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Thinking of the iPad

Delurking because some of this resonates. I'd been Windows and Android for years and intertwined with Google and Microsoft far too much. I picked up my first iPad (a mini 4) a few years ago and really liked it. I was starting to find more and more about Google that was annoying me though so, when my Galaxy Note 20 Ultra died while on holiday a couple of years ago, I decided to bite the bullet and try an iPhone (which was a shock to most people as I've been an Android fan-boy since my Motorola DEXT running Android 1.5 in 2009!). I went with an iPhone 13 and was almost immediately hooked. The iPad mini was great but I wanted something with a bigger screen so picked up an iPad Air 4 to use as my primary tablet (the mini went to my wife to replace her old Galaxy Tab A). The final jump was early last year when my Windows laptop started to die on me and I took the plunge fully into the Apple ecosystem with a late 2020 MacBook Pro (thanks to some sage advice from Dom which helped me avoid buying an Intel version!). My son bought himself an Xbox Series X so I got his old Xbox One so that helped on the games front. Although, I do miss some of the games I could play on my Windows laptop (RDR2 and GTA V are much easier with a keyboard and mouse than an Xbox controller!)

So, my current device list is:

iPhone 13 for daily browsing and audiobook listening (using the Prologue app and my Plex server)
iPad Air 4 for game sessions (I picked up an Apple Pencil for that as well)
MacBook Pro M1 for daily use
Xbox One for gaming (although controller issues mean less of that)
Kindle Oasis for ebooks

I also have a Synology NAS with two 4TB drives in RAID running Plex for my movies, music, audiobooks, and cloud storage.

The only downside to the MacBook Pro is the M1 processor only allows for a single external monitor (and I was used to a dual external monitor setup) so I picked up a cheap curved monitor and that's resolved that "issue".

Software-wise I have Affinity, FoundryVTT, and have started heavily using Obsidian for game prep (exporting data from FoundryVTT to Markdown and then tidying it up for Obsidian)

Unfortunately, I'm still tied to Google and Microsoft a bit. Despite having my own online storage solution with the NAS my wife is determined to stick with OneDrive and Office so we still have a 365 subscription. I also have a legacy Google G Suite with custom domain that powers my email. I'd love to switch that to Protonmail but, again, my wife is resistant ;)

Her Galaxy Flip phone is starting to fail though so I'm trying to persuade her to get an iPhone :D
 
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Primarily a Windows user here since 3.1, however, I'm a database engineer by trade, and I come from the old school.

That means Unix in a work context.

So I've used Linux machines for development in sql, python, and bash for a while. Proper command line Linux at that. Love me a green screen terminal 🤣

These days, I'm on a mac at work. It's fine, lovely hardware, but imo all the flashy front end stuff is almost like familiar Windows but just obtusly different enough to make usage a bit awkward.
 
jimmiwazere said:
imo all the flashy front end stuff is almost like familiar Windows but just obtusly different enough to make usage a bit awkward.
Click to expand...
You mean Windows is a clunky copy of Macos UI.. and btw Gnome 3 is not a copy of either and yet it's a very ergonomic UI, so it can be done.

Cue edition wars.
 
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I did look at the scripts to get Affinity working in Linux, and they looked a bit involved for me. May be staying dual OS for a bit longer before going fully over to Linux.
 
First Age said:
I did look at the scripts to get Affinity working in Linux, and they looked a bit involved for me. May be staying dual OS for a bit longer before going fully over to Linux.
Click to expand...
Maybe try VirtualBox with bigger RAM allocation, or as you say, start dual os.. I am..
 
Guvnor said:
Maybe try VirtualBox with bigger RAM allocation, or as you say, start dual os.. I am..
Click to expand...

I'm dual PC at the moment. I could try a chunkier VM, but I can operate fine as I am. I'm unlikely to need Affinity on the move.
 
Guvnor said:
You mean Windows is a clunky copy of Macos UI.. and btw Gnome 3 is not a copy of either and yet it's a very ergonomic UI, so it can be done.

Cue edition wars.
Click to expand...
Everybody nicked the WIMP interface from Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre. (Ducks for cover.)
 
Sablemage said:
Everybody nicked the WIMP interface from Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre. (Ducks for cover.)
Click to expand...
They did.
Anyone remember GEM from Digital Research?
 
Yes. Used it regularly until 1995.

GEM survived on the Atari ST and successors as it was beyond the Apple lawsuit.

Every now and then I get an urge to find a working MegaSTe or Atari TT or Falcon 030 to get back to TOS. Usually the moment passes.
 
Dom said:
Yes. Used it regularly until 1995.

GEM survived on the Atari ST and successors as it was beyond the Apple lawsuit.

Every now and then I get an urge to find a working MegaSTe or Atari TT or Falcon 030 to get back to TOS. Usually the moment passes.
Click to expand...
I have an image of TOS/GEM somewhere. I've run it and it's both reassuringly as good as I remember, and also pointless.
I am sure others have done the same with AmigaOS.
 
My first encounter with a PC was an Apple ][, my first encounter with a GUI was GEM on my Atari ST. Loved it.

Now some news:
“We've been sleeping for 30 years. Please excuse us”: The Commodore 64 is back, packed with extra power for chiptune music makers | MusicRadar https://share.google/iGEklsleVyALCFVlV
 
Not sure it counts as a "PC" but mine was a ZX81 produced at the Timex factory in my home town around 1982. My brothers and I got one to share between us that Christmas (along with an Atari 2600). My first GUI was the Amiga 500 in 1990.
 
My first contact with a computer was using a Commodore PET at a summer camp. My first computer was a TRS-80 clone (EACA Video Genie) followed by a ZX-81 (second hand).

My first GUI was an Atari 1040 STFM. This got upgrades to a 1040STe with twin floppies and the mono screen. I think I also got some the later TOS ROMs and then the TOS 2 boot disks.

Then I got a PowerBook 190cs and I’ve never looked back.
 
Like Dom, I had brief contact with a Commodore PET at a summer camp. The following term, my school computer club started out with a ZX80, a TRS-80 and a weird “programmable with punch cards” calculator the size of a large electric typewriter. It then acquired an ACT Sirius-1, and by the time I did O level Computer Science in the Lower Sixth (1983-1984) we had 12 BBC Micros on an econet with a print server (which a mate and I learned to hack..). Place I worked between school and Uni had the Apricot F10’s using GEM…
 
I remember playing a Dungeon game on the Commodore Pet back in the late 70s (we had them in our schools during the summer holidays if I remember rightly, and I went in every day to play on them). There was no graphics, a sword was a funny T, a snake was an S, the walls were just filling characters and you explored by the movement keys! It was incredibly basic, no visuals to actually speak of, but it was absolutely fantastic and brought on the imagination.
 
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