I recently got a pretty cheap second-hand 12.9 inch iPad Pro. I was already a fan of how the iPad is slowly gaining terrain to the PC, but wanted to go next-level and decided to try the Magic Keyboard for it. The keyboard is obscenely expensive, but it includes a trackpad and practically converts it into a laptop.

Working with this setup is surprisingly smooth and fast, I honestly believe this is more than enough for 85% of the population without very specific professional use-cases. We are definitely closer to the post-pc era we were dreaming of a decade ago, even though most people is not aware of this. I think Apple would be smart to try and lose money on keyboards with trackpad for a couple years if that makes the public aware of how powerful this option is. Not their style though.

Sadly, as a game developer I’m definitely in the last 15% of people who needs more than this so this is going to be my secondary device.

This said, I was happy to find out that visual studio code for web is working 100% on safari for iPad. I’m even forgetting what I’m writng this with. So suddenly this opens a world of possibilities for the iPad: this setup can be interesting for web frontend developers or basically anyone who can realistically run code from the browser.

This is still far from what a professional developer is comfortable with (multiple screens, tinkering with the filesystem, etc etc.) but I can’t help but wonder where Apple might be going for with the iPad in the next few years.

BTW, this is even better for writing blog posts than ghdev on a desktop browser.

GH dev screenshot