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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

#71

Post by Robotbeat »

zmmmmm wrote: post #50

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#72

Post by h1t35h »

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#74

Post by koinedad »

wudangmonk wrote: post #67

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…

I started editing videos in Final Cut Pro on iPad directly and it’s been pretty nice, and fast export. Example: https://youtu.be/4EbnzsqtB3Q

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#75

Post by Robotbeat »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #42
minimaxir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? It's 2023, not all code has to be run locally.

There's so many services to work on now, I couldn't get all our software to run on my laptop if I wanted to.

That sounds like a bad idea.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#76

Post by radicaldreamer »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #19
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…

I can't wait for ipads to mature

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#77

Post by koinedad »

etchalon wrote: post #21

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…

Yeah I ended up going for a MacBook Air for this reason.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#78

Post by Robotbeat »

warning26 wrote: post #23
warning26 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try doing that on airplane Wi-Fi!

Would work fine if you could actually locally develop instead of using a web browser.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#79

Post by agnosticmantis »

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.

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.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#80

Post by speedgoose »

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.

You haven’t used a Mac laptop recently I assume.
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