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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I use mine every day. It's turned my 2 hour train commute each day into wonderfully valuable time. I've written many thousands of words on it and thousands of lines of code. When I was job hunting last year I did several coding exercises on it in Pythonista. It's one of the most productive computers I've ever owned.

Although Sid Meier's Starships is sucking away a bit of my time lately.

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Using an iPad (with external keyboard) to even type a simple document is an exercise in masochism. Fair play if you enjoyed it, but something like a Surface makes far more sense for these types of uses.

>Using an iPad (with external keyboard) to even type a simple document is an exercise in masochism.

What exactly is the frustration from it? I find it perfectly fine, if not better than using a laptop for writing "simple documents".

In fact that's exactly the use case most pro writers that use an iPad use it for.

This was a few years ago, so it may no longer apply, but my biggest frustration was that none of my keyboard shortcuts worked. I like to toggle between the browser and my code editor while I code, and the only way I could do that was to physically swipe the screen with my hand. There was a workaround to enable certain shortcuts by turning on accessibility mode, but it was a huge hack and didn't work that well.

Well, if the "few years ago" might be closer to iPad 1 or iPad 2 eras, then that might have been the case.

As the other reply said...non-working shortcuts and also no mouse cursor. You have to continually lift your hand to the screen to swipe or press, or click/double click the home button (hopefully you have the iPad positioned securely or you'll have another frustration on your hands).

When I needed it there was also no splitscreen, which I acknowledge would make things easier. The situation might be better now, but my sour experience forced me to move completely away from Apple at the time.

>As the other reply said...non-working shortcuts and also no mouse cursor. You have to continually lift your hand to the screen to swipe or press, or click/double click the home button (hopefully you have the iPad positioned securely or you'll have another frustration on your hands).

Well, I don't normally use the mouse when I'm writing a document. I even prefer full screen, full focus mode in writing apps like iA Writer and Ulysses (also on the Mac).

That said, most shortcuts one would use for writing work just fine (select all, copy, paste, etc). And more from what I see here: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/every-ipad-keyboard-shortc...

Here here

Trying to use a Surface keyboard on my lap on a train sounds awkward, the trains I use don't have tables. I even find laptops ungainly and sometimes I don't get a seat, but I can still do pretty much anything on an iPad.

I think my error rate is a bit higher than when using a real keyboard, but the alternative would be not being productive during that time at all. I'm an old duffer though, I remember using CPM machines, 5.25" floppy drives, line editors and dot matrix printers. An iPad is fresh air and clear blue skies compared to stuff I've had to work with back in the day.

I do not own one myself, by I have seen people type on Surface keyboards on trains, with the Surface resting on their laps. It did not look awkward or uncomfortable.

> Trying to use a Surface keyboard on my lap on a train sounds awkward, the trains I use don't have tables

It's actually not that bad at all, believe it or not. I use the Pro 4 on my lap all the time. The Surface Book does not work in your lap based on what I have seen, but the Pro does fine.

This is why I've been evangelizing Chromebooks recently; they run android apps now, so if you get a small flip-folding one, it's basically a tablet with a hinged keyboard built in.

And a linux chroot that can surface X windows to chrome browser tabs, if you're willing to turn on developer mode.

What model do you use? How well does the Android app support work?

I'm a big fan of the Asus Flip (and will likely either upgrade to the new model or to the Samsung). It's increasingly my go-to travel machine. But I find it awkward as a tablet. I usually carry my old iPad with me even when I bring the Chromebook.

What apps do you use to program? I'm too lasy to look it up. Sad--I know.

I wouldn't mind front-end programing on my iPad 2, but found it tedious years ago. I remember thinking this will not work--for real work.

Working Copy + Textastic

Great apps. I use them all the time.

Pythonista. It has a syntax-highlighting code editor, integrated visual UI builder, a slew of third party Python modules baked in and a thriving community. There is also now a Python 3 compatible version. You can even use the share sheet from another app to send files to Pythonista and select a script to process the file.

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