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Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

technicallychallenged.substack.com

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Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#51

Post by DennisAleynikov »

wlesieutre wrote: post #43
behnamoh wrote: post #14

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…

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. Give PDF Viewer a look if you want better file handling: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pd…

some apps use the proper api but thats not the norm yet, PDF Viewer uses it correctly

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#52

Post by schainks »

galkk wrote: post #11
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #2

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)

hosted vscode, github codespaces etc - coding on ipad is very much possible.

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#53

Post by behnamoh »

wlesieutre wrote: post #43
behnamoh wrote: post #14

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…

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. Give PDF Viewer a look if you want better file handling: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pd…

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#54

Post by galkk »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #13
galkk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hosted vscode, github codespaces etc - coding on ipad is very much possible.

"you can visit a website" 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

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#56

Post by fragmede »

p1necone wrote: post #35
71a54xd wrote: post #22

Reasonable people should not be surprised by this

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 i…

> 5 different commercial applications

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#57

Post by sublinear »

planb wrote: post #39

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 devic…

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#58

Post by [deleted] »

wlesieutre wrote: post #43
behnamoh wrote: post #14

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…

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. Give PDF Viewer a look if you want better file handling: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pd…

[deleted]

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#59

Post by stOneskull »

sublinear wrote: post #57
planb wrote: post #39

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 devic…

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.

this article seems like a total ad

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#60

Post by DennisAleynikov »

mr_donk wrote: post #45

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.

being stuck with a mouse on macos is more of an apple problem. things like the surface pro have been around for a decade at least
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