Been using this for a while on my 2018 iPad Pro for college.
I just SSH into my pc at home and am able to work on all my assignments with neovim. Works well enough to save me from having to buy a laptop since I was able to get this iPad for ~$300 locally on Facebook marketplace. Would recommend to non-power users on a budget (e.g. college students)
Why do people like to suffer? Just get a used Lenovo Carbon that’s a few years old, plop Ubuntu on it and do all of that with a proper computer with a larger screen, good keyboard, and no “tricks” whatsoever. And if the internet connection conks out, you can still do whatever you need to do
Because I use a custom ergonomic 3D printed keyboard due to RSI and do the vast majority of my work at my desktop computer. I love the iPad for being able to do touch focused tasks and the extreme portability. Every once in a while I like to code remotely or even outside. Blink shell connected to my dev server over ssh and neovim allow me to work on the ipad pretty seamlessly. I don't have to buy yet another device that I will only use once or twice a month, and I don't have to put my custom keyboard on top of an existing keyboard built into the device.
It may seem like a weird setup but it really works for me. I put my ipad on a folding stand to boost the height closer to eye level and it's so much more ergonomic than what I used to have with my 15" Macbook Pro.
You're fundamentally misunderstanding the use case. Using an iPad Pro with a small keyboard is a small form factor, often doesn't add to the load in a student's backpack (most of them have iPads for note taking anyway), etc
They're not comparing it to a MacBook, though, they're comparing it to an iPad Pro.
We could go through the whole dance of figuring out which weighs more and what does what with whom and where, but I think it's probably easier to say "different people have different priorities". If what you want is a lightweight Linux laptop, the iPad is never going to give that to you. If what you want is a tablet that you can connect a keyboard to when you want, an X1 Carbon is never going to give you that. And if that is what you want, it's nice that the iPad can run a great ssh/mosh client that's capable of running Visual Studio Code in the cloud.
Not iPad but on iPhone, I SSH into a Linux machine to edit scripts from bed and submit jobs to AWS or cluster with a sleeping partner beside me. Vim works surprisingly well for editing text in this scenario.
In theory one could even do this from the bathroom without the awkward appearance of walking in there with laptop in arm. Hypothetically. I certainly have not tried this, no sir.
I just SSH into my pc at home and am able to work on all my assignments with neovim. Works well enough to save me from having to buy a laptop since I was able to get this iPad for ~$300 locally on Facebook marketplace. Would recommend to non-power users on a budget (e.g. college students)