As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product.
"These things will probably sell in the educational market or something."
"Developers will always surprise us, they will come up with use cases for us."
During development Amazon was proving that people wanted E-Book readers. So when it was clear the iPad didn't yet have a coherent story from Apple, iBooks was thrown together at the eleventh hour and then SJ went on the attack against Amazon to push back against the growing Kindle market.
And then Windows 8 happened! People asked Apple (And Tim Cook), will we see touch-screen Macs? And instead Apple trapped itself in a corner by doubling down that the iPad was going to forgo running full macOS because something about people not wanting to touch their laptop screen. So here we are, a product that launched without a vision, and then hamstrung by ego.
It's true that people who love their iPads, LOOOVE their iPads. So it's a nice product. It's definitely well made and I love reading the news on mine. It's a great device to travel with, for sure, yet I agree with Gruber, this thing will never flourish outside of the niche markets its found itself in.
I just recently bought a used iPad that still got the iPadOS update and what I noticed is very ambivalent.
PRO: - The device is light, has a nice screen and good sound. I can use it to read documents that need color, watch videos and browse the web all in one device with acceptable performance - The battery has enough capacity for the pad to work for days without recharging - You can use pencil 1 as an input device (I would not have bought one without support for pencil)
CON: - While apps like browsers (Safari, Firefox) look like the desktop versions they are just poor copies without the full potential. Without Add-On's my browsing experience is very limited in comparison to the experience on my computer - No Adobe Suite like many people wanted it while you can run Apps like the real PS on a surface - No native terminal, seriously? I live in a terminal and e.g. consume news via newsbeuter - Support for USB thumbdrives and mouse have just been added recently while competitors allowed much easier access much earlier. This "walled garden" feeling diminishes the experience a lot for me. I hoped for the iPad to be more like "a real PC/Mac" and this is one of the major reasons I never bought an early model or a new one.
My dream iPad would be more like macOS because as someone coming from Linux it feels already "walled" enough for my taste.
I have another major concern but that is based on the evidence about consumption, climate change etc. and of course Apple itself can probably not do much about it (can they?): What happens to the device when it is obsolete (e.g. no major OS updates and security patches)? It would be really awesome if they would open up to after market solutions to reduce waste and keep their products running so one can install linux on it.
I know this is a wild dream in a world that is driven by maximizing profit. Let dreamers be dreamers ;)
> as someone coming from Linux it feels already "walled" enough for my taste
Not criticizing at all, genuinely curious: what do you want to accomplish on an iPad that is prevented by the walled garden?
Ok this feeling especially comes from the following disadvantages:
- iOS/iPadOS AppStore vs. macOS AppStore + ability to install apps from the web (I can't even compile FOSS apps on my own without owning a mac + 100$/year dev licence - this is a real shit show for me!)
- mostly paid & stripped down terminal apps vs. a real native terminal (and of course just installing iTerm2 because you can do so on a mac)
- no "real" apps like on a desktop machine. As I mentioned in my CON's I would love to use a real browser like Firefox including Add-On's because the web is unusable in many cases without blocking and filtering all the evil scripts people use to make some extra money. Also I would like to use the Adobe products (photoshop, illustrator etc.) and not the stripped down (and from what I heard also bad) pseudo-apps. Finally I have a device that could replace things like a Wacom Tablet connected to your computer but that opportunity was missed. Very sad.
- no up- or downgrades as you please because Apple likes to force you to go to / stay on certain versions of their OS on the mobile devices to "motivate" you to buy new ones once in a while when they need more revenue.
- no free choice of OS. My MBP runs macOS and linux and if I would need it I could just install windows as well (uagh!).
There is much more to this but I think the issues mentioned should be enough to draw a clear picture of the paternalism Apple treats it's users of the mobile devices with. I don't like this at all and it was THE deal breaker that prevented me from ever buying a new iPad.
If they get worse as the MBP's do, I would also take care and probably never buy a new model and instead stick to an old one that is a combination of some "freedom" (the max. level Apple allows you to do anything with it), enough quality (good product, not too many beta-experiments) and stability (software is new enough not to be dangerous to use).
I agree with a lot of your comments, but just FYI, you can do a couple of those things:
> (I can't even compile FOSS apps on my own without owning a mac + 100$/year dev licence - this is a real shit show for me!)
You do need a Mac, but you can build FOSS apps and deploy them to your own iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV with a free developer account. You only need the paid license to distribute them to others.
> Finally I have a device that could replace things like a Wacom Tablet connected to your computer but that opportunity was missed.
There have been apps that support this for a while, but this is now a built-in iOS/macOS feature called "Sidecar".
Recently I tried to compile blink[0] without a paid account and failed miserably.
Yes they also did a great job with sidecar which will only work if you at least own a recent mac. Also it does not work with the iPad Air 2 because they decided it is too old. It is the same story again: Apple softly forcing it's customers to upgrade - nice experience...