7 ms·

As someone who uses his iPad Pro regularly, I love all the multi tasking of the iPad. I know many have written that they have issues with multiple windows on t

by 0xCMP 7y ago

As someone who uses his iPad Pro regularly, I love all the multi tasking of the iPad. I know many have written that they have issues with multiple windows on the iPad, but for me it's never been better or easier. My main gripe is keyboard behavior which is very buggy, but not related to how easy/hard it is to make and move apps around the screen. The fact is that the iPad is only useful because of its software. In my case it'd be useless without Files, Working Copy, Blink, Wireguard, and Screens. Only 1 of those is built-in and still it's a fairly recent addition. And it's the latest version on iOS 13 which is really the version which turbo-charged using many apps together easily. I use these apps to pretty much avoid directly using my "real computers" as much as possible via VMs or remote access via Wireguard. But, I think we're only seeing the beginning of the iPad. I can relate to the feeling that "we should have more of what we expected by now", but the fact is that designing these power user interfaces, actually redesigning them for touch while making them compatible with existing ones, is very difficult. A great example for HN is how we develop like we're in the 70s with text terminals and executing commands. Where on the iPad it might make more sense for the terminal to be rich like a REPL where commands/expressions act more like the results of a Shortcut (rich data, not just text) or code might be edited as an AST instead of the text which allows the concept of a "source file" to go away and instead there be a source database. Instead of trying to rebuild the editors we had we build something else designed for testing, iterating, and managing the AST. Dark[1] is a good example of this, but currently focused on the web. This is all way out there right now, but it makes me think that the iPad is still just getting started. [1]: https://darklang.com/ https://darklang.com/

Terretta 7y ago
Fully agree. I think Gruber’s dead wrong, and folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Aside from being able to turn his complaint off: To turn Multitasking features on or off, go to Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Multitasking then turn off Allow Multiple Apps if you don't want to use Slide Over or Split View. I think it works fine for business and development consumption and creation, both. I’ve daily drivered iPad Pro with Apple keyboard for last 3 generations of iPad 12.9”. It started as an experiment to see if we could move employee population over for less support costs, and then became a habit because it’s just too ideal if you’re mobile for travel or even between multiple offices and meetings. Each new Macbook model, I get nostalgic for MBP days and carry it around for a bit, and then realize too many compromises carrying a laptop compared to carrying or traveling with just the iPad Pro. I’m on a two week trip right now, with the brand new top of line Macbook Pro 16” with full dev and Adobe setup in my bag. But it only came out of my carry on once in two weeks, and that was a failure. Tried to display a web demo, some custom diagramming, and a PowerPoint on conference room screen from the laptop. Unable to use the enterprise guest WiFi due to their security proxies, and the hotspot was too slow. Popped the same USB-C HDMI adapter in the iPad, and showed all the content over LTE. In a room built for Windows world, people struggled, and failed, to get HDMI from their HP or Dell or Lenovo laptops working, via HDMI ports or USB-C ports. Both the Macbook and iPad “just worked” with Apple’s same latest USB-C to HDMI adapter. With the always on networking, all day battery life, decent choice of text based dev tools including code editors, git clients, and terminals like Blink (mosh) to do git-commit based development/deployment, Citrix and RSA and enterprise VPN, not to mention full O365 and Adobe suites (though I recommend Affinity now), it’s hard to figure out what it is I need the laptop for enough to deal with the PITA of carrying it. This was not true 10 years ago, but today, iPad Pro can be the sole computing device even for an enterprise technology executive. Bonus anecdata, I’ve recently noticed the iPad Pro is what’s used by 80% of folks in the board room, even though it’s a Windows based enterprise. Something’s changed.
- dkarl 7y ago
  folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps Stop using other devices and give yourself a few months to learn the basics? This is how I used to encourage people to try desktop Linux in 2001.
  - RandallBrown 7y ago
    It's not giving people time to learn the basics. It's giving people time to retrain their brain because it's a different device that solves problems differently.
  - sixstringtheory 7y ago
    I share a similar experience as parent. I only use my laptop for compiling iOS apps, almost everything else happens on my iPad Pro 10" with keyboard (want to upgrade to the larger size next). I don't think it takes months to learn the basics, but it does to work out all the little annoying differences between an iPad and MBP in your workflows, some of which aren't everyday things. The iPad isn't perfect, but it is great IMO.
  - Terretta 7y ago
    That’s also how you get habituals to stop complaining O365 isn’t Blackberry Work, or any other change to a tool that had become ‘second nature’. You have to unlearn or overwrite the second nature.
    - egypturnash 7y ago
      You also have to be prepared for many weeks of the special frustration of not knowing how to do a thing, or if it even can be done, and of any task potentially turning into a multi-hour rabbit hole of trying to figure out if and how to do it.
- mediaman 7y ago
  What do you use for text input? A case with integrated keyboard, or separate bluetooth keyboard, or something else?
robertoandred 7y ago
Any computer is only useful because of its software.
ogre_codes 7y ago
> I know many have written that they have issues with multiple windows on the iPad, but for me it's never been better or easier. I use the iPad for the vast majority of my non-development computing. For me—and clearly for a lot of people—multi-tasking on the iPad has never been as good as it is on the Mac or even Windows. At the same time, it is absolutely as good/ easy as it's ever been. It's just still awkward and sometimes frustrating. > This is all way out there right now, but it makes me think that the iPad is still just getting started. I think so too, I love the iPad and wish I could use it as my primary computer. Every year when WWDC (the show formerly known as WWDC?) rolls around I hope we'll see some improvements that would allow me to run some of my web development workflow on the iPad and I'm generally disappointed.
- 0xCMP 7y ago
  Yea there are some ugly hacks to make that work. If you worked in Python I’ve seen people do work in Pythonista on YouTube, but the best way I’ve seen to develop “locally” without a jailbreak is setting up a RaspberryPi4 to provide an Ethernet device over USB-C which you can connect to via SSH. Definitely a major hack and you’ll still need to either turn on the hotspot or connect the Pi some other way to the internet.
Fiahil 7y ago
> Instead of trying to rebuild the editors we had we build something else designed for testing, iterating, and managing the AST. Considering that they barely managed to design working "regular user interfaces", the next-generation editors and development tools won't come from the teams currently working on iPad OS.
- 0xCMP 7y ago
  I agree it’ll probably have to be third party developers and we’re seeing that. Short cuts (originally third party “workflow”) is already pretty powerful. If you play with Audulus[1] you see a UI not too dissimilar to Dark except for Audio Synths instead of programming. Both obviously need to be greatly iterated on, but the bones are there. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audulus-3/id1027525593 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audulus-3/id1027525593
garrickvanburen 7y ago
An iPad Pro has been my primary work device for nearly 20months now. I recommend it any professional that doesn’t need to write code.
- gregjor 7y ago
  An iPad is fine for writing code, but not capable of compiling/running code. For web development specifically you can't run a real web app on it. iOS Safari doesn't have the inspector/debugger so you can't use it much for debugging/experimenting with web pages. If iOS Safari had the inspector/debugger, or just inspector with live JS console, I would almost never need to use my laptop (which is just Chromebook, but runs full Chrome).
  - derefr 7y ago
    > An iPad is fine for writing code, but not capable of compiling/running code. I mean, hardware-wise, it's totally capable; it's got a pretty powerful CPU in it. It's just the App Store publishing policies that don't want to cooperate. But there's nothing fundamentally stopping someone from creating a Crouton-like "chroot in a box" environment and publishing it as an XCode project; and nothing stopping you from taking said XCode project and deploying it to your iPad using development provisioning.
  - lil1t 7y ago
    There are web inspector apps on the App Store. I use Inspect Browser [1] myself for that purpose. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inspect-browser/id1203594958 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inspect-browser/id1203594958
    - gregjor 7y ago
      I use that. It has a JS console but it doesn't seem to have access to JS on the page like the Chrome console does. If I had Chrome or Safari web developer tools I would only have the clunky text selection to complain about, and I can live with that.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> I use these apps to pretty much avoid directly using my "real computers" as much as possible Why? Are you actually faster at any tasks on the iPad? I don’t doubt that Apple could eventually make iPads as productive as traditional computers, given time. But I also don’t understand how doing so is a productive use of Apple’s resources when macOS already exists.

by 0xCMP 7y ago

Terretta 7y ago

Fully agree. I think Gruber’s dead wrong, and folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps. Aside from being able to turn his complaint off: To turn Multitasking features on or off, go to Settings > Home Screen & Dock > Multitasking then turn off Allow Multiple Apps if you don't want to use Slide Over or Split View. I think it works fine for business and development consumption and creation, both. I’ve daily drivered iPad Pro with Apple keyboard for last 3 generations of iPad 12.9”. It started as an experiment to see if we could move employee population over for less support costs, and then became a habit because it’s just too ideal if you’re mobile for travel or even between multiple offices and meetings. Each new Macbook model, I get nostalgic for MBP days and carry it around for a bit, and then realize too many compromises carrying a laptop compared to carrying or traveling with just the iPad Pro. I’m on a two week trip right now, with the brand new top of line Macbook Pro 16” with full dev and Adobe setup in my bag. But it only came out of my carry on once in two weeks, and that was a failure. Tried to display a web demo, some custom diagramming, and a PowerPoint on conference room screen from the laptop. Unable to use the enterprise guest WiFi due to their security proxies, and the hotspot was too slow. Popped the same USB-C HDMI adapter in the iPad, and showed all the content over LTE. In a room built for Windows world, people struggled, and failed, to get HDMI from their HP or Dell or Lenovo laptops working, via HDMI ports or USB-C ports. Both the Macbook and iPad “just worked” with Apple’s same latest USB-C to HDMI adapter. With the always on networking, all day battery life, decent choice of text based dev tools including code editors, git clients, and terminals like Blink (mosh) to do git-commit based development/deployment, Citrix and RSA and enterprise VPN, not to mention full O365 and Adobe suites (though I recommend Affinity now), it’s hard to figure out what it is I need the laptop for enough to deal with the PITA of carrying it. This was not true 10 years ago, but today, iPad Pro can be the sole computing device even for an enterprise technology executive. Bonus anecdata, I’ve recently noticed the iPad Pro is what’s used by 80% of folks in the board room, even though it’s a Windows based enterprise. Something’s changed.

dkarl 7y ago
folks should try it for a couple months. Leave the Macbook or Win10 laptop at home, and force yourself to rewire your brain into the iPad affordances and apps Stop using other devices and give yourself a few months to learn the basics? This is how I used to encourage people to try desktop Linux in 2001.
- RandallBrown 7y ago
  It's not giving people time to learn the basics. It's giving people time to retrain their brain because it's a different device that solves problems differently.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  I share a similar experience as parent. I only use my laptop for compiling iOS apps, almost everything else happens on my iPad Pro 10" with keyboard (want to upgrade to the larger size next). I don't think it takes months to learn the basics, but it does to work out all the little annoying differences between an iPad and MBP in your workflows, some of which aren't everyday things. The iPad isn't perfect, but it is great IMO.
- Terretta 7y ago
  That’s also how you get habituals to stop complaining O365 isn’t Blackberry Work, or any other change to a tool that had become ‘second nature’. You have to unlearn or overwrite the second nature.
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    You also have to be prepared for many weeks of the special frustration of not knowing how to do a thing, or if it even can be done, and of any task potentially turning into a multi-hour rabbit hole of trying to figure out if and how to do it.
mediaman 7y ago
What do you use for text input? A case with integrated keyboard, or separate bluetooth keyboard, or something else?

robertoandred 7y ago

Any computer is only useful because of its software.

ogre_codes 7y ago

> I know many have written that they have issues with multiple windows on the iPad, but for me it's never been better or easier. I use the iPad for the vast majority of my non-development computing. For me—and clearly for a lot of people—multi-tasking on the iPad has never been as good as it is on the Mac or even Windows. At the same time, it is absolutely as good/ easy as it's ever been. It's just still awkward and sometimes frustrating. > This is all way out there right now, but it makes me think that the iPad is still just getting started. I think so too, I love the iPad and wish I could use it as my primary computer. Every year when WWDC (the show formerly known as WWDC?) rolls around I hope we'll see some improvements that would allow me to run some of my web development workflow on the iPad and I'm generally disappointed.

0xCMP 7y ago
Yea there are some ugly hacks to make that work. If you worked in Python I’ve seen people do work in Pythonista on YouTube, but the best way I’ve seen to develop “locally” without a jailbreak is setting up a RaspberryPi4 to provide an Ethernet device over USB-C which you can connect to via SSH. Definitely a major hack and you’ll still need to either turn on the hotspot or connect the Pi some other way to the internet.

Fiahil 7y ago

> Instead of trying to rebuild the editors we had we build something else designed for testing, iterating, and managing the AST. Considering that they barely managed to design working "regular user interfaces", the next-generation editors and development tools won't come from the teams currently working on iPad OS.

0xCMP 7y ago
I agree it’ll probably have to be third party developers and we’re seeing that. Short cuts (originally third party “workflow”) is already pretty powerful. If you play with Audulus[1] you see a UI not too dissimilar to Dark except for Audio Synths instead of programming. Both obviously need to be greatly iterated on, but the bones are there. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audulus-3/id1027525593 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audulus-3/id1027525593

garrickvanburen 7y ago

An iPad Pro has been my primary work device for nearly 20months now. I recommend it any professional that doesn’t need to write code.

gregjor 7y ago
An iPad is fine for writing code, but not capable of compiling/running code. For web development specifically you can't run a real web app on it. iOS Safari doesn't have the inspector/debugger so you can't use it much for debugging/experimenting with web pages. If iOS Safari had the inspector/debugger, or just inspector with live JS console, I would almost never need to use my laptop (which is just Chromebook, but runs full Chrome).
- derefr 7y ago
  > An iPad is fine for writing code, but not capable of compiling/running code. I mean, hardware-wise, it's totally capable; it's got a pretty powerful CPU in it. It's just the App Store publishing policies that don't want to cooperate. But there's nothing fundamentally stopping someone from creating a Crouton-like "chroot in a box" environment and publishing it as an XCode project; and nothing stopping you from taking said XCode project and deploying it to your iPad using development provisioning.
- lil1t 7y ago
  There are web inspector apps on the App Store. I use Inspect Browser [1] myself for that purpose. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inspect-browser/id1203594958 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inspect-browser/id1203594958
  - gregjor 7y ago
    I use that. It has a JS console but it doesn't seem to have access to JS on the page like the Chrome console does. If I had Chrome or Safari web developer tools I would only have the clunky text selection to complain about, and I can live with that.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

> I use these apps to pretty much avoid directly using my "real computers" as much as possible Why? Are you actually faster at any tasks on the iPad? I don’t doubt that Apple could eventually make iPads as productive as traditional computers, given time. But I also don’t understand how doing so is a productive use of Apple’s resources when macOS already exists.