Honestly i just want MacOS on an iPad Pro, the apple equivalent to the Surface.
Basically, and macbook air with touch screen...
iPad Pro as Development Machine
51–60 of 151 posts
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#52I’ve found an iPad Pro to be perfectly acceptable for web development.
Working Copy is an excellent git client, and combining it with Textastic proved a good workflow. Textastic allows you to add any folder, including a Working Copy repo, as a source in the file browser, so no more swapping files between apps.
Using this, I built my personal portfolio site with Jekyll while commuting on the tube.
Other apps are available: DraftCode provides a full PHP/MySQL stack, I got Django running on Pythonista, found iSh could run Bundler and Jekyll and got a long way towards getting Rails working. Also Processing runs, well, Processing. Play.js does react and Node and Continuous does .NET and C#.
There are also Vim and Emacs apps, though I don’t know how good they are.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#53If you frequently use your iPad to access remote servers, check out Fredericco's post[1] at Macstories: there he mentions using FileExplorer[2], which lets you access and copy files to and from remote servers (SCP, SMB, etc) without leaving Apple's Files app.
1: https://www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/ipad-diaries-using-a... 2: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id499470113?at=10l6nh&ct=ms_...
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My iPad Pro has been my only computer for nearly a year, and I miss my Windows Machine and VMs. Some things that help me make do:
1. a VPS with a VNC server installed: I connect with Screens and, for example, can use Firefox's Dev tools. Performance could be better (I'm a ways from my VPS), but it's much better than nothing.
2. A Google Pixel 2 (or any Android phone) + a USB-C to USB adapter. This lets me put files on a flash drive, or even write Linux ISOs. I've found that, in a pinch, I can often do on my phone what I would have used my desktop to do.
3. Termux[1] was mentioned here recently, and I installed it, then loaded vim and tmux. SSHing into my phone from my iPad, I have lightning fast (low latency) Linux environment. Have just started using Termux, but for those with similar setups (iOS + Android), it may be worth a look.
4. Exploit the iPad's strengths. LiquidText[2] is, as they say on the site, "Better than paper". It's been revolutionary for reading my PDFs and extracting and connecting and cross-referencing information in them.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#54I know this probably doesn’t add much to the discussion but I did want to say that I love submissions like this, and I love the enthusiasm behind the project.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#55Didn’t we do this 3 years ago with the non-Pro iPad?
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#56This topic comes up every month or so, and there's always this catch: > we need to first create a remote workstation which we can start using as our main development machine. A dumb terminal isn't a development machine. That's like saying "Using my DEC VT100 terminal to develop in Go", let me just hook it up to an actual computer
This is not a very good argument. I do my development work on my company issued macbook, but its not like I'm doing my work locally. My several thousand dollar macbook pro acts as a terminal interface for me for a HUGE proportion of my work. All my code is developed/built/run/tested on remote machines and my laptop is just a fancy interface to them.
Backend developer then? Even in that case I would need IntelliJ idea/visual Studio/ whatever IDE, unless you are just working on “small” projects under 500kloc where vi is maybe enough...
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#57Everyone is so defensive about laptops here that you’d think they feel threatened by this post. Isn’t it in the spirit of the hacker community to be open to new modes of using computers? This is an experiment, that’s why they documented it and stated clearly that it’s an experiment. It’s something to think about and discuss, not a statement that you should throw your laptop out.
People are worried of a "war on general purpose computing" scenario if even development work can be moved to locked down devices, I think
Phones have completely replaced the use case of PCs for most people, we've accidentally reached a point where it's normal to grow up without a PC in the house.
A friend of mine is a university tutor and complained about students showing up to work with only their phones. A growing-fraction of people are even writing long essays using only google docs on their phone (without even a bluetooth keyboard).
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#58Interesting, but I couldn't do much serious work without external monitors and a great keyboard. I just need the screen real estate and a professional input device to be productive.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#59This article gets written every month or so at this point.
And they are always using the wrong setup (SSH to remote server with Blink & Mosh). If you want to edit and run code on an iPad (god knows why), use iSh.
It's a userland x86 emulator that will enable you to work offline. It's TestFlight only at the moment, or you can compile it yourself if you have a mac and Xcode.
People who do this kind of thing are like those people who change their linux distro every other month, they are in search of distraction, not productivity.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#60Interesting, but I couldn't do much serious work without external monitors and a great keyboard. I just need the screen real estate and a professional input device to be productive.
The iPad supports external monitors and keyboards.