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These articles are always hilarious. The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and
by elagost 8y ago
These articles are always hilarious.
The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and a copy of PuTTY. (Or, buying any not-broken laptop from Craigslist for $50 and saving yourself $1100.)
Granted, as a sysadmin, most of my job could be done on an iPad too (SSH, RDP, web browser, and messaging applications), but every few days I need USB, Serial, VGA, or Ethernet (along with manual config of the adapter), among other things.
So, with these iPad there are always caveats: you end up needing to keep a "real computer" around for all the cases the iPad can't cover, which is most of them.
A few days ago there was a discussion about Termux (https://termux.com/ https://termux.com/) on Android here, and with things like USB OTG and removable storage that are commonly featured in Android, a Kindle Fire tablet (which cost about $50-150, regularly on sale) would be more usable, even, than an iPad.
- Terretta 8y ago> could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy Except then when not using PuTTY, you aren’t able to use it as an iPad.
- elagost 8y agoAnother incredibly good point. Tablets are great at things like watching videos, reading comics, and if you're not doing any typing, are really good 'couch computers'. Rotating the display provides a whole new set of functionality that you just can't get on a laptop, where it's incredibly awkward to do so.
- imandride 8y agoThe convertible laptop market has had this for a while now. I for one just pull the screen off of my surface book whenever I am in need of a reading device.
- jasonvorhe 8y agoAnd still, they're happy to pay extra for great software, regular software updates, a big ecosystem, the best displays on the market and a fit and finish that no one has yet reached completely.
- elagost 8y agoThere's no bigger software ecosystem than a laptop running Windows that can be converted into a laptop running a Linux distro. But, you've got me on the 'best displays' portion. I think the iPads have 120hz displays? They're amazing and threre's nothing like them. They most certainly are "all that", but despite having the opportunity and the spare cash, I still prefer the trashy, ghosting, dim, low-rez display that I have attached to a real laptop.
- cweiss 8y agoWhat about a Mac with Windows (bootcamp or VM), the BSD subsystem, XCode with the iOS emulator and Android studio with an Android emulator?