Anyone thinking that tablets kind of always suck, get updates, and still suck?
I'll never understand why you would spend a penny on a play thing, that really does suck, instead of getting a dedicated aviation portable.
I'm sure it I'll be 'skooled' on all the great things tablets do poorly. Whatever.
Tablets won't replace computers for "real work" and they also won't replace aviation portables for "real flying".
Don't know of any dedicated aviation portables that will do everything on the feature list of any of the popular tablet software. Not even close.
And then price factors in... they aren't particularly cheap even though they don't do as much.
As far as "real work" goes, I can hook a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad and do 90% of my "real work". Not quite as comfortably as with a big monitor and a mouse, but I could take the challenge to use one for a week.
Other than running some dedicated Windows software for maintaining certain systems at the office and maybe the annoyance of having to do that via RDP without a mouse, I'd be "fine" on nothing but a tablet with a BT keyboard.
If it was a week where I needed to compile code in XCode or gcc, that wouldn't work out as well but ssh to something that can, fixes that. Testing something on virtual machines that are local to the desktop is a bit problematic also but again, ssh... but with our move to using AWS, it's getting pretty rare to need a local VM even.
Best part about that reality for me is that if I'm off work or traveling, I know I really don't have to pack a laptop everywhere I go, like I did for decades, for that inevitable "emergency" call where they apologize and say they know you're on vacation, but...
I have three Macs... two Mac Minis with i7 processors and upgraded with large SSDs and maxed out RAM, one at home and work, each... and a MacBook Pro similarly outfitted. The MacBook Pro used to go everywhere with me.
Now I don't even bother to pack it for most trips and when I do, thinking I might need it, it rarely comes out of the bag.
That all said, Apple is losing it under Cook... and the next portable machine is probably some super slim Win10 gadget maybe dual booting or just running Linux on it, and the iPad will become the aviation-only tool for Foreflight. Until I convert to something Android and then probably Garmin or WingX.
Apple has completely screwed up the MacBook Pro at this point with the stupid connector change and nobody needs a touchbar.
The other way to go is one of the "workstation class" laptops that'll drive four to six monitors and go back to lugging it around when necessary -- but I doubt it. When at a desk with a real machine these days, multiple monitor support is the key for what I do, and that's about the only feature that's a must have when sitting in the chair(s).
