You had a desktop computer, which makes life much easier for you. As someone who was (and will soon be again) in the market for my one and only computer, the iPad is a non-starter. It's SO limited.

* Software development, with the best will in the world, isn't really possible on it.

* No quick ways to open up multiple windows, alt-tab between them, snap them side by side etc.

* No mouse support (Admittedly, I tried them a while back, but by all accounts, the mouse support until this update was still bolted on).

* Shitty af file system (Admittedly another thing that is moving in the right direction).

* Woeful stand. The previous folio was a joke, especially at it's price. It was unstable, lacked a trackpad, and personally, I hated the typing feel.

It was all rather disappointing, because I was so tempted by it. A sub-1 kg setup that one could pack in one's bag and forget, with a proper aspect ratio, with touch support, with great battery life, with the Apple quality etc.

Could've been great, but isn't there yet.

> Those things the ipad can't do are largely niche

Software development doesn't feel niche to me. It feels like it should be possible to publish a usable, high quality iPad app using nothing but an iPad.

When you're in the niche, it's hard to see out. I'm old enough to remember encountering the first computer magazine that didn't feature program listings (SoftTalk) and thinking who would want this thing? Programming is very much a niche activity (although I imagine that it's more a question of when rather than if that we'll see some sort of XCode for iOS).

My take on this is that programming may be niche now, but it shouldn't be. Simple scripting is useful and lets you easily perform tasks that would otherwise be repetitive.

I'm not saying everyone should be able to build a large application, but you shouldn't be stopped from building things on it, otherwise how will you even get started?

Computers that stop you from inspecting them and learning how they work build a moat between the users and developers of the system. That's the opposite of what I think we should be encouraging.

Shortcuts.app allows simple scripting on iOS and is free from Apple. Pythonista is also on iOS.

iOS already has plenty of basic programming apps for Python, C#, F#, Scheme, and naturally Swift.

Well programming is a less of niche than studio quality mic and recording they are promoting don’t you think?