6 ms·

I turned my iPad Pro into my main computer (2021)

43 points by Ideabile 4y ago

BirAdam 4y ago
I did use an iPad Pro as my main machine at times. First with the original iPad Pro, then with the M1 iPad Pro 12.9”. In both eras, it’s somewhat easy to get by. Things have gotten better with Blink and Working Copy being available. Those two apps replaced the Panic apps I used to use on iPad. The problem for me is that at times certain websites will not work properly, external monitors and mice do not work quite the way I’d like, and the UI honestly feels… a bit clumsy. Coupling the iPad with a tiny $3/mo VM at Vultr fixes things like wanting Vim/Emacs or a compiler/interpreter; and you can password nginx, and pipe your log directly to port 80 with netcat for debugging. Not difficult stuff. The thing is that it still isn’t the best experience. For me, it’s close, so I use my iPad as a mobile machine. If I want to be at the beach and get something done, it’s good. If I am at home, at a desk, it sucks.
seltzered_ 4y ago
I was considering the same thing a year ago after my MacBook died, but instead encourage developers to consider a tablet PC running Linux+Gnome. Here's my hardware reflections after a year of making it my only machine: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm/how_long_have_you_been_using_an_ergo_mobile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm...
VoidWhisperer 4y ago
One thing the author glosses over that I'm curious about that he said he got working was cloud gaming on the ipad to replace a computer for gaming. I'm curious what cloud gaming setup/provider he used and what the experience was like. I've personally tried various cloud gaming setups before (stadia, geforce now, etc) and the experience ends up being less than ideal even with a stable, gig down / 40 Mbps connection.
- TingPing 4y ago
  They all have similar not great latency. My understanding is just some people just can't see or care less.
- andrewmackrodt 4y ago
  Xbox Cloud is quite useable, Dirt 5 for example impressed me in regards to latency but I found it to be too high for Forza Horizon 5 to be enjoyable. I've found RPGs to be a good fit, e.g Dragon Age Inquisition and Yakuza 0.
  - anakaine 4y ago
    Halo Infinite has been quite decent, most of the time. Some screen pixellation and tearing occasionally. Apparently the very latest version when played via a Web browser (not the app) on PCs is far better than the last few releases. That said, the performance was crappy enough that I just upgraded to having a console. I was able to download Halo and the campaign synced right up to where I left off in the cloud version automatically.
- djangelic 4y ago
  Stadia has been quite good for me if I connect it via Ethernet instead of using wifi. However I’ve really enjoyed using steams local game streaming. It works phenomenally well. My gaming pc is in my office office, and I’m loathe to enter the office after business hours so I’ve not been able to enjoy the games I like on my pc till I started using steam remote play. It works amazingly well, and I’ve played both 3D games like elden ring and 2d like enter the gungeon and both operate very well.
thaw13579 4y ago
It seems like these “main computer” solutions always depend on ssh-ing into some other machine with a proper command line and disk access. It seems like that defeats the point though, because the advantage of a tablet is mobility, but that also brings along less reliable network connectivity to those remote servers. Really wish we could just install macOS…
- pabs3 4y ago
  If the iPad is old enough, you might be able to install Linux instead of iOS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31604906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31604906
- imiric 4y ago
  You're right, that ends up being the main workflow. Though instead of connecting to a remote VM, I've found it better to carry with me a small Linux device running an SSH server. This can even be a Raspberry Pi. As long as it has a NIC, with a USB-C adapter hooked to the iPad you can just use an Ethernet cable, and have an entirely local setup. It defeats the purpose of carrying two devices around, but I find the iPad's screen and Folio keyboard to be very comfortable for long sessions, so this is my go-to setup for plane and train rides.
  - rewgs 4y ago
    You don't even need the ethernet cable. A single USB-C cable (assuming your Pi has a port) is sufficient. A buddy of mine has a Pi velcro'd to the back of his iPad Pro and just ssh's in to/from the USB-C network ports. It's honestly pretty elegant, as long as you never look at the back of the iPad :p
    - imiric 4y ago
      Ah, neat! That's good to know, thanks.
    - _alex_ 4y ago
      Does your friend also have a Battery pack for the raspberry pi?
nso95 4y ago
I once idealistically believed that tablets were the PC of the future. The iPad pro is definitely within the top 5 most disappointing hardware purchases I've made. Terrible UX. Trying to be both a laptop and a tablet has made it bad at being both of those things.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  I went through similar development, only with Android tablet. Sometimes I use it to show me things, sometimes I play games on it while listening to YouTube videos from my phone. Most of the time it is just sitting in the stand. Very narrow usability.
- reassembled 4y ago
  I feel like the main reason that the experience is so bad is because nobody is working to unify a touch OS experience and a desktop OS experience. My perception as a user is that the iPad OS and macOS teams are completely siloed. There are aspects of iPad OS that are becoming reminiscent of desktop counterparts but they always seem half baked. The file management experience on iPad in particular drove me up the wall when my wife asked me how to do the simple task of transferring a several hundred meg image from her Windows laptop and import it into ProCreate. The iPad OS had some UI to do this task but it was painfully buggy and slow, and hung up constantly while trying to copy the file.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- woojoo666 4y ago
  I tried switching from Surface to iPad Pro, and was woefully underwhelmed. Just felt like I couldn't get anything done. A big one was the lack of browser extensions (at the time) which I needed to organize my tabs and sessions, and while they are slowly closing the gap, it's still far from a daily driver in my eyes
Zafira 4y ago
Who is the iPad Pro catering to exactly? I've struggled to figure this out.
- imiric 4y ago
  Content consumers with cash to spare, and professionals who can work around iPadOS' limitations, or whose workflow isn't affected by them. Think digital artists, graphic designers, photographers, writers, some video editors, etc.
  - anakaine 4y ago
    Don't forget students. Heading to university as a professional who is employed full time, but I want my own device with minimal maintenance and headaches, as well as minimal distractions. Ipad pro has been a great answer. Initial notes, drafts, watching lectures, etc is a good use case. Full document drafting in Word is pretty poor compared to the desktop application where I can insert tables of contents, references, bibliographies and integrate with endnote. The reason it frustrates me is because it doesn't run macOS and I can thus do far fewer things with it. I bought it with that in mind, knowing that the trade-off was that it would go some way to improving my time-on-task with uni. It's been a success in that regard.
- phyalow 4y ago
  In my case, someone who needed extra screen real estate when travelling with my MacBook Pro M1 16”. I set the iPad up on a stand, open sidecar and voila! I have (almost) doubled my screen/work area.
  - ulfw 4y ago
    Or you could have bought one of a myriad of cheap portable 15" HD or 4K screens for that for 1/4th the cost of an iPad Pro 12.9"
    - anakaine 4y ago
      But then lost the option of having a tablet you can take around when you don't need a laptop. Also, if you're developing for ipadOS you've lost access to that. And any apps you may have had in your Apple ecosystem if you were replacing an old tablet. Not everything is purely price driven.
enos_feedler 4y ago
I use a similar setup for slightly different workflows. Ipad air instead of pro Tailscale VPN + raspberry pi instead of GCP Code-server and git on the rpi I am using terminus but will check out the recommendation in this article Constraining myself to be productive from an ipad air has been an interesting exercise. A lot of fighting along the way but its possible to smooth things out. The best feeling though is getting back from traveling and settling into a mac mini + large monitor setup. The bonus is now the ipad air still gets love via universal control. I will shift over to it with my mouse and keyboard and still do things on it while using my main mac mini. Small work tasks, youtube, etc. Then when its time to hit the road again I just pickup the ipad and go.
- _alex_ 4y ago
  Tailscale + rpi is a great idea
tluyben2 4y ago
> Blink shell… expensive… build yourself It would be good if people would be neutral on buying not buying of open source software instead of blatantly pushing for not paying anything.
- ja27 4y ago
  Yeah I hit: > It is quite pricey if you purchase it from the store and stopped reading. A one-time payment of $19.99 for an app you use all day every day is not 'quite pricey'.
  - n_ary 4y ago
    > payment of $19.99 Are we looking at the same one? For me, “Blink Shell 14” appears to be €139,99 in App Store. Which is really pricey. For the normal one, there is €21,49/year subscription fee applicable, which is indeed expensive as well, as I can use iSH for free :]
- h4waii 4y ago
  It's specifically buildable for users who would rather spend time than money or prefer to build for other reasons entirely. I am more likely to buy it because the authors see building as an acceptable choice to acquire their software, and I believe choice is a core component of open source.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    Agreed, but I think it should be neutral; I read this as a ‘too expensive, just build it’ which I see a lot with articles about OSS.
alexvoda 4y ago
I still have hope that eventually hipervizor virtual machines will be available on the iPad. The hardware is already there. M1 has hipervizor support. Even the software us partly there. UTM is very capable. Maybe if Apple is forced to allow third party stores it will happen.
Ken_At_EM 4y ago
I have always dreamed of having an iPad Pro be my main machine. When docked with mouse keyboard and second monitor: Runs MacOS When on the go with touch screen: Runs iOS Clearly the hardware is capable of it.
f6v 4y ago
I didn’t want to take my work MPB 16 back home. So I access Jupyter lab from iPad Air now. The slightly annoying thing is the Logitech keyboard that doesn’t have ESC button. Otherwise, it’s fine as a thin client for a remote server.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  If you haven't done this, iOS lets you remap caps lock to esc. :)
triggercut 4y ago
Who else was expecting CGP Grey?

43 points by Ideabile 4y ago

I did use an iPad Pro as my main machine at times. First with the original iPad Pro, then with the M1 iPad Pro 12.9”. In both eras, it’s somewhat easy to get by. Things have gotten better with Blink and Working Copy being available. Those two apps replaced the Panic apps I used to use on iPad. The problem for me is that at times certain websites will not work properly, external monitors and mice do not work quite the way I’d like, and the UI honestly feels… a bit clumsy. Coupling the iPad with a tiny $3/mo VM at Vultr fixes things like wanting Vim/Emacs or a compiler/interpreter; and you can password nginx, and pipe your log directly to port 80 with netcat for debugging. Not difficult stuff. The thing is that it still isn’t the best experience. For me, it’s close, so I use my iPad as a mobile machine. If I want to be at the beach and get something done, it’s good. If I am at home, at a desk, it sucks.

seltzered_ 4y ago

I was considering the same thing a year ago after my MacBook died, but instead encourage developers to consider a tablet PC running Linux+Gnome. Here's my hardware reflections after a year of making it my only machine: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm/how_long_have_you_been_using_an_ergo_mobile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm...

VoidWhisperer 4y ago

One thing the author glosses over that I'm curious about that he said he got working was cloud gaming on the ipad to replace a computer for gaming. I'm curious what cloud gaming setup/provider he used and what the experience was like. I've personally tried various cloud gaming setups before (stadia, geforce now, etc) and the experience ends up being less than ideal even with a stable, gig down / 40 Mbps connection.

TingPing 4y ago
They all have similar not great latency. My understanding is just some people just can't see or care less.
andrewmackrodt 4y ago
Xbox Cloud is quite useable, Dirt 5 for example impressed me in regards to latency but I found it to be too high for Forza Horizon 5 to be enjoyable. I've found RPGs to be a good fit, e.g Dragon Age Inquisition and Yakuza 0.
- anakaine 4y ago
  Halo Infinite has been quite decent, most of the time. Some screen pixellation and tearing occasionally. Apparently the very latest version when played via a Web browser (not the app) on PCs is far better than the last few releases. That said, the performance was crappy enough that I just upgraded to having a console. I was able to download Halo and the campaign synced right up to where I left off in the cloud version automatically.
djangelic 4y ago
Stadia has been quite good for me if I connect it via Ethernet instead of using wifi. However I’ve really enjoyed using steams local game streaming. It works phenomenally well. My gaming pc is in my office office, and I’m loathe to enter the office after business hours so I’ve not been able to enjoy the games I like on my pc till I started using steam remote play. It works amazingly well, and I’ve played both 3D games like elden ring and 2d like enter the gungeon and both operate very well.

thaw13579 4y ago

It seems like these “main computer” solutions always depend on ssh-ing into some other machine with a proper command line and disk access. It seems like that defeats the point though, because the advantage of a tablet is mobility, but that also brings along less reliable network connectivity to those remote servers. Really wish we could just install macOS…

pabs3 4y ago
If the iPad is old enough, you might be able to install Linux instead of iOS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31604906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31604906
imiric 4y ago
You're right, that ends up being the main workflow. Though instead of connecting to a remote VM, I've found it better to carry with me a small Linux device running an SSH server. This can even be a Raspberry Pi. As long as it has a NIC, with a USB-C adapter hooked to the iPad you can just use an Ethernet cable, and have an entirely local setup. It defeats the purpose of carrying two devices around, but I find the iPad's screen and Folio keyboard to be very comfortable for long sessions, so this is my go-to setup for plane and train rides.
- rewgs 4y ago
  You don't even need the ethernet cable. A single USB-C cable (assuming your Pi has a port) is sufficient. A buddy of mine has a Pi velcro'd to the back of his iPad Pro and just ssh's in to/from the USB-C network ports. It's honestly pretty elegant, as long as you never look at the back of the iPad :p
  - imiric 4y ago
    Ah, neat! That's good to know, thanks.
  - _alex_ 4y ago
    Does your friend also have a Battery pack for the raspberry pi?

nso95 4y ago

I once idealistically believed that tablets were the PC of the future. The iPad pro is definitely within the top 5 most disappointing hardware purchases I've made. Terrible UX. Trying to be both a laptop and a tablet has made it bad at being both of those things.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
I went through similar development, only with Android tablet. Sometimes I use it to show me things, sometimes I play games on it while listening to YouTube videos from my phone. Most of the time it is just sitting in the stand. Very narrow usability.
reassembled 4y ago
I feel like the main reason that the experience is so bad is because nobody is working to unify a touch OS experience and a desktop OS experience. My perception as a user is that the iPad OS and macOS teams are completely siloed. There are aspects of iPad OS that are becoming reminiscent of desktop counterparts but they always seem half baked. The file management experience on iPad in particular drove me up the wall when my wife asked me how to do the simple task of transferring a several hundred meg image from her Windows laptop and import it into ProCreate. The iPad OS had some UI to do this task but it was painfully buggy and slow, and hung up constantly while trying to copy the file.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
woojoo666 4y ago
I tried switching from Surface to iPad Pro, and was woefully underwhelmed. Just felt like I couldn't get anything done. A big one was the lack of browser extensions (at the time) which I needed to organize my tabs and sessions, and while they are slowly closing the gap, it's still far from a daily driver in my eyes

Zafira 4y ago

Who is the iPad Pro catering to exactly? I've struggled to figure this out.

imiric 4y ago
Content consumers with cash to spare, and professionals who can work around iPadOS' limitations, or whose workflow isn't affected by them. Think digital artists, graphic designers, photographers, writers, some video editors, etc.
- anakaine 4y ago
  Don't forget students. Heading to university as a professional who is employed full time, but I want my own device with minimal maintenance and headaches, as well as minimal distractions. Ipad pro has been a great answer. Initial notes, drafts, watching lectures, etc is a good use case. Full document drafting in Word is pretty poor compared to the desktop application where I can insert tables of contents, references, bibliographies and integrate with endnote. The reason it frustrates me is because it doesn't run macOS and I can thus do far fewer things with it. I bought it with that in mind, knowing that the trade-off was that it would go some way to improving my time-on-task with uni. It's been a success in that regard.
phyalow 4y ago
In my case, someone who needed extra screen real estate when travelling with my MacBook Pro M1 16”. I set the iPad up on a stand, open sidecar and voila! I have (almost) doubled my screen/work area.
- ulfw 4y ago
  Or you could have bought one of a myriad of cheap portable 15" HD or 4K screens for that for 1/4th the cost of an iPad Pro 12.9"
  - anakaine 4y ago
    But then lost the option of having a tablet you can take around when you don't need a laptop. Also, if you're developing for ipadOS you've lost access to that. And any apps you may have had in your Apple ecosystem if you were replacing an old tablet. Not everything is purely price driven.

enos_feedler 4y ago

I use a similar setup for slightly different workflows. Ipad air instead of pro Tailscale VPN + raspberry pi instead of GCP Code-server and git on the rpi I am using terminus but will check out the recommendation in this article Constraining myself to be productive from an ipad air has been an interesting exercise. A lot of fighting along the way but its possible to smooth things out. The best feeling though is getting back from traveling and settling into a mac mini + large monitor setup. The bonus is now the ipad air still gets love via universal control. I will shift over to it with my mouse and keyboard and still do things on it while using my main mac mini. Small work tasks, youtube, etc. Then when its time to hit the road again I just pickup the ipad and go.

_alex_ 4y ago
Tailscale + rpi is a great idea

tluyben2 4y ago

> Blink shell… expensive… build yourself It would be good if people would be neutral on buying not buying of open source software instead of blatantly pushing for not paying anything.

ja27 4y ago
Yeah I hit: > It is quite pricey if you purchase it from the store and stopped reading. A one-time payment of $19.99 for an app you use all day every day is not 'quite pricey'.
- n_ary 4y ago
  > payment of $19.99 Are we looking at the same one? For me, “Blink Shell 14” appears to be €139,99 in App Store. Which is really pricey. For the normal one, there is €21,49/year subscription fee applicable, which is indeed expensive as well, as I can use iSH for free :]
h4waii 4y ago
It's specifically buildable for users who would rather spend time than money or prefer to build for other reasons entirely. I am more likely to buy it because the authors see building as an acceptable choice to acquire their software, and I believe choice is a core component of open source.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Agreed, but I think it should be neutral; I read this as a ‘too expensive, just build it’ which I see a lot with articles about OSS.

alexvoda 4y ago

I still have hope that eventually hipervizor virtual machines will be available on the iPad. The hardware is already there. M1 has hipervizor support. Even the software us partly there. UTM is very capable. Maybe if Apple is forced to allow third party stores it will happen.

Ken_At_EM 4y ago

I have always dreamed of having an iPad Pro be my main machine. When docked with mouse keyboard and second monitor: Runs MacOS When on the go with touch screen: Runs iOS Clearly the hardware is capable of it.

f6v 4y ago

I didn’t want to take my work MPB 16 back home. So I access Jupyter lab from iPad Air now. The slightly annoying thing is the Logitech keyboard that doesn’t have ESC button. Otherwise, it’s fine as a thin client for a remote server.

kayodelycaon 4y ago
If you haven't done this, iOS lets you remap caps lock to esc. :)

triggercut 4y ago

Who else was expecting CGP Grey?