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Comment by baroomba | Hacker News Reader

The "i-devices are just consumption devices and toys LOL" viewpoint, which is shockingly still common in programmer circles, seems to rely on a bizarrely narrow idea of what "doing real work with a computer" looks like. Meanwhile iPads and in some cases even iPhones are wildly better devices for lots of work, creative and otherwise, than a "real" computer.

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That viewpoint is common in programmer circles because it applies most strongly to them. The work they've been doing for likely their entire career is still either painfully difficult or impossible to do on anything other than a "real" computer, so of course they're going to say that for them an iPad is a terrible replacement for one.

Actually most developers would stay in two apps. Browser and IDE.

Probably the use case that is best suited to an iPad.

How exactly do I run Visual Studio Professional on an iPad? Desktop developers exist too, you know.

How exactly do I transport a 10 foot ladder on a motorbike?

Of course that’s a silly analogy—there’s no technical reason why Visual Studio couldn’t be ported to run on iPad.

Go to Indonesia and you'll see an answer to that question sooner or later.

Most impressive thing I saw was two bundles of 12 foot rebar. I was reminded of jousting.

You don't, but you get to use Continuous instead.

You can't even compile and run code on a (mobile) Apple device. It's explicitly against the app store terms and conditions to allow users to do that.

> You can't even compile and run code on a (mobile) Apple device. It's explicitly against the app store terms and conditions to allow users to do that.

You better inform Apple then, that the Python IDEs that are available in the App Store need to be banned!

Last time I checked, the exact rules were that all of the code had to be either typed in by the user or included by the app. So there's no real way to share code or collaborate other copy pasting into text windows.

I haven't used Pythonista myself, and it is true that, as I understand it, Pythonista doesn't directly provide the capability to use "pip" or pull code from GitHub. But it seems that these issues have been addressed via plugins for Pythonista. E.g.,

https://github.com/ywangd/stash

An me thinking I had such a plethora of coding app environments installed.

> iPhones are wildly better devices for lots of work, creative and otherwise, than a "real" computer

I think we will need some examples to support that claim.

Digital art.

Agreed, both the iPhone and iPad are amazing for digital art.

I have a project where I try and create at least 2 pieces of abstract art every day on my iPhone. It’s great for getting ideas out quickly. Over 1500 pieces later I’m still going.

Also, on the iPad, Procreate and the Affinity apps plus the Pencil are amazing.

An actual pressure tablet peripheral and desktop software beats the iPad easily. Not even a question.

They're much, much better, and extremely useful, for just about any work that involves building or fixing things in the real world, to pick one large category of work. I'd personally find a laptop maybe 1/10 as useful as an iPhone (or smartphone more generally), at best, when, say, working on my house or car. Watching construction contractors work, they seem to love their phones and use them constantly, too, and for a lot more than making calls and sending messages.

It's like carrying around a whole office's worth of office equipment in your pocket. It's a document scanner, you can use it to measure stuff, to get paperwork signed, to take pictures and look at them later, it's a level or flashlight in a pinch, you can load reference materials on it, and on and on, and that's without getting into really specialized software or peripherals that let you do all kinds of cools stuff.

how about take a picture of something and sending it to someone. Camera's are not only used for selfies, lots of inspection work basically requires to take a picture and submit it. The workflow snap picture with camera -> eject sdcard -> insert sd card -> photo app for resize -> email attachment is really slow and inconvenient compared to add attachment -> snap picture -> send

Pretty much every large retailer I've been to in the last 6 months has most of their employees supplied with smart phones of some sort, usually with a barcode scanner, that they can use for inventory processes. I've walked up to employees at the grocery store and a hardware store and asked for a specific niche item, and they've pulled out their phone, searched for the item, found it's location in store, price, and the number in stock. Seems like they're doing a lot of work with them.

I think we will need some examples to support that claim.

Retail is one. Any retail company that doesn't have a legacy system to integrate with uses iPhones and iPads for their POS systems.

Logistics is another. According to an ex-girlfriend who works in LTL, the logistics industry is 90% people with iPads and iPhones. The only people who aren't using mobile devices for their "real work" are people like her who are chained to a desk doing back office stuff.

Tradesmen is another. When my water heater burst, the water heater guys, the plumber, the guys who replaced the floor, the guy from the gas company, and the guys who replaced the walls all took pictures of the situation before, during, and after to document what they did. Copies went to me, to the landlord, and to their office.

I have yet to see the last one lol. The tradespeople here still use the clipboard case that has their forms inside, sometimes with carbon paper. And they all seem to take cash or checks. XD

I think the reason for that is simply that programmers can’t do real work on these devices, while the many people who do real work on them don’t write about it much.

Indeed, let's be clear pretty much 100% of coffee shops, food trucks, etc use ipads to do the REAL WORK of being a very flexible and portable cash register.

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