I was an early adopter, I got an iPad back in the summer of 2010 and have used various models ever since. I've read quite a few of these "replacing a laptop with an iPad" articles and pretty much all of them involve a lot of bending over backwards to make it all work.<p>I've tried it a few times and it's not just worth it (to me). What I do instead is that I embrace the platform for what it is and don't do any of this remote machine kung fu to mimick a real computer. What I do instead is that I setup applications that sync data through the cloud, so that I can do draft work on my iPad (mostly text, some very light programming), but I never worry about runtimes, compilation etc. Ever since I stopped worrying and just used one of the many text apps (I mostly use iA or Google Keep), I've been much happier - I can focus on text, not on complex workflows.
TeX Writer developer here. Very flattered to be included in the author's workflow. Sitting at the core of this process is WorkingCopy, which has the most sensible integration with Files app that it simply keeps all files local. After one or two emails with its developer, we managed to get the coordination working rather quickly. The intersection of LaTeX & git & ipad users are very small, but it is a joy to see that apps can work well together with just a little bit of effort.<p>For iPad to function as a real computer, I think what we need most is a shared file system that can be accessed by all apps alike, with some sort of access control.<p>btw: Never expected that someone would dump the TeXLive tree into texmf-local. Nevertheless, glad that it works.
This is great to see, but also really frustrating. I see Apple pushing to make iPadOS feel more 'real computer', but these sorts of basic Unixy workflows still feel very hacky, particularly when it comes time to save things to the 'File system', as it were. I look forward to a day when I can someday actually use things like XeLaTeX and Pandoc on an iPad to accomplish my actual work, but for now, I'm finding myself editing Markdown and TeX now, and compiling later. Not great, but good enough.<p>I've often wondered whether Apple could do well by doing something similar to Crostini on ChromeOS, to allow these things to actually work as intended, but without impacting security. But that also probably doesn't sell software as effectively, as free software doesn't pay Apple's cut.
I love my iPad.
Compared to windows at work it's way more reliable and polished.
I've been shifting over my computer interaction to the iPad with good results and improvements in convenience, independence and efficiency.
Migrating rss, mail, web browsing and content consummation has been successful.
I too started using the calendar, to do list and notes app to great effect.<p>Only programming I wasn't able to change yet.
An attempt was made with a ssh app, but it wasn't able to compete with a proper ide/text editor yet.
For unix as an ide fans it would be enough though.
I want to learn that, but sadly I still have to write native apps, though I'll change that when I have the chance.<p>The best thing about iPadOS is control.
It feels so relaxing not having to worry about discord scanning all your processes and files just because you want to chat with your friends.
I hope they'll never go back to allowing unsigned code.
I don't see TeXPad mentioned anywhere. An iOS LaTeX environment, featured here a few years ago: <a href="https://www.texpad.com/blog/latex-ported-to-ipad" rel="nofollow">https://www.texpad.com/blog/latex-ported-to-ipad</a><p><a href="https://www.texpad.com/ios" rel="nofollow">https://www.texpad.com/ios</a>
Good write up, thanks.<p>I wrote three books using LaTex, but I now use markdown with leanpub, otherwise I would immediately clone the author’s setup. I also find that an iPad Pro is great for writing wherever I happen to be. I recently gave my large iPad Pro to someone and bought the smaller one. My new iPad Pro is so small it is always ready at hand.
Or you can just get a ThinkPad X1 (a generation or two behind) for sub-$1k, install Linux on it, and work in comfort with almost the same weight and battery life. I'm really pleased with mine.
I find Texpad to work great in principle, although I get frustrated by any text editor that is not vim. If you have the ability to sideload (that is, you have a developer account), there is a fork of iVim (<a href="https://github.com/holzschu/iVim" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/holzschu/iVim</a>) that supports running TeXLive locally on the iPad. I wrote up some notes on how to make this work some time ago: <a href="https://michaelgoerz.net/notes/editing-latex-on-the-ipad-with-ivim.html" rel="nofollow">https://michaelgoerz.net/notes/editing-latex-on-the-ipad-wit...</a><p>When I don't need offline editing, another workflow I've used is to do the editing on my linux server: edit via Blink/tmux/vim on the left, and see the compilation result on the right via Screens/vncserver/evince (with auto-reloading).
I have another (albeit more expensive) workflow. I use texpad[0] on my Mac and iPad, with the files stored in Dropbox and iCloud. Works like a charm and almost no overhead setting up.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.texpad.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.texpad.com</a>
I just run myself a docker container with pandoc and a flask endpoint on heroku.[1] Doesn't work offline, but with an iPad with cellular service I basically am never offline, and I have a Siri shortcut set up to share documents from any app, or markdown from clipboard, straight to the endpoint. Full latex, markdown, conversion to word... and on free dyno time no less.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/paultopia/miniapi" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/paultopia/miniapi</a>