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Comment by joeman1000 | Hacker News Reader

Similar to what I’ve been doing lately. Bought an M1 iPad (different story…) and have been using MOSH and Blink Shell to access my computer at home running emacs. Has been a blast doing journaling, logging my time in org-mode, writing notes in org-roam for uni subjects. Has been a game-changer for me. I know it’s just a ‘dumb terminal’ but the experience is so seamless it’s incredible. MOSH makes sure the connection doesn’t drop out when I lock the device and come back half a day later. I can be on the train home and fire up that buffer I had going this morning writing a paper in LaTeX, with proper syntax highlighting, completion, snippets… incredible.

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This is exactly my setup, and I love it. Seriously, gentle readers: if you haven't checked out MOSH yet, do so. It's game changing:

* It doesn't care if my IP changes. For example, I can start a session at home connected to Wi-Fi, switch to tethering to my phone as I take a bus, switch to office Wi-Fi when I get to work, and the connection never drops.

* It stays connected forever. Switch to a Blink tab with a connection I haven't used for a week, and I'm instantly looking at a live shell prompt.

It's magical. I use MOSH everywhere I possibly can now.

I also use Blink with Mosh, but what’s your physical setup? You mentioned using it on the train, so are you using an attachable keyboard like the Magic Keyboard? At that point, isn’t the iPad just bigger and heavier than a laptop?

I don’t ask to refute your experience; I’m honestly curious since I like the idea of just using the iPad, but the ergonomics just seem inherently inferior regardless of software concerns.

It’s heavier but not bigger. It’s not ideal but I like that it is more versatile (for me). I can do some coding/org stuff, then detach from the magic kb and start doing practice problems from a textbook (engineering drawings etc). Laptop will always be better if I know I won’t want to do any pencil stuff. Otherwise, iPad is compact and modular, and I feel more like bringing it with me places. I like to leave my laptop ‘docked’ and use it as a desktop often.

I sometimes sit my HHKB on top of the magic keyboard, but not often. If I’m going out I just use the magic kb and trackpad.

Not the person you were asking, but I have a Smart Keyboard Folio which is super thin and light, and that folds back and out of the way so I can use my iPad like a normal, bare iPad when I want to.

What is the UX for switching between apps or moving the screen like?

Can you do this with keyboard shortcuts or do you find yourself switching between keyboard and touch screen for some interactions?

I find this idea of using a keyboard super appealing but don’t like the idea of switching between keyboard and screen all the time. At least a virtual keyboard is on the screen!

I often use an external keyboard with my iPad (but not really on the go). Both multi-tasking and keyboard shortcut support have gotten a lot better recently (with an especially big push in iPadOS 15), but I find the biggest blocker that iPadOS still hasn’t been decided with a keyboard in mind.

For example, tons of apps—including Apple apps—don’t highlight text fields by default as they would on a computer, so you have to tap (or click) the field before you can type. You can very rarely tab to switch focus between different buttons and menus. You can’t type to jump to an item in a list, etc.

MacOS has so many little productivity enhancers, especially in regards to keyboard shortcuts and keyboard control, and the people designing iOS/iPadOS have just never made it a priority so even with an external keyboard, I find myself having to use touch or the mouse so much more often.

You can CMD-TAB to other apps as on macOS. There are many of the same keyboard shortcuts translated to iPadOS, even some emacs movement keys in all text boxes!

There isn’t enough room to have more than one thing open usually, so lots of CMD-TAB action.

Normally I’m doing one or the other - typing or annotating/drawing with the pencil. If I need touch-interaction when typing I can use the trackpad.

I can’t say it’s a perfect experience, or even a practical one, but I still enjoy it. Maybe it’s just the novelty of the setup. It weighs more (with the keyboard-case) than my MacBook Air, but it does have a nicer screen and it is waterproof. It lends itself more to portability for sure. I tend to just chuck it in my bag more often than I did with my laptop.

Alt+tab works fine on iOS, and I’m pretty sure you can trigger the app switcher view with a shortcut, can’t remember.

I'm doing something similar: PC at home, Chromebook with Crostini, running ZeroTier and nss-mdns with mosh on top or ssh for X11 forwarding (I use git gui a lot). Cheap fast and can work on battery forever.

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