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Comment by nozzlegear | Hacker News Reader

I was just thinking this myself. I have the 12.9" 2018 iPad Pro and was considering pulling the trigger on this new iPad Pro announced today. But I really have no reason to, my current one runs perfectly and I've even got the floating keyboard case which is backwards compatible with it. It's replaced my laptop entirely, instead I just ssh into my Mac at home and use vim if I feel like writing some code on the road or from bed.

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.

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> in fact is what introduced me to the Apple ecosystem (where I'm now fully submersed) in the first place.

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).

Fun use case:

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…)

Apple devices last a long time and get software updates for many years. You really don't need to upgrade unless either (A) the new device has features you want, or (B) your current device stops getting software updates, or potentially (C) you have some new use case that would be more performant on a newer device.

Very interesting! Can you please share your preferred apps for ssh/remote access to your home server or Mac? I think I could use that recommendation.

Blink.sh is my favorite ssh app for the iPad.

Sure! I started off using the Termius app for ssh, but ended up moving to Blink. It's been so long that I can't really say why I stopped using Termius, but Blink works really well. It has a lot of built-in bash commands, but honestly I don't find those that useful since I'm not working on local files. I think if Blink had vim built-in I'd use those commands a lot more, but right now I just open Blink and immediately ssh into my home machine. I have a couple ssh aliases set up for that -- one that uses my local network if I'm at home, and one that connects to my home IP address if I'm out on the road.

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

This looks incredibly good. How's the typing latency & bash completion? Thanks for sharing a photo - gives much richer perspective.

If I'm on my home network the latency is impossible to notice, I might as well be at my Mac. Same goes for bash completion, it works flawlessly. Once I'm off my home network it's a slightly different story, it just depends on the internet connection wherever I happen to be connecting from. For example I stayed at a hotel in Fargo, ND a few weeks ago and the latency was fine for the most part, but there were moments where the typing or completion would lag behind by a second or two and then catch up. Almost like lag in a video game.

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!

Nah, good heavens I won't return it :) I have a workplace M1 11in model, but its late for me - so I am going to try this fun project tomorrow.

But thanks for generously replying with so much detail. Much appreciated.

Another vote for Blink. In particular, its mosh support is brilliant.

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.

mosh + tmux/screen is a wonderful UX. The lack of an escape key is less critical on a command line, where C-c more reliably does the same thing (and if you're using vim, try C-[ or remapping the action to `jj` instead of Esc).

My favorite so far has been Prompt2, but I'm down to try others!

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