Hammers, nails, and screws a pretty much set. They're not changing regularly.
An iPad becoming a laptop-replacement is happening - its progress is debatable, but it's definitely changing on each iteration.
An iPad becoming a laptop-replacement is happening - its progress is debatable, but it's definitely changing on each iteration.
Microsoft seems to have a much clearer vision here and anecdotally I know quite a few people that have been Mac users for ages that have given up on iPads and bought Surface devices because they can use them to do real work.
What an iPad will absolutely never do is mimic an existing workflow. People who try to do that are going to hit brick walls fast. I wouldn't be surprised to see full-fledged programming environments on iOS in the next few years (and to see iOS itself open up in possibly surprising ways), but I suspect they aren't going to look much like the programming environments we're used to.
I'm glad people love their Surfaces. They look like great devices. And, yeah, I wish I could do web development more easily on my iPad. But I'm a technical writer and a fiction writer, do both professionally, and have used the iPad to do (gasp) real work in both fields.
And there are some fundamental reasons why I expect it to stay this way. Mainly that touch is a very low resolution input mechanism but also that Apple has utterly failed to create a healthy market for sustainable professional software businesses.
What’s real work?
Laptops, tablets, code and keyboards are pretty much set, they're not changing regularly. To code comfortably you need a keyboard, that's the tool for the job and one that tablets do not have. Sure you can add an external one, but then you've basically got a locked down laptop.
Just look at the the comments here, at best the iPad seems to be capable of acting as a dumb terminal to interact with a keyboard for a remote server, I wouldn't consider that coding on an iPad.
Currently the iPad might not seem capable of much wrt programming, but it is changing. Therefore someone tests it out periodically. And you don't have to like it. It doesn't have to be you testing the thing out. You're completely free to live an iPad-free life.