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Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
- soft-home3804 3y agoIt is strange that no one has mentioned the excellent development application Pythonista. It is an entire Python IDE on the iPad and iPhone. You can even access your phone's sensors and write scripts using it.
- PaulHoule 3y agoI used to pack a desktop replacement laptop in my backpack but now I have a regular iPad and a cheap BT keyboard and mouse. I leave my big “gaming PC” on and use Tailscale to log in with RDP, I have ADSL at home so it could be faster but with some tactics to manage latency it is not that bad, mostly I use a web app that I wrote on it. (my YOShInOn RSS reader) I used to do the same with an Amazon Fire Tablet a long time ago with a big cloud PC behind it. I’d go to a hackathon and have such sleek kit that people with their Macbook Pro’s would get jealous.
- sandoze 3y agoI use a laptop for work or when I need to use Xcode but I’ve been able to create music and code just fine by piggy backing a raspberry pi. The USB-C port on the iPad can power the pi and run an Ethernet connection. From there I can terminal in or VNC. The iPad becomes my monitor and I use the keyboard case and everything is pretty ok.
- intesars 3y agoI use MacBook Air M2 and it feel underpowered
- treprinum 3y agoSeriously, what's the point of iPad Pro? I can understand iPad as a media viewing device but why would I want iPad Pro?
- randyrand 3y agoThe point of it is obvious — the margins on it are huge. As they say, a fool and his money…
- Sirened 3y agoThere's definitely a funky curve of what you can and cannot comfortably do on an iPad. If you're pinned to IDEs and need lots of local graphical tools to support development, an iPad is unusable. If you already have to run all your work remotely since the tools are too heavy even for a laptop (like me with EDA tools), it turns out that the iPad makes for a great little client. I use mine a lot with iSH. I can do work locally in vim and then submit jobs to the compute cluster, it's the exact same workflow I'd use on a laptop.
- ghostbrainalpha 3y agoQuestion: If you are a serious coder, is it more realistic to do a workday in VR or with an iPad Pro?
- nottorp 3y ago> But if you need to run Xcode, VSCode, WebStorm, or Intellij than as far as I can tell the iPad is a no go. Umm wouldn't it have been better to research this before spending the money? By the description a macbook air would have done the job and for cheaper.
- pipeline_peak 3y agoUm…yeah
- tapvt 3y agoI’m a solo dev for a medium-sized (but safety-critical) enterprise. So, I’m always “on call.” My 10th-gen iPad with a keyboard, alongside the Amazon Workspace app is a game-changer. I no longer have to lug my laptop everywhere.
- ellis0n 3y agoI am a mobile coding pioneer and I disagree. The problem was in the software and I fixed it. Please check my demos coded on iPad from 2012. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/833395245 https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/833395245
- topikk 3y agoI spend a LOT of time sharpening my axe and can't imagine why anyone would choose to use an unsharpenable hatchet with a stubby handle.
- snailtrail 3y agoNext article: Can you live in a van?
- meatjuice 3y agoThere should be some kind of Terminal.app for iOS. I can’t see why they don’t implement this. There are some community-made terminal-like things like iShell, or a-Shell, though, neither of them is capable of running programs bare-metal.
- mmcnl 3y agoWhy would you want to use an iPad for coding? Honestly, the laptop form factor is pretty great for coding on the go. If you're going to reinvent a solution for a problem already solved, it's need to be a better solution, not a gimmicky different solution. The iPad is a pretty cool device, but for coding there are simply far better solutions.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoWe don’t really have any non-writing coding tools (well, for serious coding). And it doesn’t make much sense to hand write code with a stylus. I do find it great for taking notes and writing pseudo code.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoAwhile ago, my employer was indicating their intent to deploy a mobile app for time tracking and scheduling, and so I created a "work account" on my personal Android phone. Unfortunately they somehow forgot to enable the Play Store for my account, so I can't install anything other than the stock Google apps. So one day I tried to "do work" on my phone and it was a comedy of errors. Chiefly I use three apps: Slack, Google Docs/Sheets, and our internal website. Slack and Google Docs were slow as molasses in the Chrome browser. It was clear within 3 minutes that I would never get anything done if I was ever restricted to "work" from my phone. As a counterpoint, I determined that my employer's software requirements are so simple that they allow me to use a Chromebook, so I purchased a middlin' Chromebook and it's working great! Of course, Chromebooks are definitely more of a notebook computer than a mobile device, but they are often pooh-poohed as underpowered or "toys" because they don't run all the apps. I think it's an undeserved rep now, seeing how far they've come.
- nunez 3y agoI've been using an iPad Pro for coding for a year now. I traded in a M1 MacBook Pro for it and don't miss it at all. It's great if you use a text-based IDE or can Tailscale back into your home network and connect to VSCode remotely. Aside from Tailscale, I use Screens to VNC into my Macs at home and Blink to SSH in. I really enjoy being able to detach the tablet from the keyboard and use it for drawing stuff/reading/etc. Super nice during flights when you're taking off or landing and can't use laptops. It's also absolutely killer for demos. I'm in presales. People LOVE hand-drawn demos or slide deck demos that you can draw on, since most people are very visual. I look like a goddamn magician every time I go from drawing "slides" on my iPad to firing up a terminal with ease. (That said, iOS REALLY needs to support global external monitor resolutions. There is an API that allows apps to display at different resolutions, but users have zero control over that.) The only things I miss are shortcuts for Mission Control (I use virtual spaces heavily) and screenshots (you can take a screenshot by diagonally dragging a finger from the bottom right side of the screen to the center, but that's tedious and so is the UI for handling the screenshot) I tried this many years ago with the 2018 iPad Pro and was much less successful then due to iOS limitations. All this said, I can definitely see people hating the experience. You can't do multiple windows (Stage Manager sucks and split screen is limited) and you can't work locally at all.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoyou can't code on iOS why would even attempt this lmao. this isn't the thing they try to sell you on, its other kinds of apps and professions not engineering xcode for ipad is on the horizon but I ain't holding my breath, they took years to implement something similar to Samsung DeX and even then its really poorly implemented and doesn't work well. (not to mention it isn't rolled out to all ipads)
- galkk 3y agohosted vscode, github codespaces etc - coding on ipad is very much possible.
- DennisAleynikov 3y ago"you can visit a website" okay my smart toaster is an excellent dev machine as well I'm looking for something like swift playgrounds++ so baby xcode, not a remote window
- ribosometronome 3y agoDoes your smart toaster have a form factor and portability that leads you to suspect it could be a useful coding device? I can't say I've found the two to be equally useful in all situations... like, I'm personally way more comfortable using my iPad in the bath than my toaster.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agopersonally I wouldn't bring a toaster into the bathtub... but maybe my samsung smartfridge will be my next desk. who needs to buy a table, much less a standing desk? just stand in your kitchen and use the browser on your fridge to open vscode.dev! ergonomics like nothing else <3
- galkk 3y agoYou either trolling or have no idea what you're talking about. Hosted vscode is just vscode. You can use it to run remote terminal, just as ssh and run commands there or launch/debug code, set breakpoints etc from ui etc. At Google most of new hires are working on cloud machines now by default, with either vscode/remote or internal web-based editor. Your toaster doesn't have amount of CPUs/RAM/disk space that you can get with proper setup. When codespaces were free in beta, I was editing and compiling qmk firmware for my keyboard through web ui and using docker based build. In cloud. I could do the same using ipad, and I am periodically thinking about buying ipad for coding at home. I can easily setup to run hosted vscode server on my desktop and use tailscale to connect to it. It is that I every year hope that Apple will make 14/16" ipad, as by personal experience 12.9 pro is still too small for my taste.
- fortuna86 3y ago[dead]
- warning26 3y agoI have the iPad Air with the same M1 chip and it’s such a disappointment for this exact reason. It literally has the same SoC as my MacBook, but is basically useless for most productive activities I’d like to do with it. (And even goes slower at the tasks it can do!) It really highlights just how awful iPadOS is compared to MacOS.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agothey are so close to unlocking iPad and iPhone's potential but sadly keep doubling down on the locked experience. even the vision pro, seem really disappointing that its essentially running iPadOS with ARKit
- warning26 3y agoExactly! That strikes me as the biggest problem with the Vision Pro that is consistently overlooked: by running what appears to be an iPadOS derivative, its usefulness will be mostly limited to web browsing with Safari. Being able to code in multiple VR monitors while traveling actually sounds like a good potential use case that Apple has locked themselves out of with their crippled OS.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoI'll still just use vscode in multiple windows :))) you can't stop us all, apple!
- warning26 3y agoTry doing that on airplane Wi-Fi!
- Robotbeat 3y agoWould work fine if you could actually locally develop instead of using a web browser.
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- minimaxir 3y agoIt's "possible" to code now with GitHub Codespaces, which leverages VS Code for Web and has pretty good usability on the iPad, and there are a few less-conveinent ways to run the VS Code Web interface hosted on your own computer (e.g. Blink Shell: https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code )
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoby this definition a chromebook is an excellent programming machine
- minimaxir 3y agoYes? It's 2023, not all code has to be run locally.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoI think you may be missing the point of the criticism. its obvious that remotely editing code is possible, but why would you spend so much money on something that is basically a remote desktop machine? couldn't you use a much cheaper device for the same purpose
- devoutsalsa 3y agoThere's so many services to work on now, I couldn't get all our software to run on my laptop if I wanted to.
- Robotbeat 3y agoThat sounds like a bad idea.
- oynqr 3y agoI mean, you can run actual Linux applications on those. Only limit is gonna be the mostly crappy hardware. Although I guess that could be to the benefit of everyone actually using your software.
- herpderperator 3y agoThis is silly - just get a MacBook Air.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoThe iPad Pro has a better keyboard, amazingly. The air is too shallow, at least the m2 anyway. The m1 airs and pros had better keyboards
- rabuse 3y agoI have a 14" pro, and a 15" air. The keyboards are essentially identical.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoThey definitely aren’t. It’s subtle, but I find the m2 airs to be maddening to type on, and I miss keystrokes all the time, but the 14 inch pros are really nice to type on. Unless the m2 airs I typed on were duds /from a factory that messed up the spec
- warning26 3y agoI have both — I’d love the to use iPad as a secondary travel machine, since it’s far lighter and also was much less expensive. But sadly it really can’t be used for much beyond light web browsing.
- k_bx 3y ago
- smiley1437 3y agoAn ipad to be used with an external keyboard is a very suboptimal typing experience - there is usually no strong hinge to hold up the screen at arbitrary angles. In my experience this also means you can't 'pick up' the system by the keyboard to move it around (which I do with my laptop all the time) so it feels super-awkward. For drawing with the pencil, sure it's a great experience but if you need to output a ton of text it's not even close
- minimaxir 3y agoThe Magic Keyboard does solve these concerns (although you should probably wait for a sale)
- behnamoh 3y agoI’ve owned ipads for a long time and their productivity benefits compared to my Mac and iphone has never improved over the years. This year I’m selling my last ipad and won’t buy again until Apple throws a “real” OS at the thing. one of the worst things about ios is that files get copied for each app. Say I download a PDF in the Documents app and want to annotate it. As soon as I open it with NoteX, a copy of the PDF is created in NoteX folder. this results in a chaotic situation, in terms of files and hierarchies.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoI can't wait for ipads to mature
- trustingtrust 3y agoWith M1 this was something that people hoped would happen. But right now all I use my iPad for is binge watching in my bed. I’ve owned an M1 air for a year and that’s literally all I do with it. If I had a TV in my room the utility of the iPad would be zero for me.
- ineedasername 3y ago>If I had a TV in my room the utility of the iPad would be zero for me. TV's are cheaper than iPads these days
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- radicaldreamer 3y agoIn practice, this means being able to run MacOS on them. All the hardware is already there, it's just a matter of time until Apple has the "courage" to enable it.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agogiven the botched launch of stage manager I'm not holding my breath
- etchalon 3y agoIt would be great if the iPad could be used for local development, but outside of static markup, I don't see that happening until Apple allows virtualization environments. The sheer number of tools a developer needs to install for most modern stacks is non-trivial and its hard to fathom how a modern development stack would work on a system as restricted as iOS. But, if you want a small, fast, lightweight device with great battery life there's the Macbook Air. It's the same chip.
- 71a54xd 3y agoReasonable people should not be surprised by this
- p1necone 3y agoYou say this but there's a lot of unreasonable people around. There's always someone who has cobbled together a workflow on an ipad for whatever they're doing relying on like 5 different commercial applications and a bunch of sacrifices just to approximate what they'd get if they just used a macbook/windows/linux instead. And when you try to point this out to them they get defensive and basically pull the "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" argument except replace "opinion" with "arbitrarily kneecapped workflow"
- fragmede 3y ago> 5 different commercial applications The horror! Somebody paid money for something!? If it works, and it costs a reasonable amount of money, it's nice to support the developer. Not all of us have to be cheapskates.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoI think it just stings how much rentseeking is at every step to do the most basic things on ios. most other mature operating systems have open source alternative app store/repositories with free altrenatives (at the cost of some UI/UX quality you could argue)
- nsonha 3y agothe point is that the workflow was previously achieved with a single application whose design/feature set, pricing, and support policy are rarely changed or changed 5 times less often.
- fragmede 3y agopreviously? it's only with today's "there an app for that" UX that things are so easy and not buried away in some menu somewhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- divbzero 3y agoIn my experience, iPad + keyboard works okay for coding if you SSH into a remote machine [1] and use a terminal-based text editor like emacs or vim. Alternatively, you can use a Git client [2] to code locally but that prevents you from using your preferred text editor or the command line. In theory, Visual Studio Code for the Web [3] could work too though I haven’t tried that approach personally. I first experimented with iPad coding around 2013 and have tried it periodically since. I haven’t noticed a dramatic improvement in the coding experience over the past decade: Even today, iPad coding just “okay” and not great because laptops are still more versatile at windows management. [1]: https://termius.com/free-ssh-client-for-ipad https://termius.com/free-ssh-client-for-ipad [2]: https://workingcopyapp.com/ https://workingcopyapp.com/ [3]: https://vscode.dev/ https://vscode.dev/
- anon373839 3y agoIs it possible to do ssh tunneling in iOS? I haven’t tried to use my iDevices for any development tasks, but that would be a key threshold for me to find any utility in them.
- explaininjs 3y agoVSCode for the web has a built in tunneling service to connect to your desktop. If you don’t want to use vscode there are of course many ssh terminals available in the app store for you to.. vim from? emacs with? idk, you do you.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoseems like blink is the best SSH client on ios for now. its okay but I still like the android alternatives
- anon373839 3y agoI wasn’t being clear. My question was whether iOS allows apps to open up arbitrary local ports (to forward them to the remote server over SSH). It looks like it is possible, albeit with a 10-minute time limit.
- planb 3y agoI don't see what people expect. The iPad is a portable touch-first device with a small screen and a locked-down operating system. The first two are by-design for the tablet form factor, so this will never change. And I don't expect Apple to open up the system, but it does not sound as if this was the main concern in this article. So why not simply get a MacBook Air, which is a completely capable, awesome coding device?
- vonwoodson 3y agoI can answer this honestly: We want to believe that the iPad is the answer to so many of computer's problems, that the iPhone is So Amazing to be able to do so much of what we need a computer to do that a Bigger iPhone would be the ideal computer. I don't quite know why Apple doesn't see the iPad as a developer machine. Being able to program the machine that you're working on is a, if not the, meaning of a general purpose computer and we all want it to work So Bad. But, this blog really echos what any of us who have really tried to untether ourselves from the traditional keyboard/monitor or mainframe programming have discovered: The iPad (and the iPhone) are appliances and not actual computers.
- raverbashing 3y agoPretty much this This sounds like a person caught in the hype
- tommek4077 3y agoTo have a locked down, consume first, small display device?
- planb 3y agoI guess the OP wasn't looking for a Linux workstation under their desk and then went for the iPad form factor instead.
- sublinear 3y agoOr, just get any laptop really. There's nothing special about a Mac unless you need to do native development for Apple devices, and I'd suggest a Mac Mini for that.
- shon 3y agoNot to be mean but… are we supposed to be surprised by this? It’s a jailed machine. The antithesis of a dev box.
- blueridge 3y agoUsing the iPad Pro as my main computer (2019) https://hicks.design/journal/using-the-ipad-pro-as-my-main-computer https://hicks.design/journal/using-the-ipad-pro-as-my-main-c... iPad Pro as Computer - one year on (2020) https://hicks.design/journal/ipad-pro-as-computer-one-year-on https://hicks.design/journal/ipad-pro-as-computer-one-year-o...
- reportgunner 3y agoNo way, a person who uses a tablet connected to a computer for work is able to use a tablet for work instead of computer !
- mr_donk 3y agoFor me, the killer app for me has been sidecar… I work from home, and like to work outside in the summer. I’ve been using my MacBook Pro and my iPad as a second display via sidecar. One unadvertised feature of this is that you can use the pencil as a mouse on your Mac in this configuration, which is handy for virtual whiteboard type stuff on your Mac where you’d normally be stuck with a mouse.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agobeing stuck with a mouse on macos is more of an apple problem. things like the surface pro have been around for a decade at least
- tga 3y agoThat’s nice as a bonus, but an iPad is small and rather expensive to use primarily as a monitor — you can get a portable 15” touchscreen for €120.
- bullen 3y agoBuying anything that does not run vanilla linux is a mistake. Eventually every device on the planet will run it but companies that twart it should not be encouraged.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoamen to that
- scarface_74 3y agoYes the “Year of the Linux Desktop” will come any day now.
- swader999 3y agoIt's not a bad idea if you go the SSH to a real machine route. You could even use it as an extra super portable monitor. But yeah no, just get a macbook Air.
- zmmmmm 3y agoThis is going to become an interesting topic to watch as people go out and buy Vision Pro headsets on the basis that it's fine being $3500 because "it replaces my laptop". It was very disappointing that it's actually iOS based rather than MacOS. At least, if you throw a Macbook Air in your bag too in theory you will be able to bring it up as a full desktop, but it's super unclear how the integration will look.
- Robotbeat 3y agoYeah, the most annoying thing about VR, the developers like Meta and Apple literally block you from being productive on these devices. They want VR to be the future but for whatever reason they paternalistically prevent people from actually using them for real work except through frustrating workarounds.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoI still lament the discontinuing of samsung's gear VR. I understand it still exists kinda as the oculus Go, but there was something called PhoneCast which would let you open any of the apps from your phone side by side with arbitrarily large windows. [1] many times I've had the pleasure of running linux on my VR glasses and using a browser to debug webapps I can write entirely offline. meta and apple are so close but the user experience for normal people matters to them significantly more than developers. [1] https://venturebeat.com/games/phonecast-lets-you-play-2d-android-apps-in-virtual-reality-on-gear-vr/ https://venturebeat.com/games/phonecast-lets-you-play-2d-and...
- halfjoking 3y ago[flagged]
- olliej 3y agoI'm obviously an apple first dev, but even I could see that this is an obvious outcome. The iOS is phone/tablet first, and everything else is very clearly and noticeably an add on (some things closer to the "hacked on" end of the spectrum). Expecting to code on an iPad, means expecting first class desktop/laptop style interaction.
- wudangmonk 3y agoIpad Pro was just a gimmick, hardware without the appropriate software is just a waste. You can't code with it at all, you can sort of draw a little bit but again the drawing sotfware and file management of a professional workflow just isn't there. Photos? same problem. Honestly, what sort of professional work can this thing do?. I think apple is just cashing in on the 'Pro' named from their macbooks. Same thing will happen with the Vision 'Pro'
- koinedad 3y agoI started editing videos in Final Cut Pro on iPad directly and it’s been pretty nice, and fast export. Example: https://youtu.be/4EbnzsqtB3Q https://youtu.be/4EbnzsqtB3Q
- h1t35h 3y agoWhile it's not the best experience I've been using iPad for coding for over 2 years on my personal projects. My setup uses a machine at home with - https://github.com/coder/code-server https://github.com/coder/code-server - terminus - for playing with terminal work - tailscale - for VPN and accessing local servers on home server I must admit not having a ESC key in ipad keyboard is a pain as I'm a heavy vim user but after a few weeks you kind of get used to CMD + "." for escape and life moves on. IMO, the biggest pro I have for using iPad is the fact that the size and battery life as the heavy computing happens on my home server plus the small network footprint on mobile network is just helpful.
- koinedad 3y agoYou can remap caps lock to esc in settings which is pretty nice.
- koinedad 3y agoWhat I really want is a nice MacBook Pro for personal use but tried to go cheap…still love the iPad. Really tempted by the 15in MacBook Air but with 16gb memory
- nine_k 3y ago"Buying a set of paintbrushes and paints to write a book was a,mistake. A typewriter would be much more useful." Well, yes. Picking a right tool for a job still makes sense, even though some other tools can manage to work, too.
- dingi 3y ago[flagged]
- Dwedit 3y agoRun a VNC client and connect to a real computer. Now it's not useless anymore.
- rcarmo 3y agoEven better, xorgxrdp with glamor, Tailscale and you have a Linux RDP server with GPU acceleration that will work from anywhere in the world with lower latency and bandwidth use.
- ed 3y agoThis question becomes more relevant when you consider the vision pro is essentially a head-mounted iPad. I wish the author would say how they tried to get a working development environment. E.g.: VSCode Server? https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server
- WheelsAtLarge 3y agoIt's been over 10 yrs since its introduction and it pretty much has the same utility as it had at the start. Coding on an iPad is just not part of Apple's plan for it. I don't expect it to be a good choice now or ever.
- dgdosen 3y agoI love the mini - and I'd say an iPad makes sense for consumption and pen use (handwriting notes)... but the 'Pro' is a waste of an M1/M2. I would kill for a rebooted 12" Macbook with that same terrible keyboard if it at least had an M1 in it.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoomg that 12" macbook would absolutely SING with an m1
- Donckele 3y agoI think I have the first or second gen ipad. For some years now the OS and apps are frozen in time. I have basically some old games and the old safari browser. The old safari is slow and, can you believe it, HN does not fully function! Now, we all know the hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream. But we can only dream right? WTF? Apple won’t allow us to use another OS or open software on old non-supported devices? What a waste of physical material! What a waste of human creativity! What a waste of my money! What a waste of my time! I don’t give a shit how its enabled the masses to be able to do selfies. This also mostly applies to android devices as well - which is another shit show. For fucks sake - its 2023 and occasionally we have HN posts that are announcing how we are getting closer to run linux on the latest macs with the new processors. Holy shit! Even with more access and control to the apple macs we still don’t have full linux capability. Apple has the best mathematicians to optimise for pure profit and as you can see they have done a great job. Apple 1 - Rest of the world 0. Woz, please have have a talk with Tim (Nice but dim) and tell him the wonders that can be unlocked by allowing apple devices to run linux natively without jailbreaks or hacks. Don’t give me any shit they can’t do that by next month. Until then I can only dream. Thank god we have surplus machines (eg thinkpads XNNN) available that show us the light of truth.
- DennisAleynikov 3y agoah yes, the e-waste conundrum when you run an OS that is completely user hostile
- arcticbull 3y agoA first-gen iPad is 13 years old. How many tablets running a 'user-friendly' OS from 13 years ago do you still think are actually out there, being used? The only old tablets I see are running iOS/iPad OS. Probably because they're built on solid metal and glass skeletons. While I agree things could be better, Apple also does a commendable job of providing updates and support for devices much longer and much more consistently than their competitors. They are after all incentivized to do so thanks to their cut of App Store revenue.
- destroy-2A 3y agoNo escape in the Magic Keyboard removes the magic
- rcarmo 3y agoCommand + . does the same. Always has. And you can remap Caps Lock.
- vachina 3y agoMan up and buy a laptop
- jiggywiggy 3y agoThe way to make this work is by renting a mac m1 on scaleway and put a VNC app on your iPad. Works well. You just pay 70,- per month extra.
- lawgimenez 3y agoAhhh iPad Pro, the only device Apple reviewers used. I am not sure reviewers had sent me error screenshots other than the latest iPad.
- thefz 3y ago[flagged]
- bjoli 3y agoWe use iPads for work. Reading music mostly, but also for a limited amount of office tasks. I have started carrying a razer huntsman mini (the silent red kind) because I can't stand typing on the touch keyboard. I also couldn't find any possibility to remap the keyboard to svdvorak so I remapped the huntsman in hardware. With a proper keyboard it is actually almost half-decent. My colleagues mocked me until they saw I could type more than 40wpm.
- reportgunner 3y agoWhy not just get a laptop ?
- bjoli 3y agoBecause my work wont buy me one. The iPads are mostly used for reading music. A laptop would suck for that.
- theshrike79 3y agoBefore the M-series laptops, using an iPad for portable development was ... doable. I did it myself with an iPad Pro and the folio keyboard a few times in a pinch. Blink shell to server, web-based vscode for editing. Safari to poke stuff in AWS. Not comfy but manageable. The whole setup fit in my cross-body bag. Now it's just pointless, you get the same battery life from an M-series Macbook and it's an actual computer. And the 13" models aren't that much bigger than an iPad Pro.
- poopiokaka 3y agoI could have told you that
- octatrack 3y agoI mostly use my large iPad Pro as a secondary screen with Sidecar when traveling. For this, it's excellent. I've used it for some minimal coding via Codespaces or SSH, which was fine, but as a development machine, the 13" MacBook Air is a way superior choice.
- xenonite 3y agoAre you using USB cable or Wi-Fi connection for Sidecar? On the go, I think lwith the cable it is not so practical because the cable discharges the MacBook and charges the iPad. On the other hand, the cable connection is more stable and has less latency.
- reportgunner 3y agoReads like a lot of buyer's remorse.
- shinycode 3y agoIt’s not designed for professional coding, laptops are. I use jump desktop to log into my MacBook and code through it with a Bluetooth keyboard. Otherwise there is no point in using the iPad for that because clearly if it was designed to do coding Apple would have advertised this strength for a long time. Yes it’s a mistake indeed
- Havoc 3y agoWrong tool for the job ends up working poorly to nobody’s surprise
- hospitalJail 3y agoCan you blame the OP? Apple's marketing is best in class. We are animals who can't control most of the brain, only the frontal lobe(and determinists would debate that is just genetics + environment).
- Havoc 3y ago> Apple's marketing is best in class. They don’t promote iPads as primary programming productivity device to my knowledge?
- hospitalJail 3y agoI rarely see Apple promoting computing in general. I havn't watched TV since football season, but it appears they mostly focus on celebrities, the shape/color of the device spinning, and the words "Security" and "Privacy" with black backgrounds and white text. (Which I take strong offense to, I know "Security" has no meaning, but to have worst in class security from Pegasus/0 clicks, it irks me that their marketing team did this.) According to my 25 year marketer buddy, Apple sells a feeling or part of being in an 'in-group'. I wonder if OP is a victim of this.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoBoggles the mind why people still fall for the iPad Pro as a serious work machine beyond writing meme. The fact that Final Cut launched on it recently and while its exporting you have to sit there leaving the app open you can't go do something else is the punchline of the decade for the lie that this is a serious machine. This is before we get into the comical evolution from "You just need the touchscreen" to "Actually physical keys are good for long typing" iPad and a keyboard case, to "oh actually a cursor would be useful to do real work" to full blown iPad + trackpad case awkward laptop form factor. Actually the more I think about how good the M1 MacBook is it's actually a crime these beautiful processors were locked up in that abysmal form factor and forced to do Facebook and match-3 games instead of real work.
- uuddlrlrbaba 3y agoI will say however that a plain iPad connected to a macbook in side car mode (second display) makes for a great portable dual screen work setup
- gofreddygo 3y agoTouchscreen = consumption. Physical keyboard = production. My stereotypical, effective perspective of digital productivity. right now I'm on a touchscreen device fighting that sorry excuse for a keyboard to type; I'm in consumption mode. Not fooling myself.
- 8note 3y agoTouchscreen = navigation and manipulation
- kcplate 3y ago> Boggles the mind why people still fall for the iPad Pro as a serious work machine beyond writing meme Depends on your definition of “serious work”. I don’t write much code anymore, but I can definitely do my entire job using my iPad Pro. I have pretty much done my job for the last couple weeks while managing a family medical situation with multiple back and forth to hospital each day using my iPad. Built in cellular, a small and very light form factor even with the Logitech folio touch case I added, which is completely comfortable to work on…and I can pull it from my sling bag and be up and running in about 3 seconds. Frankly if I needed access to my main rig back on my desk, Parallels Access is more than sufficient to accomplish that need, but I rarely finding myself needing to use it.
- fatfox 3y agoAn expensive mistake, given that a Macbook Air comes with all the equipment the author had to buy extra.
- ako 3y agoI have a MacBook Pro m1, with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. All of these can be reused with my iPad Air m1. For desktop use I need to purchase exactly the same equipment as for the iPad. The keyboard, Nuphy air 75, can easily switch between devices, same for the Logitech mouse. And with the display plugged into the iPad using usb c, there really isn’t that big if a difference between the MacBook and iPad when using it. The MacBook 16” is really heavy, so I mostly use it at my desk. But it’s too heavy for the couch so that is where I use my iPad.
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago> But if you need to run Xcode, VSCode, WebStorm, or Intellij than as far as I can tell the iPad is a no go. > It's expensive. After buying a powerful pro model, a decent keyboard, and a pencil the price ended up being MORE than a laptop I could have used for even more coding activities. 5m of research could have shown this... i think this product is only good for artists who needs a specific ipad app or someone who really needs a writing device to use with Apple specific app only. or if you can expense it at work.
- musicale 3y ago> 5m of research could have shown this... Indeed > i think this product is only good for artists who needs a specific ipad app or someone who really needs a writing device to use with Apple specific app only. or if you can expense it at work. Procreate (with the Apple pencil) is definitely a killer app for the iPad. The iPad is also amazing for musicians, particularly in terms of the wide variety of excellent synth (Animoog, Sunrizer, Korg and Moog apps...) and music production apps (Gadget, Cubasis, Logic...) And it's great for sheet music (ForScore). It's a nice gaming device as well. I particularly appreciate card games like Monster Train or digital board games like Ticket to Ride, but there are also some great RPGs, strategy games, action games, Apple Arcade, and many games with controller support. Although I've written code on it (Swift Playgrounds, Pythonista...) and have enjoyed writing text in landscape mode (Pages), the iPad's creative/fun apps are the ones that make me keep coming back to it. That and reading stuff on the web, and magazines in Apple News+. Netflix looks surprisingly good on the iPad screen, but the 4:3 aspect ratio isn't a perfect match for modern shows or movies. It's also my gym youtube player. Sadly the duolingo iOS app is marred by excessive ad interruptions and an energy system, but the web app works well on a touchscreen.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoOf everything I've tried, the ipad is still by far my favourite media consumption device. Browsing the web using touch is an absolute joy and the thin, large screen form factor is really convenient. It's just a shame they're so expensive and fragile; I'm waiting a few years now before I can justify buying another one.
- dfaslkjsavjkl 3y agoI agree it's probably not a great machine to do serious coding on but it's very strange there's no mention of online IDEs like Cloud 9. I don't know if Cloud 9 works on iPads but surely you could find one of the online environment/cloud IDEs that does.
- at_ 3y agoHa! I made this exact same mistake. I think I lasted less than a week. It's the abstraction of the file system that did it for me. Something deeply unserious about it.
- avidphantasm 3y ago> Performance is snappy and battery life is excellent. I find that the battery life when using the Magic Keyboard on my M1 11” Pro is much worse than without. It’s really not much better than the battery life of my 14” M1 Pro. I didn’t buy an iPad primarily or even secondarily for coding, but thought it might be nice to do so on occasion (e.g. to learn new things). However the biggest problem is that iPadOS is just too limited. If I could just run a Linux VM, that would be great. The hardware is capable, but the OS is hobbled.
- kkirsche 3y agoiPads are amazing for certain professional tasks: - Artists (still or motion) - Writing (or related tasks like Editing) - Mobile roles (sales, aspects of healthcare such as patient record accessibility, etc) But, even in these cases with there is good alignment, you still lose productivity over a more traditional setup, usually due to restrictions around file management, keyboard shortcuts (usually due to “less than” applications not that the machine is incapable), security (what happens to data on the device if it’s lost or stolen), and window management (if you end up needing multiple monitors for your iPad is that really the best tool?) I wish and want the iPad to be a true professional machine, but it’s not. It’s an amazing supplementary machine though as a reference screen, drawing pad, media consumption (e.g., tutorials), etc. I guess I don’t understand how you end up believing it’ll be the best fit if you’ve used one in the past 3-5 years.
- data-ottawa 3y agoI just want to add if you do try external monitors, the experience is subpar. You can't select which audio output to use, there's no clamshell mode, there are no real mouse settings for scrolling or secondary buttons, and some apps don't allow you to go full screen on a larger display. Even apps you'd expect to work great like the Affinity suite just sort of don't function on a monitor.
- makeitdouble 3y agoDisclaimer I code for the web, so I wouldn't be affected by the SwiftUI part. Trying to make the iPad thing work for almost 10 years, I finally gave up and bought a Surface Pro (7 first, and upgraded to 8). People use to joke about the length iPad user go to execute simple tasks. Like logging to a remote server to reboot it. You can do it on an iPad, you just need an SSH app, share your keys with it, and you're done. Then you push a bit further to check out some git repo, change it and push it, and have your server update. But you're probably three apps down the line at this point, they can't really share a common working directory in the way you expect it to work as files are managed individually, there is the backgrounding issues etc. You can make most things work, but through piles of hacks, workflow glue, paying for many more external services or basically moving everything remote, out of the iPad. At some point I had a RPi stuck to the iPad to locally ssh into it. Or you spend the same amount of effort and frustration, but on Windows, on a machine that has none of the silly limitations, can run an actual linux subsystem locally, Docker if you want to, a full VSCode available offline and any other real pro tool you need. Basically, for the same amount of pulling hairs a Surface Pro actually delivers where the iPad always falls short in some way.
- cobertos 3y agoI used to use Surface Pros, but I switched to a Dell Latitude 2-in-1 to get an external eGPU (w/ Thunderbolt 3 before Surface Pro added it) I like it so much more. It's a little thicker, but it's cheaper, it's repairable (I've replaced the battery twice), and it supports Linux better. I love having a Surface-like that runs Linux
- SyrupThinker 3y agoNot making any statement regarding the mentioned workflow issues (I mostly agree with them), I really like iSH [1] for this sort thing. It’s a “good enough” solution for the “I just quickly need to do something in a terminal” problems. And because it’s an x86 Alpine Linux it can even run simple binaries if needed. But for me it still couldn’t replace a dedicated laptop for proper tasks. [1]: https://github.com/ish-app/ish https://github.com/ish-app/ish
- positus 3y ago
- PointyFluff 3y ago[dead]
- retskrad 3y agoIf we look at Apple's quarterly earnings, the iPad brings in roughtly the same amount of revenue per quarter as the Mac. It's even better than the Mac because it brings even more recurring revenue through in-app purchases from App Store. The problem is, the iPad is competing for talent and resources inside Apple. It's sandwiched between the iPhone, which is arguably the most successful business product of all time, and the Mac, which is necessary for making apps for all of Apple's platforms and it's the platform of choice of software developers in Silicon Valley. Mac gives Apple street cred in the tech world. The iPad is poor at doing iPhone things and poor for doing Mac things. It's fantastic at note taking with the pencil, reading and annotating PDF's and watching content. For those things, it's much better than the other 2. The tablet form factor has it's strengths and weaknesses. Seems like Apple is happy where it sits in the line-up. It's serving its purpose as another product to protect the iPhone moat.
- mrcwinn 3y agoThe iPad has been mostly uninteresting since its release for anything more than consumption or sending emails. And now with the MacBook Air, I’m happily selling my iPad Pro and never looking back. To paraphrase Logan Roy: these are not serious products.
- ohgodplsno 3y ago>The #1 reason I started to consider buying an iPad a few years ago was for one thing, and one thing only: to read coding books. Considering the sheer price of an iPad Pro, you could have just... bought the books. Quite a few of them too.
- secondcoming 3y agoI was absolutely gutted when I discovered that Compiler Explorer [0] didn't work on my iPad + ridiculously expensive keyboard [0] https://godbolt.org https://godbolt.org
- jhoechtl 3y agoI used to work for a University. We did somewhat consultancy-near work for public administration. Administration approached us to write a paper/report, praising the benefits of mobile devices, specifically iOS Pads for "innovation work". After analysis of the typical work been, my conclusion was stick with laptops. Only top management is directing, others create by entering text into a device. They need a proper keyboard. My advice was put down and numerous Pads have been ordered. Workforce increased steadily because suddenly it became apparent that someone has to do the work. Sure, that was not the only reason, would need to to a proper sensitivity analysis. Was a personal victory but a sad day for the tax payer.
- Dave3of5 3y agoYeah of course it was. In terms of business work you can do on an iPad it's really send emails, take teams/slack/zoom calls, write documents, create spreadsheets. That's really about it actual coding needs done on a laptop/desktop.
- la_oveja 3y agoTriple A game on the M1? OP what drugs are you taking?
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- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoSo the main culprit seems to be a small screen size. What if there was a contraption to hold the device closer to the eyes, so it takes the same visual space as a 32" monitor from a distance. There are enough pixels.
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- paxys 3y agoOnly the people really drinking the Apple kool aid ever thought of the iPad as a "Pro" machine. You had to do like 5 minutes of online research to see how idiotic all their marketing around the device is. Sure, they put a faster processor in it, but everything else around it (including the software itself) is still the same as you would get in an entry level $300 iPad or a smartphone. So why pay like a thousand dollars more for an M2 chip that you can't really use? Really the only smart iPad purchase is the cheapest one to be used for stuff like browsing the web and watching movies on the go.
- kristianpaul 3y agoI bought mine for coding and ended treating it like a journal and kinda learned how to draw as well. Recently after installing iSH finally got a known CLI environment (mainly ssh client) which is not fully functional for me (mostly the lack of habit) but it has potential.
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- mark_l_watson 3y agoI don’t argue at all with the negative comments here about iPad coding. That said, I am happy coding using a mosh client (Blink), tmux, a large VPS that is always on, and a really nice Emacs setup on my VPS. Separately, I like the Working Copy git app. I use my iPad Pro a lot for writing and research (and of course entertainment media) and always being able to instantly get to a tmux screen on my server is very nice. Sometimes I use a large external monitor with StageManager window manager, but usually I just use my iPad, with or without a keyboard. So I don’t advise other people trying to code on an iPad, since I like Emacs oriented coding, my iPad Pro works fine for me.
- joshstrange 3y agoIn other news bananas don't work well as cars. I love my Apple products but you really need to know which device is best for which job. A M2 iPad Air 12.9" and a M2 MacBook Air 13" are the /same price/. I cannot fathom why you would think an iPad is a serious programming/development platform, it just isn't and there isn't anyone saying it is. Yes you can develop "on it" (normally by SSH-ing elsewhere) but it just doesn't work well in that role. Again, I own just about every product Apple has put out but when I'm on an iPad it's consumption/gaming device, if I want to do anything serious at all (even replying to a comment where I might want to list my sources) I pull out my MacBook, it's just heads and shoulders better at basic shit like copy/paste/multi-app/multi-window.
- jjice 3y agoThe author seems to mention things that are close to it, but I could never write code on a machine that I don't have full terminal access (in a mostly unrestricted way) to. The idea that I can't have a terminal to access everything I need and now I have to be forced into a specific playground app is absolutely a dream killer. The fact that I'd need a separate development environment that I need to connect to over the internet to be able to have the computing flexibility/freedom that I _should_ have on my machine just means that that machine isn't good for development, for me, but probably for most devs.
- Cshelton 3y agoSo I love the IPad Pro form factor. In all seriousness, now that the Ipad runs the same chips (I believe) as the MacBooks, what is preventing the option to just run MacOS on the Ipad? Is there a technical limitation still or is it just Apple segregating the OS to different product lines?
- iambateman 3y agoThe average real person's work is nothing like the average HN person's work. It's like comparing a Toyota Corolla to a dump truck. I'm sure the iPad Pro is just fine or better for the vast majority of real people's computing needs.
- kapperchino 3y agoiPad pros are such good media consumption devices, and also very good note taking devices, you can draw diagrams and also use apps like obsidian.
- eurekin 3y agoHe could've gotten a switch
- hnburnsy 3y ago"What's a computer?" Apple iPad Pro TV Commercial - What's a Computer? [2017] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE
- Cupprum 3y agoI am a cloud developer and i must say i quite like the ipad experience. I have a server, which runs coder[1] (basically vscode). I also tried to play around with the vs code tunnels, but they did not feel very stable. Because it doesnt have public IP i access it using Tailscale[2]. I especially like the pen, which allows for nice notes and also diagrams. The other nice thing is, that even when i work from some place with bad wifi. I can still download and upload large files because the server is connected to optics. [1] - https://coder.com/ https://coder.com/ [2] - https://tailscale.com/ https://tailscale.com/
- andix 3y agoThe iPad is awesome for reading, browsing the web, playing games and texting. It can be used to some extent for work, like taking notes or using some business related (web) apps. But it just can't replace a general purpose Windows/Linux/macOS laptop. It just can't, it's not designed for that. Some marketers try to position it for that, but that's another story.
- dubeye 3y agoI love ipads but they are 100% for consumption, but productive work can involve consumption, reading pdfs etc. But otherwise I've given up even trying to use the pencil productively. Still love it though and expect to love vision pro for similar reasons
- chunk_waffle 3y ago> If you're a sysadmin working mainly in SSH terminals, or if you have access to a browser-based cloud development environment, then I could see the iPad fitting into a workflow, especially if you want to pair it with an external monitor of USB-C to HDMI. Honestly, if that's your workflow just get a Chromebook with LTE
- eterevsky 3y agoWell, if you also want to use it in your spare time and you like iOS apps, it could theoretically work.
- bartq 3y agoUntil recently I owned both MacBook Pro 16 M1 Max and iPad Pro 12.9 with magic keyboard. I love MacBook Pro 16 for work either on desk with connected big display or on laptop stand. Occasionally I use it as a notebook flat on the desk, but don't really like it long term, it forces you to look down which is not comfortable. But I HATE MBP16 to use as a LAPtop, it's too big, I can stand it maybe for 30min, max 1h. So here comes iPad Pro 12.9 - lightweight (maybe not that light including Magic Keyboard), but it's great to use in laptop way, on chair, in bed etc. Great to browse web, scroll through videos and write notes or emails. I liked this form factor so much that I started to figure out how to make it a coding machine. That's problematic of course, so I ended up buying paid terminal App in App Store to connect over ssh/mosh to some server/other machine and use terminal with tmux/nvim etc. Installed nerdfonds, started using TUIs and it was working pretty well. But, I hate terminals for long term real work. I want to use heavy UI debuggers, click around/browse, move etc, my work is not only inserting text. I considered buying Asus Zenbook s13 OLED and install Linux on it to have two devices to use depending on my mood and physical position I wanna have. But, first, Zenbook is on Intel/Ryzen which means heat and fan noise, two, there are high risks my linux setup will require tweaks and care which I'm not interested in. In summary: I bought base MacBook Air 13 M2 and use it as couch/cafe machine as alternative to MPB 16. So I have 3 Apple devices. Which is... fine?
- bartq 3y agoOne more thing about iPad: I think it has the best on the market form factor, see pictures how magic keyboard elevates the iPad device which makes it's floating in the air a bit. I want to have the same for other laptops, because when you type on normal laptop in LAPTOP position, your fingers stand in your eyesight covering bottom part of the screen which is atrocious. AND: computer is in the screen which makes keyboard always cool. The same as in Surface Pro.
- drumhead 3y agoI remember that cringe commercial Apple made where the girl asks "what's a computer?".
- m3kw9 3y agoEverything is sandboxed that’s for starters, so your flow of files would have to take extra detour to get around that.
- FloatArtifact 3y agoI love the hardware of the iPad pro, however iOS is holding it back. Particularly sharing between apps is extremely frustrating. If users had the 'option' for a proper file system granting access to scope storage, this would go a long way to making workflows possible.
- gcanyon 3y agoWell, yeah -- anything involving text on iOS is far from optimal, so buying an iPad Pro for: email, blogging, creative writing, memo-writing for work, working in spreadsheets, document creation in general; is a mistake. I read a commentary years back about Google's social efforts. The author blamed Google's failings on the author's assumption that no one at Google actually used their social products. For comparison, it's obvious that Google uses gmail throughout the company, and therefore has practical insight and inherent motivation to make it usable. I've been saying for many years: I am 100% convinced there is no one at Apple who lives and works on an iPad (small caveat: without having it permanently tethered to a keyboard). 1. Text selection is awful: it takes an eon to select a word in text on iOS compared with double-clicking a word on Mac. 2. God help you if the insertion point is just a character or two away from where you need it: you either have to do the long-press on the keyboard, then carefully drag to correct it, or tap somewhere else completely and then tap where you want it. 3. If iOS thinks it knows where you want the insertion point, it thinks it knows better than you where the insertion point should go. See (2). 4. Selecting large amounts of text is a huge pain. 5. The touch keyboard just isn't viable for use at scale. I could go on, but it's just a rant and no one at Apple is reading this, so I'll stop there. Apple, if you do happen to read this and want to fix this, hire me!
- _fat_santa 3y ago> 2. God help you if the insertion point is just a character or two away from where you need it: you either have to do the long-press on the keyboard, then carefully drag to correct it, or tap somewhere else completely and then tap where you want it. I don't know if anyone remembers but back in 2012ish there was a jailbreak tweak in Cydia that allowed you to move the cursor by swiping on your keyboard. It was really intuitive as you don't have to lift your fingers off the keyboard and I remember asking myself why this wasn't just part of iOS. Apple never added that feature to iOS and I still miss it. Not sure how it would have worked today with keyboard swiping but I wish apple let you switch between "swipe to type" and "swipe to move cursor".
- david_allison 3y ago> I wish apple let you switch between "swipe to type" and "swipe to move cursor". Unsure if you know: you can press and hold the space bar to enable text navigation by swiping.
- carloscabanero 3y agoIm Carlos from Blink Shell, mentioned in a few comments here. Dropped this comment in the thread but thought about leaving my 2c here too as this is something I have been thinking about a lot. Usage and expectations have been changing a lot for these devices: - At first (iPad2 & 3 years), for those who already had remote machines of some kind, the goal was to simply have a decent terminal on mobile devices to connect to them. The appeal was very clear and I think for a lot of people it offered a different context to do stuff. It still does. - Things start to grow with iPad/iPhone, Apple was heavily investing on the hardware, and that brought another wave of users. The goal changed, it was not enough to "connect" anymore, but to do real work from these devices, for hours. The talk was to replace your laptop with an iPad, may sound familiar. We thought this wave was going to be big... but it never really materialized. Blame it on lack of software? The OS? M1? ... - And so I think we are now on a third generation. I don't think the goal is to replace anything anymore. I see the next wave as a mix of the previous two. I want to work from anywhere, access my tools from wherever I am, access the code for my projects, pushing changes fast, etc. And it may be in my desktop computer, or in my coworker's laptop, on my iPad or my phone. Codespaces or in our case Blink Build are different approaches to do that. It is still getting started. I think we are entering a world similar to what Rob Pike mentioned in this interview (https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/). The idea is that "state" is not something that you carry all day with you, but it is provided to you when you need it, connecting applications and dev environments from anywhere. That "state" may not necessarily be the Cloud, it will be computers in your office, or powerful remote environments somewhere, etc... So yeah, if you were expecting Xcode, IntelliJ and XXX coming to an iPad and replacing your laptop, that may already be behind us and maybe even killed on phase 2. And although these apps may not play well in this new environment, it is worth questioning if it is more fault of the environment where we are headed or of the apps themselves. I want to think that Codespaces, Fleet, GitPod, Build, and your multiple machines wherever they are, will all play a part on that.
- goosedragons 3y agoI think Apple would rather people buy a MacBook and an iPad rather than just an iPad and so they've limited it to make that happen even if it means selling less iPads to begin with. They don't really seem to want to make great standalone products but want everything to be tied together which is why even doing something as simple as adding a single MP3 to your music library on an iPad is effectively impossible. Some of what they did with the iPad was a response to the success of the Microsoft Surface and I don't think it's something they actually wanted to do.
- synergy20 3y agoSerious coding machine has to be a Linux box IMHO. Unless you specifically code for MacOS or Windows platforms that is. WSL2 on Windows is fine, but why if I can have a full blown Linux directly. What surprised me is that, at CMU the so called top #1 CS university, its CS students are dominantly using MacOS and Windows, only 5% are using Linux, which puzzles me quite a bit. I guess other universities are the same patterns.
- wffurr 3y agoWith a remote workstation to actually build and run software on, an iPad / Android tablet almost works great as a thin client for a terminal. The biggest thing I missed on it were browser developer tools. The mobile browsers just don't have it. Needing a Mac to attach to it to run developer tools on just kills the "Pro" in iPad Pro for me. Maybe there's a decent third-party app for it now (Is Inspect Browser any good?), but there wasn't last time I tried it. Using a 14" M1 Pro now, which is the only thing work will issue to me. I pine for my 11" MacBook Air I had once upon a time.
- thih9 3y agoThis was a really useful read for me. Every now and then I want to try something similar, hoping that perhaps today coding on an iPad is a good experience. Now I won’t.
- koalacola 3y agosheer
- whalesalad 3y agofortunately these days an m2 air is more or less the exact thing most people want and need when it comes to an ultra portable dev machine. it's pretty much an ipad pro with a fixed keyboard and an unrestricted OS. I have owned a lot of computers in my life and if I were to rank them all and pick _one_ which I would have absolutely zero hesitation purchasing again it would be my m2 air. great keyboard, out of this world battery life, and rock solid performance so far. I dev remotely with vscode and have a couple of 2u servers in my basement so they do most of the heavy lifting - but the same situation exists w/ ipad dev process as well.