I think there was until the m1 air. My iPad pro is powerful and very portable. The only thing holding it back from being my complete on the go machine was lack of software around coding.
Now that the m1 air has come out, I will likely stop using the keyboard with my iPad, and just use the air on the go. The iPad will go back to my drawing and photo sorting/editing device.
There are still great use cases for an ipad. My two favorites are browsing the web or reading books from a bathtub and watching movies when travelling!
No, the ipad doesn’t mind a few droplets of water. But you need a “book cover” like ipad case [1], that you can hold with one hand by sticking the finger between the ipad and the cover part of the case, so you hold it firmly with very little effort.
While I can't run my programs on the iPad, Textastic + Working Copy + Blink (using mosh to connect to a VPS, or a work/home system if you have one to connect to) makes for a pretty pleasant coding experience so long as your code is not graphical in nature (none of mine is). I can run it on the VPS, or have a CI platform take care of running the tests and builds for me.
What was it that substantially changed from the old air and the m1 air?
Seems to me that most workflows that work on the m1 air worked on the old air but at a bit lower performance. I don't get what work you did on the ipad pro that could not have worked on the old air unless they required the pencil or touchscreen which the m1 air does not have anyway, right?
Not just a bit slower. My iPad Pro (and from I’ve seen now the new MBA) roll through programs like Lightroom. LR on my 2018 iPad Pro worked much better than LR on my 2017 MBP for example. Then there’s battery life which means not looking for a charger constantly throughout the day.
It was literally shown running at the WWDC event, and the ARM version should come out in December. I expect it to perform more like the iPad version than the mbp version.
I think there was until the m1 air. My iPad pro is powerful and very portable. The only thing holding it back from being my complete on the go machine was lack of software around coding.
Now that the m1 air has come out, I will likely stop using the keyboard with my iPad, and just use the air on the go. The iPad will go back to my drawing and photo sorting/editing device.