I was wrong about the iPad Pro
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1. a desktop-grade web browser, e.g. chrome (actual chrome not an iOS chrome)
2. better file system management
3. better multitasking (e.g. multiple windows even from a single app)
4. some way to actually code natively on the ipad, e.g. write and run python code, C code, etc., I guess have a *nix shell. I don't need to "take over the whole device" but I would like to be able to run code even if it's in a sort of sandboxed environment
You can get around this with icab mobile, but having desktop safari would fix a lot.
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/professional-series/ac...
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/lenovo-n-series/...
Whenever it becomes time to upgrade or replace it, I'll be disappointed if it's been discontinued.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/a1rltn/why_i_chos...
I hope Pixel Slate 2 comes with LTE.
It’s a solution to programming for the iPad though, not on it but for another platform, unless it’s mix of modules and capabilities happen to match your off-device needs.
Obviously they aren't JetBrains/Visual Studio class, but for the specific things they do while I'm on the go they're fantastic. This is increasingly the way I'm doing things with code and text. When I want to open Excel, however- that's when things start falling down for me.
[0]: http://continuous.codes/ [1]: https://replete-repl.org/
iSH gives you an Alpine linux environment, running in x86 usermode emulation. It's still only a beta though, I have no idea if it would even be allowed on the app store.
Pythonista gives you a python environment, it's good for automation type things. You can do stuff like run an HTTP server locally and access it from the browser.
Inspect is a neat web browser with some basic dev tools.
Scriptable is a bit like Workflow/Shortcuts, but in Javascript.
Crostini completely changed my mind around Chromebooks/ChromeOS as passive, consumption oriented, disposable hardware. I could have the best of both worlds - a nice shiny UI for surfing and Netflix, and a terminal with everything I'd need to get things done. All while not having to turn on dev-mode (wonky) and still playing within Google's ChromeOS confines.
Something like that on iOS would be wild. ChromeOS has the advantage in that it's fundamentally Linux, but the idea of having something like a little BSD container complete with shell and filesystem access would be pretty great.
But, I bet they won't.
Why did you choose an iOS device instead of a computer with the same form factor that runs a full operating system? e.g. Surface Pro.
> In the past, I've written about how devices like Surface Go are the perfect venn diagram of productivity and portability—and remain convinced that Microsoft's approach is the right one, allowing a tiny tablet to do run full desktop apps.
> But, what Microsoft still doesn't have is a good enough dedicated tablet software story yet: Surface Go is one of my favorite devices in years, but its problem is a lack of tablet-mode apps worth using. If it had better battery life, that might be worth the compromise in the opposite direction, but that'll need to be addressed in future revisions.
This last bit didn't really fit with what was being done on the iPad, writing. Was it also supposed to play casual touch-screen games, I don't know. As for the battery life, I can code all day running Chrome, VS Code or IntelliJ, and a WSL session before consuming a full charge.
Looking up the specs of the SP6, it looks like it still weighs around 800g, which is nearly double that of the 11" iPad Pro. The SP3 had the same weight, and that hurt its usability as a tablet as well.
I actually prefer a $20 bluetooth keyboard. It’s easy to use away from the ipad if I’m doing video or audio editing, and I can also raise the ipad in a stand and use the keyboard detached. I find the keys better too, and it has media shortcuts.
$20 anker keyboard: https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Rec...
Viozon ipad stand: https://www.amazon.com/Viozon-Rotatable-Aluminum-Desktop-Sur...
The stand is nice too. Super easy to rotate, or remove it.
My experience with the ipad pro is much as the OP describes. I find it really helps focussed work, and in general is much more a joy to use than a computer. I think the 120hz screen helps.
It cannot do everything thought. So there’s a certain category of stuff that’s hard on ipad, and I do from an imac. This category is shrinking however.
I may switch to a USB keyboard with a dongle, as I do find a full fledged computer keyboard more comfortable. The one downside there is you can’t remap keys, so you need one made for mac.
I love the Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard. The cover of this keyboard also acts as stand for any mobile/tablet device and is magnetically attached to the keyboard, but obviously can be detached and placed wherever you want. Unfortunately the latest iPad Pro 11 redesign renders the stand unusable for the device as it doesn't hold the new iPad Pro securely. Before I was able to use it with several generations of iPads.
I work most of the time from an iPad and when I can’t, an iMac. My iMac at home though is now mostly just a glorified Plex server.
Just grab Blink, a really nice Mosh client for iOs, and rent a small linux box from whatever cloud provider you like (I use scaleway, because they are dirt cheap and super convenient).
Thanks to LTE you've now got an always on remote terminal, that can perform arbitrarily heavy compute tasks, without having any impact on portability or battery life.
It's even good for you as a dev, because you'll get better at your CLI Foo, and because you're SSH'd into a remote machine all day anyways, having to do it in production when something goes wrong is a lot less stressful.
Also if you wanna do pair programming, you can simply share your TMux session with somebody else, or give them access to whatever web frontent, notebook, whatever, port you're running.
It feels strange at first but it's amazing once you get aclimated.
- Working Copy [1] for git repos and quick edits to things like static sites on Netlify
- Coda iOS [2] for anything more heavy lifting. I use SFTP to edit files on my desktop computer and have it run preview sites, commit to git repos, etc
- blink [3] for plain old SSH. Coda does have an SSH client too but I usually SSH via mosh to my home PC and from there to whatever I need. Better experience when on shoddy connections
[1] https://workingcopyapp.com/ [2] https://www.panic.com/coda-ios/ [3] https://www.blink.sh/
Uh, isn't that what tablet mode in win8/10 is for? It removes much of the distractions and with an appropriate WP/text editor just sort of behaves like a tablet, but with the option to flip back into desktop mode and run all those "desktop" apps the Op is complaining about.
As much as I despise some of the crap MS forced on people with W10, the convertible idea has a lot of merit. Particularly if your lugging a keyboard around with the tablet all the time anyway. What MS needs is for dell/hp/etc to start making little 7" tablets again, and then force some portion of their workforce to use them so they understand why it was a miserable experience. The result will be better for everyone.
The article above is a bit like someone saying that they have settled for driving between, say, Paris and London, despite the time commitment and other inconveniences. All while never having tried or even considered flying between the two. The goal here is to get from London to Paris, the goal in the article is to find a produce that best suits their workflow.
I don't get how you can make this claim when they actually talk about Microsoft products specifically in the article:
> In the past, I've written about how devices like Surface Go are the perfect venn diagram of productivity and portability—and remain convinced that Microsoft's approach is the right one, allowing a tiny tablet to do run full desktop apps.
> But, what Microsoft still doesn't have is a good enough dedicated tablet software story yet: Surface Go is one of my favorite devices in years, but its problem is a lack of tablet-mode apps worth using. If it had better battery life, that might be worth the compromise in the opposite direction, but that'll need to be addressed in future revisions.
There is even a key for it with win7+ win-uparrow.
There is also the option in the shortcut to automatically run any random application maximized by default. That has been around for ages (XP/2000 at least).
It's also what i3wm is for. And the latest versions of GNOME ought to be finally usable on touch-enabled tablet- and 2-in-1 PC's. I expect Linux with GNOME to deliver a significantly improved experience compared w/ either ChromeOS, or Windows in its own "tablet mode". Especially so given the recent work by Purism on GNOME-for-mobile, which included quite a few general improvements.
-it lasts all day -it’s very light -quick to pull out/put away -no fan noise -it’s cheaper than a MacBook -it’s great for taking notes, recording your class -it’s great for email and other simple tasks -easy to take a picture of a whiteboard/assignment etc
unfortunately my day is spent switching between lots of tasks the iPad doesn’t do well. Like pulling multiple assets from different locations for a 1 minuet edit in photoshop, exporting and slotting into a landing page. The iPad Pro would be abysmal for stuff like that.
It makes me glad I’m an old school die hard vim user. Give me a basic SSH client and I can be productive in virtually any environment.
But of late I’ve been eyeing the Surface Go for development, simply because it can give me a local UNIX userland (and I’m already using Surface devices for work anyway), as well as a normal desktop browse with zero compromises.
Sure, the tablet app ecosystem on Windows is... sub-optimal. But most of what I actually need is available as web apps of some sort (I don’t even use Teams, Slack or Outlook, I just use the web UIs in a browser 99% of the time these days...).
Give me a decent terminal, a full browser and a mouse pointer, and I’ll move the Earth :)
With all the (justifiable) complaints that macOS development lags iOS development, this is an area where the situation is reversed: there's a standard handwriting support, like dictation support, for every text widget. You have to plug a pen tablet in of course (boo -- the huge touchpad should work). But for some reason the handwriting support isn't automatic for iOS apps.
https://twitter.com/schreda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXXtTYYwRKM
I've considered getting an iPad for note taking. It seems a bit overkill for... note taking. And I'm not sure what the experience is like compared to pen and paper. But I hate keeping notebooks organized, have them not be searchable, etc.
It was a pretty good experience all-in-all.
I use Blink for mosh (ssh connections get closed if you leave the app in the background for too long) and Wireguard for VPN to my Linux VPC (it's so good!). I started using a code folding config in my remote vim so I can fit more stuff on my screen.
I recently started using Juno for Jupyter notebooks on my iPad. It's 15 bucks and requires a bit of work to get SSL certs set up on self-hosted instances, but it's actually usable unlike Safari.
The Logitech smart keyboard is far better than the Apple keyboard IMO but I don't think they've made one for the newest model iPad Pro yet. (I have the 2017 model)
As an example, try downloading a large file in a browser. You will quickly find that the download will stop if you switch apps or let the device go into standby.
- a lot of small things. Picture in picture is a great feature, but it works inconsitently between apps, with some not at all, and why can't I arbitrarily size the video and put it into the corners? While per default watching a video/tv program rather small, I would like to have the ability to enlarge the picture, if something interesting comes up.
- multitasking: haven't really been able to use that. 50:50 works sometimes, 75:25 usually is too small for the 25 part, should allow at least 66:33, if not completely flexible. Same for the hover over app, should allow for larger sizes.
- file management: this is really painful, so many limitations in that area. No ability to copy files from an attached USB stick or SD card into iCloud. No general ability to move files between apps, even if those in principle support the file type. No ability to add a video to the TV app from iCloud, none to add songs to the music app.
- applications: if your productive use of the iPad fits to one app from the app store: congratulations, if not, you are basically out of luck. There does not seem to be even a MUD client available for iPads. "Blink" is a pretty great SSH client, the best I found so far, but based on html rendering...
Why isn't there a version of Termux for the iPad? It allows so many quick usages, it really adds a lot of productivity. If Apple doesn't trust app programmers with such a thing, why don't they offer a port themselves in a proper sandbox? I don't need to access the system files, a small chroot jail would be fine (perhaps with iCloud drive mounted?). Of course, given the power of the iPad, why not a small "Linux" app with a Wayland desktop? Apple, if you think that would be a big replacement for paid apps, that says a lot about the app universe :p
And of course: a development environment. If general software development is too "dangerous" for an iPad, why is there no App creation environment? A self hosted environment would rock. Anyone remembers what Visual Basic 1-6 did for Windows? Why isn't there an equivalent on the iPad? Anyone at Apple ever saw a SmallTalk system? Just give Alan Kay a call, if you can't google it :p
And of course: I like the smart keyboards, but how comes that at Apple no one understands the need for the ESC key and to a lesser extend the function keys, if you are advertising a "professional" device?
PiP video can be resized, up to a limit of about 1/4 of the screen.
> While per default watching a video/tv program rather small, I would like to have the ability to enlarge the picture, if something interesting comes up.
There's an icon (diagonal arrow) to exit PiP mode and return to full-screen in the original app.
> file management: this is really painful, so many limitations in that area. No ability to copy files from an attached USB stick
iXpand USB drives are supported by some apps (e.g. nPlayer, LumaFusion). There's a rumor that external storage support will arrive in iOS13, hopefully without too many restrictions.
Right, thats the problem. It is nice for keeping track of what happens, but e.g. when watching a football game, you want the ability to magnify, as I wrote, to an arbitrary video size. Also, why can't I put the video into the corner, why does it keep a significant distance to the screen edges, so covering more of my app than necessary for the video size.
There's an icon (diagonal arrow) to exit PiP mode and return to full-screen in the original app.
Which can be slow, and not work at all. Also, it might be impossible to get back to the PIP (depending on the app) and also affects the app you were using with the PIP. Why can't I just enlarge the PIP to cover most of my screen, at least up to 75%?
Just tested it with the streaming app of a major TV station (ZDF for the German readers) and while it ends PiP, you are not getting to see the program in full screen mode, they overlay it with the apps UI, covering up 1/3 of the stream.
Double tapping the PiP video to toggle fullscreen would be a nice compromise in my opinion.
Then the icon to exit PiP will return to full screen (or the app's video state when PiP was initiated).
I imagined it would be for that usecase. I didn’t understand the “who needs a stylus” statement, but I guess that is for the iPhone.
He was commenting on past tablets that were meant to be used with a small stylus -- and the interface was totally unfriendly (and sometimes unusable) for hand touch.
He said it shouldn't be the primary method of interaction with a tablet...
His comments on styluses should be seen in light of the technology of the time (Newton/Maemo/Palm OS/WinCE etc) whose input was stabbing at a resistive screen.
(That's not to repudiate finger input being superior to pen for many interactions but styluses of 2019 use vastly different tech to those of 2007.)
I think his comments are general, not about the technology of the time. He's arguing that direct manipulation is better than not-that. That's been a central tenet of UI-stuff for a very long time.
Meanwhile, he was overseeing the development of the 7.9 inch iPad Mini, which wouldn't come out until late 2012.
[0]: https://www.itproportal.com/2010/10/21/steve-jobs-wrong-abou...
At the time, you effectively could not buy a touchscreen device without a stylus being required. Nintendo DS, Palm Pilot, Windows tablet, etc., it was a bundled experience.
Letting you use not just one, but multiple, fingers on a touchscreen without the need for a stylus was a sea change.