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Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

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Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#401

Post by refulgentis »

_fat_santa wrote: post #394
loehnsberg wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an iPad Pro mostly for my lectures and for reading and annotating PDFs. After the latest upgrade of iPadOS, I also explored it for more serious work connecting it to a mouse and keyboard. If you're happy with working inside a browser and use it as a terminal, it works just fine, but as soon as you need to manage files or quickly want to edit a document on the device, it becomes pretty painful. I really don't un…

And if you're using it primarily as web browser you can get a Chromebook that will do the job for a fraction of the cost.

This is an excellent & undervalued point: chromeos is basically an easier to use and maintain iPad Pro at half the price, with a performant Linux container

I’m really pleased with my $4K MacBook Pro M2, really amazing device. but after 3-4 years of chromeos before that, I’d trade it for a $1000 i7 Chromebook in a heartbeat, if it wasn’t for darn local LLMs. They’re not even good or fast but I need them professionally.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#402

Post by _justinfunk »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #279
basisword wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Boggles the mind why people still fall for the iPad Pro as a serious work machine beyond writing meme. So it’s not good as a work machine…apart from most jobs. Most jobs are email and documents. If you’re on the move a lot then it’s a good device for those jobs. Jobs which require a lot of computing power, large screens, input devices other than a keyboard and touch screen, are definitely the minority.

Managing multiple windows, copy/pasting, using shortcuts from muscle memory and things like instant middle mouse click are terrible experiences on any tablet or phone. Just opening a new tab on a browser is tedious, and if you deal with a lot of intranet tools, this is the very basics of productivity.

>Just opening a new tab on a browser is tedious

There is a persistent top-level button in Safari's toolbar to open a new tab. I don't know how tedious that is.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#403

Post by carloscabanero »

Im Carlos from Blink Shell, mentioned in a few comments here. Dropped this comment in the thread but thought about leaving my 2c here too as this is something I have been thinking about a lot. Usage and expectations have been changing a lot for these devices:

- At first (iPad2 & 3 years), for those who already had remote machines of some kind, the goal was to simply have a decent terminal on mobile devices to connect to them. The appeal was very clear and I think for a lot of people it offered a different context to do stuff. It still does.

- Things start to grow with iPad/iPhone, Apple was heavily investing on the hardware, and that brought another wave of users. The goal changed, it was not enough to "connect" anymore, but to do real work from these devices, for hours. The talk was to replace your laptop with an iPad, may sound familiar. We thought this wave was going to be big... but it never really materialized. Blame it on lack of software? The OS? M1? ...

- And so I think we are now on a third generation. I don't think the goal is to replace anything anymore. I see the next wave as a mix of the previous two. I want to work from anywhere, access my tools from wherever I am, access the code for my projects, pushing changes fast, etc. And it may be in my desktop computer, or in my coworker's laptop, on my iPad or my phone. Codespaces or in our case Blink Build are different approaches to do that. It is still getting started.

I think we are entering a world similar to what Rob Pike mentioned in this interview (https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/). The idea is that "state" is not something that you carry all day with you, but it is provided to you when you need it, connecting applications and dev environments from anywhere. That "state" may not necessarily be the Cloud, it will be computers in your office, or powerful remote environments somewhere, etc...

So yeah, if you were expecting Xcode, IntelliJ and XXX coming to an iPad and replacing your laptop, that may already be behind us and maybe even killed on phase 2. And although these apps may not play well in this new environment, it is worth questioning if it is more fault of the environment where we are headed or of the apps themselves. I want to think that Codespaces, Fleet, GitPod, Build, and your multiple machines wherever they are, will all play a part on that.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#404

Post by makeitdouble »

justinclift wrote: post #316
the__alchemist wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with Linux on on a SP wasn't great. The basic PC functionality is fine, but getting the pen and touch working required a custom kernel and a fair amount of effort. The input latency on the pen, combined with no good writing apps on Linux killed it for me.

Ahhh damn. Didn't know that. Thanks for the heads up. :)

Full linux as the host OS is probably excruciating. Keeping windows as the host and rely on the WSL2 subsystem seems fine, docker works as well.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#405

Post by mcfedr »

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 had a similar experience, I had iPads years ago, and recently got one again assuming it would be great, but it's just the same as years ago, really needs a proper os upgrade

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#406

Post by scarface_74 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #339
scarface_74 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So find one mainstream review that gushed about how cool an Intel i9 ran or how quiet it was. I couldn’t find one.

Who talked about i9? And were did the part about battery life go? I could easily find one but you'll keep moving the goalpost.

You did.

> x86, a 2019 model (and I had this behavior from the start).

> Lol. My MacBook Pro loses battery even when plugged and is constantly at 100% fan speed no matter what it is doing (or not doing).

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#407

Post by synergy20 »

Serious coding machine has to be a Linux box IMHO. Unless you specifically code for MacOS or Windows platforms that is.

WSL2 on Windows is fine, but why if I can have a full blown Linux directly.

What surprised me is that, at CMU the so called top #1 CS university, its CS students are dominantly using MacOS and Windows, only 5% are using Linux, which puzzles me quite a bit. I guess other universities are the same patterns.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#408

Post by wffurr »

With a remote workstation to actually build and run software on, an iPad / Android tablet almost works great as a thin client for a terminal. The biggest thing I missed on it were browser developer tools. The mobile browsers just don't have it. Needing a Mac to attach to it to run developer tools on just kills the "Pro" in iPad Pro for me.

Maybe there's a decent third-party app for it now (Is Inspect Browser any good?), but there wasn't last time I tried it.

Using a 14" M1 Pro now, which is the only thing work will issue to me. I pine for my 11" MacBook Air I had once upon a time.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#409

Post by scarface_74 »

kibwen wrote: post #352
scarface_74 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What next? Are you going to complain about Windows not supporting more than 8.3 character filenames until 1995?

In 2001 people were still complaining about the pervasive usage of 8.3 filenames due to the legacy of Windows: https://slashdot.org/story/01/03/12/210202/why-are-we-still-... If a given iPad app is still using a legacy API eight years later, that seems worth complaining about. It might not be Apple's fault so much as it is the app developer's fault, although it is at least indirectly Apple's fault for not introducing…

And no one has named the application in question.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#410

Post by [deleted] »

ubermonkey wrote: post #386
dogleash wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPad Pro is a GREAT tool for things far beyond writing. [...] Further, the iPad is pretty GREAT at remote access for Linux or Windows hosts. I try and I try and I try because lots of tasks can be done and I want to like it. But I run into this certain problem that I also get with a laptop. I’m going along fine getting shit done then hit a stretch of work with a cognitive load/interaction balance where I start think…

I mean, if you're going to do things like remote access with Windows, you'll need to either get a pencil or get a trackpad case. It definitely would be painful with JUST the device, but I don't see this as a problem. I definitely AM more comfortable with a traditional OS -- I mean, I've been using computers since the 80s -- and prefer MacOS by a wide margin. Working in iOS is different, so there definitely IS a cogni…

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