Why iPad productivity software, again?
Hi frens,
Every few years, either developers or users try to make iPad a productive device. And the tablet often fails, again, when compared with a notebook.
Steve Jobs once claimed in D8 conference (YouTube),
...if you would say, well, the software is not powerful enough, that's just a matter of time. So it can't be that the software is not powerful enough because that can get fixed over time.
So I think your vision would have to be fairly short to say that these things can't over time grow into tools that can do many things.
Let’s see what Apple has done for iPad productivity software, for the past 15 years:
2011-2012: iLife (GarageBand, iMovie; iPhoto but later discontinued with introduction of iOS 8 Photos.)
2021: Swift Playgrounds 4 for building apps
2023: Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro.
There was almost a decade that Apple has done not much stuff, when Microsoft and Adobe provide productivity software suites with subscriptions.
However, for small business, does the tablet productivity market justify the development cost?
We’ve seen Procreate grows and entered the animation market with Procreate Dreams (but why the video of “Procreate Dreams Reveal Keynote” was removed).
We’ve seen Paper by FiftyThree launched with great success, acquired by WeTransfer in 2018, and acquired again by Bending Spoons in 2024. Now Paper is under Evernote Corporation!
More recently, from iOS Dev Weekly issue 697, I’ve seen another interesting development case from Godot (game engine!) to make an iPad app. Miguel de Icaza talked about “Why iPad” and the technical details. If we could build a Roblox game on the iPad, why not exploring more possibilities?
And I plan to develop another side project entirely on Swift Playgrounds 4 on the iPad, based on the feature of building software directly from source code, without the need for explaining “reproducible builds” because you can easily build by yourself without worrying about the development environment!
I wonder what’s next for us.
Your friend,
Denken