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It's really impressive what an iPad can do. But this setup requires you to always have a connection, and the author said that he had replaced his laptop with an

by sgt 4y ago

It's really impressive what an iPad can do. But this setup requires you to always have a connection, and the author said that he had replaced his laptop with an iPad completely. What do you do if you're offline (or if reception is bad)?

monkin 4y ago
I, for example, read Books on iPad when there’s no connection, but with a cellular version that isn’t common. Yet, having mosh connection inside Blink is a blessing exactly for that purpose as I’m always going back to my stuff on desktop.
em500 4y ago
The iPad in the setup described is just running a terminal with SSH. Emacs (and pretty much everything else described in the blog) is running on a remote server running Ubuntu (so I don't know why he even bothers to compile emacs from source). "Impressive" is not the word I'd use for running a terminal with SSH. Especially since the iPad is likely several times more powerful than the remote Ubuntu server that is actually running emacs.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
> It's really impressive what an iPad can do. It is just accessing a VPS via ssh. That is not at all impressive, rather the opposite: you have to connect to another machine because the ipad just cannot do what you want. And you then still have to deal with keyboard issues.... And that is kind of a shame because the screen and form factor are both really nice.
- monkin 4y ago
  A lot of companies are moving into development in cloud, for example GitHub. Which is a future for many use cases, and for which iPad is an ideal device to work with. > And you then still have to deal with keyboard issues.... What kind of issues?
  - em500 4y ago
    If you do dev in the cloud, you might as well just get a Chromebook, since you're probably carrying a keyboard with the iPad anyway. And all the recent Chromebooks can also run Android and Linux apps.
  - andyp-kw 4y ago
    The iPad is not an ideal work device for most people. Typing on a touchscreen is much slower than a keyboard. Add a keyboard to your iPad, congratulations you've now got a laptop with half the features. Cloud development sucks if you live far away from the datacenter due to latency. Also, if your internet connection goes down then you're unproductive until it comes back.
    - monkin 4y ago
      I’m doing all my development in the cloud for the last two years and never had any latency problems whatsoever. And it’s not about feature comparison to a laptop, even with a keyboard as MacBook Air M2 is better and cheaper than iPad. But easy content consumption, taking notes, sketching, writing, and many others. It’s just more fun than a heavy laptop. But yes, it’s not for everyone as using it full-time requires a change in personal habits. There’s also not much pro apps, but for now you can produce videos, music, cad designs, web design (figma, adobe, serif), so it’s not so limiting as it was years ago.
      - oblio 4y ago
        When you say "development", do you mean writing and debugging code, tests, etc? Because none of the activities you list afterwards are writing and debugging code, tests, etc.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - diffeomorphism 4y ago
    The ones mentioned in the article under "Some keys that won’t work"
z9znz 4y ago
To replace or supplement remote, you can carry a little Raspberry Pi. This guy makes a nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3qn1nqw-Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3qn1nqw-Gw I have previously setup a Hetzner server (EU) with openVPN and Code Server, and then I was able to really have the benefits of pretty secure dev environment that was always on, easily accessible, and powerful. Of course it required a connection to use, but the bandwidth requirements were low. Latency requirements were more important, but they weren't as harsh as if you were using a remote desktop.

by sgt 4y ago

monkin 4y ago

I, for example, read Books on iPad when there’s no connection, but with a cellular version that isn’t common. Yet, having mosh connection inside Blink is a blessing exactly for that purpose as I’m always going back to my stuff on desktop.

em500 4y ago

The iPad in the setup described is just running a terminal with SSH. Emacs (and pretty much everything else described in the blog) is running on a remote server running Ubuntu (so I don't know why he even bothers to compile emacs from source). "Impressive" is not the word I'd use for running a terminal with SSH. Especially since the iPad is likely several times more powerful than the remote Ubuntu server that is actually running emacs.

diffeomorphism 4y ago

> It's really impressive what an iPad can do. It is just accessing a VPS via ssh. That is not at all impressive, rather the opposite: you have to connect to another machine because the ipad just cannot do what you want. And you then still have to deal with keyboard issues.... And that is kind of a shame because the screen and form factor are both really nice.

monkin 4y ago
A lot of companies are moving into development in cloud, for example GitHub. Which is a future for many use cases, and for which iPad is an ideal device to work with. > And you then still have to deal with keyboard issues.... What kind of issues?
- em500 4y ago
  If you do dev in the cloud, you might as well just get a Chromebook, since you're probably carrying a keyboard with the iPad anyway. And all the recent Chromebooks can also run Android and Linux apps.
- andyp-kw 4y ago
  The iPad is not an ideal work device for most people. Typing on a touchscreen is much slower than a keyboard. Add a keyboard to your iPad, congratulations you've now got a laptop with half the features. Cloud development sucks if you live far away from the datacenter due to latency. Also, if your internet connection goes down then you're unproductive until it comes back.
  - monkin 4y ago
    I’m doing all my development in the cloud for the last two years and never had any latency problems whatsoever. And it’s not about feature comparison to a laptop, even with a keyboard as MacBook Air M2 is better and cheaper than iPad. But easy content consumption, taking notes, sketching, writing, and many others. It’s just more fun than a heavy laptop. But yes, it’s not for everyone as using it full-time requires a change in personal habits. There’s also not much pro apps, but for now you can produce videos, music, cad designs, web design (figma, adobe, serif), so it’s not so limiting as it was years ago.
    - oblio 4y ago
      When you say "development", do you mean writing and debugging code, tests, etc? Because none of the activities you list afterwards are writing and debugging code, tests, etc.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- diffeomorphism 4y ago
  The ones mentioned in the article under "Some keys that won’t work"

z9znz 4y ago

To replace or supplement remote, you can carry a little Raspberry Pi. This guy makes a nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3qn1nqw-Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3qn1nqw-Gw I have previously setup a Hetzner server (EU) with openVPN and Code Server, and then I was able to really have the benefits of pretty secure dev environment that was always on, easily accessible, and powerful. Of course it required a connection to use, but the bandwidth requirements were low. Latency requirements were more important, but they weren't as harsh as if you were using a remote desktop.