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> 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

> 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. Hell no. The iPad is a nice PDF reading machine with its retina display and the pencil is a joy to use but the device is barely usable for any text entry and don't support any real programming workflow. However some shortcomings can also be positive, in particular I find the limited multi-tasking really helpful to concentrate on the reading of a paper, which is way way harder on a desktop computer with three screens, dozens of tabs opened and multiple running applications.

Terretta 7y ago
You seem a little overconfident that it’s unusable for text entry or programming workflow. I type holes through the rubber keyboard skin in about 6 - 9 months I do so much text entry. Silk screened key caps are mostly gone by month 3.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  That....doesn't seem like a feature!
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Have you considered a mechanical keyboard? Those generally last a lot longer- like the switches are rated for something like 50 million presses, and if you get some good keycaps, you should be set for life. r/mechanicalkeyboards is a good place to go for help, esp. if you check the wiki.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Is there a mechanical keyboard... keyboard cover? (I already know the answer is no, but it'd certainly be neat.)
HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
Are you using a physical keyboard, or an on-screen one? The Windows touch keyboard isn't great either. Not a very fair comparison.
hsitz 7y ago
iPad is not just great machine to read on, it's a great machine to write on, too. There are loads of excellent editors to write in, e.g., iVim, iA Writer, Scrivener, Ulysses. I use an iPad Pro in portrait mode (i.e., vertical orientation) with a Microsoft Wedge bluetooth keyboard. It's a great writing environment.

Terretta 7y ago

You seem a little overconfident that it’s unusable for text entry or programming workflow. I type holes through the rubber keyboard skin in about 6 - 9 months I do so much text entry. Silk screened key caps are mostly gone by month 3.

mattkrause 7y ago
That....doesn't seem like a feature!
HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
Have you considered a mechanical keyboard? Those generally last a lot longer- like the switches are rated for something like 50 million presses, and if you get some good keycaps, you should be set for life. r/mechanicalkeyboards is a good place to go for help, esp. if you check the wiki.
- derefr 7y ago
  Is there a mechanical keyboard... keyboard cover? (I already know the answer is no, but it'd certainly be neat.)

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago

Are you using a physical keyboard, or an on-screen one? The Windows touch keyboard isn't great either. Not a very fair comparison.

hsitz 7y ago

iPad is not just great machine to read on, it's a great machine to write on, too. There are loads of excellent editors to write in, e.g., iVim, iA Writer, Scrivener, Ulysses. I use an iPad Pro in portrait mode (i.e., vertical orientation) with a Microsoft Wedge bluetooth keyboard. It's a great writing environment.