It's really impressive what an iPad can do. But this setup requires you to always have a connection, and the author said that he had replaced his laptop with an iPad completely. What do you do if you're offline (or if reception is bad)?
"Impressive" is not the word I'd use for running a terminal with SSH. Especially since the iPad is likely several times more powerful than the remote Ubuntu server that is actually running emacs.
It is just accessing a VPS via ssh. That is not at all impressive, rather the opposite: you have to connect to another machine because the ipad just cannot do what you want. And you then still have to deal with keyboard issues....
And that is kind of a shame because the screen and form factor are both really nice.
> And you then still have to deal with keyboard issues....
What kind of issues?
But it's not, the opposite actually. Any kind of serious typing requires a proper keyboard. If you have to carry a tablet, which is essentially just a screen, and a keyboard, you might as well just take a laptop and gain the ability to take advantage of a general computing device.
Unless one flies business class, there is often not enough space between seats to comfortably use a traditional laptop. With a tablet, you can at least do something.
The other big thing is that iPad Pros have very high screen brightness. For working outside it's a big benefit, as most portable laptops don't get that bright. The M2 Air and the M* Pros do, but you can't just pull the screen off when you only need a screen.
The best of both worlds, imo, is to have an M2 Air and an iPad Pro. When you're at a desk to do real work, you get the full laptop benefit plus the big iPad Pro as a second monitor. When you're on the daily outing, you take either or depending on your expected need. But you do now have a $5000 setup, which is more than many people would like to spend for a little more flexibility.
If Apple hadn't done such a great job with the M* Air, it would be easier for me to consider some other vendors' 180 degree folding laptops. But the silence of my Air and the amazing battery life are hard to give up.
Typing on a touchscreen is much slower than a keyboard.
Add a keyboard to your iPad, congratulations you've now got a laptop with half the features.
Cloud development sucks if you live far away from the datacenter due to latency. Also, if your internet connection goes down then you're unproductive until it comes back.
And it’s not about feature comparison to a laptop, even with a keyboard as MacBook Air M2 is better and cheaper than iPad. But easy content consumption, taking notes, sketching, writing, and many others. It’s just more fun than a heavy laptop. But yes, it’s not for everyone as using it full-time requires a change in personal habits. There’s also not much pro apps, but for now you can produce videos, music, cad designs, web design (figma, adobe, serif), so it’s not so limiting as it was years ago.
Because none of the activities you list afterwards are writing and debugging code, tests, etc.
I have previously setup a Hetzner server (EU) with openVPN and Code Server, and then I was able to really have the benefits of pretty secure dev environment that was always on, easily accessible, and powerful. Of course it required a connection to use, but the bandwidth requirements were low. Latency requirements were more important, but they weren't as harsh as if you were using a remote desktop.