iPad and Linode: 1 Year Later
yieldthought.com
yieldthought.com
It doesn't have the ridiculous battery life of an iPad, but other than that it essentially gives you the same portability without feeling like you're constraining yourself to a subpar development environment (I've tried doing serious web dev on an iPad, but the lack of a web inspector and the ability to remap caps lock as control are both dealbreakers for me).
Battery life was the main hindrance, as I would always need to find a place with a convenient power socket at least for the other half of the day. If somebody made an MBA-like, Linux-capable machine with a full-day battery, I'd buy it no matter the cost.
This might give an idea of the places I worked in: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/sets/72157631399738304/
Slightly more expensive city to live in than Berlin, though. It felt a lot cheaper when I moved there for a while from Helsinki back in 2008.
I just got back from a trip to both Berlin and Istanbul. As a tourist at least it's way cheaper. Is rent just that much higher?
Great produce is also ridiculously cheap here, which makes cooking a much better deal.
Istanbul is big, really really big, like mind-bogglingly big. It's Europe's biggest city (although technically part of it is in Asia too) but if you want to live somewhere posh like Bebek or Nisantasi it's as expensive as anywhere else nice in a major European city. If on the other hand you're prepared to live in a less nice area or a bit further out then there's some good deals to be had.
If you're living somewhere properly then the quality of the food is far higher than that accessible to me here in my bit of the UK, eating out is generally more expensive in terms of average income percentage but typically less expensive than London in terms of raw costs.
I would highly recommend Istanbul to anyone looking to try something a bit different. It really does feel like nowhere else in the world, a chaotic mishmash of east and west but with a great vibe and great people.
http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice-External-Battery-for-Mac...
I wonder how heavy it is... I carry a similar item for my iPad and iPhone in my day bag by default, as my iPhone has some battery issues.
High capacity 60-Watt-hour lithium ion battery allows you to use your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air for up to 20 hours
That page also gives the weight as 362 grams (12.8 ounces). But then you'll also need the MacBook airline adapter which is another 49$. The battery itself is 168$ (and the same amount in €).
Here is a review: http://www.slashgear.com/hyperjuice-external-battery-for-mac...
Seems like a valid option if I decide to stay with MBAs after February.
Update, Amazon reviews don't seem to agree:
So although it won't charge my MBA battery it looks like it will power it for over 3 hours (three stars)
i believed the 20 hour run time they posted. right. sure. i bought it so i could use my macbook at the cabin (no electricity). what i got was, at best, 3 1/2 hours of power from it (one star)
If I use the HyperMac with just the MacBook Pro 13 inch I get probably about 2 hours of use out of this external battery. (five stars)
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/lenovos-x220-thinkpad...
Like you, I see draw backs. I don't want to use vim as my primary editor, and I hate that I can't have tabs loading in the background in the web browser, or can't be on Skype while doing something else...
Though I did the same with my iPad 1, and it was mostly great too, depending on what I needed to do.
How much time/money do you save when you don't have to wait for your code to compile before you can leave, or when you don't have to worry about making sure you save before your battery dies? I can spend $1000 on a laptop and work on it with the same constraints as any workstation, or I can put that $500 to several years of Linode and have money left over to type "go build massive_project" then meet my girl for a coffee while it chugs away in the background without a worry.
Totally agreed. There's a nice little conversation going on here about a Macbook Air vs. an iPad, but shouldn't this raise the point that a $300 netbook can do all this and more?
If all you're using is SSH and a web browser, why spring for the high-end (and high-priced) Apple hardware?
But, if that works for you it would be fine. Me? I'm going with the nicer hardware even if I'm just using vi and terminal.
But I have the advantage of the dev environment I like (even mimics the full rig), I can work on a plane without wifi (my netbook runs servers just fine), and I can boot Win if I need to. It also fits easily onto even a small airplane tray/table.
The only drawback is that unity isn't quite as good as the netbook remix ubuntu used to have. And some progs like mysql workbench don't respect monitor size and make their windows too large (thank god for virtual desktops).
I will probably do this for my next 'round' of tech investment again rather than go ipad.
I couldn't recommend it to anyone for anything other than a couch surfing machine, but then again, a tablet is just as good for that.
You can even use ssh without dev mode, but it is crippled.
[0] basic troubleshooting shell in CrOS
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhomp...
The big disadvantage is the lack of a web inspector, but I'm mainly working on back-end stuff at the moment.
I tried an iPad + keyboard + remote vim a while back and found it slowed me down significantly. Having to take my hands off the keyboard and swipe or use the button slows my flow. Writing code and want to look something up? Swiping to Safari is much slower than Cmd+tab to a real browser.
http://s00pcan.com/photos/ipad1.jpg http://s00pcan.com/photos/ipad2.jpg
I'd love an actual fullscreen iSSH too. If only it was open source so we could improve it...!
http://www.panic.com/blog/2011/04/introducing-prompt-ssh-for...
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prompt/id421507115?mt=8
And for VNC, "Screens" is the best: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screens-vnc-control-your-comp...
Of course this is on a fast x86 chip. No one has been able to get a comparable experience on a table or phone yet. I'm slightly worried that things won't be as crisp or as nice on the Surface ARM (and other ARM tablets). If it is it's not just a step up from Mobile Safari, Chrome for Android, and Firefox for Android, but a major step forward.
However, this has prompted me to re-evaluate what I need on my work computer. Essentially, there are only three things I actually run: vim, Vagrant and a browser.
This means that when the lease period on my current Air ends in February I will have a lot of freedom to choose my next "workstation". Theoretically it could be any small-and-light laptop, or maybe even something like iPad or Surface. Though even with the little requirements I have, I'm not so keen to go Windows...
Oh, and an actual question: I do quite a lot of front-end development (see for instance http://createjs.org/ ). One thing that mobile browsers lack is access to proper inspectors and JavaScript consoles. Any ideas on that?
This is a shame. Firefox is great on Android.
When you have to, can't you VNC to a machine with proper inspectors and consoles?
I don't ipad exclusively, nor do I front end very much, but whenever ssh or run-a-client-on-the-ipad fails me, VNC usually is the solution. I guess rdesktop works too. Given a decent xserver on the ipad I could do a few more things.
Once you've got a quad core server doing the heavy lifting, why not use an iPad for the interface? It doubles as a fantastic entertainment device and looks great too.
Well, i was trying to get at what benefits you thought the iPad gave you (other than ease of setup, and being a great content consumption device).
(While I don't know exactly what you do) you would probably still need a remote server, but Linux would give you a much more mature development platform, with many IDEs including the light table that you mentioned you missed.. with this and a proper shell you would be able to at least do some proper work with no data connection. And still keep the battery life courtesy of ARM.
Except: when merging changes. Then I really want the screen divided into 4 sections, and the iPad is too small to do that comfortably.
That said, I've noticed a trend in my coding style to prefer conciseness and locality. This may be a subconscious reaction to the smaller viewport I'm using.
Then move to Germany.
Having a keyboard that's not joined to the screen has been convenient a number of times though - I can hang the iPad in a bush and rest the keyboard on my knees, for example.
in terms of portability, i see no difference between ipad + kb and a macbook air. heck, i see very little difference between ipad + kb and ipad + macbook air, which is what i carry around. ipad for reading, macbook air for coding and writing.
iOS does not seem like an environment designed for people who spend most of their time writing and typing or otherwise creating. rather, it is an environment optimized for what most people do with their computers most of the time: consume information. that doesn't mean you can't create on the ipad. OSX, on the other hand, is such an environment. there is no reason to pick either or, you can have both at relatively low cost.
Considering all of the comments here, is there a service where you can use a browser that's hosted in the cloud, but have its UI appear in a client over something like VNC?
As far as weight is concerned the Macbook air is an absolutely WONDERFUL device. Coming in at 2.2lbs it's almost the same weight as my iPad+keyboard. Plus, the fact that it's a shell design (case closes and protects the screen+keyboard) works way better for me than an iPad could (though arguably one could get a similar 'protector' for the iPad).
Oh and the kicker ? I'm currently traveling fulltime with my girlfriend (have been doing so for a year now..) and between us, we carry an iPad2+keyboard and Macbook air combo. We do all sorts of things including photo editing, video editing, web development (for me..) on this combination.
But using the iPad for any useful work ? Nuh-uh!
Given our situation, it's also difficult to get good WiFi connectivity most of the time and the macbook air's wifi hardware is better than the iPad's by far. (in terms of wireless reception quality). There've been plenty of times that I pick up the WiFi signal on the Air and then share it over bluetooth for the iPad. More info on our gear is here: http://bkpk.me/about-a-z/
I'm sure you can build confidence and get used to pulling off a string of moves with no immediate visual feedback, but it sounds like something you'd have to get used to tolerating, rather than not notice?
Also, what kind of programming do you do? I often hack in plain console.. but more often than not, I need a browser with the inspector/console open and lots of documentation tabs.. How do you make it work for these cases?
Thanks!
Edit: correction - I love Vim as an editor with incredibly powerful macro and scripting capabilities. That makes up for a lot of otherwise missing IDE features, but it could be so much better.
Of course, you don't need to do it all day every day - you can use your laptop for frontend work and an iPad for backend development in the park on nice days.
Do you have many problems with sunlight on the screen/ glare?
Great to read the year-after follow up, by the way. Really well done.
But i might use something like that for everything that isnt coding, i still love my 11" MBA for that though.
For those that don't remember they were hacked and a sizeable sum of Bitcoins were stolen from a number of VPSs after their customer service app was hacked.
The problem is that (a) customers were the last to hear about it having to find out the news from Reddit, (b) we still don't know exactly what happened, (c) we don't know whether it affected other VPS or whether it is still an issue, (d) what they've learnt/changed.
Compare this to Cloudflare which was transparent and open with everyone and clearly learnt a lot of lessons. Trying to hide your mistakes at every turn is NOT how you run a service company.
People love hating on hosting companies, and touting their own horror or success stories. When will people realize that mistakes are inevitable. To me, one mistake every once in a while is forgivable. Perhaps I could also careless about bitcoins (they seem about as worthless as Second Life money). Linode did mention publicly that only 8 accounts were compromised and no credit card info or passwords were available to them.
Your server, your data, your information is only as safe as you make it. Even if everything is fully encrypted and all a hacker could do to mess with you is delete your instance, you should have offsite backups of your important stuff. Always assume you're going to lose everything. Whether it's hardware failure, hacking, or a simple mistake, treat a gun like it's loaded.
Encrypt your important data. Use two-factor authentication on privileged accounts. If you want Bitcoins to be a currency, then read up on Payment Card Industry regulations and really understand how to keep a currency secure.Hire an auditor if need be. Everyone is going to be hacked, everyone is going to be embarrassed, and your data is never secure unless you make it secure.
the attack was a hypervisor intrusion, linode's VM setup was hacked, none of these recommendations would have helped at all in this case.
You sign no SLA with Linode. They make no guarantees. That leaves it up to you to make sure you're secure, and fortunately they give you the tools needed to make this a reality.