Ha! I made this exact same mistake. I think I lasted less than a week. It's the abstraction of the file system that did it for me. Something deeply unserious about it.
Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
211–220 of 533 posts
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#212I’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…
>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.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#213An expensive mistake, given that a Macbook Air comes with all the equipment the author had to buy extra.
I have a MacBook Pro m1, with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. All of these can be reused with my iPad Air m1. For desktop use I need to purchase exactly the same equipment as for the iPad. The keyboard, Nuphy air 75, can easily switch between devices, same for the Logitech mouse. And with the display plugged into the iPad using usb c, there really isn’t that big if a difference between the MacBook and iPad when using it.
The MacBook 16” is really heavy, so I mostly use it at my desk. But it’s too heavy for the couch so that is where I use my iPad.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#214> But if you need to run Xcode, VSCode, WebStorm, or Intellij than as far as I can tell the iPad is a no go. > It's expensive. After buying a powerful pro model, a decent keyboard, and a pencil the price ended up being MORE than a laptop I could have used for even more coding activities. 5m of research could have shown this... i think this product is only good for artists who needs a specific ipad app or someone who…
Of everything I've tried, the ipad is still by far my favourite media consumption device. Browsing the web using touch is an absolute joy and the thin, large screen form factor is really convenient. It's just a shame they're so expensive and fragile; I'm waiting a few years now before I can justify buying another one.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#215> Performance is snappy and battery life is excellent.
I find that the battery life when using the Magic Keyboard on my M1 11” Pro is much worse than without. It’s really not much better than the battery life of my 14” M1 Pro.
I didn’t buy an iPad primarily or even secondarily for coding, but thought it might be nice to do so on occasion (e.g. to learn new things). However the biggest problem is that iPadOS is just too limited.
If I could just run a Linux VM, that would be great. The hardware is capable, but the OS is hobbled.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#216In 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…
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 ha…
If you want to compile it yourself it’s free, as it’s under GPLv3 so you’re free to remove the license stuff if you wanted to
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#217I 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…
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.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#218iPads are amazing for certain professional tasks:
- Artists (still or motion) - Writing (or related tasks like Editing) - Mobile roles (sales, aspects of healthcare such as patient record accessibility, etc)
But, even in these cases with there is good alignment, you still lose productivity over a more traditional setup, usually due to restrictions around file management, keyboard shortcuts (usually due to “less than” applications not that the machine is incapable), security (what happens to data on the device if it’s lost or stolen), and window management (if you end up needing multiple monitors for your iPad is that really the best tool?)
I wish and want the iPad to be a true professional machine, but it’s not. It’s an amazing supplementary machine though as a reference screen, drawing pad, media consumption (e.g., tutorials), etc.
I guess I don’t understand how you end up believing it’ll be the best fit if you’ve used one in the past 3-5 years.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#219I think I have the first or second gen ipad. For some years now the OS and apps are frozen in time. I have basically some old games and the old safari browser. The old safari is slow and, can you believe it, HN does not fully function! Now, we all know the hardware is premium and this device would probably run linux very smoothly and the touch interface would be a dream. But we can only dream right? WTF? Apple won’t…
>This also mostly applies to android devices as well - which is another shit show.
What do you mean? I have been using my old androids for a ton of purposes.
Admittedly 2 of them are for my kids who are play video games and watch youtube.
I have one for my kitchen for recipes.
Heck, you just gave me an idea when my wife's phone dies, I can use it for our gym crew to track weights.
Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
#220Wrong tool for the job ends up working poorly to nobody’s surprise
Can you blame the OP? Apple's marketing is best in class.
We are animals who can't control most of the brain, only the frontal lobe(and determinists would debate that is just genetics + environment).