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I am an avid iPad Pro user (on #3) but it took me making a concerted effort to unlearn over three decades of my understanding of what a computer is to me, my ol

I am an avid iPad Pro user (on #3) but it took me making a concerted effort to unlearn over three decades of my understanding of what a computer is to me, my old standby app favorites, and to be willing to force myself to use the new instead of leaning on the comfortable old. Prior to that I’ll admit that it was an entertainment device. Now it can basically serve all of my computing needs. What caused me to make the switch is the portability, battery, immediacy, and cellular option. For me it provides the utility of a smartphone and laptop, but with a better form factor I hated it at first but its use quickly became second nature. Caveat here is I no longer write code or require total configurability into the bowels of the machine…and to date, for me, I haven’t found a computing task that I need or want to do that it cannot handle.

futuraperdita 2y ago
I bought the iPad Pro 11 (M4) on its release day and did the same thing you did: throwing out what I knew to adjust to new paradigms. I regret its purchase. It is still fundamentally a device that cannot handle code-based workflows, although it's OK for some media creation. For software development, the canonical advice consists of excuses that rely on a "Pro" device to be a thin client. Remoting out to a workstation somewhere else defeats the purpose of having an M4 in the tablet itself. I can't even run a VM with native virtualization. A Chromebook with Crostini offers more functionality in this regard. You are also a consumer in another way: iOS revenue models are optimized for rent-seeking, whereas that is only partially true for macOS - even for Apple itself. As an example, I use Logic on the Mac and I pay for it once - Logic for iPad is subscription based. I don't hate the idea of the iPad overall - I have an iPad mini I use to read and mark up papers, and it's great for that.
- gessha 2y ago
  Yeah, I have a 2018 12.9 model and I haven’t really felt the need to upgrade. The tablet still feels snappy and all I do is draw, and markup papers. I tried programming on it but without a shell and proper file system API, what can you even do?
- kcplate 2y ago
  Yeah I am probably the perfect customer for it. It ticks all the boxes I need and I don’t mind the subscriptions. I also don’t get hung up on the whole “What ‘pro’ should mean” debate. I bought a new 11 pro M4 mainly for the screen and its usability in bright daylight, but I also don’t mind having excessive horsepower either. Rather have too much than not enough.

futuraperdita 2y ago

I bought the iPad Pro 11 (M4) on its release day and did the same thing you did: throwing out what I knew to adjust to new paradigms. I regret its purchase. It is still fundamentally a device that cannot handle code-based workflows, although it's OK for some media creation. For software development, the canonical advice consists of excuses that rely on a "Pro" device to be a thin client. Remoting out to a workstation somewhere else defeats the purpose of having an M4 in the tablet itself. I can't even run a VM with native virtualization. A Chromebook with Crostini offers more functionality in this regard. You are also a consumer in another way: iOS revenue models are optimized for rent-seeking, whereas that is only partially true for macOS - even for Apple itself. As an example, I use Logic on the Mac and I pay for it once - Logic for iPad is subscription based. I don't hate the idea of the iPad overall - I have an iPad mini I use to read and mark up papers, and it's great for that.

gessha 2y ago
Yeah, I have a 2018 12.9 model and I haven’t really felt the need to upgrade. The tablet still feels snappy and all I do is draw, and markup papers. I tried programming on it but without a shell and proper file system API, what can you even do?
kcplate 2y ago
Yeah I am probably the perfect customer for it. It ticks all the boxes I need and I don’t mind the subscriptions. I also don’t get hung up on the whole “What ‘pro’ should mean” debate. I bought a new 11 pro M4 mainly for the screen and its usability in bright daylight, but I also don’t mind having excessive horsepower either. Rather have too much than not enough.