A 13" iPad Pro with keyboard is $1650. And you can't even get the nanotexture glass below 1TB; so that + keyboard is approaching $2300.
Who is buying this?
iPad Pro gives me:
- amazing SSH terminal
- ability to download content from streaming services to long-haul flights
- a decent size screen for watching TV in bed (my bedroom has a layout that prevents me from placing TV anywhere)
- a good steam/xcloud client
- when latency is too high for SSH, I have RPi I connect with USB-C to iPad and shows up as Ethernet adapter powered from iPad.
- a few games to play on the iPad itself when away
- I have a thunderbolt dock that my main PC is connected to, I can switch to my iPad. That with Stage Manager gives essentially focus-mode mac.
- nice screen (quality and size) to read things (not books, eInk is king there)
- nice screen to look at recipes while I cook
You might notice that none of these tasks require a powerful CPU, and you will be right. I got iPad Pro because of screen size and thunderbolt. Might switch to the new one because the camera is finally in the right place.
If I could run IntelliJ on iPad, even in remote mode - I wouldn't even think about buying a laptop.
Years ago there were 4:3 Thinkpads. Then OEMs moved to 16:9 aspect ratios for video content, some claiming that the economics were no longer viable for 4:3 displays. Yet Apple continues to ship millions of 4:3 screens for iPads.
As for peripheral, not at all. My iPad lives mostly in its keyboard folio. I also regularly use a USB-C dock with it for either Ethernet access, HDMI output to hotel TVs, or memory card reading (camera). I know a few people who carry around 8bitdo Bluetooth game controllers for use with all sorts of devices (steam deck, laptop, phone, iPad). If you’re a diehard gamer, it’s well worth it.
I don't remember whether it had USB-C at the time or not, but it definitely didn't have Thunderbolt, which is a requirement for me.
> Samsung
Same with thunderbolt, but also I can't stand Samsung's version of Android. I wish Pixel Slate kept evolving. The Android tablet experience in general isn't great. Blink terminal is 12/10 experience, there is no app like that for Android. However, on Samsung, I would be able to just install NixOS in VM on the tablet, so there is that.
> Cool that it works, but that is very far from out of box experience.
Well, yes, but first it's just one cable and a game pad that I already had. I didn't buy any of those things specifically for the iPad. For me, it was an out-of-the-box experience.
I'd like to mention that when I got my iPad Pro, I had zero apple products at my house.
No, don't run anything on my servers thanks. I don't even care if there's an option to turn it off.
Switched to termius, I'll miss being able to use custom fonts but meh.
A secondary use-case is watching movies while traveling. I did my taxes on there too - Google sheets, scanning receipts from the camera into the Files app, all work well. I plugged in a monitor for that.
The one thing I’m not doing on there is coding. I only do that on my work laptop. If I had personal programming projects, I’d surely be using a laptop that lets me run my own code as my personal computer.
The price for the new Pro sure is high, but I’m tempted. The phone’s 120Hz OLED has spoiled me. Surely they sell more of the cheaper models, but they might as well make a halo device to rake in as much margin as they can from people who are willing to pay for the best.
And that matters for coding work because?
>screen is lower and further from my eyes.
The iPad screen doesn't have any fixed position, so what are you comparing it to? iPad propped on an Apple iPad keyboard (which would be even lower)? iPad handheld which would be unusable? iPad set flat on a table? iPad on a stand (if so, what prevents you putting the MacBook on a stand?)
The Magic Keyboard actually lifts the iPad above the keyboard, which puts it in a better viewing position in laptop-mode than an actual laptop. Every little bit helps when you have creaky tendons and joints.
The MBA is permanently affixed to its keyboard: so it can't easily be used for consumption (in bed, on the couch, etc.) The MBA also has no touch screen, and no stylus. The iPad can also ship with a built-in cellular radio. Now I'm carrying an extra tablet, plus an extra hotspot.
That sure sounds like a lot of compromises to me. If I needed more performance I'd be stepping up to a MBP for the active cooling, which pushes us into a different price bracket anyways. If I needed more disk/memory bandwidth I wouldn't even be considering a portable in the first place. (More realistically: I would be using my portable to shell into a more powerful box, and an iPad Pro or even an iPad Air would do that just as well as any MacBook.)
If you need more external I/O, well, I'm not sure I buy that the iPad Pro is a serious compromise over the MBA. It has 40Gb/s of bandwidth and that's _a lot_ for the vast majority of use-cases. My main MBP already sits docked all day via a single thunderbolt cable.
The only reason I would actually choose an MBA over an iPad is that I'm a developer. I place strangely disproportionate value on things like an untrusted boot-chain, kernel extensions, and freedom.[1] I like having the flexibility to be able to bless and enroll my own bootable volumes. I want to be able to tinker with the system partition. I want to introspect the system when things go wrong. The iPad challenges these things by design.
I cannot emphasize this enough: _all of my friends would be lost trying to follow along with the preceding paragraph._ They would look at me like I had two heads. _The above desiderata are not at all representative of the average computer user today._ For most of what I do (media consumption and some content creation) the iPad Pro would do an excellent job, I'd argue better than the MBA. For everything else I do: "iPad Pro vs. MBA" is a false dichotomy, I would not be choosing either of those machines. I would buy a workstation-class device at a minimum.
The ability to install apps and third-party browsers without your democratically-elected representatives holding the OEM at gunpoint?
News to me, as it never prevented me from doing exactly that. Like hundreds of millions who don't own a tablet (and I do own some).
I think touch computers had enormous potential that has mostly been permanently squandered by making them into entertainment devices for users — not owners, and certainly not operators. The product barely even really belongs to you from that perspective.
This is something that Stallman and the Free Software movement got absolutely bang-on: proprietary software seeks to control its users and prevent them from truly owning and operating their computers. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important free computing is, and how much more important it will become in the future if we don’t secure our access to it.
I expect this to improve, and I've not tried to build any complex software on it (yet).
I do wish iPad had something to push me over to replace my laptop for that use case, but I’m too used to windowed environment.
I have mine bound to esc since I use vim as my main editor, but ctrl is also an option.
As for the soft keyboard, at least in termius this is remappable in the settings (I think blink also)
I am basically fed up with my iPad, looking to sell it and buy an Android with termux.
Why would you need a table for those things? Isn't a dektop/laptop optimized for those kind of things anyway?
Or you just want to hook some 11" iPad to a monitor and a keyboard, and just use it as a desktop unit?
Heck, maybe it would be interesting to work on touchscreen software on a touchscreen computer in a touch oriented IDE or editor, no?
Well, a sports car and a truck, and a Mini Cooper and an 18-wheeler are all road vehicles too.
The difference is tradeoffs, optimization, cost, user experience, and so on.
The iPad could indeed get the ability to be used as a Mac (hook cable to hub, perhaps monitor, full macOS etc). It would still not exactly be optimized for that, it would need all the extra stuff, but it would work.
A Macbook with a touch screen not so much. It would either have to be detachable (like some PC models), which comes with certain tradeoffs, limits on construction, materials, battery life, thinness (as the screen would need to be able to work autonomously, thus have the CPU and everything), etc.
Or it could be a laptop with a touch screen (again, like some other PC laptop models), which would give an unatural, unergonomic experience.
>Heck, maybe it would be interesting to work on touchscreen software on a touchscreen computer in a touch oriented IDE or editor, no?
Based on our experience with laptops that have that, not that interesting in the end. There's a reason we don't see people using those PC laptops that have that using them for the touch screen in the wild, and that they haven't really caught on.
That being said, I’m getting an iPad Air now that they offer 13”.
I had one from 2020, use it all the time over my phone, and I’m upgrading to this one. 512GB though - shame I can’t get the glass :(
I ultimately ended up selling it in lieu of a MacBook Pro and an iPad mini, as I really missed having a local dev environment.
However, laptops at my current employer are more locked down, so I can't SSH and VNC into them like I could before, even through Tailscale.
Given that I will still travel a lot with them and like to work on non-work things during flights without carrying two laptops, I decided to get the OLED 11" iPad Pro with the Keyboard that I can use to remote into my laptop at home.
I also draw heavily during deep dives and workshops; so much so, that I always have a Pencil with me in my fanny pack, which I carry with me everywhere. Given this, I also got me a Pencil Pro to replace it.
Heck they have 4GB/32GB tablets for $30 that would no doubt just about manage running ReadEra or some other PDF viewer with no trouble.
Also the keyboard when I need to quickly ssh into something and I didn’t bring my laptop. (Not sure if there are non-pro iPads that support them now)