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Comment by acomjean | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical about the tablet.

I went on a trip last week and left my workhorse macbook pro at home for the first time on a trip and brought my iPad mini.

It just isn't that useful for dealing with photos taken with a separate camera. It was nice for browsing the web but that was pretty much it. I couldn't work on my learning new graphical js on my downtime, not beat making (ableton). The iphone was great on the trip while on the go.

It just doesn't feel like a creative device. Even though the pencil is amazing, I just don't see it.

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>It just isn't that useful for dealing with photos taken with a separate camera.

I recently went on a trip with no laptop -- only my "real" camera, my iPhone, and a Western Digital MyPassport Wireless Pro: https://www.wdc.com/products/portable-storage/my-passport-wi...

It worked out surprisingly well. I mainly bought the MyPassport for the extra storage space so I didn't have to bring a million SD cards, but it also worked well as a backup battery pack for the phone, and for transferring a few of those images to the phone for immediate access. Admittedly, I shot in RAW + JPEG and the app only recognizes the JPEGs (from what I could tell quickly) but it was good enough for the few photos I wanted to share right away after taking them.

I don't have an iPad but I've been considering one just for photo editing with the pencil. I hear Lightroom on iPads is getting better, and I just got an e-mail today about Affinity Photo being released for iPad.

But yeah, consider the WD MyPassport if transferring/storing photos without a true laptop was a problem.

consider getting the cable that connects iphone to camera. it's $30 but pretty useful. you can transfer/edit on phone, and upload directly to its permanent home in cloud storage.

probably won't work for a professional but is fine for photo hobbyists. it's nice not having a laptop or an external drive in your camera bag.

The drive I'm fine with. My cameras both have iOS apps that allow wireless data transfer, but both of them are just a nightmare to use. The WD drive is leagues better, despite getting some negative reviews (which all seem, to me, to just be user error).

thanks for the tip, that drive seems useful for backing stuff up on the go.

I tried the wireless sd cards at one point, but it gets hard as the photos get pretty big and the interface never worked quite right.

Yeah, the wireless SD cards were a nightmare. Case in point: https://petapixel.com/2016/06/30/eye-fi-brick-older-wi-fi-ca...

The iPad mini is a very different thing then the iPad Pro with keyboard and Pencil. There are a ton of great music making apps, photo editing apps (some of the best available on ANY device), and other creative devices. I use my iPad Pro as laptop replacement and very little do I miss or need a macbook pro.

Do you write software using your iPad Pro? I've thought about using one with an AWS instance for modeling/prototyping, but it doesn't seem like we're there yet.

I have for a class - external keyboard is a must, but as long as you're comfortable in vim, it's not a bad way to go.

Perfect, not a problem. How about viewing graphs?

I do, on a regular basis. Blink (http://blink.sh) has brought the iPad completely on par with the Macbook for me as far as the command line goes.

Ooh, thanks for the link! How to you think Blink compares to Prompt (which I'm currently using)?

mosh support in Blink completely changes the game. Switching networks is trivial and not worrying about the three minute connection timeout just because I'm reading docs in Safari is freeing.

I bought it last night and it's as great as you say. Thanks for the recommendation!

Even using SSH I find it to be much snappier than the competition. Killer feature for me: key repeat and remapping caps-lock to escape on the Apple Keyboard. I'm actually amazed how Blink manages to go beyond what I thought were fundamental limitations of iOS. It even has full support for an external monitor as independent second screen at full resolution! (not that I use that much, but it kinda blew my mind)

> couldn't work on my learning new graphical js on my downtime

Assuming that you mean Javascript, there are a few environments like Coda [1] which let you code and play around.

I can't do Mac app dev, but I can certainly play around on my servers via SSH (keyboard really helps here).

> not beat making (ableton)

There may not be Ableton for iOS, but there are loads of music apps covering the spectrum. I'm a total amateur, but have been experimenting with Garageband, some synths, and an app that does tone-detection and spits out MIDI.

[1] https://panic.com/coda-ios/

Yeah, I just don't get why you wouldn't get an air instead of trying to use this. Is the touch screen really that helpful for working? I much prefer to use my mac book, but I'm probably just not the target audience.

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