Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

I tried making my iPad my computer three times. Despite its awesome specs, these remain a huge pain in the rear for actual dev work.

iPadOS and iPhoneOS will remain useless for actual dev work until they unlock hardware virtualization in Virtualization.framework.

Apps on the iPhone and iPad will remain sandboxed, and root isn't possible, so being able to run a VM that _can_ run as root is the next best thing.

I believe this framework on mobile uses software emulation, which is horribly slow and guzzles battery.

Well, this and third-party browser engine support. Mobile Safari is absolutely horrible. This doesn't become apparent until you're using your iPad full time. Death by a trillion cuts. It also burns battery when you start using it with desktop websites.

Until then, the experience is basically you using your iDevice as a dumb terminal (don't mean that as a dig against Termius; great app given its limitations) to some server somewhere where actual work is done. Rendering issues galore if you use vim with color schemes.

I've by now come to the belief that there's someone high ranking in Apple Org responsible for iPad who deeply despises developers. Every action done over the past years has made development on the iPad worse, not better. Such as spending extra legal energy to make sure the recently-introduced emulator support on iOS does not cover running any kind of computer VM that could allow software development. At the same time, Android ships an official terminal that can run a Debian VM and X11 apps.

They despise users becoming developers. Apple's entire model depends on these being separate groups of people (as opposed to GNU/Linux OSes where they're assumed to be exactly the same.)

Keeping development tools away from users gives Apple a substantial amount of power over them that they can rent out to approved software development organizations.

That is Microsoft. Apple for small developers just paid $100 per year got you there. And tbh the terminal and underlying unix shell is real.

Ironically it's easier to run a compiler and do whatever you like on Microsoft's OSes these days.

Apple is a consumer company. They're all about catering to the consumer class, and growing that class at any price.

Developers are necessary, and their needs has to be tolerated, but only as long as they are successfully kept distinct from consumers.

It's one thing to not have your needs directly catered to and delivered on a silver platter.

It's another to have the company go far out of their way to they don't even leave the field open for someone to cater to your needs.

I don't think that's true at all. Apple has always marketed itself as a brand for creatives. Image/video editing and 3D modeling software demands a lot from its hardware, just like developer tools do. But removing restrictions on developer tools is inherently a security risk, and Apple seems very willing to ship less capable devices if they're also less vulnerable.

Android is no panacea either. There are no Android tablets that are anywhere close to achieving parity with the iPad.

I used a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ with the Book Cover (the one with the track pad) and the Smart Folio (the one without a track pad).

The track pad was horrible. HORRIBLE. Ghost taps, misfired scrolls, and cheap feeling clicks. The track pad on the Magic Keyboard is as good as the standalone Magic Trackpad; this didn't even come close in quality.

The keyboard was fine, but keyboard shortcuts are implemented on a per app basis. This is fine until you want to use CTRL+L in Firefox to navigate to some URL only to discover that Firefox simply doesn't support keyboard shortcuts! Someone opened an issue for this two years ago too because, insanely enough, FF used to support them but simply dropped them because "reasons."

Then there was the cover. The Book Cover provides a Surface like kickstand that's adjustable. Great on a table; unusable on your legs. The Folio solves this by using a tented support, but this forces the tablet into a 25-ish degree tilt that I didn't find comfortable. There wasn't anything like the Magic Keyboard's excellent magic hinge (though maybe later model Galaxy Tabs have an equivalent).

All that said, Termux worked GREAT, and I think I would've gotten mileage out of using an external screen with DeX though I've heard it's lacking in that department. I badly wanted this setup to work, but there were too many quirks.

Also, battery life sucked.

Why do you need to be root? I am working every day on a VDI and I am not root of the machine nor do I have virt capabilities enabled

I think it works great if you're good with VSCode and developing in Github Codespaces or something similar.

Using an iPad Pro with the keyboard works great, plus you can use a bluetooth mouse and even have a second monitor.

Even with all that, I still use my laptop a lot more.

Still can't build native platforms for the device you are using and others within that ecosystem properly. Also not everyone wants to use VSCode.

I wouldn’t expect third party browser engines to be any better on the efficiency front. Under macOS both Chrome derivatives and Firefox are worse. I think the real problem is that for most web apps, performance and efficiency sit at the bottom of the pile in terms of priorities. Nobody cares if they keep your CPU from idling, occupy well more than a reasonable amount if RAM, and guzzle battery, as long as it technically functions it’s good enough.

iOS virtualization is already a mature thing: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/utm-se-retro-pc-emulator/id156...

Dev site: https://getutm.app/

The term "virtualization" is being used in this context to mean using features of the hardware to build virtual machines that run at native performance on computational tasks. In contrast, the app you linked to is just relying on JIT compilation to emulate the guest CPUs.

It is not even relying on JIT, because that’s not allowed unless you are a browser engine and in the EU.

AFAIK, the version in the app store has poor performance compared to the "sideloaded" version. This is due to Apple rules.

We provide both top of line laptops and iPad Pros with trackpad keyboard case (set up for dev using 10 years of learning best patterns) to our SWEs, and depending on WR destination, many opt for travel with solely iPad, suggesting whatever pain in the rear they are, for many the pain is easily outweighed by benefits.

Maybe that's because little of the above comment seems fully accurate, perhaps stemming from thinking one should be working as root on any device. If you know how to dev while avoiding need for root, you likely can iterate into how to do this.

Separately, terminals may be dumb, but mosh, IDEs using code servers, git, and other distributed computing patterns that can be good ideas (depends on nature of work and level of collaboration) no matter your UI device seem wise. Even on an airgapped desktop, dev containers may be wise.

TL;DR: Inability to dev on iPad Pro 13 5G with trackpad keyboard case (and USB-C dock or 4K second screen if you like) may be more cultural than technical.

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