Comment by jyunwai
10 hours ago
For text extraction: on my MacBook, I can take a screenshot of some text with a keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Shift+4, then drag the selector with the mouse), unobtrusively clip the targeted part of the screen, select all (Cmd+A), and copy to clipboard (Cmd+C).
On my iPad, it theoretically works the same, but the workflow differs when I take the screenshot. The screen gets filled entirely by the new screenshot interface instead of keeping to a small window that keeps other windows in view (like on MacOS), and often, text selection just doesn’t work on the iPad until I crop the screenshot further to just the text (versus working reliably on MacOS). So, it’s fiddly and takes a lot of time.
On the MacBook, I could even install free third-party software to skip a couple steps (Cmd+A, Cmd+C) and immediately save any text in the selection to my clipboard.
And that is the core of the issue for me. For the actual person using the device to get something done, many of the tasks I detailed are not possible to complete on the iPad as it is today, due to limitations on what I can install.
I would be happy if I could at least dual boot to another OS or run a virtual machine (even if touch becomes disabled) so I can install more software tools, as the hardware capability is there for the iPad. On Linux, at least I can run a Windows virtual machine to run Adobe Premiere Pro (or dual boot with Windows), but I cannot fully use the hardware of an iPad with the way its operating system is currently designed.
Maybe you just need to learn how to use the system more effectively?
Take the screenshot > hit the checkbox > save to photos > open photos app > choose the first photo > select the text.
I guess it’s true that there is a lack of overlapping windows but other than that this process is very quick with very few button presses.
That task needed a good number of screenshots a minute. I can get each extraction done with a single keyboard shortcut and selection on a laptop, versus... that a few dozen times. It works okay for a one-off, but there's value in enabling quick non-OS-native solutions to make work easier.
The situation should dictate the solution as decided by the user, instead of the OS dictating a solution and limiting options regardless of the situation.