What eWaste are you talking about? The lifetime, battery life, and software updates are way longer than those of any other tablet on the market. iPads are not a replacement for Macbooks or PCs; let it be the iPad.
And what would you do with an ipad running linux? There's no tablet software.
May sound harsh, but the Open Source movement is just not capable of producing enough software to make Linux a viable on the desktop, let alone on the tablet.
Linux became a thing because computing devices were available for development.
I guess if enough Ipad hardware is available without too much black magic, there could be a stack viable based on linux or some other OS (possibly not yet created)
Linux has been 'ready for the desktop' for more than a decade, far longer for those who use it 'professionally' so that old trope can be put to pasture. As to what to run on a Linux tablet there's Plasma Mobile (KDE), Ubuntu Touch, Gnome/Phosh, PostmarketOS with any of the above and more. If you're looking for a single 'Linux tablet interface' you won't find it as there is no single 'Linux $thing' anywhere - you get the choice between many alternatives, some more polished/functional/useable than others.
Complete disagree. Even today they are still trying to get simple stuff like smooth mouse support working, not to mention random crashes of the desktop due to proprietary driver bugs. Every single pro Linux person always claims their desktop works great. Well good for you. You ain't convincing the mass market anytime soon because Linux is NOT at their standard yet. Even if the powers that be manage to completely lock down computing and we lose the war against general computation, people will still not use Linux.
It would be more than easy to write the exact same comment about MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows $version and whatnot. From the dreadful state of the MacOS window manager via the randomly disconnecting 'magic' touchpad to the myriad of annoyances in Windows - which used to crash when you looked at it the wrong way but that problem has been mostly fixed - to the lobotomised experience of running iPadOS to the fancily decorated jail which is iOS which has the nasty tendency to crash and burn when iMessage receives something it doesn't like or the iDevice which needed to be held just so to receive a signal, need I continue? In reality:
- mouse support under Linux was a fait accompli on the first device I installed XFree86 on back in 1993, That was back in the time of serial mice with DB9 RS-232 connectors, more than 30 years ago. What you call 'smooth mouse support' is rather vague, if you mean acceleration and the likes that has been around almost as long. Want to use a mouse/trackpad/trackball/trackpoint/whatever with Linux? Plug it in and it will probably work just fine.
- proprietary drivers are the exception to the rule that Linux is free software. One well-known exception here is nVidia which still rides the fence. While this is far less than ideal the drivers they produce are not known for producing 'random crashes'. Random crashes in Linux-land tend to be related to hardware problems and would crash other operating systems as well.
- the 'mass market' does not need convincing to use Linux since they use it daily, mostly without knowing they do so. Most of them don't use it on 'the desktop' (well, those running Chromebooks do but they mostly don't know about it) but there is nothing really keeping them from doing so.
You're living in a fantasy where 'the desktop' is an ivory tower where only the anointed incorporated entities are welcomed. This has never been the case and that will remain true as long as the hardware is (or can be made to be) open. Go ahead and install a distribution, I suspect you'll be surprised just how 'ready' Linux is for the desktop unless you insist on it being a 1-on-1 clone of Windows or MacOS and insist on everything working exactly like those systems. It isn't and it doesn't, things works differently between those systems and between Linux distributions. Choose one which comes closest to your expectations - probably Gnome-based if you're in the Apple world, Mate or KDE-based if you're used to Windows - and give it a try. If you want to do so, that is. If you don't want to try it that's fine as well. In that case I do wonder where your adamant statements about 'smooth mouse support' and 'random crashes' come from though.
Bluetooth keyboard + mouse. I have an iPad that is eWaste because Apple said it is even though it technically still functions and would work great if Apple would let me use it as a terminal to my main computer
You caused the ewaste, not Apple. Why did you buy a device that you don't want to use, and why don't you sell or donate it to somebody who wants to use it?
You are not serious, aren't you? You have Raspberry Pi for that purpose. It's like saying Mercedes should allow me to install software on my Mercedes so I can use my $200k car to use it as a tractor.
Customers who paid for a Retina display can apply their hardware to use cases which fall in the simplistic market segmentation between headless SBC and slate.
The utility of a working Retina display need not be limited by unsupported and insecure software when connected to public networks.
I have a 12 year old iPad running as a photo frame. Doesn’t get security updates, but then again it stays at home with only a single app running.
One of the things that keeps fascinating me about Apple is how they keep coming out with better and better iPads, even though they don’t seem to have any real competition. Take the new iPad Pro. It’s super thin, got a brand new tandem OLED screen that goes up to 1000 nits and is decent for using outdoors. They even put a new M4 chip in it which has faster single core performance than any desktop chip by Intel or AMD.
I use SoloSlides for Google Photos. It's free to try, but I ended up purchasing it to get the randomisation feature. I've created a separate Google account where I add pictures that I want to show on the iPad.
It's fairly stable. Only really run into issues when the internet goes out and then comes back later, sometimes this would make the app stop showing photos.
My work ipad pro is 4 years old, and I can't be bothered to replace it (I can upgrade for free at work, at the 'cost' of having to migrate my apps and data etc...)
My personal ipad mini 3 has been travelling with me until last year, as ebook reader. Sure it was heavily handicapped in the sense that I did not get app updates or any new apps really. But I still have my books and goodreader app, and still had VLC, and until very recently also netflix. That thing was 9 years old and I only retired it because work unlocked my work ipad so I only travel with 1 ipad now.
Nope! In the same way, I don't want to be able to install a "custom" OS in my car; I don't want the ability in more personal devices. "Opening" is weakening; there's no way around it.
Darwin is the core Unix operating system of macOS (previously OS X and Mac OS X), iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, visionOS, and bridgeOS. It previously existed as an independent open-source operating system, first released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code derived from NeXTSTEP, FreeBSD, other BSD operating systems, Mach, and other free software projects' code, as well as code developed by Apple.
The second link (to Surface) is trying to sell a Surface computer (i.e., hardware).
The first link appears to be... presentation software? I think? It talks a lot about Samsung devices but doesn't appear to be selling a specific device (i.e., not hardware. I don't see how the software would affect sales of the iPad (which is hardware).
(Was there a different link you meant to share instead? :) )
Android is just fine. Unless you're an artist who actually wants the super fancy pen interactions and display, there's really not that much difference. You may be more used to one over the other, but I guarantee it works the other way too.
I know many non-artists who want high refresh rate displays and low latency stylus input. It’s not “super fancy”. Let’s not move the goalposts; the iPad hardware is years beyond any other tablet.
Android is not “just fine”. The hardware available is relatively low quality compared to the iPad.
New iPad is super fancy. It's above everything else in many ways. But that doesn't move everything else down. Android tablets (unless you get one from a discount bin) are perfectly functional devices and they really are just fine. You can do almost all the same tasks on them. You don't have to chase the new, shiny and expensive. In the same way, Camry and Civic are just fine cars - they are simple and get the job done.
With the EU now going centre-right (and largely at the expense of Greens) their long-standing stance on eWaste (and similar consumer-oriented regulation) is likely to be casualty.
I was at the most recent CCC conference and there was a discussion on "Spotting tech fictions as replacement for social and political change". What I heard was the same line of thinking I had heard since the COP21 Paris Climate Conference 10 years ago.
The solution is to push the green agenda through activism and pressuring politicians/corporations to enact sweeping motions. During this talk, they discussed pushing people to take the bus in place of getting an EV with a series of methods to penalize owning a vehicle.
Its funny how given yesterday's results the talk that happened in the last days of Dec (so just 6 months ago) is now looking obsolete but I saw this over the last 10 years as the promised commitments of COP21 fell by the wayside anyway. I used to joke about how conservatives in the US lived in a bubble. Now I am seeing techies like the OP are also in a bubble.
I recall speeches by British celebs in the late 90s when this sort of thing first became fashionable. Some lady told a huge crowd that they need to unplug their kettles. You are not serious people.
But I'm sure it feels great to sit around at conferences and discuss "pushing people to take the bus". Heck, it is a whole industry unto itself, isn't it?
P.S. - I do think climate change is a serious issue. Figured I'd mention that before the usual responses that shun and excommunicate me as a "denier".
This will simply not have "political solutions".
Realistically the greens are counter productive to the max and always have been. It is simply the self-flagellation remnant bits of defunct religions. Devoid of rationality.
See also: Germany and nuclear power. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Out of curiosity, what do you think should be done to mitigate the climate issue?
I personally believe in engineering solutions that are better than the current solutions. With the collapse in prices for EVs, I am drooling over these super cheap electric cars and hope to one day have a backup used car just for fun trips around town. Or maybe just pick up a single long range EV for a little bit more. Right now the repair market is still in its early stages but its getting there. I dream of owning a single EV model that lasts me for 30 years powered by solar. Plus the cost of electricity is trending towards 0. I am always trying to find ways to swap out my lifestyle with something more efficient. Am I an outlier, yes but I see technical solutions coming to the mass market and I remain optimistic a tiny bit.
Nope, normcore to the max. You've been greenwashed.
Your EV won't run on Solar. The cost of electricity is not trending towards zero.
> I am always trying to find ways to swap out my lifestyle with something more efficient.
The best thing you could personally do is squeeze out a few hundreds thousands miles out of a third hand Honda Civic. Not that your personal lifestyle matters one iota.
What should be done? Enjoy life and if you want to promote anything at all promote engineering degrees for young people. And nuclear power.
Unfortunately I am a programmer so I always am thinking of optimizing and efficiency. Sorry but its how my brain is wired! :)
>Your EV won't run on Solar. The cost of electricity is not trending towards zero.
Are you in the US? Because every year I look at prices to install solar panels and it is definitely trending in that direction. Do we have to account for the carbon to produce those panels? Yes but that part of the supply chain is also cleaning up and furthermore we are now seeing the results of the first major solar installs from 25 years ago as they reach their expected end of life. End of life for them means 80-85% of the energy generated when they were new. Given the evidence we have seen, this is definitely not greenwashing...unless you are buying the nonsense expressed in that conference where they talk about greenwashing ;)
>The best thing you could personally do is squeeze out a few hundreds thousands miles out of a third hand Honda Civic. Not that your personal lifestyle matters one iota.
You are right as personal consumption is a drop in the bucket compared to industry. If it does become the norm my hope is that continued supply and labor inflation will force businesses to cut costs wherever they can and once Solar + EV gets to a certain price point, even business will have to adopt to stay competitive.
>Enjoy life and if you want to promote anything at all promote engineering degrees for young people. And nuclear power.
I would love some Nuclear but the ship has sailed. The US has forgotten how to build reactors and China has raced past them in their own custom designs. Now in the US it is just nonsense promoted by the Oil industry pushed down to COnservatives/Libertarians to distract.
>With the EU now going centre-right (and largely at the expense of Greens)
I'm annoyed by the media coverage which all imply the Right won seats at the expense of the Left when, as you say, it's mostly the Greens (who, yes, are technically Left) who lost seats.
What's even more annoying though is I need to take a magnifying glass to even see the additional seats won by the Right. The Left still holds majority and haven't even lost an unusually large number of seats.
There obviously are exceptions when looking at the election more microscopically, like in France, but overall it's mainstream misleadia.
What's surprising to me is this disinformation campaign by the media only serves to try and empower the Right, which I always thought was something the media do not want.
Summing the votes of all parties that could be considered left (Green, S&D and The Left) you get 224 seats, which is about 31% of the European Union Parliament.
> the media only serves to try and empower the Right, which I always thought was something the media do not want
Whatever gave you that impression? A significant percentage of all media outlets are owned by very right-leaning businessmen, or otherwise entangled in capitalism to such extent that it may bias their judgement
A large portion of western media is state-funded public broadcasters (the BBC, CBC, PBS, ...), and another large swathe is under the control of various explicitly right-leaning corporations (Murdoch's News Corp and Fox, Sinclair, ...).
While there are indeed numerous liberal-leaning media outlets, it is entirely unclear to me that they have equivalent reach to their conservative counterparts.
Ground News uses bias ratings from Ad Fontes Media, All Sides, and Media Bias/Fact Check; they rate NPR as Center, Lean Left, and Lean Left respectively.
If you consider NPR to be far-far left then what is Jezebel, The Young Turks, Jacobin, or Democracy Now? That's not even getting into things like Socialist Alternative or pod casts like Chapo Trap House.
Between the ones I listed and NPR are sites like Slate and Vox which are to the left of NPR but not as far left as Democracy Now.
The BBC generally tends towards the center-left, but also takes some characteristically right-wing stances - they they have at times been vocally anti-trans), they were on balance pro-brexit, and they tend to lean right on immigration and religion.
Probably not by number of outlets, either, not that it would matter.
The dominant Western media position is center-right neoliberal corporate capitalist (unsurprisingly, reflect both the ruling class of Western society and, as its the same class, the class that predominantly owns corporations, including media corps.)
> Since you use language like "neoliberal corporate capitalist" and "ruling classes" consider that you are so far on the left yourself that everything seems center-right at best to you.
That’s...very much not true. I use terminology more popular with people to the left of my own position because it is the most fit for the purpose.
> Is The Guardian not socialist enough to your tastes or something?
The Guardian is left of the median of major Western media outlets, not a representation of where the Western media is centered.
well if you want to go all conspiracy theory, the media wants clicks because that gets them ad revenue, and so are making it seem like the right is winning because it gets you to click on the article which then, after you've scrolled past a bunch of ads, tells you they didn't actually win that many seats.
eWaste? What are you talking about? iPads have typically gotten 7-9 years of software updates. Its not intended to be like a direct laptop replacement. Sure you can do laptop like things but that is not what the iPad is. Even then, most laptops don't even get that kind of support. Calling the iPad "eWaste World Champion" reeks of ignorance about what the device is about.
Instead it really is a unique device with unique use cases as evidenced by todays keynote. Did you watch it? I came away impressed with the cool things they developed just for the iPad.
Apple needs to put 25% of the vigor into iPadOS that it just put into Apple Intelligence because this is getting ridiculous. The iPad Pro gets incredible new hardware and an M4 chip and then iPadOS essentially gets nothing of substance.
>After which they could run Linux, instead of being e-waste.
There is so much PC based garbage that ends up in the eWaste trash destroyed way before years 7-9 hit and you are complaining about a device that is not even designed to be used in a server/desktop OS configuration?
>iPadOS 18 did get a calculator.
This really does explain it all...Just pure ignorance based on hatred of Apple.
In your other comment you laid out potential uses for a "unlocked" ipad
web browser
IoT control panel
video conferencing
photo frame
e-reader
kiosk
The bottom 5 don't really need updates and if Android tablets are anything to go by (looking at you Nexus 10) arguably will work better running on top Apple software instead of whatever half baked garbage gets dumped out of the major distros or "custom rom" makers.
For web browsing, a nine year old tablet will arguably be slow as molasses for the content that would be on the web nine years from now. We have seen this with using old desktop computers to browse the web.
Your argument is pretty weak. There is a whole lot of work to make this happen among not only Apple but the OSS community for almost no gain. The community's time time would be better spent getting fundamentals of Linux Desktop working well so that maybe one day in our lives it really will be the Year of the Linux Desktop™.
Anything connected to a network requires security updates. The bottom five require network connectivity.
> Slow as molasses for the content
An old tablet isn't suitable for general Javascript-impaired web browsing, but there is a wide world of static online/offline content accessible to slow web browsers, as well as bespoke static content delivered via HTTP.
> Whole lot of work.. for almost no gain
The heavy lifting work is in device enablement, but that's a one time cost. Applications exist, work on other devices and are already maintained. Linux iPads would only expand the userbase for those applications.
> We have seen this with using old desktop computers to browse the web.
That's not always the case though. ;)
About 3 years ago I got hold of a fully function dual Xeon system from around 2004 (!).
Only really wanted the case (old workstation, built like a tank) but the system itself still powered on and ran Win7 perfectly fine. Each of the two Xeon cpus was a single core thing (this was from before multi core), ran at ~3Ghz, and used about ~100w.
... and it played back Youtube videos perfectly fine. I think they were 1080p ones too, rather then 720p.
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We've seen that in later years (past this example above), computing power become "good enough" so that even old computers are completely workable more than a decade later.
Later model iPads will probably be the same, "good enough" for years after Apple is done with them.
Could you recommend an article or Apple web page listing those additions? Or name some here?
Mark Gurman, long-time Apple journalist, didn't find any iPad-specific features, beyond AI/LLM features coming to all Apple platforms. Here's another article that lists "everything" announced at WWDC, which doesn't list any new iPad features, other than AI/LLM, https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/10/everything-apple-announced...
iOS: customize home screen + control center
apps: floating tab bar menus
apple apps: animations + doc browser
screen sharing: pencil annotations
calculator: math notes + brett victor animations
apple notes: handwriting digital twin
Cute features, sadly of low benefit to work use cases. High value would be a VM and CLI terminal to run a web server stack for offline dev, maintenance or publishing tasks in time and space constrained contexts where Macbook would be inconvenient. Macbook is good for hours of dedicated work, iPad for quick tasks.
Mandate support for alternate OSes, like Asahi Linux on Macbook, https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Platform-Secur...
> ipadOS not even one layer of Mac virtualization
iPadOS 17 on M4 has a "Secure Exclave" OS, https://mastodon.social/@_inside/112440596781136013