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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

I am actually genuinely curious of what is the use case for doing coding or advanced video editing on an ipad rather than a laptop. Like why do you need that level of mobility? To edit a movie on the toilet seat of a plane? I get the hacker toying mentality of "it would be cool if I could run Doom on my washing machine's LCD". But is there really a market for it?

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Actually - the more I think about the question the more I realise that I don’t want an iPad to do laptop tasks - as a designer I want the interface connection that comes from Pencil + touch interface on my MacBook Pro...

This is the failure in vision of sidecar, of seeing windows from one device appear in the dock of another (mainly just Safari and Mail, practice), of cut/paste between devices.

Really you want to be able to casually use your iPad as a kind of input device to the Mac sometimes. Also to pick up a task you’re engaged in on one device and continue in another, back and forth. I started this comment on an iPad; as it has turned out to be more than one sentence I should be able to finish typing in the Mac (a much better experience), pressing “reply” on either device and continuing on.

To channnel Conways’s law: Apple’s flat yet strictly siloed corporate structure makes things like this almost impossible.

Microsoft fills the niche nicely for a full operating system with first-class pen and touch support.

Yep, with inferior pen support and slow devices.

I spend so much of my personal time in my iPad that when I am doing personal research on my laptop, at least once a month I try to poke the screen with my finger (never happens at work, different context)

I’m still a little surprises as MBP having no touch interface. Another option would be if the touch pad and the touch bar were fused into one product, allowing a bit of pencil interaction

I know a surprising number of non-tech people editing video for their youtube channel on their phone. Some of them have upgraded to an iPad (usually an older model to save money).

For coding ATM I agree it seems silly to me but apps like Codea are trying to make it possible and I suspect lots of kids have been given iPad not not general computers by their parents

Video and photo editing has certainly been pushed by Apple and its software partners as a use case for the iPad Pro, so we can leave it aside as its not enthusiasts and hackers asking for it in this case.

That leaves programming. And programming is possible on iPads in terms of writing code - even with detachable keyboards now, its only compiling it which is not possible due to Apple's restrictions. It seems fair to ask why.

But my question is: if you must attach a keyboard, aren’t you better off with a laptop? And if you don’t use a keyboard, is anyone really doing any meaningful coding on an ipad with touch only? And if so I’d be curious why?

It doesn't need to be as good as a laptop, it just needs to be good enough to avoid having to also bring along a laptop.

If you’re bringing a laptop presumably you can simply leave the iPad at home. IMO, laptop + phone covers most use cases for iPad + keyboard just fine.

I’ll just pack a Wacom tablet too so I can draw and write on my laptop and leave my iPad at home then?

For Windows you just need a laptop that supports the pen protocol. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/com...

For Apple you might need a Wacom tablet.

I used to have a Surface, it’s fine if you want to doodle occasionally but it really doesn’t measure up to an iPad for its overall tablet experience

There are better alternatives to an old Surface.

Sure, and the 2020 iPad Pro is better than the 2016 iPad Pro that I switched to initially. The problem on Windows’ side is the software. Unless Microsoft has found a way to get developers on board with their own modern UI paradigm, you get a good tablet experience maybe 10% of the time.

And their tablet friendly UI sucks even when Microsoft does it themselves. For example, the new disk manager, which is objectively worse in every way than the old one except for having big touch targets: https://mspoweruser.com/this-is-the-new-windows-10-modern-di...

Plenty things a laptop is not as nice for as the iPad. And even comfortably replacing it assumes your laptop is similar in size and weight than the iPad, which puts another constraint on your device choices.

Sorry for the late reply, but I'd say if you can attach a keyboard and do more of the tasks that a traditional laptop does, it can replace the traditional laptop. Then you have one device where you can pop off the keyboard when you are on the couch, and pop it back on when you are at a desk or need to do some typing.

Not my taste, I still prefer the traditional laptop form-factor, but Apple is actively pushing their (expensive) keyboards so its worth asking why not allow compiling of code.

In terms of video editing.. its not about portability, its about ease of use. A friend of mine edits videos on her iPad for 2 reasons. The first is that there seem to be more easy to use video editing apps there than on Windows, and she found one she liked (by testing them on her phone). The second is that the video editing performance is actually really good compared to what you can get with the same money in a Windows laptop + editing software. So getting an iPad mostly for video editing was an easy decision for her.

For me, I love the video editing part. Allows me to easily edit videos on trips to share with family and friends. Works much better than on a phone and requires a lot less hardware than a laptop.

A giant multi-billion dollar market for it already exists. There are several major apps used by world-class producers and famous creators.

Music and video production has rapidly adopted tablets not just because of the speed and mobility but also the accessibility and tactile nature of the experience. Not everyone needs to sit in front of a big workstation to get things done, and in fact much of the work that used to be done that way didn't have any other alternatives until now.

Programming is arguably harder to bring around because it requires a keyboard and screen real estate but most visual/design/creative work can easily be moved to iPad and opened up to many more people.

Perhaps the reason is as simple as, "this is what I own, and I'd like to use it."

I think the situation is almost the inverse of your question, actually. :) The article's author already does almost everything on their iPad; so the use case is as simple as "I want to move that one last thing (coding) off my laptop and onto my main machine (my iPad)".

I once had a programming assignment for a job interview. I was given a CSV format file sample and asked to submit a custom compression program. I went with creating a symbol dictionary for some fields, variable length encoding for some numerical fields, etc. I wrote it on my iPad using Pythonista mostly during my train journeys to and from my job at the time, with a bit at coffee shops during lunch.

> But is there really a market for it?

I think there was until the m1 air. My iPad pro is powerful and very portable. The only thing holding it back from being my complete on the go machine was lack of software around coding.

Now that the m1 air has come out, I will likely stop using the keyboard with my iPad, and just use the air on the go. The iPad will go back to my drawing and photo sorting/editing device.

There are still great use cases for an ipad. My two favorites are browsing the web or reading books from a bathtub and watching movies when travelling!

Do you use it in a zip-loc bag like bezos does with his kindle? I’ve wondered if that works.

No, the ipad doesn’t mind a few droplets of water. But you need a “book cover” like ipad case [1], that you can hold with one hand by sticking the finger between the ipad and the cover part of the case, so you hold it firmly with very little effort.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/JETech-Apple-10-2-Inch-Model-Genera...

FWIW, there are waterproof Kindles now.

What was it that substantially changed from the old air and the m1 air?

Seems to me that most workflows that work on the m1 air worked on the old air but at a bit lower performance. I don't get what work you did on the ipad pro that could not have worked on the old air unless they required the pencil or touchscreen which the m1 air does not have anyway, right?

Not just a bit slower. My iPad Pro (and from I’ve seen now the new MBA) roll through programs like Lightroom. LR on my 2018 iPad Pro worked much better than LR on my 2017 MBP for example. Then there’s battery life which means not looking for a charger constantly throughout the day.

Lightroom is not supported on m1 macs.

It was literally shown running at the WWDC event, and the ARM version should come out in December. I expect it to perform more like the iPad version than the mbp version.

I don't understand - Adobe claims it's not supported and promised a version some time next year.

Why would it perform more like the ipad version? They are different apps.

While I can't run my programs on the iPad, Textastic + Working Copy + Blink (using mosh to connect to a VPS, or a work/home system if you have one to connect to) makes for a pretty pleasant coding experience so long as your code is not graphical in nature (none of mine is). I can run it on the VPS, or have a CI platform take care of running the tests and builds for me.

What if you just want to use your computer while in bed or on the couch? It's so much more comfortable. Laptops are awkward and desktops just aren't made for it.

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