4 ms·

For anyone who does code on an ipad, what is the advantage over a mac air or similar?

by fhood 9y ago

efficax 9y ago
None? I guess the iPad Pro has a lovely screen.
- JollyGiant 9y ago
  Great screens can be find on laptops too.
- williamstein 9y ago
  I’m also a software dev who has been painfully dogfooding an iPad Pro 10.5 fulltime for development of CoCalc/SageMath for the last few weeks. I even opened (and fixed) a bunch of bugs in our site as a result: https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues?utf8=&q=label%3AA-ipad%20 https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues?utf8=&q=label%3... I’ve been using iOS 11 beta3. Surprisingly, there actually exist some clear advantages over most laptops: Physical Hardware Advantages over laptops (not over surface pro): - More cameras (e.g., an extra 12MP camera on back); you can easily snap a picture or shoot video. - The iPad 10.5 weighs 1 pound, which is way less than most notebooks; it is EXTREMELY portable. - Portrait mode (i.e., rotate screen) with no keyboard, which is useful, e.g., for reading pages of technical documentation. - No trackpad, so the keyboard/bottom takes up much less space, meaning you can fit easily in more places (e.g., cramped airplanes). - The keyboard doesn’t get dust/crumbs under the keys, since they are sealed. There are also some advantages over my other laptop, which is a 2.2 pound Macbook 12: - The iPad has LTE, which works very well to provide internet without wifi. - Surprisingly, the iPad 10.5 “SmartKeyboard” from Apple has a vastly better mechanical feel than the Macbook 12 (2016). Of course, the real annoyance of the iPad is the software, because the hardware itself is very good, whereas the software is intentionally crippled for reasons of control/security/arrogance/vision. This is a much bigger can of worms...
nailer 9y ago
Mac OS, like Windows, has fundamental latency and battery use issues that can't be easily fixed without sacrificing backwards compatibility.
- fhood 9y ago
  what do you mean by "latency"?
  - simonh 9y ago
    It's the action-response time. I this case the delay time for interactive activities, such as the delay between pressing a key and seeing the letter appear on the screen. Even 'fast' desktops can be intermittently rubbish at this due to background tasks saturating the CPU or I/O channels.
    - nailer 9y ago
      OP here, this is exactly what I meant.
- JollyGiant 9y ago
  What latency are you talking about? Decent PC or Mac with SSD is much faster than iPad and can hold battery trough ~9 hours (depends on a workflow).
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    You should look at benchmarks of latest iPad Pro vs. Mac laptops. iPad Pro is faster than lower end Mac laptops and only a little bit slower than MacBook Pros.
    - fhood 9y ago
      Why does graphics performance matter for programming? (Game design excluded of course)
    - 9y ago
infosample 9y ago
LTE
- fhood 9y ago
  Not like you can't tether to your phone, but I get the point.

For anyone who does code on an ipad, what is the advantage over a mac air or similar?

by fhood 9y ago

For anyone who does code on an ipad, what is the advantage over a mac air or similar?

efficax 9y ago

None? I guess the iPad Pro has a lovely screen.

JollyGiant 9y ago
Great screens can be find on laptops too.
williamstein 9y ago
I’m also a software dev who has been painfully dogfooding an iPad Pro 10.5 fulltime for development of CoCalc/SageMath for the last few weeks. I even opened (and fixed) a bunch of bugs in our site as a result: https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues?utf8=&q=label%3AA-ipad%20 https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues?utf8=&q=label%3... I’ve been using iOS 11 beta3. Surprisingly, there actually exist some clear advantages over most laptops: Physical Hardware Advantages over laptops (not over surface pro): - More cameras (e.g., an extra 12MP camera on back); you can easily snap a picture or shoot video. - The iPad 10.5 weighs 1 pound, which is way less than most notebooks; it is EXTREMELY portable. - Portrait mode (i.e., rotate screen) with no keyboard, which is useful, e.g., for reading pages of technical documentation. - No trackpad, so the keyboard/bottom takes up much less space, meaning you can fit easily in more places (e.g., cramped airplanes). - The keyboard doesn’t get dust/crumbs under the keys, since they are sealed. There are also some advantages over my other laptop, which is a 2.2 pound Macbook 12: - The iPad has LTE, which works very well to provide internet without wifi. - Surprisingly, the iPad 10.5 “SmartKeyboard” from Apple has a vastly better mechanical feel than the Macbook 12 (2016). Of course, the real annoyance of the iPad is the software, because the hardware itself is very good, whereas the software is intentionally crippled for reasons of control/security/arrogance/vision. This is a much bigger can of worms...

nailer 9y ago

Mac OS, like Windows, has fundamental latency and battery use issues that can't be easily fixed without sacrificing backwards compatibility.

fhood 9y ago
what do you mean by "latency"?
- simonh 9y ago
  It's the action-response time. I this case the delay time for interactive activities, such as the delay between pressing a key and seeing the letter appear on the screen. Even 'fast' desktops can be intermittently rubbish at this due to background tasks saturating the CPU or I/O channels.
  - nailer 9y ago
    OP here, this is exactly what I meant.
JollyGiant 9y ago
What latency are you talking about? Decent PC or Mac with SSD is much faster than iPad and can hold battery trough ~9 hours (depends on a workflow).
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  You should look at benchmarks of latest iPad Pro vs. Mac laptops. iPad Pro is faster than lower end Mac laptops and only a little bit slower than MacBook Pros.
  - fhood 9y ago
    Why does graphics performance matter for programming? (Game design excluded of course)
  - 9y ago

infosample 9y ago

LTE

fhood 9y ago
Not like you can't tether to your phone, but I get the point.