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Comment by robenkleene | Hacker News Reader

I'll add the best thing Apple could do to fix iPadOS is make the developers working on it bootstrap[0] it. E.g., by running some version of Xcode on it (or CLI tools until they have Xcode working). Those developer would then fix it right up.

I contend that iPadOS is so sluggish to use because it's a compile target from a real machine that developers respect and work on, not a machine that those developers take seriously itself. That Apple is pushing a platform so hard that their own developers would never use for their work is everything you need to know about using an iPad for productivity. Sure, there are other tasks you can use a computer for besides programming, but sorry, programming is the task for computers, everything else stems from it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)

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I think of the iPad like a car. It does a few things well... but I would never use one car as the means to build another. My computer(s) function much better in those roles.

+1 Good product design is as much about what a product doesn’t do as what it does. Jobs was very good at that. The current design committee… not.

It's like developing Macintosh software on a Lisa. Surely that could never produce anything usable, right?

Making a toolchain for iPadOS is trivial. The issue is that Apple does not provide the facilities to do this.

Porting the toolchain is arguably trivial, but making a pleasant developer experience on a computing platform that may or may not have a keyboard is another concern entirely.

Making a pleasant developer experience is a lot easier than getting iPad to load your compiled code at the moment, and the current state of developer tools reflects this.

Easier for everyone other than Apple itself. But GP was suggesting that Apple build it, and Apple can easily modify their own code signing restrictions.

I took the comment to mean that developers should bootstrap it. Perhaps I misinterpreted it…

I see, your gripe is having to be a part of the Apple developer program to develop for iOS. A 10+ years stale debate.

No, my issue is with the fact that even with a developer program account you cannot compile and run code directly on your device.

Sure you can. With a developer account nothing is stopping you from running a compiler on your device. You don’t need root or jailbreak to run a compiler.

As other poster alluded to. It’s not the difficulty, it’s that given the environment of the iPad, there isn’t a compelling use case.

> Sure you can. With a developer account nothing is stopping you from running a compiler on your device. You don’t need root or jailbreak to run a compiler.

You can run a compiler, but you cannot run the generated code.

This is news to me as an iOS developer. I wonder what I’ve been doing all this time.

Compiling code on your computer and then transferring it to your device?

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