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Comment by heimatau | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently debating to use an iPad Pro for my main workflow. This article is 12 pages long. Lots of solid perspectives. I'm surprised I haven't read more articles like this yet.

I'm a math student. I hate the sheer volume of paper I have to lug around. I know the iPad won't replace 100% of my activities as a college student and as an autodidact but I have a sneaking suspicion that the iPad Pro is a solid device, localized control and overall a replacement of my laptop (primary computer) for 95% of activities.

P.S. I went to check out a Microsoft Surface, a family member got one for xmas last year and she loves it. It crashed on me within 1 minute, namely OneNote, which would be apart of my primary workflow. iPad Pro never crashed and had great response times.

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That's interesting to hear, because I've been using a Surface Pro for the last year and never had a similar issue. OneNote (when I use it) has generally been pretty solid sans some weird account issues that didn't take long to solve. I'd never give up my full computer for a tablet to do actual work. It has the flexibility that I can use all the normal dev tools, and then switch over to Gamemaker, etc. I honestly think using an iPad for real development is basically limited to web stuff, because you can't access Xcode to make an iOS app, or Qt for a desktop application, or even Gamemaker/unity for games. It's a "limited" tool. Don't let that single crash taint the surface line of products, because they are solid. A friend even decided to get one over Black Friday and is loving being able to write code again, as his desktop is hooked into a tv for games/entertainment.

When I read comments like yours I can't help but feel as if your mind was made up before you gave the device a fair shot. Despite your singular negative experience, even you must be able to concede that it was most likely an atypical issue.

I've had iPad applications crash on me numerous times - but I still think they're great, largely stable devices.

Well, I didn't want to write a book of reasons but one of my math professors avidly uses it and it crashes EVERY SINGLE class, many times it crashed at least two times in a 3 hour class. The max was about 7.

The problem with anecdotes is that they're easily refuted. For example, I know of someone who uses a Surface as their full time development machine and I've never seen it crash on him...ever.

Just be careful dismissing products due to a singular negative narrative that you've created.

I doubt 'ever'. It doesn't matter what OS the person is using, there will be crashes. It also crashes on my sister-in-law. I'd say you are just as guilty saying 'problem with anecdotes is that they're easily refuted'.

I'm not a blind Apple user. The recent MBP changes has me strongly looking for an alternative. I didn't make up my mind. I went out of my way to go to a Msft store and give them a shot. Nope, it failed. At the end of the day, the consumer most likely makes a decision based on anecdotes. There is no 'scientific standard' to 'should I buy a Surface or iPad'. There isn't. Being critical of my opinion is a sad thing. As, all I'm doing is sharing my experience and your attempts to 'refute' my perspective only help refute yours.

I'd encourage you to consider that I'm trying to help people with my experience. You sharing someone else's experience to 'correct' me is mean-spirited. Namely because your desire to correct and not inform.

You seem to have taken offense at what I was saying. I'll just say that wasn't my intent and leave it at that.

Well, you sounded critical namely due to assuming/thinking I had only one experience, then trying to deconstruct how I was 'wrong'. Instead of maybe saying, 'I hope you aren't basing your decision on only one experience. As I had problems with the iPad crashing on me but I still think it's a solid device'.

How you approach saying something matters more than what you actually say, when dealing with humans. It's something that I'm learning as I've gotten older and I am not an expert.

YMMV, but OneNote makes me nervous. I briefly played with it on OSX, and didn't see a good way to get notes out of it (e.g. for backup, recovery/usage in absence of OneNote). That is one thing that Evernote gets right IMO - the local store is just a bunch of html files + images, one directory per note.

For math - it's been over a decade, but I think I'd need a big device (ipad pro 12.9) and a pen. I'd want to be able to get a full page of notes on screen at once. That said, I'd be tempted. I've scanned my old notes for posterity and to save space, but it would have been nice to just capture them in digital form in the first place.

I'd also want a TeX stack on the device (editor+preview), but I'd write that if I had to. (I did pure plain TeX back in the day.)

OneNote files are stored in the OneDrive file sync service by default (and I assume has the same data hiarangees), but you can save them locally if you'd like.

I use my ipad v1 constantly. I have about ~100+ great engineering and mathematics books that I couldn't carry and consume otherwise.

The only draw back for me is that I haven't found a solid journaling app that I trust, so I still carry a paper journal.

I agree with you there. I only use viJournal Lite on my MBP. Finding a replacement has been difficult.

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