I own a 2018 11" iPP, and it has been a game-changer in the way I have studied. After buying it, I haven't printed a single sheet of paper for note-taking. It's also a much better Netflix device than my phone.
Honestly have no complaints with this 2018 model, it's one of my favorite pieces of hardware I've ever owned and in fact is what introduced me to the Apple ecosystem (where I'm now fully submersed) in the first place.
The only special setup that I had to do on my Mac was allowing ssh connections and adding the public key that the Blink app created for me. When I was on Windows I found that I had to map the command and option keys from my iPad keyboard to my custom vim keybindings, but now that I use a Mac as well that's not necessary.
Edit: here's a picture of my iPad ssh'd into my Mac and editing some F# code. It works well! https://www.dropbox.com/s/ilh16cesqj8ovi9/IMG_7535.jpeg?dl=0
Blink has mosh in addition to ssh, which if I understand correctly is much better suited to handling higher latency connections like that. I just haven't taken the time to set it up at home, so I can't really say how it performs.
All in all, if you're curious about using the iPad for this kind of thing I really recommend it. I absolutely love mine. Apple is pretty generous with their return policy too, I've returned a handful of their laptops just because I had buyer's remorse!
But thanks for generously replying with so much detail. Much appreciated.
Short version: after installing mosh-server on the remote machine, you run "mosh remotehost" instead of "ssh remotehost". It uses SSH to establish an encrypted UDP "connection" to the server. If your IP changes, Blink instantly re-establishes a connection. If you pause your iPad for a week and come back to it, Blink instantly re-establishes a connection.
What this means in practice is that I can start doing something at home. Oops, time to leave: I take my iPad on with me on the bus to the office, pair it with my phone, and continue working from the same session. Get to work and switch to Wi-Fi, and I keep using that same session. It's freaking magical.
If you’d be willing to expand on this, I’d be very interested to hear more.
I used to be all-in on Apple devices circa 2010, but drifted back to Windows and Android for gaming & better notification UX (and Windows being a much more familiar OS to me). However, I don’t game on PC anymore, and I’ve become increasingly unhappy with the privacy concerns regarding Google’s ecosystem.
I got a 2020 iPad and the UX is leagues ahead of my aging Samsung Galaxy S9. Given this and the aforementioned privacy concerns, I’ve been considering once again switching to an iPhone and MacBook. Therefore, it would be very valuable to me to hear more about your experiences (and others who have made the same switch and happen to read this).
My 12.9” eventually had like 30 min battery life and I refuse to spend so much on a legit battery replacement.
Instead I mounted it on the side of our refrigerator to be always plugged in.
Our kids use it with friends to look at family pictures, play multiplayer arcade games, stream music, etc.
It became kind of a mini home console for them (it is mounted lower for their height).
It might be a good model for internet browsing as well, and texting, since it forces open communication as they wean into entering the dangerous internet (for some, it can be as dangerous as learning to drive…)
OTOH you can buy a whole lot of $3 spiral notebooks for the price of an ipad pro
For me notebooks go straight to paper recycling after a while, the space and burden is just too much. Anything I intend to last any devent amount of time is digitized, and scanning notebooks is a PITA.
At some point, 'it's cheaper' is just not a good enough argument for paper notebooks versus the sheer versatility of an iPad.
I would have to buy a veritable cart-load of writing stationery to emulate everything I do on my iPad. It would likely still be cheaper, yes, but it would also be much more of a pain in the neck.
Despite its age, the 2018 iPads still fare very well for most tasks.
I don't work-work on it, but it does sit beside me all day. Notes, manuals, calls, music etc. Sharing my screen, pulling up a diagram and the pencil is my favourite way to explain things on calls lately. Then I can just shoot them a pdf when we're done to cut out 'n keep.
I see nothing today that changes this for me - just new toys that I look forward to seeing in a few years.
Nomad Sculpt. There is no such thing as increased CPU power, often you're dealing with multiple millions of polygons. There is even limitation in the app saying "don't go over X number of polygons" because of CPU limitations. And it's the reason why I'm buying new iPad Pro - to be able to work with more polygons faster.
It seems kind of crazy to say there's nothing that makes full use of the CPU.
You're not going to edit a feature film on it, but for anything that's just filming a few minutes of different things and editing then together and posting/sending it wherever, it's a godsend.
Whether you're a professional actor taping a last-minute audition from your hotel room, a sales manager putting together an instructional video on site, or a high schooler putting together a classroom project.
But maybe there exists better options. I can't say I have invested in expensive video editing software on iOS. (Not that I've ever had to on macOS or Linux though.)
For about 6 months iMovie had this crazy bug on my iPad pro that made it extremely laggy.
The software side of iOS is definitely suffering lately, and somethings on the ipad have felt like a downgrade.
Where the 2018 model struggles at high frame rates, the M1 version enables more fluid gameplay at 95-120fps. The new M2 would likely deliver more consistent 120fps performance given the advertised 15% CPU and 35% GPU uplift.
They've since walked that back, and while it is being reworked will be coming to a14 models after all, probably sans the external display support.