Steve Troughton-SmithApple was once convinced the future of computing was 'apps', so iPad was designed married to that idea. But we're 16 years on now, and the present of computing is AI, and IDEs, command lines and virtualization, and Python, and git, and scripting and automation. iPad risks being completely left behind as a computing platform by not supporting any of that stuff properly, and developer interest has been waning for years now. It's well past time for iPad to get its shit together, and open up
Victor Villas@stroughtonsmith Or is it time for iPad enthusiasts realize that this platform is not going the direction they hoped? It’s not walking towards an open platform. It barely take occasional steps towards a proper workstation; but has there ever been evidence that they’d be interested in surfacing the innards of the OS? They’re going to bet the platform that their main audience does not care about IDEs long term.
@villasbc 'iPad will never support a stylus', 'iPad will never get mouse support', 'iPad will never get windowing', 'iPad will never extend to external displays', 'iPad will never get a menu bar', 'iPad will never get support for sideloading'. We've heard it all before. It *is* moving in this direction, just very slowly. And the next big step I would like to see is Xcode and Terminal on iPad
@stroughtonsmith Not saying that it will never get a terminal or any specific feature. But when it gets one, will it really achieve feature parity with the Mac equivalent? Maybe in 10 years? If the iPad takes one step in the right direction every few years and in the meantime PCs also take a step away, I don’t really consider that as movement.
I have an iPad and I love it, but I have realistic expectations - it’s a large phone, not a small PC. One day my phone will have IDEs too, sure enough.
adamrice@villasbc @stroughtonsmith Wouldn’t the easiest (and best?) route to feature parity between Macs and iPads be Apple allowing iPads to run MacOS? Clearly the OS distinction is entirely arbitrary at this point.
@adamrice @stroughtonsmith Maybe? I don’t know, I don’t work there to know what’s easiest for them to do. And I also don’t know if “easiest” is what they would be aiming for anyway