Well, although I've got admit that I haven't spent too much time looking into it, and also that I'm not familiar beyond a basic knowledge with Apple computers,

Well, although I've got admit that I haven't spent too much time looking into it, and also that I'm not familiar beyond a basic knowledge with Apple computers, I'm still unsure whether there is a sane way to get software of my own to run on ipads. Because without that, what's the point of using a computer? More specifically, we were given two ipads by the in-laws. And I think they could be very fun devices for our small-ish kids - I've got quite a few ideas for little programs that I could make for them to play around with or that could accompany stuff they learn in school. Of course, there's lots of educational software out there, but I don't like all of them for one, and also just as a matter of principal, I would find it very useful to be able to actually use these devices in the way I want, i.e., with small apps that cater exactly to my kids' interests and their parents' educational preferences. But as far as I can tell, it is super difficult to develop software for these devices, at least compared to the traditional ways of writting little programs: fire up editor, compile, debug, share. And by "share" I don't mean "deploy to the app store and await review". At some point I thought I had found the ultimate work-around: just write every "app" as a stand-alone HTML page instead. Sure, you'd have to do JavaScript or use something that compiles to it, but hey, webbrowsers are super-powerful today, so that certainly work for little kids' apps that I just want to develop quickly and that probably end up having a half-life of days or weeks at most... But no! Even that is not possible, it seems: you cannot open a local HTML page that's stored on the device in Safari on the ipad. To that's that. Again, I'm not an expert at all of this, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were functioning work-arounds to all of this. But the mere fact that you have to jump through hoops for something so simple is already such a big turn-off that I don't even feel like exploring possible alternatives. Such built-in hostility for DIY programmers who just want to create something for their own personal enjoyment really makes ipads pretty uninteresting devices for myself. And I kinda suspect for a lot of other hackers, too. Do you have any tips for me? Please post them!