APIs, and it still took them that long to create an update.
That does not meet my definition of "just recently".
So you are comparing adoption from Apple, who originated the feature and probably was working on this right from the get go, to a third party developer...
And you assume that Microsoft had early access to the APIs? Really? Because Apple is known for that kind of treatment... The few times I have seen Apple doing something like that is when they worked together with Logitech to launch a product using the Smart Connector and with Adobe after Photoshop version sucked so bad on iPad and they needed it running since the entire system was going to switch to ARM.
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Why? Portability. Sure, if I am chained to an office desk, might as well get a MacBook or iMac. But I travel a lot for work (or did LOL), and right now I carry both a MacBook for MS office when I am at a table, or desk, and an iPad for more casual use. Sure would be nice to just have to carry one. Admittedly not a huge deal, and these days a MacBook and iPad together weigh less than the older MacBooks. But still. Portability. That's why
Why? I don't follow your logic here. Why does an iPad with touchpad support have anything to do with whether a MacBook would or would not benefit from a touch screen? Serious question. I get that iOS has been designed from ground up to be a touch screen, and a MacBook would not be as good of one, but that doesn't mean it would be bad with one.
You haven't been paying attention. Apple regularly demonstrates third-party apps of new software during the WWDC keynote.
Have you been paying attention to what agile third-party developers did with this interface? Pixelmator announced support for the iOS 13.4 trackpad features on April 7, 2020 . Fourteen days after the feature was announced. Microsoft's update took over 10x that time.
I'm comparing Microsoft to normal third-party developers. Microsoft gets left in the dust.
You guys clearly don’t get...this iPad is the new MacBook touch. I can hear Steve hear it saying
I don't think those are really comparable though, you can't just discount the huge variations in complexity between various third party apps. Pixelmator Photo uses a lot of off the shelf stuff from Apple, so much of the trackpad support they "added" came essentially free. All they really had to do was build against 13.4 and make some tweaks. Their big feature is the machine learning stuff to modify the image, so their custom code has little if anything to do with responding to a pointer.
The Office apps, on the other hand, use an entirely custom rendering framework to create and modify significantly more complex files than images, and much of this framework is affected by how you are interacting with the device. Things like dragging to select text in Word or cells in Excel, the addition of a right-click, different pointers shape based on the many different object types that are possible, and plenty more, all of these things have to be added and QA tested. Microsoft gets essentially none of this functionality for free like Pixelmator Photo does.
As for Apple demoing third-party apps at WWDC? Yeah, they do, this wasn't WWDC, and if I remember correctly no third-party apps were demoed with trackpad support at launch. That to me says Microsoft found out about this the same day we all did.
One last point about Pixelmator Photo, the developers also have an app that is a good bit more complex than Pixelmator Photo that's just called Pixelmator. It has a lot more UI elements and functions that interact with a pointer. That app just got trackpad support today.
Absolutely correct. The iPad has hundreds of uses, but not one of them is real, man.
Because if Apple thought that touch screens were the way people want to fully use computers, they wouldn’t have made a first party touch pad for the iPad.
I couldn't disagree more. Many PC laptops are building touchscreens into the display that it's pretty much the norm these days. To me it's just a money grab. If they build the touchscreen into a Mac, there is a good chance iPad sales will go down because people won't have a need for both anymore. Just my opinion.
Couldn't agree more. I used to have a PC laptop for work until I switched to a MacBook due to video editing needs. I used the touchscreen on my PC laptop almost daily, compared to rarely using the touch bar on the MacBook. Practically every working adult is proficient enough at typing that your eyes are on the screen while you type. I find is more time consuming to look down at the touch bar to use a function than touching something on a screen since my eyes are already there.
A touchscreen MacBook will not affect iPad sales. And even it does, Apple is still getting the money from Mac sales so they could care less.
I think what's going to happen is Macs and iPads are going to get closer, but the difference is going to be the primary input. For iPads, it's touch with pointer secondary, for Macs, its pointer with touch secondary. That distinction alone is going to drive a lot of design decisions across both apps and the OS itself. Many apps in particular may be designed to work well with the primary, but not the secondary beyond what it gets "for free."
That coupled with iOS being more managed and macOS being more open, seems like there's plenty of space for both options in the market.
ummm, interesting point but doesn’t address my question, read the original quote ‘Adding touchpad support to the iPad somehow equals beating around the bush for a touchscreen MacBook? If anything it shows that Apple shouldn’t use a touchscreen in the MacBook..’
this argues opposite what you say. I understand your logic, not his.