This is true, but I'd be sacrificing the silence, the portability and the battery life. And the hipster factor, I guess. A 11" laptop, particularly the new MBA

This is true, but I'd be sacrificing the silence, the portability and the battery life. And the hipster factor, I guess. A 11" laptop, particularly the new MBAs, is less cumbersome than an iPad + keyboard and far, far more useful as a real development tool. Other than battery life I just don't see the point of doing this other than the "hipster" factor. Just the ability to spin up a Rails instance on my own machine or run XCode alone keeps my iPad on the shelf when I'm working.