Logos needs to take advantage of the new iPad Pro

Apple Pencil support for marking up my texts.

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I have a Macbook Pro 2015 and I would say that the chances are it will be the last laptop I’ll buy - desktops have already been unimaginable for a while for me and that’s certainly not atypical among my friends. I own my laptop exclusively for Logos.

The confusion I have is that my library is huge - leaving the app open on iOS long enough for it to download my entire library (presumably the screen would need to stay on for the download to happen? I don’t know what restrictions exist on background downloads) and that immediately could be quite confusing for some people - I assume that this is the main reason that the online models are moving ahead so much faster, along with memory concerns that are only now becoming less of a live issue - my iPhone has the same storage capacity as my mac now.

The hardware power-side is clearly important if you clump all versions of the mobile app together, but that’s what we’re hoping to move away from now.

But if the library download thing is as big an issue as I think it might be and internet connectivity is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, I’d say it’s a really hard sell to decide if a full offline experience is worth developing, no matter how much I want it. It’s really interesting to think through all the gains/losses etc. I don’t really have any answers, but I’m gearing my hopes to more incremental changes. It’s not like photoshop where it’s all downloaded in one go and ready to go immediately. But we can hope!

Dr. Michael Wilson said:

Apple is making the hardware to support this

Very few companies are able to bring full desktop experience to the iPad. Apple (worth $1,000 billion) have done with with Pages, etc. Microsoft (worth $815 billion) have got somewhere close with Office, though it's still short of the desktop experience. Adobe (worth $120 billion) will release Photoshop in 2019. But almost no-one else has managed it.

All that is to say, "Don't hold your breath".

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Agreed. My iPad Pro has nearly replaced my macbook pro. I would not be suprised if Apple does away with laptops all together. I think this is where the industry leaders are heading A.K.A. Microsoft surface book and google's new (not so great) pixel tablet.

JT (alabama24) said:

Then you don't follow Apple. They have consistently said this will not be the case... they don't even plan to merge iOS and macOS. 

Absolutely.

Nor do they plan to help desktop developers make an easier transition to iOS (which doesn't help Faithlife, of course). What they are working on is making mobile apps easier to transition to the desktop. That's also what Android is doing. Microsoft has already done this years ago, but because no-one actually owned Windows phones, it was largely irrelevant.

Renan said:

A full transition from the windows/mac version to the web version app.logos.com would also solve the problem for the ipad and any other tablet.

Hope that never happens... my internet is not stable enough to desire that the moment internet is required to do basic things in Logos is the day I leave it. The Web app is a fine thing but the point of this post seems mostly to indicate a desire to have a more autonomous iPad experience with all downloadable resources installed on the iPAD. I know this is not a likely thing to happen... I do feel that greater functionality with the downloaded books on the device is a reasonable request and in some small respects FL has moved to do this a bit. Although currently the iOS apps for me are virtually completely unusable. cashing every few minutes. So my dreams of what I want are tempered now by dreams of the apps being stable once again.

-dan 

LaRosa Johnson said:

Affinity has done an incredible job with porting both Affinity Photo & Designer to iPad, and they are a much smaller company.

That's true. It's equally true that was a brand new product when it was recently launched, designed without any backwards compatibility concerns, straight for desktop and iOS, and without ANY phone compatibility. That's quite a different proposition to a nine-year old (counting just from from L4) desktop application being ported. It's also the case that there are significant advantages to tablet over laptop for powerful graphics software, which isn't necessarily the case for powerful Bible software. (By which I mean it's obvious why I might want to do graphics with a pen and no keyboard. It's less obvious why I might want to do detailed Bible study with a pen and no keyboard.)

Sounds good to me. My house has no cell service and only available internet is satellite based so weather here or on the east coast can knock out my net. I have no issues with the concept of using something different as long as it works fine. 

-dan

Dr. Michael Wilson said:

That misses the entire point of my post. I don’t want all my books on my mobile device unless I have the abil to have way more than 2 stinking windows and no tabs

Yes, it does miss your entire point. 

That said, the Logos iOS app right now is not (and perhaps never will be) what Logos is on the desktop.

Part of this can be laid at Apple's feet for their marketing blitz on how the new iPads are more powerful than "computers." I find it ironic that they can say that when they could add mouse support, for example, that would make the iPad in some areas as powerful as a computer. But they choose not to do that. If they did, I might not go looking to other devices for functionality that iPads don't have.

But it works the other way, too. My Surface Go is a great tool because it runs the full desktop Logos app. I have my entire library on my SSD. I have the full functionality of Logos 8. I get access to my PBBs. I can open multiple windows, but the funny thing is that on a 10-inch device I can't read the text in those windows because the screen is too small. I also get lower performance of the CPU on the Go than my desktop computer and the limitations (yes, the limitations) of Windows on a tablet device. Every device has tradeoffs; there isn't one device that does it all.

Olivetree palm allowed 3 panes at once. And it was very handy. 

-Dan

Dr. Michael Wilson said:

It is sad that they chose to go with the subscription model. I just want to buy books and be done with it. I see no reason that a book reader should have a subscription

If you don’t find Connect worthwhile, you can ignore it and purchase outright as before. Kindle offers a subscription service that I doubt I’ll ever use, but I find the free books/Mobile Ed rental etc makes it a great deal for me.

Dr. Michael Wilson said:

It is sad that they chose to go with the subscription model. I just want to buy books and be done with it. I see no reason that a book reader should have a subscription

Bob P. has repeatedly said they won’t go to sub ONLY. So you can always buy books and keep them, unless they are being dishonest.

Since the iPad Pro has been out a little while, curious how those of you with it are enjoying logos on it now That some time has passed

Tony Walker said:

Since the iPad Pro has been out a little while, curious how those of you with it are enjoying logos on it now That some time has passed

I'm not really using it....like others have said, It's like using a Kindle or other reader and has minimal features. But I'm glad I have access to all the books! I'm happy overall so not complaining!

Robert

Dr. Michael Wilson said:

logos can start by giving 4 panes.  I used to have a palm device and I would run olive tree on it. Olive tree have me 2 panes and no Bible software has advanced beyond that, in all these years.  That is my major complaint with everyone.  Olive tree, Accordance and Logos are all stuck and these is no reason that we can’t have a little itty bitty bit more

In case no one has mentioned this yet, there's a way to get around this.

Since there's a couple of Logos clones, namely Logos, Faithlife study Bible, ebooks, Noet.

You can choose 3 of these. Open 2 of them side by side, and than 1 "floating" on the right. Where each gives you 2 panes. So you can have 6 lanes on the display at once.

Or, you can have a "multi virtual desktop" experience. On 1 split screen, choose 2 apps from above. In another split screen, choose 2 apps from above. Now you have each "virtual desktop" having 4 panes and you can use multitasking gesture to get between them.

The limitation is those pane aren't sync'd, and resources download separately. So you need to be prepared on what kind of resources you want from which part of the screens.

But this method is faster to switch around then the native Logos method (that you touch the middle button to show up a virtual spaces and choose resources from there.)

When you use long enough sometimes you'll forgot about this is a trick until you found yourself confused that changing settings on one side doesn't affect the other, etc.

One could say so, but on the other hand, I don’t see they‘re going to change that. suggestions like this has been suggested when the iPad first shipped (amazingly Logos has an iPad app first the first day iPad is available.)

(And the having a few Logos clone means the side by side method can be used for the same Logos resources, not Logos plus something else. It can be quite useful in some other ways too. Eg I have the Noet app doing the job of a dictionary app where I have some English dictionaries opened and when I need to look up words I can open the Noet app and search immediately (just like any other dict app.) ebooks app for reading plans, have a certain book always ready to be read.)

The only thing really changed since Logos provided iPad app is the screen size and computation power on the iPad (I agree better Apple pencil support is needed, which is a different matter than having a Logos desktop clone available on the iPad.)

But even 12.9” is quite limited (I use it every day for reading, it is not large enough once one starts to partition it.) Even on a 13”/15” MacBook Pro, the screen is not large enough and an external monitor is often needed (in fact my first dual monitor set up is because of Logos.)

And there’s so much misconception around the computational power of iPad comparing to MacBook Pro. People often claim it is as fast or fastest than MacBook Pro. But what does it mean? I wonder for the people quoting that fact, has they look into what algorithms is used in that benchmark and what implication is that (hint: they all involves simple instructions that makes ARM and x86’s difference largely irrelevant)? And also the multi-core score that many people focused on is quite irrelevant for most cases. First, the Hetero-structure of the cores (namely some faster and slower scores used simultaneously) is very difficult to be used efficiently in real world situation. Second, for many perceived responsiveness doesn't quite involved parallel processing; and there's parallelization overhead, that if a certain task isn't long enough the overhead of parallelization will actually slow things down.

I'm not saying I don't dream about having everything doable on the iPad Pro (and I envy those that Logos is the last app they need for that to happen.) But it's just a dream, a nice wish list item, but realistically/practically it just won't happen (I didn't even mention the difficulty around software difference where Mark has briefly mentioned above.) Much of the friction is actually imposed by Apple. They decided unification is not the best experience and the consequence of it is that iPad and Mac needs to coexist, not only to Apple but to the end users as well. I started getting used to the fact that every time I travel I have an iPad Pro and 15" MacBook Pro put side by side hurting my back. (Last I tried to join the unification train it's a complete disaster. Another story for another day.)

Kolen Cheung said:

One could say so, but on the other hand, I don’t see they‘re going to change that. suggestions like this has been suggested when the iPad first shipped (amazingly Logos has an iPad app first the first day iPad is available.)

(And the having a few Logos clone means the side by side method can be used for the same Logos resources, not Logos plus something else. It can be quite useful in some other ways too. Eg I have the Noet app doing the job of a dictionary app where I have some English dictionaries opened and when I need to look up words I can open the Noet app and search immediately (just like any other dict app.) ebooks app for reading plans, have a certain book always ready to be read.)

The only thing really changed since Logos provided iPad app is the screen size and computation power on the iPad (I agree better Apple pencil support is needed, which is a different matter than having a Logos desktop clone available on the iPad.)

But even 12.9” is quite limited (I use it every day for reading, it is not large enough once one starts to partition it.) Even on a 13”/15” MacBook Pro, the screen is not large enough and an external monitor is often needed (in fact my first dual monitor set up is because of Logos.)

And there’s so much misconception around the computational power of iPad comparing to MacBook Pro. People often claim it is as fast or fastest than MacBook Pro. But what does it mean? I wonder for the people quoting that fact, has they look into what algorithms is used in that benchmark and what implication is that (hint: they all involves simple instructions that makes ARM and x86’s difference largely irrelevant)? And also the multi-core score that many people focused on is quite irrelevant for most cases. First, the Hetero-structure of the cores (namely some faster and slower scores used simultaneously) is very difficult to be used efficiently in real world situation. Second, for many perceived responsiveness doesn't quite involved parallel processing; and there's parallelization overhead, that if a certain task isn't long enough the overhead of parallelization will actually slow things down.

I'm not saying I don't dream about having everything doable on the iPad Pro (and I envy those that Logos is the last app they need for that to happen.) But it's just a dream, a nice wish list item, but realistically/practically it just won't happen (I didn't even mention the difficulty around software difference where Mark has briefly mentioned above.) Much of the friction is actually imposed by Apple. They decided unification is not the best experience and the consequence of it is that iPad and Mac needs to coexist, not only to Apple but to the end users as well. I started getting used to the fact that every time I travel I have an iPad Pro and 15" MacBook Pro put side by side hurting my back. (Last I tried to join the unification train it's a complete disaster. Another story for another day.)

iOS 13 may change some of this 

My previous post got deleted, but I already use desktop Logos on my iPad Pro. Basically I use the iPad as a second monitor, but I can be in another room. I use the Apple Pencil for highlighting and read my personal books on my iPad. Doesn’t help with traveling but it’s much better than sitting at a desk.