iPad Pro With my M4 IPad I’m going to

[TechnoMonk]

A few years ago, I set out to rewrite the first app I released to the App Store (original release: August 2008). After a bit of consideration, I realized that this could be done competently using only iOS/iPadOS devices for every task in the effort.

Using Swift Playgrounds, I rewrote and modernized old code using Swift/SwiftUI. Working Copy (truly excellent, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) served as my interface to GitHub. Files moved bits and pieces around, and Pixelmator enabled visual comps to be constructed. San Fransymbols (also excellent) enabled SF Symbols lookup and enhanced previews. App Store Connect was the worst part of the workflow, though I just used Apple’s web interface most of the time for this task (just as I do on the Mac). TestFlight distributed builds to my development devices, and lastly Translate helped me with initial drafts for localization needs.

All of these tools are readily available on the iPad, and for very reasonable costs (or often just for free). My physical hardware is a M1 iPad Pro 11, along with a Magic Keyboard and a Magic Mouse (less occasionally used).

10+ hour portable battery life, seamless WiFi/5G connectivity, an excellent screen, a very good-feeling keyboard, and a good old mechanical trackpad ‘click’ make development on this ~2lb/1kg device a joy (as much as app engineering/development can be called a ‘joy’). I consider the 11 Pro with a Magic Keyboard the best portable device Apple has ever produced.

I began the effort a few years ago with the question ‘Can I really use this tool to make and maintain a mature, production-quality app?’

The answer turned out to be ‘yes’. Created by iOS, for iOS. A journey that’s come full circle.

Edit: To directly answer the thread’s original question - I’m going to be doing more of all of this

I need to take a look at this, I have been using my iPad Pro to run custom inferences, and started using as test bed, and code reviews. I use Mac to manage and deploy my Test bed App to iPad. If I can do it through iPad Pro, it would be great.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Forget all the OS arguing for a minute. I think what a lot of people are trying to say is essentially, the hardware and pricing don’t matchup to the software.

Maybe macOS or a hybridOS but an iPad Pro that now starts at $1K just doesn’t make sense. Where is the price limit for Apple? Say micoLED hits the iPad Pros in 3-5yrs, are people still going to shell out possibly $1500 for an 11” iPad Pro with the same iPadOS? At some point you’re pricing yourself out of the market.

 

[RichHI]

so you have just bought a bigger 15 pro max ok

I am hoping the 16" iPad Pro with OLED will come as this would be ideal for movies on long flights.

 

[RichHI]

Forget all the OS arguing for a minute. I think what a lot of people are trying to say is essentially, the hardware and pricing don’t matchup to the software.

Maybe macOS or a hybridOS but an iPad Pro that now starts at $1K just doesn’t make sense. Where is the price limit for Apple? Say micoLED hits the iPad Pros in 3-5yrs, are people still going to shell out possibly $1500 for an 11” iPad Pro with the same iPadOS? At some point you’re pricing yourself out of the market.

They will be pricing themselves out of the market when there are no customers for their products. The Pro is not aimed at the less expensive end of the market. Apple has 4 iPad ranges and each one is focused on a target segment of the market and the budgets that consumers in each segment have.

 

[F-Stop]

The iPad I can pick up and be semi present. Typically in the evening wife and I will be collapsed on the couch and she’s hogging the tv with something I don’t want to watch. I want to be there in the same space but want to also look at things I’m interested in on my iPad.

This is exactly the same as me and my wife too 😍

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

They will be pricing themselves out of the market when there are no customers for their products. The Pro is not aimed at the less expensive end of the market. Apple has 4 iPad ranges and each one is focused on a target segment of the market and the budgets that consumers in each segment have.

Not when there are no customers but when their R&D/production costs outpace consumers which can happen a lot sooner, similar to the Vision Pro at this point I imagine.

 

[Surfsalot]

I am hoping the 16" iPad Pro with OLED will come as this would be ideal for movies on long flights.

Won’t fit on the table in coach

 

[NastyMatt]

I will be using my M4 with the same apps as my 2020 IPP but now I will hook it up to my 34” UHW screen! So looking forward to that. Plus, when on video calls it will now look like I am looking at the people on the call

It was only a small feature but I am (unexpectedly) excited about the new document scanning feature. No more annoying shadows on invoices/receipts etc

 

[ignatius345]

iPadOS is far superior to MacOS for this class of device.

Uhh, ok, but how about a better version of iPadOS? I think anyone arguing to just plop MacOS onto an iPad is kind of insane, but I also think iPadOS could take a thing or two from the Mac -- especially now that it has cursor support.

 

[bcortens]

I can see Apple making a compatibility layer to allow MacOS apps on the iPad. Much like you can use iPad apps on MacOS, just in reverse.

I don't think people understand what that would involve.

iPadOS apps on the Mac required bringing the entirety of UIKit to the Mac AND spending a ton of time and effort bringing all of the underlying frameworks into alignment again. After a decade of divergence iOS and macOS had a lot of frameworks and libraries that needed to be brought back into alignment in order to get UIKit working.
Early Mac Catalyst was actually pretty limited with several missing frameworks.

To bring AppKit to iPadOS would likely involve a similar level of effort and given that Apple is moving away from both AppKit and UIKit in favour of SwiftUI I really don't see them doing this. How many resources still exist on the AppKit team?

 

[killhippie]

I've never had a web compatibility problem with mine, but what you're describing sounds like a need for improvements to Safari, not a complete transplant of the OS. Changing the OS doesn't make a difference in this case at all.

That may well be true and if I was in the EU not the UK. I could have that ability later in the year to install maybe a better browser for my usage like Firefox with ublock origin and it would work fine. I’m still not going to spend £1300 on a 256 GB M4 iPad which is until I see different chronically gimped by iPadOS. I’m quite happy to carry on using the one I’ve got even though it is getting old. Hopefully we’ll see some major software changes this year and then I might be tempted.

I just really wish they hadn’t reduced its thickness and removed the sim card slot because I only ever use that in an emergency if there was no Wi-Fi because I could just stick a sim card in it and use the data for when I needed, it now I can’t even do that because there isn’t as far as I know in the UK any eSIM providers that have prepaid data sims or even a pay as you go data sim I can top and just use when I need it in the eSIM format. That limitation really put me off the M4 iPad. It just didn’t need to be that thin in my opinion especially considering its size and the one I’ve got is a 12.9 inch pro and that definitely flexes when you pick it up so it’ll be interesting to see what the new ones are like.

 

[bcortens]

A few years ago, I set out to rewrite the first app I released to the App Store (original release: August 2008). After a bit of consideration, I realized that this could be done competently using only iOS/iPadOS devices for every task in the effort.

Using Swift Playgrounds, I rewrote and modernized old code using Swift/SwiftUI. Working Copy (truly excellent, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) served as my interface to GitHub. Files moved bits and pieces around, and Pixelmator enabled visual comps to be constructed. San Fransymbols (also excellent) enabled SF Symbols lookup and enhanced previews. App Store Connect was the worst part of the workflow, though I just used Apple’s web interface most of the time for this task (just as I do on the Mac). TestFlight distributed builds to my development devices, and lastly Translate helped me with initial drafts for localization needs.

All of these tools are readily available on the iPad, and for very reasonable costs (or often just for free). My physical hardware is a M1 iPad Pro 11, along with a Magic Keyboard and a Magic Mouse (less occasionally used).

10+ hour portable battery life, seamless WiFi/5G connectivity, an excellent screen, a very good-feeling keyboard, and a good old mechanical trackpad ‘click’ make development on this ~2lb/1kg device a joy (as much as app engineering/development can be called a ‘joy’). I consider the 11 Pro with a Magic Keyboard the best portable device Apple has ever produced.

I began the effort a few years ago with the question ‘Can I really use this tool to make and maintain a mature, production-quality app?’

The answer turned out to be ‘yes’. Created by iOS, for iOS. A journey that’s come full circle.

Edit: To directly answer the thread’s original question - I’m going to be doing more of all of this

I hope they keep making SwiftPlaygrounds better

I have some older CoreData and UIKit based projects I'd love to work on using the iPad but sadly I am unable to do so right now. I could embed the RootViewController in a SwiftUI view and then writeup some manual core data setup but that isn't something I have time for ATM.

 

[hagjohn]

I don't think people understand what that would involve.

iPadOS apps on the Mac required bringing the entirety of UIKit to the Mac AND spending a ton of time and effort bringing all of the underlying frameworks into alignment again. After a decade of divergence iOS and macOS had a lot of frameworks and libraries that needed to be brought back into alignment in order to get UIKit working.
Early Mac Catalyst was actually pretty limited with several missing frameworks.

To bring AppKit to iPadOS would likely involve a similar level of effort and given that Apple is moving away from both AppKit and UIKit in favour of SwiftUI I really don't see them doing this. How many resources still exist on the AppKit team?

But it can be done. It makes logical sense that if you keep evolving iPad hardware, adding more and more power, that eventually there is going to be some MacOS involvement.

 

[bcortens]

But it can be done. It makes logical sense that if you keep evolving iPad hardware, adding more and more power, that eventually there is going to be some MacOS involvement.

It doesn't actually make logical sense, adding more capabilities to iPad OS (better background processing, improved file management, etc...) does not actually necessitate adding macOS to the iPad or bringing macOS apps to iPadOS.

Those apps would be bad on touch and wouldn't offer the fluidity that iPad apps do today. Today I can go from my desk to holding my iPad effortlessly by simply tearing away the iPad from its keyboard, use it with a pencil, dock it again and type up an email. Because the iPad has dedicated apps that were designed with touch first and (if the developer was smart) pencil, keyboard and pointing device support as additional affordances mean iPad apps are far more flexible than Mac apps ported over would be.

 

[henrikhelmers]

Using Swift Playgrounds, I rewrote and modernized old code using Swift/SwiftUI. Working Copy (truly excellent, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) served as my interface to GitHub.

Have you written about this setup somewhere, or have a guide you would recommend?

 

[bcortens]

Have you written about this setup somewhere, or have a guide you would recommend?

It's actually pretty straightforward.

1. Make sure you have an App in SwiftPlaygrounds
2. Open WorkingCopy and make sure you're at the root repository tree
3. Open Files beside WorkingCopy and navigate to the Playgrounds folder in iCloud drive and you should see your app
4. Drag the App from Files into WorkingCopy

WorkingCopy automatically links to the project rather than copying it in so you can now add a remote and start tracking your changes.

 

[swelliott]

Have you written about this setup somewhere, or have a guide you would recommend?

That’s an excellent question - I’ve not written about this anywhere (this thread is the first I’ve mentioned the effort online, and for that I registered a forum account here).

Not many other folks are talking about this subject online, so there’s a dearth of general guidance and only a patchwork of recommendations I found to put together my eventual workflow. A lot of the effort just took good old fashioned trial-and-error.

Don’t even get me started on having to adapt to debugging a complex app in Swift Playgrounds without the use of breakpoints…it was like going back in time (coding-wise). And the lack of Instruments made optimization especially unique. Lots of room for Apple to grow in this area.

 

[swelliott]

It's actually pretty straightforward.

1. Make sure you have an App in SwiftPlaygrounds
2. Open WorkingCopy and make sure you're at the root repository tree
3. Open Files beside WorkingCopy and navigate to the Playgrounds folder in iCloud drive and you should see your app
4. Drag the App from Files into WorkingCopy

WorkingCopy automatically links to the project rather than copying it in so you can now add a remote and start tracking your changes.

Alternatively, you can use the ‘Link external repository > Document Package’ feature in Working Copy that’s pretty much made for linking Swift Playgrounds projects.

I’ve had good success using a linked repository, though YMMV.

Also - Swift Playgrounds is amenable to using sub-folders to organize its directory, in case your project needs a more complex storage structure (documentation, resources, etc.)

 

[ssledoux]

I'm gonna do all the same things I'm currently doing with my Air 5, but with some better specs, a landscape camera, and Face ID. ;-p

 

[bcortens]

That’s an excellent question - I’ve not written about this anywhere (this thread is the first I’ve mentioned the effort online, and for that I registered a forum account here).

Not many other folks are talking about this subject online, so there’s a dearth of general guidance and only a patchwork of recommendations I found to put together my eventual workflow. A lot of the effort just took good old fashioned trial-and-error.

Don’t even get me started on having to adapt to debugging a complex app in Swift Playgrounds without the use of breakpoints…it was like going back in time (coding-wise). And the lack of Instruments made optimization especially unique. Lots of room for Apple to grow in this area.

Yeah constantly adding in print statements and then removing them later was annoying. I ended up defining a global constant for debug and a custom print function I used during debugging.

 

[Ctrlos]

Yeah constantly adding in print statements and then removing them later was annoying. I ended up defining a global constant for debug and a custom print function I used during debugging.

Would you recommend this process for a complete noob? I've had an idea for a short pixel-art RPG for a while now I'd love to bring to iOS and sell for charity but I don't really have much experience beyond visual-based editors like GB Studio.

 

[swelliott]

Would you recommend this process for a complete noob? I've had an idea for a short pixel-art RPG for a while now I'd love to bring to iOS and sell for charity but I don't really have much experience beyond visual-based editors like GB Studio.

Native, compiled software development for iOS is really jumping in on the deep end. That being said, Apple has made it much easier over the past 15+ years with the introduction of Swift (and now Swift UI, though that’s its own bag of cats 🐱).

Apple offers really good ‘getting started’ types of resources and examples at developer.apple.com, though the really difficult part will be connecting those first steps to the result you wish to produce. Luckily, there’s an active iOS community at Stack Overflow for Q&A, and lots of helpful blogs are available that carefully illustrate finer points (though many resources are locked behind a forced login/paywall at Medium).

To begin with, I’d use every Apple tutorial and resource for all its worth. Apple has a Developer app that aggregates every session of WWDC going back nearly a decade (obsolete/antique sessions have been pruned out, tho) with combined session video, transcript and code examples (if available).

 

[Ctrlos]

Luckily, there’s an active iOS community at Stack Overflow for Q&A, and lots of helpful blogs are available that carefully illustrate finer points (though many resources are locked behind a forced login/paywall at Medium).

To begin with, I’d use every Apple tutorial and resource for all its worth. Apple has a Developer app that aggregates every session of WWDC going back nearly a decade (obsolete/antique sessions have been pruned out, tho) with combined session video, transcript and code examples (if available).

Thankfully I have a Medium sub!

Can you use a unpaid dev account for the WWDC stuff?

 

[swelliott]

Thankfully I have a Medium sub!

Can you use an unpaid dev account for the WWDC stuff?

I’m not sure - I’ve had a paid Apple Developer account since 1996, so I’m unfamiliar with their free level of resource offerings. Apple surely must make the session recaps available for free in the Developer app, tho

 

[bcortens]

I’m not sure - I’ve had a paid Apple Developer account since 1996, so I’m unfamiliar with their free level of resource offerings. Apple surely must make the session recaps available for free in the Developer app, tho

I too have been on the paid account for so long I no longer know the limitations of the free one. On the Playgrounds app on iPad I know that I can build and test on device without having a logged in account. However I think you will need a paid account to actually distribute to the App Store.