Comment by or_am_i
8 hours ago
Have owned a couple iPads starting ~2010 -- mainly for reading pdfs, and comics in electronic form. Occasionally drawing / jamming some tunes - almost all via 3rd party apps. There are still plenty of decent apps in the ecosystem, even though their eventual obsolescence is as good as built in, and a lot of stuff I previously loved the platform for has now been gone for years with no replacement. Native apps have never been great at pretty much anything, with a notable exception of Garage Band which is an absolute banger for its money. Books is... passable I guess?
But the reading pdfs part is important -- and really hard to beat for me, the iOS drag/scroll/pinch/zoom UX perceived responsiveness is still unmatched IMO. It would take some real creativity beyond liquid glass to enshittify this aspect out.
I find the last part really surprising. That seems, and feels (I do have an iPad), standard to me. But markup is, to put it lightly, fucking terrible.
I lean towards the iPad's success mostly being brand name and advertising because I've never experienced the "just works". I understand that from the non techie people, but not when talking to nerds