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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

#501

Post by mmcnl »

makeitdouble wrote: post #380
positus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do web development on an iPad Pro, using Blink.sh and a remote server. Not a bad experience, really. Works better with an external monitor hooked up for live-reloading, and not having a real, proper web inspector is a drawback, but it works.

I totally agree it can work, I also had a somewhat working setup. At some point I just asked myself if avoiding Windows was worth all the tradeoffs. Windows is still completely clunky and ugly, to be honest I feel I exchanged polish and elegance for actual power. Staying so long on the iPad, it felt really weird when I needed to test on firefox...and I can just run firefox. No need to VNC other some other desktop or…

Windows 11 + Windows Terminal + Windows Subsystem for Linux + VS Code is not clunky at all in my opinion. It looks and works great. If you want to use Docker it's actually better than macOS because you don't need to install bloated desktop apps, you can directly install it on the Linux kernel.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#502

Post by AmericanChopper »

czx4f4bd wrote: post #495
AmericanChopper wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no IDEs that run on iPadOS, the best you can get is either a text editor with basic high lighting, or a “cloud” IDE. There’s also no way to install a runtime or compiler on iPadOS. Unless you’re already using some cloud based solution (in which case you should already be familiar with their pitfalls), it should be immediately apparent to most developers that their workflows aren’t going to run on an iPad. I…

This comment is bizarrely antagonistic for no reason and I would appreciate if you'd knock it off. I literally admitted I was incorrect in thinking that I could comfortably write code on my iPad, a point that largely agrees with what you're saying, but for some reason you still feel the need to argue even further. It should be immediately apparent to most people that I made my decision based on my own personal contex…

It’s not weirdly antagonistic to point out that you’re making factually incorrect claims. Out of all the tooling that goes into a typical developer workflow, iPadOS will only allow you to install a text editor, a web browser, and provides a somewhat restricted filesystem.

You and I might also agree that a shovel isn’t a very good tool for cutting down trees. But this isn’t a conclusion that takes more than a moments consideration to get to.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#503

Post by mmcnl »

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.

That's what I did. I have a HP Elitebook that runs Linux + Windows 11 (really, Windows is not the Windows from 10 years ago, developer experience is pretty great these days, I much prefer it to macOS). For iOS app development I have a Mac Mini.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#504

Post by mmcnl »

melvyn2 wrote: post #290
scarface_74 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you want a 14 hour battery life, doesn’t sound like a 747 when you open a few Chrome tabs. Not to mention the fact that a Mac laptop won’t fry your nuts when you put it on your lap.

As surprising as you may find it, Apple doesn't have a monopoly on good hardware. The stereotype of any non-macbook being a toaster is practically a strawman at this point (while people are so quick to forget the atrocity of the i9 macbook).

Mac hardware is better though. My HP Elitebook from last year is a pretty good device: good screen, solid build, nice glass touchpad, really great keyboard. But the screen resolution is only 1080p, the battery lasts for 6 hours and the fan noise is meh. These are quite expensive premium Windows laptops that cost somewhere between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro.

Overall I'm happy with my Windows laptop considering that the competition for a Windows laptop is not better, but MacBooks are really a lot better with battery life, screen quality and fan noise.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#505

Post by scarface_74 »

smoldesu wrote: post #497
scarface_74 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s “unclear”? A modern web browser wouldn’t be any more performant than a safari is in 2023 on any pre-64 bit iOS device. Not that 32-bit or 64-bit by itself makes a difference. But the devices were dreadfully slow and RAM constrained by todays standards. Which modern browser engine do you real think would work decently on such a device? Besides that, no pre- 2012 iOS devices supported 4G and the carriers are dro…

> But the devices were dreadfully slow and RAM constrained by todays standards. Yeh. That's why people turn them into DNLA servers or FTP heads or motion sensors or security cameras or weather machines, spotifyd servers, Docker playgrounds, RC cars, GPIO controllers, home assistants, esoteric K8s nodes, et. al.. There's plenty of things you can do with hardware you don't intend to directly interact with, things that…

> Webkit? You can still build it for 32-bit arches, I don't really see what the holdup is. Firefox could squeeze into ~100mb of memory if you're light on tabs, and Chrome would... well, run. With a little help from swap space.

If you tried to use swap on any older iOS device the storage would rapidly fail. Those devices had storage that was never designed for swap.

These are the minimum system requirements for running Firefox on Linux.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/114.0.1/system-require...

And you think WebKit would run on it or Chromium?

Apple hasn’t updated or supported WebKit for 32 bit processors for years and from what I can tell neither does Chromium or Firefox

How well do you think a 256MB RAM, 500Mhz processor will run Firefox and be able to access todays web?

The first iPhone introduce in 2007 had the performance of a 1997 iMac. By 2010, you weren’t even up to the speed of 1Ghz processor that came out in 2001. iOS devices didn’t reach anywhere near turn of the century PC performance until 2012 with the 1Ghz dual core iPhone 5.

That would also make a horrible DLNA server and god forbid you needed any transcoding. My old 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo from 2010 could barely handle Plex by 2017 with any moderately complex videos.

You can buy a $50 cheap Android phone today that would run rings around it or a $100 Raspberry PI or Windows stick.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#506

Post by czx4f4bd »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #502
czx4f4bd wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is bizarrely antagonistic for no reason and I would appreciate if you'd knock it off. I literally admitted I was incorrect in thinking that I could comfortably write code on my iPad, a point that largely agrees with what you're saying, but for some reason you still feel the need to argue even further. It should be immediately apparent to most people that I made my decision based on my own personal contex…

It’s not weirdly antagonistic to point out that you’re making factually incorrect claims. Out of all the tooling that goes into a typical developer workflow, iPadOS will only allow you to install a text editor, a web browser, and provides a somewhat restricted filesystem. You and I might also agree that a shovel isn’t a very good tool for cutting down trees. But this isn’t a conclusion that takes more than a moments…

The only factually incorrect claims here have come from you.

You claimed that the iPad lacks "any developer tools". That's factually incorrect, as you've admitted and repeatedly tried to walk back.

Because you're determined to be right, after you admitted that the iPad has at least some development tools, you tried to move the goalposts and say that the iPad doesn't have any IDEs, while in the same sentence admitting that it has text editors and cloud-based IDEs, which are developer tools. Now you're trying to walk that back again. If you're going to be wrong, you could at least have the decency to be consistently wrong instead of waffling back and forth like this.

You said, "There's also no way to install a runtime or compiler on iPadOS." That's also factually incorrect. I can use basically any compiler or runtime that I want inside iSH without even needing an internet connection after they're installed.

At any rate, I've already explained why none of this is even relevant to the point at hand, but since you can't be wrong, you'll probably ignore these points like you've ignored everything else. Or maybe you're just trolling, who knows? Either way it's pretty pathetic.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#507

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

skydhash wrote: post #471
recursive wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a lot easier to put a touch screen on a laptop. Mine has one, and it's a totally normal laptop.

My work laptop (Dell XPS) has one and I've never used it. It runs Ubuntu and everything is much faster with the mouse (external) than touching the screen. I'm on my MBA, and I've never felt the urge to touch the screen for anything. And even with the iPad, there is always this friction when context switching from keyboard to pencil. I either use it in tablet mode (touch and pencil) or writing mode (and I always want…

As great as the Apple trackpads are, if you are reading docs, scrolling through stuff, a touch screen is superior. More precise for text selection. Can’t lose the cursor. Better on my wrists. And complex motions are easier. I wish I could CAD with a touch screen gestures.

It’s different environments too. If I am at my desk with external screens, I want a trackball. I don’t want to reach for the screen. But on the couch, or on the go, I wish I had a touch screen Mac laptop.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#508

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

amerkhalid wrote: post #439
recursive wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a lot easier to put a touch screen on a laptop. Mine has one, and it's a totally normal laptop.

I’m not sure if it’s a touchscreen by itself make it such a great device. I think it’s combination of media consumption focus, responsiveness and super light to hold for reading or writing. When I bought it, I was going to use it just for reading and drawing. But it was with me all the time so I bought keyboard too and started ssh into my virtual machines for light work. Eventually, I was using it for programming mor…

Right. It’s modal. Depending on the kind of task you have on hand, you need different input methods. That’s why you still need a keyboard and touchpad.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#509

Post by lazide »

ubermonkey wrote: post #387
lazide wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I tried to import/copy large photo sets (hundreds of gigs), the tablet would end up being useless for a long time and often even crashing. Which is ridiculous, I just wanted to copy the files. This is with a first gen iPad Pro. I literally got it for copying photogrammetry data sets, so it was useless for the one basic task that I got it for. :(

Weird. I copy cardfulls of photos into Lightroom on the regular when I'm traveling, and it's fine. You DO have to leave LR running to do it, but I mostly do this overnight anyway.

Uh, that’s definitely not reasonable behavior IMO. It should take 10-15 minutes to copy, max, and be able to do it in the background while I’m doing other things. The hardware is more than capable.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#510

Post by weikju »

fuomag9 wrote: post #216
weikju wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No need to jump through so many hoops when you can just join their beta program and get it for free that way?

(PS I joined the beta program AND paid for it because as an ssh/mosh client and occasional code editor, it was worth it)

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