An iPad Pro as a PC

For several years now, my primary personal computer has been my desktop PC, which is far from mobile. I have had a work laptop, which made browsing or doing email from the or while traveling possible, however there are some things that are better done on a personal device.

Lately I’ve been using an iPad Pro 11" with a folding keyboard case as a laptop replacement. Compared to a similarly priced laptop: Not quite as flexible in terms of work power, but more flexible in terms of content consumption. I can actually do a decent amount of hacking/development over SSH with Blink Shell to my Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Raspberry Pi, but it’s not quite as efficient as a proper laptop.

Here's how I think it stacks up for my three main use cases: Entertainment, Web browsing, and Development

Entertainment: 10/10 The screen is incredible, even at low brightness. Reading and watching video are both crisp, clean, with great contrast. On top of that, AirPods make a great accessory allowing two viewers to watch a movie with synchronized audio—a wonderful feature when on long flights.

Casual web browsing: 8/10 Generally a good experience somewhere between mobile and desktop. Safari is actually amazing. The ability to open multiple windows as well as tabs make the experience much more akin to a desktop. Unfortunately, I’m predominantly a Firefox user. While it does have a desktop-like experience as well, it does not support multiple windows on iPad OS. I really hope this eventually changes as switching to Safari is not an option for me since it’s not multi-platform.

Development: 6/10 Definitely workable and sufficient for now. However, not an ideal environment. My best experience developing on a remote machine over SSH with Blink Shell, but limited local editing is possible with something like Working Copy. Unfortunately locally building or running is generally not. Working Copy does however allow you to set up a remote machine to synchronize the repo to and execute build commands remotely. There is also a newer tool, iSH, which offers a full x86 Linux terminal on your iOS device using an emulator, but I do not use it.

Overall, I’d say it meets my needs well enough. Though pretty much any laptop would rate better for development, few (if any) would do so well as an entertainment device. I still find myself sitting down at my computer when I need to do more serious development, but for the most part, I’m able to do just about anything on the iPad.