> Can I code on it yet?
I (honestly) don't understand the appeal of writing code on an iPad. Feels like the Air or Macbook Pro already do that: a keyboard with a screen. I'd feel cramped if I had to develop on something like iPad OS.
I (honestly) don't understand the appeal of writing code on an iPad. Feels like the Air or Macbook Pro already do that: a keyboard with a screen. I'd feel cramped if I had to develop on something like iPad OS.
The benefit of the iPad is the touch screen, that's it. The size/weight argument is only valid for those who aren't loading it up with a keyboard cover. I assume everyone talking about coding on it are going to be using the Magic Keyboard.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21227741/apple-ipad-pro-m...
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/ipad-keyboards/folio...
My iPad has better battery, cellular, etc…
Do I use it to code, no, but that is because I don’t really code anymore. I have used it along with parallels access to remote in to my Air from literally across the world, and run VSCode to troubleshoot some code for a friend. It worked fine. Anymore it’s become my travel machine.
The fact that you can remove the keyboard half is a big benefit to some as well.
If you are going somewhere and will want to type when you get there, the Magic Keyboard is coming with you. It folds up to act as a case for your iPad during transit... it is a portable device.
It’s also less invasive that way, you can get a laptop stand but it looks ridiculous in coffee shops.
What you call artificially dumbing down others would call optimising for the form factor.
There is almost nothing stopping people from writing up iPad apps for coding things up, except for the fact that there is no market. Apple is no longer standing in the way IMO (stuff like Pythonista exists after all)
Is the context I described responsible for the lack of market? It may be.
I still think that iOS is the best mobile experience out there, but it's
It requires consciously designing everything to work as both a fully fledged computer and content consumption device. That touches everything from product design, internal hardware, thermals, operating systems, frameworks etc.
And what you say about 'consciously designed ...' amounts to nothing meaningful. Have you seen what hardware people have been running Doom on?
So does my watch, my fridge and my car.
iPad's hardware is already a perfectly usable general purpose computer. It is very portable, unlike your fridge, and has powerful processor and high-capacity battery, unlike your watch. The only problem preventing its use as a general purpose computer in a sense of Macbook is a lock by the manufacturer, which prevents loading a proper OS on it, and the absence of hardware specs, nothing more.
And an iPad is nowhere close to the safety-critical nature of the other computers. There is no defence for its locked down nature.
I’m going to skip answering and simply say I would like to code on my iPad too
I would guess that Apple fears that Epic will start using untrusted VMs to distribute Fortnite outside the App Store. Though, honestly, they're not far from being able to do that with a hypothetical WebAssembly/WebGL version already.
iPad OS 16 also adds virtual memory for the first time on an iOS device.
It makes me wonder how much life my 2018 iPad Pro has left. I think it only has 3GB of RAM, which I could see being more important, as Apple adds more multitasking to the OS.
I have also seen that claim, but I have a really hard time believing they didn’t have swap before. Like hell, I’m sure they must have used memory compression as well..
The latter is pretty rare given how much work has been put into notifying apps about memory pressure, making them easily suspend/resume, and not using garbage collection.
Also, sorry to be pedantic but reference counting is a garbage collector algorithm, but I do understand what you mean here (RC needs less memory at the price of not being able to defer work to a concurrent thread)
I guess I really want some weird hybrid of both OSes.
I have a Mac Mini at home, but lately while doing some prep for interviews (sigh, leetcode), I’ve been going to the library or other places with my iPad and a BT keyboard, and it’s not half-bad to write some code. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask) I’ve been mostly writing code on a DigitalOcean instance that I SSH to. That can be trickier if Wi-Fi is shaky where I am since my iPad doesn’t have access to mobile networks and my phone doesn’t do tethering.
Nowadays newer iPads can even hook up to external displays. So form-factor wise, you’re not necessarily missing much, even if you prefer more screen real-estate.
It would definitely be nice to have a native Terminal shell, though.
When I'm home I don't really need the iPad for this (much). There a few use cases where it's clearly better than my MacBook Pro though: the screen is veerry nice outside and I've written more in a hammock than you'd think. Also - airplanes which I am on more often than I'd like to be. an iPad Pro with the magic keyboard is fantastically shallow. It fits on a tray better than anything else.
But you can take it off and write notes with it, pass it around, etc.
It's not even about the money, it's the sheer audacity and arrogance that shits me.
Until I can plug a screen and a keyboard to my iPad and write something as sophisticated as Cultured Code's Things on it, there is still ways to go.
If these were your two requirements, you wouldn't need an Air or MBP either.