Interesting experience. Personally, I'm moving closer to ditching my personal MacBook Pro for an 12.9" iPad Pro. I highlight personal to emphasize that I don't expect to be doing development work on it (although the more I look into ways it could be done, the closer to "never say never" I get). But in a lot of ways, the iPad paired with a Magic Keyboard is just a better combination. More portable, terrific battery life, at least as powerful, better keyboard, better screen, even better speakers.
It's kind of strange, really: all the complaints you may have read about iOS holding the iPad back at this point are absolutely true; there are a lot of nitpicks I personally have with it (mostly relating to automation, scripting, and system-level text editing capability); there are slightly questionable hardware decisions (did you really need to take out the headphone jack from something this large? is this just a vendetta against headphone jacks? did a headphone jack kill Jony Ive's pet poodle?). But when I pick up my iPad I keep thinking this is the best computer I've ever owned. I'll see if I'm still thinking that six months from now, to be sure, but so far I'm surprised at how much I do not regret this purchase.
Over the past ~1,5 years I have used my iPad in the same way. I still appreciate it greatly for what it is, but over time it has become incredibly cluttered.
* Once you switch your preferred text editor a couple of times file management becomes a mess. You probably didn't copy over and delete everything immediately but you moved _some_ files over to try it out. Now you have different versions of everything, all of which you're afraid to delete. If you hitch a ride on the iOS text editor hype train every so often you'll have three/four of these red flag apps stashed in a folder somewhere within a year.
* If you use more than one app on the same text file there will be numerous copies of it in different apps.
* Some apps support 'open in place', meaning they don't copy the file you're editing to the app's sandbox. But I don't know which apps support this and they all use different terminology to tell you on use (if they tell you at all). In addition these files or file pointers may or may not be differentiated in the app's local file system and may or may not be there when you reopen the app.
* Each app has its own, separate tagging and/or folder solution.
* Some apps have a genuinely clever way to solve a problem that should be solved on the OS-level. These solutions make no difference to me; only one app supports them, and using them is mildly intuitive so I never get beyond using them once or twice.
And on it goes. I have found the best use for my iPad is to treat it as a stateless machine. My passwords, bookmarks and apps are on it and that's what I'll use. Then I move the files elsewhere and forget about the internal storage. In that capacity it's the best device I've ever owned.
Well, I've settled down on the iOS text editor hype train, which helps a lot with this, admittedly. :) I tend to write in Ulysses or Scrivener, both of which sync between all my devices (the former transparently, the latter...not, but that's not an iOS issue, as near as I can tell). The other alternative is just a designated Dropbox folder that iOS apps are told to point to; from a user standpoint this reduces a lot of these issues.
In theory, apps don't have to have the problem you mentioned, as there's an "open file in place" API for them to use (and even an "open directory in place" API) which avoids all the document shuffling. Unfortunately, a lot of apps don't seem to really support it particularly well. And I'd still prefer the apparently crazy, radical idea of having a shared Documents folder.
Well, I cheat here, I admit: I use a lap desk when I'm in the living room (which I am now). When I'm out, I'm usually at a coffee shop and not worrying about whether it can be on my lap.
The Studio Neat "Canopy" for the Magic Keyboard provides a support that works with an iPad in my lap, although I don't love it.
Imo the primary appeal of handwriting vs keyboards is the freedom of non-line-based editing; that is, you can draw a vertical line just as easily as you can write a word.
This is entirely lost in a system that simply takes handwritten text and converts it to characters (its more difficult, and slower, than a keyboard), so it makes sense this system would be unpleasant to use. But even if it worked well, it’d be worthless for writing current programming languages, as they’re inherently line-based, and optimized for keyboard input. Theres nothing to be gained from vertical lines in your C codebase.
A visual programming language might see better use, but the main issue there is that the visual part of it is the relationships: in a sane codebase, this is relatively rare to edit to any significant degree. You’re primarily editing values (a keyboard-appropriate task), and the the visualization is used for reading; rarely, its useful for editing (where a pen might be more convenient, but its competition is the mouse, and I’m not sure it does any better [if not worse])
So it makes sense that writing/editing code with handwriting will be non-compelling: its clearly worse than the keyboard in all cases I can think of.
But notes, documentation, and by accident of qwerty keyboards, arbitrary symbols (eg greek) is another story. Where arbitrary drawings are first-class citizens along with text, and the computerized benefit is automatic cleanup (straighter lines, handwriting to text) ala onenote, though its conversion is lacking (I can never get it to parse things “perfectly”).
But code? It shouldn’t be compelling. Pens are simply worse at the task.
Pen is undeniably worse than keyboard for full fledged code writing. But that is for laptop & pc. For iPad I prefer to use its native input device instead. Editing code is mostly about navigating and reading than writing and changing.
I'd be curious about that. :) I use Blink shell for ssh/mosh and can run, well, anything that I can run on a Linux server that way, so it's not impossible that if I really get an urge to code I'll set something up that way. So far what I've done is use Working Copy, which is a slightly arcane but powerful git client for iOS that registers itself as a "file provider," meaning any other editor that knows about file providers can open up repositories as if they were file systems.
I use the exact same hardware with the same apps and use case as OP, and yes, I would say so.
The magic keyboard has an escape key, which is handy when using vim on a server, and a function row with brightness and volume buttons that work on iOS. Pairing is automatic, battery life is great, the keyboard is more clicky, it's not bound to the device physically, and when you switch devices 5 years down the road you don't need to buy a new, shiny, expensive, essentially the same keyboard. I use the MK with my desktop as well, just so I don't need to adjust to different keyboards during the day. And it's cheaper.
Personally I see only upsides to the magic keyboard over the smart keyboard.
Yes, all this. :) My MK came with an iMac that I bought, and I actually use a mechanical keyboard with that, so I effectively had a spare keyboard. And it turns out to be great for all these reasons.
That's great. I was personally on the fence about it because 1) the MK is much cheaper than SK and 2) the tactile of the MK is so much better than the SK.
It's kind of strange, really: all the complaints you may have read about iOS holding the iPad back at this point are absolutely true; there are a lot of nitpicks I personally have with it (mostly relating to automation, scripting, and system-level text editing capability); there are slightly questionable hardware decisions (did you really need to take out the headphone jack from something this large? is this just a vendetta against headphone jacks? did a headphone jack kill Jony Ive's pet poodle?). But when I pick up my iPad I keep thinking this is the best computer I've ever owned. I'll see if I'm still thinking that six months from now, to be sure, but so far I'm surprised at how much I do not regret this purchase.