[fallenhitokiri]

This is IMHO a really good point. Somewhere in between App Groups, Share Extensions and custom URL schemes I really hoped at some point we would see a way to make this happen.

My wife is currently using Affinity and Adobe products to work on illustrations. It works mostly the same for her as on her Mac. She does not care about small, specialised tools, she wants one app that does everything she needs. The iPad is doing a great job running those apps.

I am not sure how many users (outside of the ones who got used to it) want UNIX-like flexibility vs "give me an app that does everything I need". If the later group keeps getting larger the walled garden approach to apps might actually work.

[howaboutnope]

But for anything non-trivial, that app that does everything person A needs doesn't do what person B needs, and vice versa. It mostly does what person C needs, who is a whiteboard made subset of the most used features and doesn't match anyone.

It's not just UNIX-like flexibility, it's human uniqueness, and the uniqueness of the tasks they perform and the ideas they have. It's also the difference between owning and knowing how to use a tool, versus renting someone to do it for you who might help you today, but could rob or hurt you tomorrow.

Just consider how we spend decades to teach new humans to read and write as well as they can learn it, versus just giving them a bunch of emoticons to signal when they're hungry or sleepy or bored. Because we expect them to become full peers, and architects of their world, responsible for the next generation, not just consumers picking options others prepared for them. And we don't care if they want that, because we know what they don't know, yet. We base our judgement on the information we have, not the information they lack.

Making an exception for computer literacy just because it is hard (as if language and reading and writing aren't until you get used to them) set us on a terrible path.

[walterbell]

> Just consider how we spend decades to teach new humans to read and write as well as they can learn it, versus just giving them a bunch of emoticons to signal when they're hungry or sleepy or bored. Because we expect them to become full peers, and architects of their world, responsible for the next generation, not just consumers picking options others prepared for them.

Thanks for this summary of the case for general purpose computing.

[emodendroket]

Why should the average person learn these skills in particular rather than plumbing, cooking, woodwork, auto repair, or any number of other useful skills they could also learn?

[vladvasiliu]

> I am not sure how many users (outside of the ones who got used to it) want UNIX-like flexibility vs "give me an app that does everything I need". If the later group keeps getting larger the walled garden approach to apps might actually work.

I think this is crux of the matter. Even outside the Apple ecosystem I see a tendency in people to not think about composing multiple tools but to look for an app that does everything.

I'm talking about my colleagues, working in IT, but in a Windows environment.

And on Windows there's PowerShell, which, although slow and to me not as flexible as bash, still allows one to do quite a lot of things. But people seem to see using it as a last resort, when there's absolutely no way of doing what they want by clicking around some window.

[emodendroket]

It's hard to remember all the arguments for a passel of command line utils. Discoverablility is much better for a GUI, and only someone who wishes to do something unusual or specialized will chafe against the limitations.

[emodendroket]

Even in Unix it's not like everyone is satisfied with small and specialized applications, or Emacs, let alone modern IDEs, would never have been created.