
The 12.9-inch iPad Pro took me by surprise and replaced my laptop - aparashk
https://paulstamatiou.com/made-on-an-ipad-pro/
======
dschuetz
Well, I hoped for an actual review. What I got was "The iPad Pro is always
ready to go ... which is, like, totally amazing! Yeaas!" The most pro points
he makes are based on features which are actually a normality. The whole thing
is emotionally laden and he sounds like a typical fanboy.

After reading this dripping wet review, I am now absolutely convinced that an
iPad will _never ever_ replace a computer. Because it is _not_ a computer, but
rather a consumer device, like a television set. People who think that an iPad
replaced their actual computer laptop didn't know and still don't know at all
what their laptop actually _can_ do: being programmable.

~~~
skellera
Or most people don’t require more than what an iPad can provide. It’s a mass
market device and that’s fine. As you say, one would already know if they need
a laptop over an iPad.

~~~
dschuetz
Exactly the point why I've been asking myself: why oh why does Apple say "That
huge thing, like, totally replaces the laptop!" Apple clearly has some
outlandish understanding of what a computer is, no surprise. But let's stay
honest, and don't put up sales pitches based on flat out lies.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
It's a mixture of clever marketing and wishful thinking (the "tablet era"
hasn't arrived after all, everybody is using notebooks for work).

However, as others said, some people actually use iPads only. A good example
is my mother. She was using it for a few months, but then the memory got
filled up with photos and she asked for advice. I told her to back up the
device using a computer. "I don't have one", she said. Then the battery
started to degenerate and so on. It's clear to me you can use these tablets as
simplified notebooks/PCs, but sooner rather than later you reach their limits,
and at that point thing can get costly. I can get a 2TB HDD for my Mac Pro for
50€, good luck with that kind of storage on any kind of iPad.

~~~
dschuetz
You see, your mom doesn't compile software with basic toolchains that have
existed since the beginning of the computer era. I'm OK with the fact that
your mom, or anybody else's mom, or spouse, or sister uses an iPad now,
instead of a fully featured computer. It's totally fine. They get everything
they've ever needed, and more. But let's make it perfectly clear that an iPad
cannot ever replace a laptop as a _computer_. Since most people don't see the
difference, we need to point out that there this crucial fact.

I've been trying to switch (I also own an ipad pro) and it just doens't work.
Either you need a second computer nearby, or a solid internet connection and a
server with the toolchains of your choice. Microsofts's Surface _actually_
replaces a laptop without the need to point that out, where the iPad is
_falsely_ advertised as a replacement. Sorry, I cannot accept false
advertising, nor is _clever marketing_ an excuse. They need to point out
_facts_ instead of wishful thinking. I am using Apple products for specific
purposes, but also other products of other vendors. Because _all_ of them suck
in very specific ways. Let's not pretend that Apple somehow is superior in
marketing that it tries to sell a consumer product as a universal computer.
Nope, Nuh-uh. Not buying it.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I agree with your sentiment but ultimately what I or you think is
insignificant, what matters is that people buy the iPad Pro, try to switch as
advertised, discover the shortcomings of the device and switch back. If it
happened to my mother, it will definitely happen to other users who need much
more than Facetime/Safari/Photos/Skype/Netflix.

~~~
abritinthebay
Sure, but there are less of those cases than the other way around.

------
sheetjs
This article is incredibly light on actual details.

JS development, as long as you aren't using webpack or some other nodejs-based
toolchain, is awesome on an iPad Pro. Many developer-oriented apps ship with
WebDAV servers which can serve JS scripts. And thanks to the iOS 11 Files app,
you can even test sites that involve the HTML5 File API.

For example, doing some work on a VBA-related tool on a plane was surprisingly
productive:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dc9JZBMUwAAg2BY.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dc9JZBMUwAAg2BY.jpg)

More than anything else, I felt more productive on the iPad than on my MBP
because the constraints ensured there was no visible chat application or time
wasting website screen.

P.S.: the VSCode sidebar never really made sense until I saw it executed in
the Kodex app: [https://kodex.space/](https://kodex.space/) \-- the ability to
jump down to a particular place in the file with a single touch is mindblowing
and immediately boosted productivity when dealing with huge scripts.

~~~
tambourine_man
Can you elaborate on this workflow? Got me interested. What editor is that?
Can iOS Host a server (localhost)?

~~~
mattkevan
I wrote my personal website on an iPad Pro. Worked well.

I work on it while commuting on the Tube, where an iPad is less ostentatious
than a laptop. It’s built with Jekyll, so I pull the latest changes before
leaving the house and then push once arriving at work. Netlify runs the build
and the changes go live.

I use Working Copy for Git plus the built-in editor is okay, IA Writer for
Markdown, Autodesk Graphic for vectors and Affinity Photo for images.

It’s actually possible to run a full Django dev environment, including
localhost in Safari, using Pythonista and StaSH (shell for Pythonista). It’s
genuinely amazing what it can do.

~~~
woolvalley
So you used a physical keyboard or just tapped on the tablet screen keyboard?

~~~
mattkevan
Both. For a long time I used the on-screen keyboard, but recently got a cheap
keyboard case.

------
Yhippa
I went on vacation recently and decided to just take an iPad and my camera. I
got one of the new regular iPads and I had a Lightning -to-SD dongle. When I
finished a day of shooting I plugged everything in and had the same issues
Paul did. I couldn't even view the photos because they had to be imported to
Photos on the iPad and I definitely didn't have space to do that.

I'm frustrated at how hard it is to do something simple like take pictures off
my Canon 6D and make them go straight to the cloud. We live in adapter and
dongle hell.

~~~
murukesh_s
How about android tablets? I haven't used one lately but I believe you can do
all fancy stuff there.

~~~
firmgently
On my Android tablet I run Debian in chroot. Full LAMP, i3wm, choice of
terminal emulators, Vim, git, real Firefox, real Chromium.

I use a Bluetooth keyboard with a trackpoint built in (alternatives with
trackpads are available for people who prefer those). Or a Bluetooth mouse of
course. I recently bought a Thinkpad Bluetooth keyboard so interface-wise,
once I start X I'm basically on a Thinkpad.

In the winter when I have to get by on small amounts of electricity (all solar
powered here) I use my tablet almost exclusively and earn money with it.

I use a bendy arm with a clamp to hold the tablet at a good ergonomic height
and closer to my face. In a pinch when power is really low I actually do the
same with my Android phone with all the same software, which works
surprisingly well at 1920x1080. It ends up filling a similar proportion of my
view to a 15" laptop (at the laptop's normal working distance) - although then
it's only a few inches away from my eyes when using the phone (shortest
focusing distance I can do) so wouldn't be healthy long term.

I can plug in my DSLR via a USBOTG dongle and grab photos from it. Or use a
MicroSD in the camera via a full-size adaptor, then slot the MicroSD directly
into the tablet. Then I can edit directly from RAW in Snapseed.

The biggest shortcoming is that I can't use Photoshop as I have an ARM
processor. The armhf Debian distribution and packages are amazing and almost
everything is there. WINE works but it would need some x86 binaries to run
Photoshop, that just don't exist because it's ARM.

Artflow in Android is great, as is Snapseed and PhotoEditor (for resizing and
basic image adjustments, including batch mode etc). I can run GIMP and Inkflow
in Debian but after 20 years using Photoshop they don't come close for me. So
when I really have to use Photoshop I have to save up some juice and fire up
the laptop.

This is all on a 5-year old Sony Xperia Tablet Z. It was good for its time but
nowadays there are faster machines with more RAM available. I'm looking
forward to when I can justify an upgrade (this is a great tablet in many ways,
I have lots of things I need to spend money on and I have been adjusting my
work/life balance a lot in recent years so don't earn much).

I'm no Google fanboy, for me Apple/Google are just different flavours of very
horrible. The difference with Android gear is that the potential is there to
use it the way I want - it's possible (and not even that hard). I can root, I
can use a pointing device, as opposed to Apple's approach.

------
Watabou
I know a lot of people have mentioned that they have transitioned to using the
iPad and even making it their main computer but having owned and daily use an
iPad Pro (the 10.5 inch), I don't see it anything other than a media
consumption device (which I love using it for).

I occasionally used it to carry with me at work, when I got it new last year,
to try and make it my "laptop" replacement. I used everything, SSH to log into
my Mac back home, I was on irc, browsing the web, writing emails on it, even
used Pixelmator and iMovie to edit images and movies for real work things,
which my colleagues were impressed by.

It was difficult, however, and I felt like I was constantly fighting with the
iPad.

For example, Spotlight just isn't as fast on the iPad like it is on the mac.
Try it out. Type command + Space, then type "me" and hit Enter. If you thought
you'd get Messages, you will only be right half the time. Enough to make it
frustrating. On the Mac, I can fluidly bring up Spotlight, hit a few
characters and launch that app. On the iPad, sometimes, it'll miss typing the
first character as spotlight animates, and even if it caught the first typed
character, it takes painfully long to update results. So by the time you type
"me" and hit return, the results haven't updated to show Messages.app yet, and
Messages won't be launched.

There's no Xcode on it yet, so I can't code on it properly. There's no
terminal, Files.app feels like a poor man's Finder, there's no indication of
focus and when you have two apps side by side, there's no way (that I know of)
to switch between them using the keyboard. So you have to tap.

So I gave up. I'm sure my experience, needs and workflows are different and
maybe the iPad-as-a-laptop is not for me, but I am a bit skeptical now
whenever someone tells me they use their iPad as their only computer. At
least, not this version. iOS on the iPad at its current form just isn't
convenient to use as the only computer.

~~~
kalleboo
> _I am a bit skeptical now whenever someone tells me they use their iPad as
> their only computer_

The people I've read who have successfully gone iPad-only seems to fall into
two categories: Authors/bloggers who could just as well be served by a 1980's
word processor, and those who use it as a very expensive dumb terminal in
either SSH or the web browser.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> those who use it as a very expensive dumb terminal in either SSH or the web
> browser.

This is me, 100%.

I use Blink to MOSH into a remote server for all of my personal dev work. It's
great. Between MOSH (instead of plain SSH) and LTE, I really feel like the
expense is justified.

------
wei_jok
I’m sorry, but what exactly did Paul make on his iPad Pro?

This article is more like an advertisement.

~~~
pocketstar
perhaps the website and post was made on the iPad? /shrug

~~~
saagarjha
The post was, certainly, as the author alludes to it three fourths of the way
through.

------
ultimoo
I purchased a Surface Pro last week, which is my first Windows device in more
than a decade. Couldn't have been happier.

Though I enjoy using macOS for software development and other tasks much more
than Windows, I don't think I can say the same for iOS. For the same price and
form factor you get a full operating system as opposed to the iOS walled
garden (which I fully appreciate on my iPhone X).

Since the Surface Pro is actually a full computer with a Core i5 processor, it
can run any application -- including Ubuntu over Microsoft Hyper V, Docker,
Photoshop, and even Steam. Plus the keyboard cover has a trackpad.

~~~
cmsimike
I recently bought a Surface Pro as well. While it still isn't my day to day
computer (Mac or Linux for development) I do take my Surface on vacations for
Steam games and access to my music library.

Recently I bought a display port to hdmi adapter for my Surface, and an HDMI
cable and now I have a portable gaming/media center pc I can set up in hotel
rooms.

------
walterbell
The biggest problem with the iPad is iOS developer attrition - so many
promising apps stagnate due to invisibility and developers running out of
funding. Steve Jobs wanted to avoid another Adobe ISV competitor to Apple and
he succeeded. But he also starved the iPad of software that could take
advantage of the fantastic hardware. Things may improve when iOS developers
can sell apps that also run on macOS.

If Apple wants to keep iOS app development limited to small development shops
and cheap apps, then they need to improve inter-app workfllow/composition,
which is currently gated on a very small whitelist of functions. Only the
audio community has successfully pulled off inter-app interop on iOS, thanks
to Audiobus & friends. Would be nice to have similar multi-app pipelines for
text, images & video.

iPad Pro 12" can replace several devices, but not a laptop.

HARDWARE

    
    
      - 4:3 (!) HiDPI screen
      - loud/clear speakers 
      - Logitech Create backlit keyboard & case
      - iXPand drive (USB+Lightning)
      - "Camera adapter" for USB nic/kb/mic
      - headphone jack
      - good battery life
      - TouchID for banking apps
    

SOFTWARE

    
    
      - very fast Safari w/ Firefox Focus adblock
      - Transmit: web upload / email attachments
      - vSSH
      - Wire: usable E2E chat/audio app
      - Bria: VOIP softphone
      - GoToMeeting/WebEx conferencing
      - Video streaming + GoGo airline videos
      - CornerTube: PIP video overlay
      - Microsoft RDP to desktop/laptop/VM
      - Native VPN client
      - Codebook for passwords
    

OFFLINE APPS (iCloud not needed)

    
    
      - GoodReader: in-app "filesystem"
      - Omnifocus (WebDav)
      - 2Do (CalDav)
      - Notebooks (markdown, WebDav)
      - Notability (audio synced to text/ink)
      - DevonThink (web clips, offline search, WebDav)
      - LumaFusion: multitrack video editor
      - TwistedWave: mulitrack audio editor
      - VoiceDream: offline web/pdf/epub to audio
      - Marvin: epub reader

------
Rjevski
Counterpoint: I tried using an iPad and an external keyboard for web (Django)
development. It sucked.

The lack of mouse for text selection is a huge problem, and constantly
switching between Safari and your code editor (I used Vim in a remote
terminal) is a pain as well.

~~~
pvg
It's probably slightly better (if you can live without vim) with one of the
several iOS-native programmer-oriented editors. It will still suck, just a
little bit less.

~~~
Rjevski
> if you can live without vim

I actually didn't choose Vim because I liked it, but because it was the only
way to have an editor & fully working Linux environment in the same app where
I can switch using a keyboard shortcut (both running in Screen).

Using an app means that I have to switch apps to go between editor and
terminal, and also because the editor app would have to "upload" every single
change to the server for me to actually be able to run the new code in the
terminal.

~~~
pvg
No, the fancier apps have built-in terminals, editing remote files directly
over ssh, version control client support, etc.

~~~
Rjevski
Can you install Python, Django, etc in their built-in terminals?

~~~
pvg
The terminals are for talking to your remote server. There is at least one on-
device Python IDE but I don't think it's at all useful for a the kind of work
you have in mind.

Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you an iPad is a sane, comfortable way to
do the kind of programming where you are regularly doing a backend-to-browser
sort of cycle. You can probably make it slightly less barebones 'terminal
session to a server running vim'.

------
aparashk
OP here (not Paul, the blog author): I am surprised by the amount of attention
this has had!

I understand the iPad can be a useful dev environment if one is using one of
the Web IDEs, e.g.
[https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/?origin=c9io](https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/?origin=c9io)

What about an IDE that runs natively on the iPad using asm.js or Web assembly,
with remote storage for files, and ssh for running on a remote dev machine?
Even better, what about a complete local Linux environment, including gcc,
using something like:
[https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?cpu=riscv32&url=https://...](https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?cpu=riscv32&url=https://bellard.org/jslinux/buildroot-
riscv32.cfg)

Does this exist, or still a pipe dream?

------
Sanketk
No doubt iPad is worth replacing the conventional laptops. I had the bulky old
HP Envy laptop and then saw iPad 12.9" in my friend's hands. Casually handled
it and loved it so much when there was only reason worth considering is
Battery backup but then again my Friend suggested to buy Laptop power banks
from this research bloggers website: [https://www.powerbanktalk.com/best-
portable-laptop-charger-a...](https://www.powerbanktalk.com/best-portable-
laptop-charger-aka-external-battery-power-bank-for-laptop-in-2016/) Bought
Anker power bank and This combination are best I have ever used. I can work on
the go without worrying about charging and iPad is so flawless.

~~~
walterbell
Which power bank and batteries did you choose?

------
woolvalley
Unless you want to draw with the pencil or use it in a cramped airplane
environment, I don't know why someone would get the ipad pro 12.9" over the
macbook 12"?

The keyboard + tablet combo is heavier than the macbook 12", the ipad keyboard
is gummier and worse, you get hover hand issues when using it in keyboard mode
and multitasking / web browsing is slower due to design issues and animation
wait times.

If the cpu is slower than the iPad pro, you know that is going to get fixed
with the future arm macbook. Same with the current butterfly keyboard issue.

I'm pretty sure we are going to get the 'full screen ipad' soon since the ipad
UI is leaving a big blank space in the middle of the status bar currently.

~~~
walterbell
iOS security is better than macOS.

~~~
pjmlp
macOS is getting a new security runtime, which will extend iOS security to all
macOS userspace.

~~~
walterbell
Thanks for the pointer, is there a better link than
[https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/05/macos-mojave-
security-p...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/05/macos-mojave-security-
privacy/) ?

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, the WWDC 2018 session.

"Your Apps and the Future of macOS Security"

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/702/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/702/)

------
saagarjha
> If you want to drag something from one full-screen app to another that is
> not open, you have to use one finger to drag and hold the object, then with
> another finger you need to summon the Dock to find the app you want and
> release. Oh and you better hope you had already opened that app earlier to
> the exact document/file/place where you want to release, otherwise the app
> won't know what to do and you'll have to release the object then try it
> again.

You can navigate around while holding those files to exactly where you need to
be, then drop them there. No need to release the drag.

------
kalleboo
The title makes you think he replaced his computer usage with the iPad, but
further down in the article he reveals that he uses a desktop PC to get real
work done due to inflexibility in iOS.

Seems like the iPad is still not a productivity machine.

------
itomato
I keep thinking I want to try this way of working, but I just can't into the
walled garden of an App Store ecosystem.

Until I can run Homebrew and a proper shell and 'git clone', the iPad is still
just a gargantuan iPhone in my book.

~~~
saagarjha
> git clone

See:

> For example, I can use an app like Working Copy to download and manage a git
> repository.

~~~
itomato
> App Store ecosystem

For example, requiring gimmicks like paid 'pro' features for 'free' apps.

------
pocketstar
is this an ad?

------
mozumder
Love my iPad Pro. Only wish it had an actual usable IDE for Django web
development, including a local Postgres database & H2O web server with uWSGI.
If it had that then I could get rid of my MacBook Pro.

BTW get the Logitech keyboard. It's backlit and you can adjust the angle of
view. It's great but the only problem is that's its really thick.

Seriously, it's just missing the pro apps. Where are they?

------
ageitgey
You still can't use a real third party browser (i.e. not just reskinned
Safari) on the iPad Pro, right? I'd be a lot more tempted if iOS was a little
less locked down.

~~~
saagarjha
If by "real" you mean using something other than WebKit and having access to
JIT compilation of JavaScript, then no, at least not on the App Store.

~~~
robin_reala
3rd party browsers get JIT JS compilation (and have done since iOS8[1]).
You’re stuck with WebKit unless you’re a proxy browser though.

[1] [https://bgr.com/2014/06/04/ios-8-safari-and-webkit-
performan...](https://bgr.com/2014/06/04/ios-8-safari-and-webkit-performance/)

~~~
saagarjha
Yeah, that's what I said: if you want JIT and want to be on the App Store, you
need to use WebKit/JavaScriptCore.

