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Comment by oe | Hacker News Reader

Could the new iPad Pro works as a development machine?

Yes, but that’s so awkward technically and from a marketing / product segmentation perspective that I’d be shocked if Apple went that way.

They want to sell this transition as letting them build the best Macs ever. A kitbash iPad, despite its virtues, is definitely not that.

I don't mean as a product to sell to the masses but something that could be used to develop / test ARM apps before the new shiny laptop arrives sometime in 2021. Not the most ergonomic way to develop apps but maybe possible?

Absolutely, but iOS and its "security" is holding it back.

I meant iPad running a version of macOS

It already does,

Pythonista, Continuous, Codea, Shaderific, Playgrounds

Are enough to keep me busy.

Try out code-server[1]. It let's you run VSCode in a web browser. I have a 10$ a month vultr server set up for personal git hosting and running this, and it works great on my iPadPro (as well as my PinebookPro).

https://github.com/cdr/code-server

Thanks, but there is already the Azure version of it, where VSCode actually started.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/cloudshelleditor/

How well does this run on an iPad Pro? I assume that this is a web app. Does it run OK on iOS Safari? Thanks in advance.

I never used it, just the apps mentioned above, just wanted to note that there is where VSCode came from.

I usually only use tablets when flying, not the ideal place to access Internet (very few Airlines offer that on European flights).

I've said it before but I really love code-server. Recent releases have been a bit messy (change of deployment model didn't really work) but it's amazing. I got it running on a $5 VPS to access my dev environment from any machine without the need to sync anything (no more forgetting to commit code before I leave for a trip).

As long as I'm <10ms from the VPS I can't tell any difference between code-server and native VSCode. I really hope their business model is successful.

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