6 ms·

Cool, but nothing about any focus on making the machine realistic for development. My current MacBook Pro is getting a little long in the tooth and after suffe

by cfors 7y ago

Cool, but nothing about any focus on making the machine realistic for development. My current MacBook Pro is getting a little long in the tooth and after suffering through the 2016 and later versions at work, I will not be buying one of those until the keyboards are fixed. If iPadOS has first class terminal support I would consider making it my full time machine. Looks like the waiting game will continue.

cl0ckt0wer 7y ago
i hear the thinkpad keyboards are pretty good.
robohoe 7y ago
Blink shell on the App Store is a fantastic terminal that works wonderfully on iOS/iPadOS. Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20. It supports mosh out of the box and has ability to store/import private/public keys. Multiple terminals can be opened as well. It even has a limited native shell which you can use to SCP files from your iPad to servers.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  > Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20 It's GPL3 [1], so you are welcome to compile and install on your own personal devices even if you do not have a paid Apple development subscription, though I'm pretty sure that this would require periodic compile/install cycles (every couple of weeks?). [1] https://github.com/blinksh/blink https://github.com/blinksh/blink
  - nvrspyx 7y ago
    It’s every 7 days.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _ph_ 7y ago
  I am using Blink as it seems to be the best terminal app I could find so far and would recommend it, but it does struggle a bit in some corner cases, as split-screen and switching between apps.
- simias 7y ago
  I don't own an iPad so I'm not really the target audience but even after reading about the app I must say that I'm rather confused: it's called Blink shell but it's actually a terminal emulator at the core, right, not an actual shell in the technical sense?
  - biztos 7y ago
    It's a terminal emulator, but most of its UI is in a character terminal that's like a very limited shell. So you have some commands including most obviously "mosh" and "ssh" but also a few others. To get a GUI configuration window you enter "config" and hit return.
- biztos 7y ago
  I also use Blink and have been mostly very happy with it -- great Magic Keyboard support, though I wish the onscreen "extra keys" could be configured e.g. so you could have ":" when working in vim. Unfortunately, lately I have found that it drops input on spotty WiFi connections, both in ssh and mosh. Mosh works fine if I go offline for a while, but if the connection is really weak and packets are getting dropped I start losing input which gets scary when doing "sudo apt blabla." Still happy with my purchase, just hoping it gets more reliable.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I wonder if there is any other profession that thinks $20 is a steep price for its tools.
bigdubs 7y ago
The iPad was never intended to be a desktop or laptop replacement; it was meant to invent a new niche for a computer with a "fileless" interface. Expecting it to replace your development machine is probably not realistic.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > The iPad was never intended to be a desktop or laptop replacement I think it was and has been for many people.
  - beat 7y ago
    For non-developers, yeah. People whose work necessarily involves file management are hosed. But that's a small minority of what gets done on computers these days.
darklion 7y ago
> Cool, but nothing about any focus on making > the machine realistic for development. What are you developing? What would you need?
- chadlavi 7y ago
  built in terminal with access to (even a sandboxed) filesystem where I can do the stuff I do in the terminal on a mac -- install and use packages (homebrew might work? it's Darwin underneath iPadOS too, right?) and do other bash/zsh stuff; text editors/IDEs (I'd personally like an iPadOS version of vscode); and some mac-only software, like Sketch. If they had those, I'd switch to an iPad Pro today.
  - cfors 7y ago
    Pretty much all of this. If I could have sandboxed dev environments, a terminal interface is all I really need since I do most of my dev work in a terminal. I suppose some nice-to-haves would be the ability to spin up local servers that I could access from Safari.
  - biztos 7y ago
    FWIW my brother carries around a little Raspberry Pi with all his Linux dev stuff on it and uses that when he wants to work on his hobby projects using the iPad. One big advantage is he can use the same thing with a Chromebook or phablet or whatever is handy, since he's just ssh-ing in. I've thought about doing the same, but it just kinda irks me that I have this insanely powerful and robust tablet-form computer with good security, and I can't even have the equivalent of a Docker container. So instead I mosh into a Digital Ocean droplet and grind my teeth whenever the café's WiFi drops out. :-(
    - chadlavi 7y ago
      This is EXACTLY my thinking on this, too. An iPad Pro is, I think, more powerful than the computer I used for work just a couple years ago. Let me use it like a macbook pro already! It's way too powerful (and not to mention, expensive) to just be an ssh client. I could use an underpowered out of date samsung tablet for that.
ogre_codes 7y ago
Terminal support isn't the issue, there are a couple nice terminal apps you can get which are solid. The big problem(s) I've had are: * Lack of a common file system so you can't use multiple apps to edit/ compile source well. * Inability to build and run locally (for iOS/ local apps) * Inability to deploy locally (for example to a web server running on your machine) * No virtualization... which would solve the above plus a few other issues. * Inability to establish persistent network connections in the background. For terminal apps here's a couple good starters: https://ish.app https://ish.app https://panic.com/prompt/ https://panic.com/prompt/ You can use Coda to do remote web editing which can be useful if you have a remote build environment. There are a few other decent ways to do remote work, but building out a full local workflow on iOS is pretty much a non-starter right now.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Lack of a common file system so you can't use multiple apps to edit/ compile source well. The Files app kinda works for this. > Inability to deploy locally (for example to a web server running on your machine) You should be able to do this.
  - ogre_codes 7y ago
    "Kinda" meaning... not really. It works well for something like having a common place to open documents, but not very well for source code where you have a pile of related and interdependent files which you need to share among 4-5 apps. Things like Working Copy (https://workingcopyapp.com https://workingcopyapp.com) help a bunch, but it's mostly a PITA. For example what kind of workflow would you have trying to set up to enable a typical build environment. > You should be able to do this. I'd love to see this. We have a fairly straight forward web development environment: Node.js + React + Typescript to build the client. The server runs on Koa and uses a MySQL database as the backend. You think I should be able to get this going? ... I love my iPad, and I've dug around and looked for solutions and come up largely blank. Just getting the client stuff up and running using local files is... exceedingly difficult and impractical. Getting Koa + MySQL running seems like a non-starter. This isn't some obscure stack, these are some of the most common web-dev building blocks around and it's just too much of a PITA. I'd LOVE for this to work. So if you have some secret sauce, please share.
wayneftw 7y ago
Why do you want a extremely limited computer, one that you hardly have any control over, as your development machine. Do you really want Apple making all of your decisions for you? I won’t even use macOS due to the limitations that don’t exist anywhere else, but mostly because I think Apple makes bad decisions and then does not give me any options to change the behavior. They are such a “one size fits all” company that I just don’t understand why creative people would want to support them. Their tech is more draconian than anything. They’re like the China of computing.
- cujo 7y ago
  I'll bite. What were the limitations?
  - damnyou 7y ago
    I don't know what GP has in mind, but you normally can't do basic developer stuff like run dtrace on system binaries or use TotalSpaces. The only way to do that is to disable SIP by holding down a bunch of keys at startup, and that mysteriously re-enables itself after reboots with a pattern I haven't figured out. It's beyond frustrating to have to type in terminal commands in a special recovery zone to have a functional computer. Reminds me of typing grub commands at each boot to get graphics on Linux computers circa 2000 or so.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    You can’t think of any limitations that macOS has, that others don’t? Not even the really, really big obvious (and recursive) one?
    - wayneftw 7y ago
      I don’t believe that this much willful obliviousness actually exists here, but I’ll state the obvious anyway: the big one that you failed to realize is about the hardware. And, it’s recursively limited because of the limited choices even within their own lineup. Enjoy your censorship I guess!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 7y ago
Until Apple acquired NeXT, terminals were meaningless on Mac OS, developers were doing just fine with IDE REPLs.
- biztos 7y ago
  This developer was doing just fine with NSCA Telnet to do UNIX work. Without a terminal emulator I couldn't have justified owning a Mac.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    So not Apple's target audience of Mac developers, developing Mac software.
    - biztos 7y ago
      Not that target audience, definitely. But I wouldn't underestimate how much productive software was used on Macs via Telnet, at corporations and at universities as well as by random hackers who loved the Mac GUI.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        I kind of would, given how little presence Mac OS (pre-OS X) had outside US market. We were all using a mix of MS-DOS/Windows, Amiga and Ataris. What I remember was getting Small-C and K&R C compilers to kind of get corporation/university work done at home, no one was that rich enough to pay for telnet connections over long term dialups.

by cfors 7y ago

cl0ckt0wer 7y ago

i hear the thinkpad keyboards are pretty good.

robohoe 7y ago

Blink shell on the App Store is a fantastic terminal that works wonderfully on iOS/iPadOS. Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20. It supports mosh out of the box and has ability to store/import private/public keys. Multiple terminals can be opened as well. It even has a limited native shell which you can use to SCP files from your iPad to servers.

OrangeMango 7y ago
> Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20 It's GPL3 [1], so you are welcome to compile and install on your own personal devices even if you do not have a paid Apple development subscription, though I'm pretty sure that this would require periodic compile/install cycles (every couple of weeks?). [1] https://github.com/blinksh/blink https://github.com/blinksh/blink
- nvrspyx 7y ago
  It’s every 7 days.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_ph_ 7y ago
I am using Blink as it seems to be the best terminal app I could find so far and would recommend it, but it does struggle a bit in some corner cases, as split-screen and switching between apps.
simias 7y ago
I don't own an iPad so I'm not really the target audience but even after reading about the app I must say that I'm rather confused: it's called Blink shell but it's actually a terminal emulator at the core, right, not an actual shell in the technical sense?
- biztos 7y ago
  It's a terminal emulator, but most of its UI is in a character terminal that's like a very limited shell. So you have some commands including most obviously "mosh" and "ssh" but also a few others. To get a GUI configuration window you enter "config" and hit return.
biztos 7y ago
I also use Blink and have been mostly very happy with it -- great Magic Keyboard support, though I wish the onscreen "extra keys" could be configured e.g. so you could have ":" when working in vim. Unfortunately, lately I have found that it drops input on spotty WiFi connections, both in ssh and mosh. Mosh works fine if I go offline for a while, but if the connection is really weak and packets are getting dropped I start losing input which gets scary when doing "sudo apt blabla." Still happy with my purchase, just hoping it gets more reliable.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I wonder if there is any other profession that thinks $20 is a steep price for its tools.

bigdubs 7y ago

The iPad was never intended to be a desktop or laptop replacement; it was meant to invent a new niche for a computer with a "fileless" interface. Expecting it to replace your development machine is probably not realistic.

saagarjha 7y ago
> The iPad was never intended to be a desktop or laptop replacement I think it was and has been for many people.
- beat 7y ago
  For non-developers, yeah. People whose work necessarily involves file management are hosed. But that's a small minority of what gets done on computers these days.

darklion 7y ago

> Cool, but nothing about any focus on making > the machine realistic for development. What are you developing? What would you need?

chadlavi 7y ago
built in terminal with access to (even a sandboxed) filesystem where I can do the stuff I do in the terminal on a mac -- install and use packages (homebrew might work? it's Darwin underneath iPadOS too, right?) and do other bash/zsh stuff; text editors/IDEs (I'd personally like an iPadOS version of vscode); and some mac-only software, like Sketch. If they had those, I'd switch to an iPad Pro today.
- cfors 7y ago
  Pretty much all of this. If I could have sandboxed dev environments, a terminal interface is all I really need since I do most of my dev work in a terminal. I suppose some nice-to-haves would be the ability to spin up local servers that I could access from Safari.
- biztos 7y ago
  FWIW my brother carries around a little Raspberry Pi with all his Linux dev stuff on it and uses that when he wants to work on his hobby projects using the iPad. One big advantage is he can use the same thing with a Chromebook or phablet or whatever is handy, since he's just ssh-ing in. I've thought about doing the same, but it just kinda irks me that I have this insanely powerful and robust tablet-form computer with good security, and I can't even have the equivalent of a Docker container. So instead I mosh into a Digital Ocean droplet and grind my teeth whenever the café's WiFi drops out. :-(
  - chadlavi 7y ago
    This is EXACTLY my thinking on this, too. An iPad Pro is, I think, more powerful than the computer I used for work just a couple years ago. Let me use it like a macbook pro already! It's way too powerful (and not to mention, expensive) to just be an ssh client. I could use an underpowered out of date samsung tablet for that.

ogre_codes 7y ago

Terminal support isn't the issue, there are a couple nice terminal apps you can get which are solid. The big problem(s) I've had are: * Lack of a common file system so you can't use multiple apps to edit/ compile source well. * Inability to build and run locally (for iOS/ local apps) * Inability to deploy locally (for example to a web server running on your machine) * No virtualization... which would solve the above plus a few other issues. * Inability to establish persistent network connections in the background. For terminal apps here's a couple good starters: https://ish.app https://ish.app https://panic.com/prompt/ https://panic.com/prompt/ You can use Coda to do remote web editing which can be useful if you have a remote build environment. There are a few other decent ways to do remote work, but building out a full local workflow on iOS is pretty much a non-starter right now.

saagarjha 7y ago
> Lack of a common file system so you can't use multiple apps to edit/ compile source well. The Files app kinda works for this. > Inability to deploy locally (for example to a web server running on your machine) You should be able to do this.
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  "Kinda" meaning... not really. It works well for something like having a common place to open documents, but not very well for source code where you have a pile of related and interdependent files which you need to share among 4-5 apps. Things like Working Copy (https://workingcopyapp.com https://workingcopyapp.com) help a bunch, but it's mostly a PITA. For example what kind of workflow would you have trying to set up to enable a typical build environment. > You should be able to do this. I'd love to see this. We have a fairly straight forward web development environment: Node.js + React + Typescript to build the client. The server runs on Koa and uses a MySQL database as the backend. You think I should be able to get this going? ... I love my iPad, and I've dug around and looked for solutions and come up largely blank. Just getting the client stuff up and running using local files is... exceedingly difficult and impractical. Getting Koa + MySQL running seems like a non-starter. This isn't some obscure stack, these are some of the most common web-dev building blocks around and it's just too much of a PITA. I'd LOVE for this to work. So if you have some secret sauce, please share.

wayneftw 7y ago

Why do you want a extremely limited computer, one that you hardly have any control over, as your development machine. Do you really want Apple making all of your decisions for you? I won’t even use macOS due to the limitations that don’t exist anywhere else, but mostly because I think Apple makes bad decisions and then does not give me any options to change the behavior. They are such a “one size fits all” company that I just don’t understand why creative people would want to support them. Their tech is more draconian than anything. They’re like the China of computing.

cujo 7y ago
I'll bite. What were the limitations?
- damnyou 7y ago
  I don't know what GP has in mind, but you normally can't do basic developer stuff like run dtrace on system binaries or use TotalSpaces. The only way to do that is to disable SIP by holding down a bunch of keys at startup, and that mysteriously re-enables itself after reboots with a pattern I haven't figured out. It's beyond frustrating to have to type in terminal commands in a special recovery zone to have a functional computer. Reminds me of typing grub commands at each boot to get graphics on Linux computers circa 2000 or so.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  You can’t think of any limitations that macOS has, that others don’t? Not even the really, really big obvious (and recursive) one?
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    I don’t believe that this much willful obliviousness actually exists here, but I’ll state the obvious anyway: the big one that you failed to realize is about the hardware. And, it’s recursively limited because of the limited choices even within their own lineup. Enjoy your censorship I guess!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 7y ago

Until Apple acquired NeXT, terminals were meaningless on Mac OS, developers were doing just fine with IDE REPLs.

biztos 7y ago
This developer was doing just fine with NSCA Telnet to do UNIX work. Without a terminal emulator I couldn't have justified owning a Mac.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  So not Apple's target audience of Mac developers, developing Mac software.
  - biztos 7y ago
    Not that target audience, definitely. But I wouldn't underestimate how much productive software was used on Macs via Telnet, at corporations and at universities as well as by random hackers who loved the Mac GUI.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      I kind of would, given how little presence Mac OS (pre-OS X) had outside US market. We were all using a mix of MS-DOS/Windows, Amiga and Ataris. What I remember was getting Small-C and K&R C compilers to kind of get corporation/university work done at home, no one was that rich enough to pay for telnet connections over long term dialups.