
iPad Pro as Development Machine - tosh
https://arslan.io/2019/01/07/using-the-ipad-pro-as-my-development-machine/
======
laurentdc
This topic comes up every month or so, and there's always this catch:

> we need to first create a remote workstation which we can start using as our
> main development machine.

A dumb terminal isn't a development machine. That's like saying "Using my DEC
VT100 terminal to develop in Go", let me just hook it up to an actual computer

~~~
melq
This is not a very good argument. I do my development work on my company
issued macbook, but its not like I'm doing my work locally. My several
thousand dollar macbook pro acts as a terminal interface for me for a HUGE
proportion of my work. All my code is developed/built/run/tested on remote
machines and my laptop is just a fancy interface to them.

~~~
computerex
It all depends on the type of work you do. I work on the latest top of the
line macbook pro issued by work as well, and for me it's too slow. Running the
company's php app along with all the other dependencies like MySQL/Redis/etc
takes a significant amount of resources. All development is done locally on
the dev laptops, bugs are reproduced and fixed on local dev laptops. At this
point I almost wish that my laptop _was_ a terminal so that I could have
access to more resources like RAM (currently at 16 GB).

~~~
blub
32GB of RAM is top for the MBP, not 16.

Edit: OP said he had the _latest_ top of the line. Latest, top of the line has
32.

~~~
computerex
Oh sweet, I am gonna ask for an upgrade then. Thanks for the info.

------
blinkingled
This falls under fetish category.

Steve Jobs' Post PC world analogy was off in that PCs are the cars, trucks,
convertibles etc. and tablets are the scooter. Yes you can do all your grocery
shopping on the scooter given the groceries fit, the shop isn't too far away,
it's not raining, the mileage will be good etc - you making that one
successful grocery trip doesn't mean scooter is a car replacement.

~~~
nightfly
That analogy works pretty good: For many people a scooter is all they need for
day-to-day life, and when they need car they borrow/rent one.

~~~
vonseel
Your comment reminds me that (AFAIK) there aren’t really great rental sources
for many pieces of gear. I have often wished something like this existed, and
not even for computers (considering I am a dev and have a MBP). But, it would
be nice to be able to rent a high end tool that you may only need for one
small project, or a high end piece of music gear - like a $2,000 microphone,
or guitar amp, etc. - from a well-known and trusted supplier with simple
shipping techniques and easy return process (ship back in original packaging
with included label, etc).

I suppose enough people use Amazon like this, but they will eventually ban you
for abusing their return process.

~~~
bdefore
There have been a few companies trying to fill the need you speak of. Two that
I'm aware of [https://fatllama.com](https://fatllama.com) and
[https://www.beomni.com](https://www.beomni.com). I believe the latter is
currently only in San Francisco.

------
elagost
These articles are always hilarious.

The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily
configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and a copy of PuTTY. (Or, buying
any not-broken laptop from Craigslist for $50 and saving yourself $1100.)

Granted, as a sysadmin, most of my job could be done on an iPad too (SSH, RDP,
web browser, and messaging applications), but every few days I need USB,
Serial, VGA, or Ethernet (along with manual config of the adapter), among
other things.

So, with these iPad there are always caveats: you end up needing to keep a
"real computer" around for all the cases the iPad can't cover, which is most
of them.

A few days ago there was a discussion about Termux
([https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)) on Android here, and with things
like USB OTG and removable storage that are commonly featured in Android, a
Kindle Fire tablet (which cost about $50-150, regularly on sale) would be more
usable, even, than an iPad.

~~~
Terretta
> _could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy_

Except then when not using PuTTY, you aren’t able to use it as an iPad.

~~~
elagost
Another incredibly good point. Tablets are great at things like watching
videos, reading comics, and if you're not doing any typing, are really good
'couch computers'. Rotating the display provides a whole new set of
functionality that you just can't get on a laptop, where it's incredibly
awkward to do so.

~~~
imandride
The convertible laptop market has had this for a while now. I for one just
pull the screen off of my surface book whenever I am in need of a reading
device.

------
vlunkr
Everyone is so defensive about laptops here that you’d think they feel
threatened by this post. Isn’t it in the spirit of the hacker community to be
open to new modes of using computers? This is an experiment, that’s why they
documented it and stated clearly that it’s an experiment. It’s something to
think about and discuss, not a statement that you should throw your laptop
out.

~~~
farslan
OP here: Thanks for the comment. I thought I was clear that this was an
experiment and that I wanted to try out things. Now that I'm using it for
couple of months, I have even more things to share that are not covered by my
blog post.

~~~
a-saleh
Would you be willing to try:

a) some IOS-native IDE, i.e.
[http://continuous.codes/](http://continuous.codes/) ?

b) how would android fare in comparison? I.e. I really like termux project, it
seems to have much more installable packages than i.e. blink, and it could
alleviate the need to run separate session in a separate box over the
internet. Similarly, because android is based on linux, there are projects for
running linux distros alongside (mostly in chroot?).

I am currently trying to learn Ocaml on my android phone on my way to work
with Termux :)

~~~
snazz
Termux is awesome. iSH ([https://ish.app](https://ish.app)) is trying to
accomplish the same thing for iOS, but it might not be approved by Apple
because it may break the current set of App Store policies. Termux also does
not have the overhead of running a complete x86 emulator. I’ve never needed
to, but the possibility of running Xorg (with a real window manager) on my
_phone_ is mind-blowing, even if it’s uncomfortable without a keyboard and
mouse.

------
jwr
I get excited every time I see an article about using the iPad Pro for
development. But then it always turns out that people just use blink to
ssh/mosh into another machine.

I really wish I could have native Emacs on the iPad. It is one of the fastest
and lightest machines around, phenomenally lightweight and with a great
battery life. It has a pretty good keyboard attachment. And Emacs even without
a native shell would work pretty well (using Tramp for editing remote files).

And no, Emacs via a shell is not nearly enough. You can't get enough modifiers
through the TTY, so it ends up being crippled. And no, Apple is not likely to
reject it, apps with interpreters have been getting in for several years now.
And even if Apple were to reject it, there is nothing that prevents people (as
in, me, for example) from compiling Emacs myself and loading it onto my iPad
(these are common misconceptions, so I'd rather clear them up right away).

I think I might end up funding a bounty, perhaps someone is willing to shave
this yak.

~~~
BonesJustice
Wouldn’t the locked-down filesystem be a problem?

~~~
jwr
I don't see why it would be: I don't want to share data with other
applications, I just want to edit stuff within Emacs. The sandbox doesn't
prevent me from doing that.

------
coppolaemilio
Too much configuration to even get started!! and the fact that you can't work
offline makes this setup so much worse than a regular laptop for my regular
use :( I wish there was a better dev environment on the ipad already

~~~
rocky1138
Why do you wish that? It sounds horrible. Why not just use a laptop (the right
tool for the job).

~~~
i_cant_speel
Agreed. I don't know why anyone would want that. It's almost the equivalent of
getting DOOM running on random devices.

~~~
freehunter
You say that like it's a bad thing. You do know the title of the forum you're
on right now, right?

~~~
i_cant_speel
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just not very useful in a practical
sense.

------
eertami
>If you’re using the iPad Pro in the mindset of “This is going to be my main
work machine”, then you’ll be living in constant fear.

I feel like this should be the opening line, not buried in the ending notes.

------
satysin
Tried this a few weeks ago. The iPad Pro has the power but iOS is just too
limiting still. You still need a remote system to do any _real_ work on so it
is just a £1000+ dumb terminal with a really dodgy keyboard (if using the
Apple Smart Folio one anyway).

I am hoping Apple will update the 12" MacBook this year so I can try that out
for an ultra-portable dev machine. I like the current model but the CPU
options are poor/dated.

~~~
cyberpunk
I use a proper desktop when working from home, and an iPad Pro with
blink+mosh+tmux to a chunky server when I'm on the move and to be honest I
have no problem at all with the keyboard (only nit -- after a day or three
heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to stop hitting capslock for escape on
my regular keyboard when I'm home) -- What's your problem with it?

Edit: Hitting the little... "world" key is sometimes quite annoying, it pops
up some kind of emoji keyboard? Alas.

~~~
the_pwner224
> (only nit -- after a day or three heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to
> stop hitting capslock for escape on my regular keyboard when I'm home)

Why don't you rebind your Caps Lock to Esc? For Windows there's uncap
<[https://github.com/susam/uncap>;](https://github.com/susam/uncap>;) on Linux
you can find it in your KDE/Gnome settings or look at the uncap Github page
for other methods.

Or if you do use the Caps Lock key frequently, what for?

~~~
cyberpunk
I just never got around to it. I have a .xmodmap somewhere which will probably
do the trick. I'm using OpenBSD on the desktop :)

------
navs
I've done this before, just not with an iPad Pro.

I used Blink (because of Mosh support), a Digitalocean droplet running docker
and Dropbox for syncing local and remote files. Very similar approach to
what's been mentioned in this article.

Some of my experiences as a full-stack web developer:

\- Front-end development sucks. You can use Coda for iOS but it doesn't help
much. What I was missing was Chrome's inspector. You can do some basic DOM
manipulation and console logging via apps and firebug but it's not productive.

\- Manipulating image assets. I didn't use the official Dropbox client (I
think at the time Linux support wasn't very good) I instead opted for a small
script written in bash that talked to the Dropbox api. If there was an image
that needed manipulating, I would push that image to a folder in Dropbox,
which I could then open in Pixelmator in iOS. Pixelmator would update and sync
to Dropbox and I'd run the bash script on the server to pull the updated file.

\- Browserstack didn't work on mobile Safari. I don't know if it does now but
at the time, I couldn't get it working.

\- Lack of multi-tasking. Granted, iOS now supports split screen so maybe this
isn't a big deal anymore. I'm ok with looking at one app at a time but app
switching in iOS was horribly slow.

This was over 2 years ago and things may be better now but overall as a full-
stack web dev, I wouldn't recommend it. It was a frustrating experiment.

------
hatmatrix
Can you not just use a Surface Pro? I've never used one but I thought it had a
full-fledged OS so you could use it as a development machine, albeit with
smaller HD and RAM than a typical notebook.

~~~
0815test
Windows 10... a full-fledged OS? Mind you, there _are_ tablets/convertibles
that can support a full-fledged OS with relative ease. I just don't think the
Surface is one of them, unless you're willing to wait until the hacks that are
involved in making it work under Linux are included in the kernel mainline,
and thus in distros. The SP 3 is there now, possibly the 4 as well. But what's
the point when you can just pick something else and it'll probably work out of
the box?

~~~
maxxxxx
The Surface Pros are full fledged machines and quite powerful if bought with
the right spec (not cheap though). Just get the keyboard cover. No idea how
they work with Linux though.

~~~
alpaca128
> No idea how they work with Linux though.

On the Surface Pro 1 you can forget using the pen input and sometimes the wifi
will just disconnect until you reboot. Aside from that Linux will run pretty
smoothly.

From what I've read so far I get the impression it works better on the newer
models though(SP3 and up).

~~~
frosted-flakes
Many Linux distros don't seem to support display scaling (Ubuntu in
particular), so the Surface Pro's high resolution display makes for tiny text.
There are some work-arounds like setting custom font sizes, but none that work
well.

------
zed88
Apple missed the boat on a tablet running macOS. It's pointless to even try
and fill the gap created by their mistake. Because when I boot my device, I
want to get to work ASAP rather than configuring 10 things.

------
mattkevan
I’ve found an iPad Pro to be perfectly acceptable for web development.

Working Copy is an excellent git client, and combining it with Textastic
proved a good workflow. Textastic allows you to add any folder, including a
Working Copy repo, as a source in the file browser, so no more swapping files
between apps.

Using this, I built my personal portfolio site with Jekyll while commuting on
the tube.

Other apps are available: DraftCode provides a full PHP/MySQL stack, I got
Django running on Pythonista, found iSh could run Bundler and Jekyll and got a
long way towards getting Rails working. Also Processing runs, well,
Processing. Play.js does react and Node and Continuous does .NET and C#.

There are also Vim and Emacs apps, though I don’t know how good they are.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thanks for mentioning that you got Django running on Pythonista. I just spent
a few minutes web searching and fiddling and now I have a small Flask web app
running on my iPad using Pythonista. There is no hot reload, so if I change
code I need to restart the Flask app and then refresh the web page on Safari.
I had no idea this was possible, or that there was anything like StaSh.

------
_bear
So... this is just another one of those "create a remote server to use as the
main development machine"?

What if I want to work in areas of little or rubbish connectivity?

Tools such as docker, etc don't exist just to run things on a remote server.

------
MR4D
Lightbox, VSCode, or an •XCode Light” is needed. Anything else to me is just a
terminal app.

Code editing, highlighting, syntax checking, and a compiler. The iPad is
pretty damn powerful, but Apple just won’t let it off the leash.

I bought the gen 2 pro in 2017, and while it’s a fantastic iPad, it sucks for
doing work. I should have just gotten a Mac laptop.

And that disappointment is completely due to software - the hardware is
fantastic.

------
zenlot
And all you really need for development is relatively cheap ThinkPad laptop.

------
Razengan
I've been using an iPad Pro (2018 12.9") as my main/only computer for 2 months
on a sort of vacation. With the Apple Pencil 2, a detached bluetooth keyboard
(because it's sometimes easier to keep it to the side instead of front,
especially when working with the Pencil) and the Smart Folio to keep it
upright.

It's generally surprisingly capable for a vast number of tasks, and I love
using this in bed/on the couch/outdoors more than a laptop, but iOS remains
the biggest hurdle. Too many limitations and quirks, and it's frustrating that
you have to wait for a year at a time to receive any major changes.

I even tried brainstorming some coding ideas in Swift Playgrounds, but gods
it's terrible for that. You can't even really `print` some simple output
without awkward UI fumbling as there doesn't seem to be a "console" window
without creating views.

~~~
usaphp
Isn’t it easier to just carry a MacBook Pro 13” instead of an iPad, folio
keyboard, pencil etc? You basically making it harder to carry and lose a lot
in terms of productivity, since you were working anyway on your vacation

~~~
Razengan
I actually sold my last MacBook before going away and got this because I loved
the form factor and wanted to try it.

Now I've decided to keep it as a secondary display for my next Mac, which
might be a Mini:

[https://lunadisplay.com/pages/using-luna-with-mac-
mini](https://lunadisplay.com/pages/using-luna-with-mac-mini)

------
0x38B
If you frequently use your iPad to access remote servers, check out
Fredericco's post[1] at Macstories: there he mentions using FileExplorer[2],
which lets you access and copy files to and from remote servers (SCP, SMB,
etc) without leaving Apple's Files app.

1: [https://www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/ipad-diaries-
using-a...](https://www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/ipad-diaries-using-a-mac-
from-ios-part-1-finder-folders-siri-shortcuts-and-app-windows-with-keyboard-
maestro/#accessing-macos-files-from-ios-fileexplorer-and-the-files-app) 2:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id499470113?at=10l6nh&ct=ms_...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id499470113?at=10l6nh&ct=ms_inline)

\---

My iPad Pro has been my only computer for nearly a year, and I miss my Windows
Machine and VMs. Some things that help me make do:

1\. a VPS with a VNC server installed: I connect with Screens and, for
example, can use Firefox's Dev tools. Performance could be better (I'm a ways
from my VPS), but it's much better than nothing.

2\. A Google Pixel 2 (or any Android phone) + a USB-C to USB adapter. This
lets me put files on a flash drive, or even write Linux ISOs. I've found that,
in a pinch, I can often do on my phone what I would have used my desktop to
do.

3\. Termux[1] was mentioned here recently, and I installed it, then loaded vim
and tmux. SSHing into my phone from my iPad, I have lightning fast (low
latency) Linux environment. Have just started using Termux, but for those with
similar setups (iOS + Android), it may be worth a look.

4\. Exploit the iPad's strengths. LiquidText[2] is, as they say on the site,
"Better than paper". It's been revolutionary for reading my PDFs and
extracting and connecting and cross-referencing information in them.

1: [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

------
krn
Why would anyone use iPod Pro as a development machine, when Google Pixelbook
is of a similar weight, size, power and price, and comes with a standard
keyboard and a native Linux support built-in? Tablets are for consumption, not
creation.

~~~
pjmlp
Maybe because Pixelbook is on its way out.

In any case I do agree, only 2-1 and laptops are viable propositions for
coding on the go.

------
kayoone
I still prefer using my Laptop in most cases, connect it to a nice big 4K
screen at home and the office. I also love my iPad for the usecases it is
great at, like taking notes and casual browsing/reading but i would not want
to use one device for all. If you do that, a Surface Pro is arguably the
better choice.

A lot of apps offer seamless syncing which makes using multiple devices really
easy. I can throw PDFs on my iPad via Airdrop, annotate them with the Pencil
in Notability and see the changes synced immediately back to my Macbook with
Notabilitys icloud sync.

------
abhayraizada
Well I don't want to be a prude here but if you want to develop on an iPad
pro, just get a surface?

------
martin-adams
I don't think the remote workstation idea is a bad idea. For me, in order to
be a proper development machine it would need to have a fully local IDE with a
remote terminal so I can run docker, test cases, database commands, etc.

The VSCode Docker image recently discussed is a huge next step if the input
and scroll were to be fixed.

I used to use the dev version of cloud 9 on my VMs and code in the browser. It
worked really, really well. Getting that right for the iPad would be quite
exciting.

~~~
kartickv
I'd like someone to build a service and offer native apps for Windows, Mac and
iPad, with the data stored on the cloud. Everything should work offline and on
flaky networks, with zero latency. Sync should happen in the background.

------
YeahSureWhyNot
machine? more like a gimmick. machine is what you remotely connect the your
pad to to handle all the heavy lifting

------
ru999gol
I still have trouble taking developers in the Apple walled garden seriously,
this kind of article certainly doesn't help their credibility in my mind.

------
whynotminot
I could still see something like this as the future of development in some
ways -- powerful pro workstation level resources somewhere off in the cloud
that you connect to via a super portable client. Maybe even over 5G or some
other next generation wireless technology to truly enable an untethered
development experience that's not limited by local resources.

But that continues to feel like something many years away.

------
rcarmo
I have been using a similar setup for a while (I use Ansible and Azure ARM
templates to provision my remote machine), and it’s pretty usable for back-end
development if you’re used to vim+tmux.

It’s not a mainstream solution, though, and for other kinds of development
I’ve found that Jump Desktop and the Citrix X1 mouse
([https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930](https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930))
are a great alternative—I can VNC or RDP to a Remote Desktop via an SSH tunnel
and run literally anything (mostly VSCode and Firefox).

Doing fully local development with the likes of Working Copy and Textastic is
also quite feasible (at least for back-end stuff), but it’s always a pain to
test and compile stuff.

Things are getting better
([https://github.com/holzschu/Carnets](https://github.com/holzschu/Carnets)
lets you run Jupyter notebooks locally, which is awesome), but we’re not quite
there yet.

------
HenryBemis
No way Jose! I am about to update my iOS app, for both iPhone and iPad. I need
to add some sounds. That means find an online library, get/buy the sounds,
then use Audacity to tweak them. Then watch some Udemy video-classes I bought,
then take screenshots/notes and star updating my SWIFT code. The only thing I
am doing on my Mac is to type the code on Xcode and run the simulator (and
then ofc pack, sign, and upload to Apple).

Everything else (downloading, tweaking sounds, watching classes, reading on
Apple's Feb resources, etc. I do on my Windows laptop. I do have an iPad, but
it is as good as a video player/kindle. Perhaps I am just lazy and don't
bother to learn how-to-ipad-everytbibg, but a PC will always (imho) be more
useful than most other alternative options out there.

------
soganess
There needs to be something along the lines of the iron law of wages, but for
developer machines. Something like:

"If you are unable to run the tools needed to further create software on the
machine itself, then said machine cannot be considered a developer machine."

------
pedalpete
About 6 years ago I set-up my HP Touchpad running linux and tried to use it as
a development machine.

It was running ArcLinux, node 0.4 (if I remember correctly).

I'm not going to suggest that this was the "future of computing" and I put it
away after playing with it for a bit.

I'm not an Apple user and don't have an iPad (pro or other) but I do think we
will move away from "pc" needed as your development platform.

At one point we would have said that a notebook wasn't good enough for
development, you need a "real pc" (desktop) for development.

With AR/VR we'll move into completely new realms of interfaces for
development, I wouldn't rule out a tablet as one of the form factors of the
future.

------
ryanmarsh
I love these articles. I know they’re frequent and always come with the same
caveats but I dream of the day I can effectively work from an iPad Pro. I have
no idea why, it’s completely impractical when I have a perfectly good laptop.
I just want to.

------
seba_dos1
I've been using my Openmoko Neo Freerunner as a real development machine back
in 2008, with no remote desktop tricks - although the screen could have been a
bit bigger, it wasn't that bad. Come back when you reach that :P

------
ifiri90pokn
Reading this and thinking about the Visual Studio Code server post the other
day.

------
lecro
You might find interesting those two articles by Mark O’Connor written over 7
years ago

I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode
[http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-
macbook-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for-
an-ipad)

iPad + Linode, 1 Year Later [http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad-
linode-1-year-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad-
linode-1-year-later)

I followed his steps and enjoyed this approach much.

------
kowdermeister
Interesting, but I couldn't do much serious work without external monitors and
a great keyboard. I just need the screen real estate and a professional input
device to be productive.

~~~
tosh
The iPad supports external monitors and keyboards.

~~~
kowdermeister
Thanks, I didn't know about he monitor support.

------
sys_64738
No mouse support though.

------
gdubs
I know this probably doesn’t add much to the discussion but I did want to say
that I love submissions like this, and I love the enthusiasm behind the
project.

------
nbanks
I have a Gemini PDA phone that I've used to recompile the Linux kernel. It
takes 4-5 times as long as compiling on my laptop, but sometimes it's easier
than cross-compiling.

I rarely use my phone as a development machine, but when I do, it feels more
authentic than using a remote workstation. It heats up because the local CPU
is really working. Occasionally I find myself shelling into the phone from my
laptop....

[edit, typo]

------
pducks32
Using apps that support Open In Place has been magical. I now use my iPad
24/7\. Terminus is really great and although I was hesitant to spend money at
first I just think the app is so well made. Mix that with Working Copy and
it’s so easy to edit files on servers and redeploy.

Pythonista (though I’m not python person) is always great to have especially
with the new keyboard. Scriptable is also magical.

------
mark_l_watson
I didn't like that it was a long article, and the author ended saying
effectively “nope.”

With fine iPad native IDEs for Haskell and Python, some local development is
possible. In the future with using the USB-C port to dock to monitor and
keyboard, then we get a little closer to a “not nope” answer to the author’s
question.

------
bibyte
I can understand why some people might think this kind of setup is crazy but I
actually do this with my Android tablet. With the Termux I can have Rust,
Python, Neovim etc installed locally. I only ssh to my desktop if I need to do
something CPU intensive. I am regularly surprised just how well this works.

------
aboutruby
I wouldn't feel confortable putting my secrets in a remote server with a
public IP (IPv6 might be a better idea as it's less guessable).

Also seems a bit over-engineered, I would just ssh into a server and do
everything from there as a normal user.

------
marcosvm
This is a great article, it got me thinking on better uses of the iPad and the
whole setup on a virtual machine using terraform, docker, etc is also a good
way of thinking on how to work remotely. Thank you for sharing.

------
lttlrck
I think I’d rather go with a UMPC, I’d love to see a 2019 Toshiba Libretto but
the GPD Pockets look interesting. I think I’d be happier if it had an ARM
processor.

------
AJRF
This article gets written every month or so at this point.

And they are always using the wrong setup (SSH to remote server with Blink &
Mosh). If you want to edit and run code on an iPad (god knows why), use iSh.

It's a userland x86 emulator that will enable you to work offline. It's
TestFlight only at the moment, or you can compile it yourself if you have a
mac and Xcode.

People who do this kind of thing are like those people who change their linux
distro every other month, they are in search of distraction, not productivity.

------
tylerhou
tmux tip: You can press prefix+D to show a list of connected clients. From
there, you can choose one to disconnect.

------
dejaime
That looks like ergonomic terror

------
TamDenholm
Honestly i just want MacOS on an iPad Pro, the apple equivalent to the
Surface.

~~~
major505
Basically, and macbook air with touch screen...

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sgustard
TLDR (quoting the article which I think buries the lede): "Obviously, there is
no way to develop on an iPad Pro."

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bluedino
Didn’t we do this 3 years ago with the non-Pro iPad?

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shurcooL
Thank you for taking the time to write up and share your experience with this
experiment, Fatih. I enjoyed reading it.

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sridca
I purchased a Pixel Slate (running ChromeOS) and couldn't be much happier. It
replaced both my portable laptop and iPad. I'm surprised people here don't
talk much about this tablet that runs full fledged Linux!

