641: Catching up with Federico Viticci

It’s possible we would have been on mars before Elon made his first million :grinning:.

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Exactly this. You can compare it with moving to Windows or Ubuntu. You can probably do most, or all, of your work on these systems, but it will only work when you are willing to learn how to fully use the OS.

I agree on this point. I find it a plus for the iPad that you don’t have to think about organizing your windows. On the other side, that is how I mostly work on the Mac too and why I don’t want a screen bigger than 16”.

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As a fellow front-end web dev, I respect what you’re able to accomplish here. But I can’t imagine doing our job without Docker (or some other local development virtualization), or Chromium’s element inspector, or a native command line, or a screen big enough to have three text files and a command line open at once (all the time).

Let alone that I couldn’t imagine doing web design in something other than Figma or Sketch. And managing assets and typefaces and… oof. The list goes on.

But seriously, much respect for what you’re doing. You’re a unicorn. A canary in a coal mine. I’m impressed. (You should genuinely write posts about your workflow for Macstories because I’d love to learn more.)

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I suspect my process is far more simple than yours and my sites likely are simple too! Mostly static pages, and most of my usual work is updating content so it’s just a matter of changing out text and images. When I do set-up a new site it’s usually based on an existing, proven template that I use. No Figma, no Sketch, etc. A basic folder structure of html and css files, images, pdfs, etc. So, maybe don’t be too impressed. I’ve been working on the web since 1998 and I suspect I’m just a hold-over from those simpler times. Give me a text editor with built in FTP, web browser, graphic editor (or two) and I’m good to go.

Gotcha. That’s far simpler than my flow is these days. Kinda jealous!

@Denny, I always appreciate your positive take and analysis. This is another great entry. As you know from some past posts you and I’ve interacted on, I love my iPad Pro but feel it falls down for me in some places where it shouldn’t. Still, I 100% agree with your views on many of your points. Chief among them…

First:

There are places where the iPad is equally capable (if not better than the Mac), but people just want to do a thing exactly the way they do it on their Mac and accuse the iPad of not being able to do the thing because it’s not done the same way. When I’ve taken the time to learn to do something the iPad way, I’ve found that it works at least as efficiently as on the Mac. Which leads to my next point…

Second:

I am delighted with multitasking on the iPad and find that I can work quite efficiently with it. I took a few days of forcing myself to learn the features and use them last summer when the new design came out. It has paid great dividends. Yes, it’s different from macOS, but it is not less capable. In fact, the only multitasking problems that I’ve ever experienced have to do with legacy-third-party apps, like Microsoft Word. The multitasking system works and works great on an iPad.

Third:

I agree with this, because like you, I want the iPad to improve but don’t want it to become macOS. I love macOS. But I don’t want iPad to run on iPadOS or for iPadOS to become macOS.

Fifth

Agree

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I totally enjoy the follow up guests, one being Mr Viticci himself. I had to listen twice to take notes!
New indie devs would be cool, but only if they are willing. At least Federico shines the light on those who don’t come up from their computers yet!

The new multitasking announced at WWDC seem like we (@Denny) are going to get what we want. iPadOS seems to be retaining the existing options and adding this new Stage Manager mode, along with true multi-display support. Looks great to me.

Take a look here:

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It certainly opens up the potential for whole new categories of use, especially with the improvements to apps themselves and the unexpected but (seemingly) incredible collaboration features.

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Agreed. This is a very promising suite of updates, IMHO.

Maybe they need to get Federico back on the podcast. :grinning:

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It does appear his timing may have been a little off.

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Yeah, we’ll see. Definitely glad to see the basic interface will still be available for the folks that use the iPad in simpler ways will still have that. Thus far, with each iteration of multi-tasking I’ve followed along and been happy with the changes. I’m not sure how I feel about overlapping windows. That said, I’ve only watched the few minutes of the keynote and haven’t gone to check out the website or really think about what this will mean for my workflows. I’d guess it will make many of those that wanted a more mac like experience very happy though. And I’ll go ahead and guess that a lot will keep complaining saying it doesn’t go far enough. Goal posts will be moved. “You mean I can only extend my iPad to 1 external monitor?? Why not 5???”

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Aside from how the new multitasking and Stage Manager, no doubt that there are so many excellent features coming. The underling change to memory management seems like a big shift. Customizing toolbars on iPad apps will be a welcome change. There’s a LOT to digest. But there’s no doubt that they ticked the most important features on the request lists that have been floating around. Exciting and certainly a BIG day for the iPad Pro.

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This is the biggest update for the iPad Pro ever (Stage Manager is M1 only).

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It’s a little frustrating, isn’t it? I feel like a lot of it is fueled by tech YouTubers trying desperately to have a hot take or fill up the content calendar. A few years ago, I wrote an Apple note called “What would make iPad serve all my computing needs.” I did this after analyzing all the things that I do on computer. The list is divided into “critical” and “wishlist” items. Some of those items are in the OS territory, several are things I need to be able to do in third-party apps.

Almost every year over the past few years, I’ve been able to check off an item or two. This year, it looks like I should be able to check-off the wish-list item of “better external monitor support.” The improvements to spotlight may allow me to check-off the wishlist item of “better file searching.” I did not see enough details about Files app improvements, but maybe I’ll be able to check off my list items on file management.

It’s hard to deny that iPadOS is becoming more and more capable with each update. Every year the delta of work (or workflows) that I can’t accomplish on iPad and can only do on Mac shrinks.

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I think adjusting the effective resolution was the biggest concession to keyboard-and-mouse iPad users since that will actually reduce the size of tap targets beyond guidelines. Wild stuff. :slight_smile:

Overlapping windows seem a lot nicer than Slide Over without reducing what’s special about creative work on iPad. Same for the system-level affordances like memory swap and background processing.

I’m sure we’ll learn a lot more, but I felt like some needs were being met while keeping the iPad a place for work with divergent results.

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StageManager would be nice for a couple of things I do but nothing they announced would justify replacing my 2020 iPP. It would be nice to just have full screen support on an external monitor but I doubt marketing will let older iPads get that feature.

OK, but for real, why not 5 external monitors one day?

I will admit to generally being a Mac guy, and despite today’s updates, that looks to still be the case for my workflow. But why not 5 monitors one day? I have the same Q for the MacBook Air, FWIW. I only use 1 monitor personally, but see no reason others should be limited based on my preference.

Lol, I see I should have gone more extreme in my joke. Why not 10? 20? Or maybe it wasn’t a joke. My point is that no matter what is offered, there will be complaints. More a statement I think that no matter what they do, some people won’t be happy. Or, to put it another way, some will want other features not added, etc. I’ll admit, in part, I’m just grumpy because I feel like, in general, internet tech culture is so often focused on what they don’t get, what isn’t offered. It seems like it’s often the norm as opposed to being thankful/positive of what is offered. But that’s obviously my opinion/problem and I do sometimes take a break from the digital realm largely because of it.

But, yeah, I think they offered some nice new features that will be helpful and appreciated by some and for those folks, their lives will be better.

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