you 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)
Does 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.
personally 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
You 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.
I use both hosted VSCode, Codespace as well as other web based software.
I also program from smart fridges, toasters and random garbage (for my own entertainment) because basically anything can open vscode.dev login to github and use a terminal.
saying "b-but my ipad can code" is insane if the definition of code is opening a browser. I can't believe I have to explain such a basic concept to an adult
Coding doesn't mean that you must have full fledged ide like intellij on local machine. Largest ipad screen is about same as old macbook air, and combined with keyboard it can be used as dev machine no problem.
basically any device can code. an ipad is definitely capable of that entry level definition of programming, there is definitely many workspaces like yours that mostly have cloud infrastructure and don't have any codebases small enough to fit on basically any laptop or desktop pc.
yes it would be nice if there were larger screen ipads, but also I think ipads are capable of some kind of escape hatch mode where they run macos locally. all of the woes of the iPad are caused by running iOS, not being too weak or made with bad hardware.
"Smart toaster" was an accidental feature of some Apple products.
I used to have a MBP laptop that basically doubled as a "smart" toaster, giving me something close to a sun burn if I used it on my lap. Even lap pads would warm to uncomfortable levels after a short usage time, until I found one with aerogel insulation.
I set up a codespace and hook up my M1 ipad to a thunderbolt dock for external display real estate. Just kidding! It's janky af.
If I'm using stage manager and on a video call, stage manager sometimes crashes.
The audio selection situation is silly. I have to use the airplay button (wtf?) to select the output I want if bluetooth headphones are part of the equation. Otherwise, I must plug my wired headset into the dock. Oh, but if you use wired headphones, the microphone has been eaten by the dock, so you need a wired mic, too. The ipad speakers no longer become usable when hooked up to the dock, at all.
Yes, I can and actually do code in the codespace, and can deploy code. But I could not have set that all up quickly with an ipad alone, I had help from my desktop machine to do a bunch of the heavy lifting.
>The #2 reason I considered the iPad was because Apple had announced at WWDC 2021 that their Swift Playgrounds app would be updated to support SwiftUI and be able to release complete iOS apps on Apple's AppStore.
I 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.
Exactly! 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.
It'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 )
I 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.
yeah I actually use the Lenovo Duet 5, its an excellent arm64 chromebook with with some of the best battery life I've ever had on a "laptop" (its a tablet hybrid)
They 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
I 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.
The MBA isn't a competitor in my mind. It loses SO MUCH by not supporting pen and touch while adding a bunch of unremovable bulk. The iPad is a better form factor and far more flexible it's just artificially handicapped.
An 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
I’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.
With 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.
In 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.
The issue is not courage. Apple knows that the use cases for the Macbook Air and the iPad Pro significantly overlap. So they use software limitations to avoid canibalising sells of one with the other even if it means making the iPad Pro a lesser product than it could be.
IMO it's not about running macOS on it but rather that there is a need for desktop-class features on iPad. Apple doesn't need to run macOS on iPad to add desktop-class features. I'd rather see those features added to iPadOS (as well as visionOS, which is clearly a derivative of iPadOS).
The hardware may be there, but the input models — touch vs. keyboard & mouse — are so fundamentally different that I think it makes sense to present different user experiences.
If apps are still handling files that way instead of being able to open documents from anywhere in your local files, iCloud Drive, it’s on the developer. Hasn’t been the case for years that this is the way files work, you should be able to save them to your Downloads folder (or elsewhere) and open them in whichever app you want.
That further proves my point about iOS/iPadOS's limitations. Why can't files be handled like on Linux/Windows/Android/macOS/etc. without having to use iCloud?
Edit: Goodnotes and Notability also have this annoyance.
I don't know about WebDAV but it does let you mount SMB shares.
If you need WebDAV I think Documents by Readdle will do it, and maybe even makes the share available to other apps though its File Provider. But I'm not sure what parts of Documents are subscription based now since I have a paid copy from before it went subscription.
It even has the option to keep a local copy of folders from network shares so you can use them offline, which is a pretty handy feature if you're working with large files or don't have a cellular iPad.
You don't need iCloud, in the Files app you explicitly have "iCloud Drive" and "On My <device_type>" as top-level root directories to save files, you can maintain everything local as you wish...
>If apps are still handling files that way instead of being able to open documents from anywhere in your local files, iCloud Drive, it’s on the developer.
Not a problem on a real operating system, everything just works. No need to pray the developer followed this years best practices instead of 3 years ago best practices just to use files in a sane manner. No need to beg a developer to fix it either, because the system was designed in a non-broken way to begin with.
I’d love to know what fantasy world you live in where developers don’t routinely fuck up basic functionality of operating systems by implementing custom versions of things like save & print dialogs.
Because let me tell you, it ain’t this one. Windows & Linux routinely run into this & per your rant… shouldn’t.
For me, after doing a bunch of evaluation I went with buying an old (and very cheap) 2nd hard Surface Pro 3 on Ebay to see if that could possibly do the job.
... and yep, it does even with just Windows on it. Technically Linux can be loaded onto these things, and apparently works pretty well. But, I never got around to trying that out.
About a year later I dropped the damn thing and completely shattered the screen. Still haven't replaced it, but mean to at some point. Again, not with an iPad, but probably a newer generation Surface Pro. And I'll put Linux on it this time. :)
My experience with Linux on on a SP wasn't great. The basic PC functionality is fine, but getting the pen and touch working required a custom kernel and a fair amount of effort. The input latency on the pen, combined with no good writing apps on Linux killed it for me.
Out of curiosity, what are the "good writing apps" on windows? When I last checked windows seemed to have exactly one note, android like 2 apps and iPad like 3 apps.
Concepts looks nice and I hadn't heard of it before. The freemium and/or subscription seems like a potential dealbreaker to me, but might be worth a try.
There's a few OneNote of course, Nebo, Noteshelf, Squid which is really an Android app. All of those are on iOS and Android too. Microsoft Journal I just discovered and seems alright.
I don't understand why a device can't just be for consumption of media. Why is everyone trying to force this to become a computer with an annoyingly complicated navigation UX and the rest of the ceaveats when using a complete OS.
If I ever have to worry about CPU usage or driver issues on my iPad I will be the one leaving. I bought an iPad NOT to work on it. It is my vacation device so work can never call me and ask me to do something quickly
I owned a Surface Go for two days before getting an iPad Mini.
What made me return it was the file save dialog. I bought a device to read and doodle on, two things I used to do on paper. I browse through my sketches by turning pages, and finish the activity by closing the (note)book. Procreate and Google Play Books work similarly.
After a whole day of installing updates and removing bloatware, the Surface wanted me to name and organise my drawings on a filesystem before I could do something else.
My goal was to draw and read, not to use a computer. The Surface wanted me to think about files and updates and the device’s state. My iPad Mini is a book with benefits, paper with tricks.
Yeah, I'm curious too. If you use a desktop Windows app you will of course run into that kind of thing but there is apps like Sketchable available that are like what's on the iPad. Even on the iPad you can run into file save dialogs, from what I remember Clip Studio Paint on the iPad is for better or worse Clip Studio Paint on the iPad file save dialogs and all.
12.9" pro's the best comic book reading device on the market, by a mile, AFAIK. Comfortable to hold, can display two-page spreads at very nearly full life-size.
It's great for PDFs and sheet music for similar reasons.
Gotta admit, though, if they made a 12.9" non-pro at least $200 cheaper than the 12.9" Pro, I'd have that instead. I don't need the horsepower.
If it is only "very nearly", wouldn't something larger like an s8 ultra be better? Also "by a mile" is a stretch. It might be better but all $1000+ tablets are reasonably close enough to be happy with any of them.
I've used a lot of Android tablets, low end to high, and developed software for them. They're awful. Crashy, glitchy, bad battery life. I don't think we'll see a true iPad competitor until/unless a new OS enters the market—Android's had a long time to get its shit together, and evidently just can't. Wish someone would give it a shot, because I'd love to see that market better-served.
5 years ago I would have mostly agreed with your statements about android tablets, but since then Samsung has created a family of very acceptable tablets imho.
Maybe I'll try one from their newer line at some point. I haven't had a big pile of Android test devices around me on the daily in about 4 years (the consistent "Android's finally good now!" cry with each Android release and major-vendor product launch, followed by that never turning out to be true, for the entire decade I was doing mobile dev before that, is why I'd assumed nothing would have changed by now) so it checks out if they have in-fact finally made a good one (the older Samsung tablets were... not good) I might have missed it.
Last time I was guided by "no really this higher-tier Android thing is finally good, actually" advice was about a year ago, with the Nvidia Shield, though, so I'm... hesitant.
If I see one in a store, I may poke at it, read some reviews, see how their app store's looking these days for categories I care about. Could use a second largish tablet for the kids—or maybe a new one for me, and they can have the big iPad full-time. Having just one decent vendor in the mobile market blows (fucking Apple still won't add multiple profiles/icloud-logins to iPadOS, so annoying) so I'd be thrilled to discover that's changed.
4:3 does happen, just coincidentally, to damn-near match the aspect ratio of a 2-page spread on a comic, too (~1.3 width/height on an open comic book, 1.333... for 4:3, 1.6 for 16:10) which means a larger screen in a wider ratio might not actually be any benefit (or not enough to justify the extra weight/unweildiness, perhaps) for that particular narrow use case.
Which, it's a very niche and specific thing, but still, if we're talking "what's the very best device for that exact thing, disregarding all other concerns", having a 4:3 screen ratio's an advantage over all the other common ones.
Because Apple doesn't allow macs to take that form factor.
There is a gap between iPads' convenience and macs' capabilities, we've all been pondering about when and how this gap will be filled, and it doesn't feel like it will ever happen.
Basically what is Apple's equivalent of a Surface Pro ? Until that question has an answer, some will be ranting about iPad OS being too restrictive and others lament the mac not getting touch support.
This is probably because those developers haven't added support for opening files in place, which has been available since iOS 9. There are a few other things (e.g. the way you call open/save dialogs) that need to be changed if you want to add support as well.
i like how we are talking about an OS that initially released in 2007, and only got support for "opening files in place" in 2015. What a time to be alive, we can open files in place and all..
gotta give apple credit, while the rest of the world is reduced to lowly CopyOnWrite, they took it one step further, with CopyOnRead.
in 2007 when ios first released, we had the ability to open files without insanities everywhere else. it was total insanity it was not possible, part of the apple thinking that you only do what they 100% say. Who would dare have some video file that isnt in itunes? well certainly not someone the mighty apple cares about. so this lead to movie players also having builtin ftp/smb/nfs clients/servers to be able to access your content, god forbid you could just have files.
so yeah, to have a 2007-vintage API be "legacy that cannot open files properly" is a joke, pretending that it is not, is the apple reality distortion field
If a given iPad app is still using a legacy API eight years later, that seems worth complaining about. It might not be Apple's fault so much as it is the app developer's fault, although it is at least indirectly Apple's fault for not introducing a proper file management API from the very outset.
I had a similar experience, I had iPads years ago, and recently got one again assuming it would be great, but it's just the same as years ago, really needs a proper os upgrade
It 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.
You 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"
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.
I 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)
the 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.
In 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.
Is 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.
I 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.
There's also Blink [1] which includes a local shell (limited), ssh and mosh support, and comes with a local-first, but remote-dependent, vscode implementation. Works with vscode.dev, code-server (the coder.com and microsoft version), coder.com etc. Not free but a free TestFlight versions available if you accept to be a beta tester of sorts.
I've had moderate success using it, but overall the code-server experience has been a bit lacking, in part due to languages I use, in part due to lots of software still assuming a local-first development environment (code-server/coder.com help with this by e.g. proxying http ports in your dev environment). A real IDE/code editor running on a MacBook is still way superior.
To save anyone else the trouble, after walking through a fairly broken build process I discovered that the open source version is very much not in sync with the App Store version. I'm not sure exactly how old it is (the last real commit is a year old) but it lacks most of the current App Store functionality and has various issues with the terminal rendering incorrectly. Blink may have been FOSS at one point but it isn't anymore. The App Store version is $8 per month which is a bit steep for my needs since things like iSH [1] exist and are actually FOSS.
Yeah, it works okay. I've been using it with GitHub Codespaces[1] in the past, which is not only VSCode Web, but also allows you to run your code (and any terminal commands really) in GitHub's cloud.
You get 60 2-CPU-core hours for free each month, it comes in pretty handy if you just want to quickly code something on the go, and don't have a real laptop / PC available.
Actually, I can use vim on a-Shell (or Textastic, or Blink’s VS Code copy) to edit Working Copy repositories. There is a lot more flexibility than most people realize.
I 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?
Or, 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.
I haven’t used a Linux laptop in a while. Is there any that’s competitive to MBP M2 in terms of processing power and battery life?
I’ve been working on an MBP M1 for ~1 years now and I’ve yet to hear the fan working or feel the heat (to be fair, it’s a work laptop and most development happens in the cloud). If only for this reason I find it hard to buy anything other than MBPs for work, unfortunately.
I got a surface a few months ago and have been impressed with build quality. I’ve actually never had problems with dell or Lenovo laptops either in terms of ruggedness however I don’t know that I’m actually properly testing that attribute. I don’t view any of my computer usage as rugged tbh.
I just like using / writing code on macOS more than windows, not much else to it.
> Is there any that’s competitive to MBP M2 in terms of processing power and battery life?
Sadly, nope. And I'm not even on a MBP M2, just a maxed out MBA M1, The best laptop I ever had. Processing power is more than enough for what I develop, and after more than two years I can still easily work my day with a single charge. Meanwhile, coworkers suffer with Dell laptops running different Linux distros: power management problems, battery life is tiny, fans blowing like they're hoovers. Oh... and they all have more expensive laptops than me.
My work laptop is a MBP M1 Max, all development is local and I've never heard the fan or feel the heat like my previous work MBP Intel (Core i9). That machine sucked, it had the power but I could never be work for more than 2-3h away from a power outlet. The M1 Max lasts 7-10h even when doing Google Meet video calls (the biggest power drain I experience, much more than development running multiple containers with Rancher Desktop).
Nothing compares for battery life except really slow ARM laptops like Samsung makes.
But if 10 hours is enough I think ASUS Zenbooks and the ProArt line are pretty good Linux machines. They have faster GPUs and betters screens (OLED) too.
Processing power: plenty. Battery life: not really but who cares? Just plug in. The real question is why you would want a $2,000 laptop to run as a terminal emulator.
I'm interested and not trying to be sarcastic. Which non Apple laptop is arm64 with endless battery, good build quality, and descent performances at a fair price?
my main computer is a Lenovo Duet 5 tablet/laptop hybrid. It gets more than 24 hours of battery life and is completely silent, runs cold and has an excellent OLED screen. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for.
its $500 and includes the kickstand and keyboard
I did mention in my previous comment that the m1/m2 are still faster than other arm64 devices but for the web development tasks that I'm doing a chromebook is better suited anyways due to the less locked down environment and the ability to run full linux apps.
macos is okay for development but I'm not targeting iOS so its benefits are wasted on me. (I still got an m2 Pro mac mini with 32gb of ram to play with machine learning but its turned out to be too slow to compete with even a rtx3060)
Thanks. That’s an interesting device. I ignored devices running ChromeOS. Of course it’s a lot slower than a M1 on the paper but I believe you when you say it’s good enough.
Are you also "sublinear"? Because that's who was being asked, as far as I see.
In any case, the claim that any ARM laptop before the M1 had excellent performance is new to me and I'd be interested in knowing what non-Apple ARM laptops exist that are competitive with M1/M2 Macbooks in battery life, heat generation, performance and utility for developers. I'm in the market for a new laptop.
It's not quite as fast but the Thinkpad X13s Snapdragon? Fanless, lighter than the 13" MBA, battery life seems good from reviews, offers M.2 storage and 5G if you need it. There is also an ARM version of the Surface Pro 9 which offers an iPad Pro like form factor but without the restrictions. Admittedly the current ARM PC offerings aren't as fast but they aren't terrible either.
MacBookPros have been pretty much for the past decade+ the undisputed leader of rugged hardware design. Nobody else to my knowledge sells machined unibody laptops at a competitive price point. (Only half jokingly posting this hoping somebody can't help to attempt to prove me wrong)
Old unibody MacBooks could do that. The lack of choice now is due to a non-standard architecture, which the Mac Pro seems to confirm (not “unibody”, but still the RAM is not extensible)
Machined unibody laptops aren't rugged hardware. They look nice, and are reasonably robust to minor wear and tear, but they definitely aren't "rugged". Put enough force info the body to bend it, and it's never the same again. A machined unibody like a MacBook offers no damping or shock protection to the boards inside.
Real ruggedized laptops, e.g. those sold by Panasonic or Dell, look very different. It's like the glass-versus-plastic question in phone screens. Glass looks nice, and withstands day-to-day abrasion better. But the stress necessary to shatter glass is way less than that of plastic.
You’re right in that they are not ruggedized. But for “normal” laptop use, it works very well and looks good too. However, if I were to do a geological survey or something like that, I might not use MacBook.
Compared to the cheap plastic laptops HP, Dell etc sell they sure are! For many years I've dropped my MBPs, MBAs, and ipads and have only had one failure, yes a broken ipad screen.
But "undisputed leader"? No there are plenty of more rugged devices used in construction, the military etc.
Sounds like you've got a guardian angel! I wouldn't trust my Macbook to take a spill from waist height, even compared to a plastic HP/Panasonic machine. My ex went through so many broken iPhones that he considered Applecare an operational expense.
They're machines that hold up well in backpacks, but hearing "rugged" used to describe them is funny when a cup of coffee could decommission the whole thing in seconds.
I use MacBook Pro for these reasons: a) Availability of high-quality native applications. b) I like macOS. Good GUI with a Unix underneath. (Installing Homebrew and GNU Coreutils makes it much fresher.) c) The hardware is really nice.
If I was a heavy gamer, perhaps I would consider Windows.
There’s one thing I miss from Linux though: Native support for cgroups. I can live without it, but it sure would be convenient.
As surprising as you may find it, Apple doesn't have a monopoly on good hardware. The stereotype of any non-macbook being a toaster is practically a strawman at this point (while people are so quick to forget the atrocity of the i9 macbook).
The M1/M2 chips are just that good. My old 2015 Macbook turned into a toaster/jet engine if I only looked at it funny, macbooks between 2015 and 2020 were garbage, crappy keyboards, crappy USB ports and the thermal energy monsters that are Intel chipsets. It only really changed with the 2020 Apple silicon laptops, and they are just that good. A blazingly fast workhorse with outrageous battery runtime that rarely ever gets hot, and I think I heard the fan maybe once? since I bought it 3 years ago.
I'm sure there are great laptops out there, but at least in my company the other Dell or Lenovo (including Thinkpad) machines just don't stack up to that.
Show me the laptop that is as good or better than the new 15” MacBook Air at the same price. Needs the same or better specs, build quality, and local in-person support (i.e. a worldwide dense network of retail stores). Good luck!
Dell XPS spec’d to meet the 15” MacBook Air requires the nicer screen which makes it $2,000, the screen is higher resolution than the MBA but it’s 100 nits less bright. MacBook Air is $1,700 after adding memory and storage to meet the XPS. The MBA is $300 cheaper for a laptop that is thinner, the same or better specs in almost every category, miles better better build quality (plastic trash vs aluminum) and actually has a network of stores throughout the world. So nowhere close to the 15” MBA, but I appreciate you trying.
The T15 isn’t available so I’ll look at the T16. The cheapest T16 is $1,570. The comparable MacBook Air is $1,500. The T16 has a 300 nits low resolution screen, slow DDR4 RAM (didn’t know they made RAM this slow these days), and is made of cheap plastic. And again, no worldwide network of stores to support your device.
So you’ve really failed to come anywhere close to the specs, build quality or support system of a MacBook. And this is without considering the huge advantages you get with Apple silicon over intel.
Mac hardware is better though. My HP Elitebook from last year is a pretty good device: good screen, solid build, nice glass touchpad, really great keyboard. But the screen resolution is only 1080p, the battery lasts for 6 hours and the fan noise is meh. These are quite expensive premium Windows laptops that cost somewhere between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro.
Overall I'm happy with my Windows laptop considering that the competition for a Windows laptop is not better, but MacBooks are really a lot better with battery life, screen quality and fan noise.
That's what I did. I have a HP Elitebook that runs Linux + Windows 11 (really, Windows is not the Windows from 10 years ago, developer experience is pretty great these days, I much prefer it to macOS). For iOS app development I have a Mac Mini.
Nothing special indeed about a Macbook Air M1. I need to hear my machine working, but this thing does not even have a cooling fan. I can always put on noise-cancelling headphones if my machine sounds like it's about to lift off. Not to mention Apple Silicon is a joke, the Threadripper in my almost mobile workstation beats it any time. Meanwhile the battery cannot even last a standard Earth day, so why not just stick to power outlets?
All kidding aside, the (lack of) ports and the non-upgradability can be meaningfully criticized, but then again a lot of competitors are copying those anti-features. But to say there is nothing special about these machines... well, maybe not to you. Some people hate noisy laptop fans, and this total silence is a game changer.
Remember the 'What's a computer Ad' of iPad Pro from 2017?
I'm not saying that OP fell for that marketing and is gullible, but Apple marketed the iPad Pro as a replacement for a computer, so it may not be completely unreasonable to expect a reasonably similar experience on an iPad after 6 years and the n number of iPad generations that went by.
> Apple marketed the iPad Pro as a replacement for a computer
Nah, they were using an extremely narrow definition of computer, one where you can buy and consume stuff and do "cool" social media with the device. If that's not your use case you want a different kind of computer.
The current marketing copy for the 10th gen iPad on Apple's website says
"Get things done — all on one device. Take notes, collaborate, and work seamlessly between apps. From pie charts to pie recipes, iPad is designed for all kinds of productivity."
and from the iPad Pro site:
"Enhanced ways to work. iPadOS 16 gives you powerful new ways to do more than ever. New desktop-class apps make your workday more productive. Resize and overlap apps to multitask like a pro with Stage Manager. And hook up an external display, with resolutions up to 6K, for even more room for all your apps"
They are clearly marketing these things as do everything productivity devices even though in practice it's pretty bogus especially if you need any sort of programming functionality. Heck they even show an image of Swift Playgrounds being used!
I don’t. That’s the point. I want to have device that adjusts to my needs instead of keeping a zoo of specialized devices.
iPad Pro has powerful enough hardware to be a full blown productivity machine when connected to a keyboard, but convenient enough interface to be a media consumption device in bed.
"Zoo" is quite the exaggeration; we're talking two devices instead of one. I'd rather have an iPad Pro for the bedroom (!) and a high-powered desktop Mac for the office than something that tries to be both of those things and ends up failing at both.
True, but by the same argument, you still need a house to put it all in.
(To address the downvote: I consider a phone to be a different class of product, in the context of this discussion. Nobody is seriously talking about coding on their phone.)
> I'd rather have an iPad Pro for the bedroom (!) and a high-powered desktop Mac
That’s not what people in the thread suggest though. They’re talking about MacBook Air. Which is also a nice point, good luck bringing your beefy desktop Mac anywhere with you.
The iPad is the only Apple device with a 13"(roughly A4) portable rotating screen and touch support.
A Macbook Air doesn't fit in that category and is sub-par to read A4 formated docs. Arguably a Surface Pro (or Z13 Flow) would be a better choice if programming is also something you want to do.
Or get both? As a research mathematician, my iPad Pro is for drawing mathematics and reading papers, to get me away from a 32" screen when I'm not coding. The MacBook Air is for when I can't be at my 32" screen.
Coding intricate data structures is like teaching the computer chess. It helps if you understand chess. I can't imagine understanding what I want my code to do, without an involved process of drawing everything repeatedly in many variations.
Someday there will be an iPad drawing editor like Emacs, arbitrarily scriptable using further drawings, never putting down the Apple Pencil. We're still at the earliest stages of "word processing" technical art; this evolution is still to come.
I 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.
For 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.
It'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.
This 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.
Yeah, 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.
I 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.
I'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.
Ipad 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'
While 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
- 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.
What 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
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[ 393 ms ] story [ 5508 ms ] threadxcode 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)
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
just stand in your kitchen and use the browser on your fridge to open vscode.dev! ergonomics like nothing else <3
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.
I also program from smart fridges, toasters and random garbage (for my own entertainment) because basically anything can open vscode.dev login to github and use a terminal.
saying "b-but my ipad can code" is insane if the definition of code is opening a browser. I can't believe I have to explain such a basic concept to an adult
Coding doesn't mean that you must have full fledged ide like intellij on local machine. Largest ipad screen is about same as old macbook air, and combined with keyboard it can be used as dev machine no problem.
basically any device can code. an ipad is definitely capable of that entry level definition of programming, there is definitely many workspaces like yours that mostly have cloud infrastructure and don't have any codebases small enough to fit on basically any laptop or desktop pc.
yes it would be nice if there were larger screen ipads, but also I think ipads are capable of some kind of escape hatch mode where they run macos locally. all of the woes of the iPad are caused by running iOS, not being too weak or made with bad hardware.
They are doing this because Google has a gigantic monorepo, not because it’s some platonic ideal way to code.
Local development is still the gold standard, if you can do it. One obvious benefit: it works even if you’re offline or have a bad connection.
I used to have a MBP laptop that basically doubled as a "smart" toaster, giving me something close to a sun burn if I used it on my lap. Even lap pads would warm to uncomfortable levels after a short usage time, until I found one with aerogel insulation.
If I'm using stage manager and on a video call, stage manager sometimes crashes.
The audio selection situation is silly. I have to use the airplay button (wtf?) to select the output I want if bluetooth headphones are part of the equation. Otherwise, I must plug my wired headset into the dock. Oh, but if you use wired headphones, the microphone has been eaten by the dock, so you need a wired mic, too. The ipad speakers no longer become usable when hooked up to the dock, at all.
Yes, I can and actually do code in the codespace, and can deploy code. But I could not have set that all up quickly with an ipad alone, I had help from my desktop machine to do a bunch of the heavy lifting.
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.
even the vision pro, seem really disappointing that its essentially running iPadOS with ARKit
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.
you can't stop us all, apple!
Curious, is that with Apple's own apps or third-party ones? Or is this specifically because of how iPad-based workflows work?
The 3rd-party apps often come with SDKs which phone home just to initialize, that's where big startup times come from usually.
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
Tell HN: Water is wet
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
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.
TV's are cheaper than iPads these days
I'm not sure that's the case—Apple has generally not been afraid to cannibalize sales of their devices by their own devices.
Give PDF Viewer a look if you want better file handling: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pdf-viewer-annotation-expert/i...
Edit: Goodnotes and Notability also have this annoyance.
If you need WebDAV I think Documents by Readdle will do it, and maybe even makes the share available to other apps though its File Provider. But I'm not sure what parts of Documents are subscription based now since I have a paid copy from before it went subscription.
It even has the option to keep a local copy of folders from network shares so you can use them offline, which is a pretty handy feature if you're working with large files or don't have a cellular iPad.
Not a problem on a real operating system, everything just works. No need to pray the developer followed this years best practices instead of 3 years ago best practices just to use files in a sane manner. No need to beg a developer to fix it either, because the system was designed in a non-broken way to begin with.
Because let me tell you, it ain’t this one. Windows & Linux routinely run into this & per your rant… shouldn’t.
Yet they do.
... and yep, it does even with just Windows on it. Technically Linux can be loaded onto these things, and apparently works pretty well. But, I never got around to trying that out.
About a year later I dropped the damn thing and completely shattered the screen. Still haven't replaced it, but mean to at some point. Again, not with an iPad, but probably a newer generation Surface Pro. And I'll put Linux on it this time. :)
Thanks for the heads up. :)
Concepts is good for some things too.
I don't understand why a device can't just be for consumption of media. Why is everyone trying to force this to become a computer with an annoyingly complicated navigation UX and the rest of the ceaveats when using a complete OS.
If I ever have to worry about CPU usage or driver issues on my iPad I will be the one leaving. I bought an iPad NOT to work on it. It is my vacation device so work can never call me and ask me to do something quickly
What made me return it was the file save dialog. I bought a device to read and doodle on, two things I used to do on paper. I browse through my sketches by turning pages, and finish the activity by closing the (note)book. Procreate and Google Play Books work similarly.
After a whole day of installing updates and removing bloatware, the Surface wanted me to name and organise my drawings on a filesystem before I could do something else.
My goal was to draw and read, not to use a computer. The Surface wanted me to think about files and updates and the device’s state. My iPad Mini is a book with benefits, paper with tricks.
It's great for PDFs and sheet music for similar reasons.
Gotta admit, though, if they made a 12.9" non-pro at least $200 cheaper than the 12.9" Pro, I'd have that instead. I don't need the horsepower.
Last time I was guided by "no really this higher-tier Android thing is finally good, actually" advice was about a year ago, with the Nvidia Shield, though, so I'm... hesitant.
If I see one in a store, I may poke at it, read some reviews, see how their app store's looking these days for categories I care about. Could use a second largish tablet for the kids—or maybe a new one for me, and they can have the big iPad full-time. Having just one decent vendor in the mobile market blows (fucking Apple still won't add multiple profiles/icloud-logins to iPadOS, so annoying) so I'd be thrilled to discover that's changed.
Which, it's a very niche and specific thing, but still, if we're talking "what's the very best device for that exact thing, disregarding all other concerns", having a 4:3 screen ratio's an advantage over all the other common ones.
There is a gap between iPads' convenience and macs' capabilities, we've all been pondering about when and how this gap will be filled, and it doesn't feel like it will ever happen.
Basically what is Apple's equivalent of a Surface Pro ? Until that question has an answer, some will be ranting about iPad OS being too restrictive and others lament the mac not getting touch support.
I’ve owned Macs since 2006 and have never had to worry about driver issues once.
Come to think of it, I don’t really worry about the CPU either since M1.
iPads are not for me but I’m happy that they’re for someone else.
gotta give apple credit, while the rest of the world is reduced to lowly CopyOnWrite, they took it one step further, with CopyOnRead.
so yeah, to have a 2007-vintage API be "legacy that cannot open files properly" is a joke, pretending that it is not, is the apple reality distortion field
If a given iPad app is still using a legacy API eight years later, that seems worth complaining about. It might not be Apple's fault so much as it is the app developer's fault, although it is at least indirectly Apple's fault for not introducing a proper file management API from the very outset.
That issue was resolved years ago, and any remaining limitations are due to third-party developers not keeping up with evolving standards.
+ it still doesn't offer user profiles, so it fails to serve as a family device in the living room
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.
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"
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.
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
[2]: https://workingcopyapp.com/
[3]: https://vscode.dev/
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.
I've had moderate success using it, but overall the code-server experience has been a bit lacking, in part due to languages I use, in part due to lots of software still assuming a local-first development environment (code-server/coder.com help with this by e.g. proxying http ports in your dev environment). A real IDE/code editor running on a MacBook is still way superior.
[1] https://blink.sh
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243
(PS I joined the beta program AND paid for it because as an ssh/mosh client and occasional code editor, it was worth it)
Yeah, it works okay. I've been using it with GitHub Codespaces[1] in the past, which is not only VSCode Web, but also allows you to run your code (and any terminal commands really) in GitHub's cloud.
You get 60 2-CPU-core hours for free each month, it comes in pretty handy if you just want to quickly code something on the go, and don't have a real laptop / PC available.
[1]: https://github.com/features/codespaces
[1] - https://mosh.org/
So why not simply get a MacBook Air, which is a completely capable, awesome coding device?
This sounds like a person caught in the hype
I just like using / writing code on macOS more than windows, not much else to it.
Sadly, nope. And I'm not even on a MBP M2, just a maxed out MBA M1, The best laptop I ever had. Processing power is more than enough for what I develop, and after more than two years I can still easily work my day with a single charge. Meanwhile, coworkers suffer with Dell laptops running different Linux distros: power management problems, battery life is tiny, fans blowing like they're hoovers. Oh... and they all have more expensive laptops than me.
But Apple bad. Not professional. Or so they say.
But if 10 hours is enough I think ASUS Zenbooks and the ProArt line are pretty good Linux machines. They have faster GPUs and betters screens (OLED) too.
endless battery, fanless design, excellent performance for the kinds of tasks a developer does.
only downside is the m2 is probably faster in cpu/compilation times for certain things because of how fast it is
its $500 and includes the kickstand and keyboard
I did mention in my previous comment that the m1/m2 are still faster than other arm64 devices but for the web development tasks that I'm doing a chromebook is better suited anyways due to the less locked down environment and the ability to run full linux apps.
macos is okay for development but I'm not targeting iOS so its benefits are wasted on me. (I still got an m2 Pro mac mini with 32gb of ram to play with machine learning but its turned out to be too slow to compete with even a rtx3060)
a joy to use! I hope to see something similar from apple in the future, I've heard whispers of oled ipads?
In any case, the claim that any ARM laptop before the M1 had excellent performance is new to me and I'd be interested in knowing what non-Apple ARM laptops exist that are competitive with M1/M2 Macbooks in battery life, heat generation, performance and utility for developers. I'm in the market for a new laptop.
Real ruggedized laptops, e.g. those sold by Panasonic or Dell, look very different. It's like the glass-versus-plastic question in phone screens. Glass looks nice, and withstands day-to-day abrasion better. But the stress necessary to shatter glass is way less than that of plastic.
Glass and aluminum are ruggedized materials?
But "undisputed leader"? No there are plenty of more rugged devices used in construction, the military etc.
They're machines that hold up well in backpacks, but hearing "rugged" used to describe them is funny when a cup of coffee could decommission the whole thing in seconds.
If I was a heavy gamer, perhaps I would consider Windows.
There’s one thing I miss from Linux though: Native support for cgroups. I can live without it, but it sure would be convenient.
Not to mention the fact that a Mac laptop won’t fry your nuts when you put it on your lap.
I'm aware it's uncomparable to the ARM-based ones, but people were saying the same BS back when it was only Intel.
> x86, a 2019 model (and I had this behavior from the start).
> Lol. My MacBook Pro loses battery even when plugged and is constantly at 100% fan speed no matter what it is doing (or not doing).
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP809?locale=en_US
I'm sure there are great laptops out there, but at least in my company the other Dell or Lenovo (including Thinkpad) machines just don't stack up to that.
No one is “forgetting” about the i9. It sucked like every other x86 laptop sucks.
But this is 2023 not 2020.
If you pay for the Nvidia card you could even outperform the M2 Ultra for kicks and giggles.
The T15 isn’t available so I’ll look at the T16. The cheapest T16 is $1,570. The comparable MacBook Air is $1,500. The T16 has a 300 nits low resolution screen, slow DDR4 RAM (didn’t know they made RAM this slow these days), and is made of cheap plastic. And again, no worldwide network of stores to support your device.
So you’ve really failed to come anywhere close to the specs, build quality or support system of a MacBook. And this is without considering the huge advantages you get with Apple silicon over intel.
Overall I'm happy with my Windows laptop considering that the competition for a Windows laptop is not better, but MacBooks are really a lot better with battery life, screen quality and fan noise.
All kidding aside, the (lack of) ports and the non-upgradability can be meaningfully criticized, but then again a lot of competitors are copying those anti-features. But to say there is nothing special about these machines... well, maybe not to you. Some people hate noisy laptop fans, and this total silence is a game changer.
I'm not saying that OP fell for that marketing and is gullible, but Apple marketed the iPad Pro as a replacement for a computer, so it may not be completely unreasonable to expect a reasonably similar experience on an iPad after 6 years and the n number of iPad generations that went by.
Nah, they were using an extremely narrow definition of computer, one where you can buy and consume stuff and do "cool" social media with the device. If that's not your use case you want a different kind of computer.
†Apart from, I guess, any really bad social media things that only exist as apps. I think there's one or two.
"Get things done — all on one device. Take notes, collaborate, and work seamlessly between apps. From pie charts to pie recipes, iPad is designed for all kinds of productivity."
and from the iPad Pro site:
"Enhanced ways to work. iPadOS 16 gives you powerful new ways to do more than ever. New desktop-class apps make your workday more productive. Resize and overlap apps to multitask like a pro with Stage Manager. And hook up an external display, with resolutions up to 6K, for even more room for all your apps"
They are clearly marketing these things as do everything productivity devices even though in practice it's pretty bogus especially if you need any sort of programming functionality. Heck they even show an image of Swift Playgrounds being used!
Extrapolating that to Linux server gearheads… sorry, your use case isn’t the same as that 13 year old in the ad.
I am still mad my iPhone didn’t make me a rock god.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSfIm3nbKLs
I settled for an iPad Mini and a 12” MacBook and I’m reallY happy with that combo. I just wish they made a faster M2 version.
There’s now iPad and iPad Pro. If you want media consumption then just use iPad.
(To address the downvote: I consider a phone to be a different class of product, in the context of this discussion. Nobody is seriously talking about coding on their phone.)
That’s not what people in the thread suggest though. They’re talking about MacBook Air. Which is also a nice point, good luck bringing your beefy desktop Mac anywhere with you.
A Macbook Air doesn't fit in that category and is sub-par to read A4 formated docs. Arguably a Surface Pro (or Z13 Flow) would be a better choice if programming is also something you want to do.
Coding intricate data structures is like teaching the computer chess. It helps if you understand chess. I can't imagine understanding what I want my code to do, without an involved process of drawing everything repeatedly in many variations.
Someday there will be an iPad drawing editor like Emacs, arbitrarily scriptable using further drawings, never putting down the Apple Pencil. We're still at the earliest stages of "word processing" technical art; this evolution is still to come.
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.
It’s a jailed machine. The antithesis of a dev box.
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-o...
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.
Eventually every device on the planet will run it but companies that twart it should not be encouraged.
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-and...
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'
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.
Well, yes. Picking a right tool for a job still makes sense, even though some other tools can manage to work, too.