I bought the iPad Pro M1 chip in hopes of a lightweight, fast, multi-purpose device that I could also code on. It delivered in almost all areas. Why an iPad in the first place? The #1 reason I started to consider buying an iPad a few years ago was for one thing, and one thing only: to read coding books. I have a kindle and I love it, but for coding books it is terrible. The large color screen especially comes in handy with code snippets as well as for color syntax highlighting. I definitely don't like reading programming books on my computer, and I'm trying to minimize physical book purchasing since my book shelves at home are already maxed out (🫠 my wife appreciates my self-control). So the iPad seemed like a good middle ground.
Im Carlos from Blink Shell, mentioned in a few comments here. Wanted to give my 2c as this is something I have been thinking about a lot. Usage and expectations have been changing a lot for these devices:
- At first (iPad2 & 3 years), for those who already had remote machines of some kind, the goal was to simply have a decent terminal on mobile devices to connect to them. The appeal was very clear and I think for a lot of people it offered a different context to do stuff. It still does.
- Things start to grow with iPad/iPhone, Apple was heavily investing on the hardware, and that brought another wave of users. The goal changed, it was not enough to "connect" anymore, but to do real work from these devices, for hours. The talk was to replace your laptop with an iPad, may sound familiar. We thought this wave was going to be big... but it never really materialized. Blame it on lack of software? The OS? M1? ...
- And so I think we are now on a third generation. I don't think the goal is to replace anything anymore. I see the next wave as a mix of the previous two. I want to work from anywhere, access my tools from wherever I am, access the code for my projects, pushing changes fast, etc. And it may be in my desktop computer, or in my coworker's laptop, on my iPad or my phone. Codespaces or in our case Blink Build are different approaches to do that. It is still getting started.
I think we are entering a world similar to what Rob Pike mentioned in this interview (https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/). The idea is that "state" is not something that you carry all day with you, but it is provided to you when you need it, connecting applications and dev environments from anywhere. That "state" may not necessarily be the Cloud, it will be computers in your office, or powerful remote environments somewhere, etc...
So yeah, if you were expecting Xcode, IntelliJ and XXX coming to an iPad and replacing your laptop, that may already be behind us and maybe even killed on phase 2. And although these apps may not play well in this new environment, it is worth questioning if it is more fault of the environment where we are headed or of the apps themselves. I want to think that Codespaces, Fleet, GitPod, Build, and your multiple machines wherever they are, will all play a part on that.
I got a Surface pro x for the same reason. That and, I wanted a touch screen for drawing diagrams. It is kind of the opposite problem. All the software runs (native ARM versions took a while to trifle in) and with WSL2, I have a real Linux on a lightweight VM. The problem is the SQ2 processor is so painfully slow.
Oh, no XCode. But I don't consider lacking XCode to be a problem.
First, you didn't mention the #1 reason to code on iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard: LTE data modem. Second, your "as far as I can tell" dismissed the professional coding approach:
> But if you need to run Xcode, VSCode, WebStorm, or Intellij than as far as I can tell the iPad is a no go.
For VSCode, try Blink Code in the Blink shell app:
"VSCode is a very powerful code editor which has become the tool of choice for a lot of developers in record time. ... The goal of a shell is to expose services to programs and users, and hence inside Blink Shell our approach has been to integrate Code with iOS so we could offer you the best of both worlds:"
- "A VSCode experience fitted to your device, that connects to VSCode web, Codespaces, GitPod, or your Code server."
- "Work on local projects, or edit remote files as if they were in your device, thanks to Blink Files."
- "First-class iOS experience, with software and hardware keyboard, and the full edge-to-edge experience without interruptions that everyone loves from Blink."
I use iPad Pro to code via Github Codespaces, so I can use Visual Studio Code and build there. Otherwise I'm using it for sketching etc for projects :)
Apple recently put Logic Pro on the iPad. Could be amazing for music or podcast production. So maybe it's great for other creative or content related efforts.
Im Carlos from Blink Shell, mentioned in a few comments here. Wanted to give my 2c as this is something I have been thinking about a lot. Usage and expectations have been changing a lot for these devices:
- At first (iPad2 & 3 years), for those who already had remote machines of some kind, the goal was to simply have a decent terminal on mobile devices to connect to them. The appeal was very clear and I think for a lot of people it offered a different context to do stuff. It still does.
- Things start to grow with iPad/iPhone, Apple was heavily investing on the hardware, and that brought another wave of users. The goal changed, it was not enough to "connect" anymore, but to do real work from these devices, for hours. The talk was to replace your laptop with an iPad, may sound familiar. We thought this wave was going to be big... but it never really materialized. Blame it on lack of software? The OS? M1? ...
- And so I think we are now on a third generation. I don't think the goal is to replace anything anymore. I see the next wave as a mix of the previous two. I want to work from anywhere, access my tools from wherever I am, access the code for my projects, pushing changes fast, etc. And it may be in my desktop computer, or in my coworker's laptop, on my iPad or my phone. Codespaces or in our case Blink Build are different approaches to do that. It is still getting started.
I think we are entering a world similar to what Rob Pike mentioned in this interview (https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/). The idea is that "state" is not something that you carry all day with you, but it is provided to you when you need it, connecting applications and dev environments from anywhere. That "state" may not necessarily be the Cloud, it will be computers in your office, or powerful remote environments somewhere, etc...
So yeah, if you were expecting Xcode, IntelliJ and XXX coming to an iPad and replacing your laptop, that may already be behind us and maybe even killed on phase 2. And although these apps may not play well in this new environment, it is worth questioning if it is more fault of the environment where we are headed or of the apps themselves. I want to think that Codespaces, Fleet, GitPod, Build, and your multiple machines wherever they are, will all play a part on that.
Thanks for writing this Jesse - you inspired my to share my own thoughts at https://campedersen.com/. I linked back to you :)
I got a Surface pro x for the same reason. That and, I wanted a touch screen for drawing diagrams. It is kind of the opposite problem. All the software runs (native ARM versions took a while to trifle in) and with WSL2, I have a real Linux on a lightweight VM. The problem is the SQ2 processor is so painfully slow.
Oh, no XCode. But I don't consider lacking XCode to be a problem.
First, you didn't mention the #1 reason to code on iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard: LTE data modem. Second, your "as far as I can tell" dismissed the professional coding approach:
> But if you need to run Xcode, VSCode, WebStorm, or Intellij than as far as I can tell the iPad is a no go.
For VSCode, try Blink Code in the Blink shell app:
"VSCode is a very powerful code editor which has become the tool of choice for a lot of developers in record time. ... The goal of a shell is to expose services to programs and users, and hence inside Blink Shell our approach has been to integrate Code with iOS so we could offer you the best of both worlds:"
- "A VSCode experience fitted to your device, that connects to VSCode web, Codespaces, GitPod, or your Code server."
- "Work on local projects, or edit remote files as if they were in your device, thanks to Blink Files."
- "First-class iOS experience, with software and hardware keyboard, and the full edge-to-edge experience without interruptions that everyone loves from Blink."
See: https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code
I use iPad Pro to code via Github Codespaces, so I can use Visual Studio Code and build there. Otherwise I'm using it for sketching etc for projects :)
It seems that buying a MacBook Air is a good choice, but the disadvantage is that there is no screen with a dynamic refresh rate of 120Hz
Gitpod.io is perfect for the iPad. A full Linux and VS Code environment in the cloud.
Apple recently put Logic Pro on the iPad. Could be amazing for music or podcast production. So maybe it's great for other creative or content related efforts.
You can remove "for coding" from the title. Buying any apple product is always a mistake