Of everything I've tried, the ipad is still by far my favourite media consumption device. Browsing the web using touch is an absolute joy and the thin, large screen form factor is really convenient. It's just a shame they're so expensive and fragile; I'm waiting a few years now before I can justify buying another one.

My iPad is my favorite computer to use by far. It's five years old now and I'd buy a new one if I could find some reason to do so. My problem isn't that it does so little but rather that it does everything I want it to do.

Articles like this one never feel very genuine to me. It would be like buying a Honda Civic and then complaining that you can't really carry 4x8 sheets of plywood with it.

But it's still a bad fit for artists too, as they're not gonna need the hardware of the pro. It's way too overpowered/expensive for what iOS permits you to do.

The normal iPad or iPad Air for media consumption are already perfect, the Pro version remains as a bad market fit

code-server works really well on the iPad. Make a web-app and you have VSCode as pretty much a full citizen. (Except of course you need a network connection and a remote system.) When I’m traveling light, this is an excellent solution. That said, no one should buy an iPad foremostly to code on.

No, no it doesn't work really well. iOS Safari aggressively suspends tabs in the background. So when you switch from editor to webpage, it will often suspend your editor, forcing it to refresh when you flip back to it and you lose the ssh connection, debugger, or whatever else you have running. And if you're debugging a front end in a certain state, it will suspend that, and refresh it when you return, losing that important state. Very infuriating experience. I tried for months to make my iPad Pro an acceptable dev environment, both locally and remotely via code-server, and the OS just isn't there (yet). Maybe someday.

I don't know, when I impulse bought my iPad Pro a few years ago to supplement my laptop that stopped charging, I did about 15 minutes of research and found a lot of people claiming that you can comfortably code on an iPad Pro. That turned out to be completely untrue for my use cases, but it would've taken a lot more than 5 minutes to figure that out.

That said, the iPad Pro is my biggest mistake I've never regretted. I've used mine every day since I bought it and I love it. It sucks for coding but it's great for written notes, drawing, music production, casual web browsing and games, etc. It's a perfect companion to my regular laptop and a great travel device when I don't want to take my laptop with me. Even the lack of a full OS is an upside for me. iPadOS hinders multitasking enough that it ends up being a more focused device than my normal laptop.

There's a lot of people in this thread mistaking "Pro" for meaning "Developer." The iPad sucks for writing code. But there are tons of professional things you can do on it. I use it more than I use my laptop.

What differentiates the iPad Pro from the regular iPad is/was its high refresh rate display, which makes the Apple Pencil much more responsive, and True Tone color. These are definitely Pro-level features. Just not developer-Pro.

> That turned out to be completely untrue for my use cases, but it would've taken a lot more than 5 minutes to figure that out.

Couldn’t you figure that out when you noticed that it doesn’t have any IDE you’ve ever heard of, and no compiler or runtime for anything? I know there are iPad for coding advocates out there, but it really doesn’t even take 5 minutes to figure out that the developer experience is completely terrible, as evidenced by the lack of any developer tools.

My use case didn't require an IDE. My main intent was to remote into my batteryless laptop, so in principle the iPad didn't need much functionality of its own.

That said, I don't know what you mean by "the lack of any developer tools". There are absolutely code editors, IDEs, SSH clients, and even runtimes for iPadOS. There are also lots of web-based IDEs and editors now, even self-hostable ones like code-server. Obviously I wouldn't have bought mine if those didn't exist.

There are no IDEs that run on iPadOS, the best you can get is either a text editor with basic high lighting, or a “cloud” IDE. There’s also no way to install a runtime or compiler on iPadOS. Unless you’re already using some cloud based solution (in which case you should already be familiar with their pitfalls), it should be immediately apparent to most developers that their workflows aren’t going to run on an iPad. It doesn’t have the most basic tools that you would need, not even the ability to run the code that you write. People do use it, but the level of jankiness they’re accepting is immediately apparent, even if you’re only consulting the most vocal advocates. I also considered this when I saw how cool the iPad Pro looked, but it barely took more than a couple of minutes to figure out that it wasn’t worth trying.

This comment is bizarrely antagonistic for no reason and I would appreciate if you'd knock it off. I literally admitted I was incorrect in thinking that I could comfortably write code on my iPad, a point that largely agrees with what you're saying, but for some reason you still feel the need to argue even further.

It should be immediately apparent to most people that I made my decision based on my own personal context and requirements at the time, just as you made your decision in your own context, which is why we each came to a different conclusion. I already made it clear the iPad was only intended to supplement my laptop, not replace it, so obviously I didn't expect it to fully replace my development workflow either. I just thought it might be usable for casual coding when I wasn't at my desk, and I was willing to accept that I might be wrong in that.

There's no point in trying to convince me now that the iPad dev experience sucks, because obviously I already know that, as evidenced by the fact that I literally said it two comments ago (and because you're wrong about why it sucks). You don't win anything for proving I was wrong again.

What I really don't get is why you feel the need to tell me I'm wrong about what the iPad is capable of when I actually bought one and wrote a decent amount of code on it, while you admit you dismissed it as an option with a few minutes of consideration. I have literally written, run, and compiled code on my iPad both locally and remotely using the dev tools you claim don't exist or don't count or are too janky or whatever. What is the point in arguing with me about that when we both already agree it's probably not worth programming on an iPad either way?

The funny thing is that tooling wasn't even the main reason I moved away from coding on my iPad. The tooling wasn't my favorite, but it does exist and was passable for my limited requirements. I just didn't like iPadOS's mediocre multitasking and weird conflicts with key bindings in browser-based dev tools. Were it not for that, I probably would've kept programming on my iPad for a while longer.

It’s not weirdly antagonistic to point out that you’re making factually incorrect claims. Out of all the tooling that goes into a typical developer workflow, iPadOS will only allow you to install a text editor, a web browser, and provides a somewhat restricted filesystem.

You and I might also agree that a shovel isn’t a very good tool for cutting down trees. But this isn’t a conclusion that takes more than a moments consideration to get to.

The only factually incorrect claims here have come from you.

You claimed that the iPad lacks "any developer tools". That's factually incorrect, as you've admitted and repeatedly tried to walk back.

Because you're determined to be right, after you admitted that the iPad has at least some development tools, you tried to move the goalposts and say that the iPad doesn't have any IDEs, while in the same sentence admitting that it has text editors and cloud-based IDEs, which are developer tools. Now you're trying to walk that back again. If you're going to be wrong, you could at least have the decency to be consistently wrong instead of waffling back and forth like this.

You said, "There's also no way to install a runtime or compiler on iPadOS." That's also factually incorrect. I can use basically any compiler or runtime that I want inside iSH without even needing an internet connection after they're installed.

At any rate, I've already explained why none of this is even relevant to the point at hand, but since you can't be wrong, you'll probably ignore these points like you've ignored everything else. Or maybe you're just trolling, who knows? Either way it's pretty pathetic.

This. Plus, going a step further...

Development using those IDEs are not well suited to inputs from anything other than a keyboard (or keyboard-translator.) Too many functions tied to keys and such.

I'm uncertain why anyone would think this somehow magically changes because of the tablet form-factor.

I think it's great as a large format ebook, especially if you want to read graphic novels.

Also it's great for a musicians to display sheet music.

> 5m of research could have shown this...

Indeed

> i think this product is only good for artists who needs a specific ipad app or someone who really needs a writing device to use with Apple specific app only. or if you can expense it at work.

Procreate is definitely a killer app for the iPad.

The iPad is also amazing for musicians, particularly in terms of the wide variety of excellent synth (Animoog, Sunrizer, Korg and Moog apps...) and music production apps (Gadget, Cubasis, Logic...) And it's great for sheet music (ForScore).

It's a nice gaming device as well. I particularly appreciate card games like Monster Train or digital board games like Ticket to Ride, but there are also some great RPGs, action games, Apple Arcade, and many games with controller support.