Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iPad Pro as Development Machine

arslan.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 151 posts

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#61

Post by satysin »

Tried this a few weeks ago. The iPad Pro has the power but iOS is just too limiting still. You still need a remote system to do any real work on so it is just a £1000+ dumb terminal with a really dodgy keyboard (if using the Apple Smart Folio one anyway).

I am hoping Apple will update the 12" MacBook this year so I can try that out for an ultra-portable dev machine. I like the current model but the CPU options are poor/dated.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#62

Post by unsignedint »

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This falls under fetish category. Steve Jobs' Post PC world analogy was off in that PCs are the cars, trucks, convertibles etc. and tablets are the scooter. Yes you can do all your grocery shopping on the scooter given the groceries fit, the shop isn't too far away, it's not raining, the mileage will be good etc - you making that one successful grocery trip doesn't mean scooter is a car replacement.

Back when I was helping people quite a bit about general computing support, I actually got frustrated by someone making bad judgement in this regard. Essentially, people get frustrated for things that iPad is just not fit for their job, in your analogy, complaining that their scooter won't work well over unpaved roads.

It's one thing if that user choose to make a wrong choice but they can service it themselves, but it becomes a nightmare story if someone's forced to support that.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#63

Post by kowdermeister »

tosh wrote: post #60
kowdermeister wrote: post #58

Interesting, 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.

Thanks, I didn't know about he monitor support.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#64

Post by bochoh »

dana321 wrote: post #28
laurentdc wrote: post #8

This 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

There is a way of emulating an x86 machine on ios now https://ish.app/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430031 Still doesn't convince me to swap my 8 core ryzen 1700 laptop with 32gb ram and 1.5tb ssd and a RX580 for an ipad pro.

What laptop is this?

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#65

Post by krn »

Why would anyone use iPod Pro as a development machine, when Google Pixelbook is of a similar weight, size, power and price, and comes with a standard keyboard and a native Linux support built-in? Tablets are for consumption, not creation.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#66

Post by cyberpunk »

satysin wrote: post #61

Tried this a few weeks ago. The iPad Pro has the power but iOS is just too limiting still. You still need a remote system to do any real work on so it is just a £1000+ dumb terminal with a really dodgy keyboard (if using the Apple Smart Folio one anyway). I am hoping Apple will update the 12" MacBook this year so I can try that out for an ultra-portable dev machine. I like the current model but the CPU options are po…

I use a proper desktop when working from home, and an iPad Pro with blink+mosh+tmux to a chunky server when I'm on the move and to be honest I have no problem at all with the keyboard (only nit -- after a day or three heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to stop hitting capslock for escape on my regular keyboard when I'm home) -- What's your problem with it?

Edit: Hitting the little... "world" key is sometimes quite annoying, it pops up some kind of emoji keyboard? Alas.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#67

Post by snazz »

a-saleh wrote: post #45
farslan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here: Thanks for the comment. I thought I was clear that this was an experiment and that I wanted to try out things. Now that I'm using it for couple of months, I have even more things to share that are not covered by my blog post.

Would you be willing to try: a) some IOS-native IDE, i.e. http://continuous.codes/ ? b) how would android fare in comparison? I.e. I really like termux project, it seems to have much more installable packages than i.e. blink, and it could alleviate the need to run separate session in a separate box over the internet. Similarly, because android is based on linux, there are projects for running linux distros alongside…

Termux is awesome. iSH (https://ish.app) is trying to accomplish the same thing for iOS, but it might not be approved by Apple because it may break the current set of App Store policies. Termux also does not have the overhead of running a complete x86 emulator. I’ve never needed to, but the possibility of running Xorg (with a real window manager) on my phone is mind-blowing, even if it’s uncomfortable without a keyboard and mouse.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#69

Post by snazz »

bosie wrote: post #44
lordleft wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the article - as a developer with an iPad Pro, it was fun reading your thoughts. I haven't tried coding on it, but I love it as a supplementary machine.

Mind expanding on how you use it as a supplementary machine? Any specific workflow you can share?

I use my iPad for email (reading and sorting; I write it so rarely anyway), HN-browsing, and as another screen for documentation or whatever. I think that’s about the limit of its capabilities. My biggest complaint is still how limited the interaction between apps is and how walled-off they are from one another: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207796
Post reply on HN