Bookends works for me, but admittedly my IPadOS use of it is minimal.
You might be more interested in PaperShip if you’re in the Zotero universe.
If you’re interested in R, you can run a server instance and open it from a web browser. There are also a couple of iOS apps mentioned in this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rstats/comments/6i75n2/r_on_the_ipad/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
@JohnAtl, Prompt is a good SSH client, but its not an approved solution by most Corporate clients (at least mine) . Also when I meant VPN, the Corporate VPN they have mandated for which we have applications to install on Windows, Unix and Mac but still are not available on iOS 
Why wouldn’t that be approved? As far as I know they can’t track the client you’re using to ssh into a server. Besides Prompt (which I’m not using myself b.t.w.) there a many other ssh clients available for the iPad.
It’s just not authorized to be installed along with a bunch of other softwares. They are work rules
Great episode!
It was a fun trip down memory lane that reminded me of my largely positive experiences with my first-generation iPad (which, surprisingly, is still in active use). It was also a good reminder of how far things have come over the past ten years.
While my work tends to be Mac focused, I’m using my iPad Pro 12.9" (2018) more and more. The introduction of iPadOS and Safari growing into a desktop-class browser enabled a lot of functionality that wasn’t previously available. And, while I tend to work most efficiently behind a Mac, I find I go into a different mode when using my iPad, that’s particularly conducive to certain types of activities (especially those with a creative element).
In addition to the iPad being a very capable device in its own right, I find that that iPad can serve as a helpful companion to the Mac.
When I’m travelling with my MacBook Pro, I sometimes use my iPad as a second screen by taking advantage of either Apple Sidecar or Duet Display. Both work well in my experience.
I don’t tend to bring my MacBook Pro with me when I go on vacation since my iPad’s up to the task of dealing with pretty much anything work-related that I may have to deal with while travelling. In those rare instances where I really need a Mac, I use Screens (included with Setapp) to remotely connect to my iMac. Screens even lets me use my iPhone as a trackpad during these remote sessions. A nice touch.
One of the big things I use my iPad for is aviation. I think the iPad (and some very awesome accessories) has revolutionized general aviation. Instead of relying on old instruments (or new and VERY expensive ones), I can put a Stratus in my window and have my iPad on my lap with a moving map, terrain avoidance, aircraft avoidance, and all charts/maps/frequencies/etc that I need. It’s a game changer!
It sounds like I’m not alone in feeling what I think of as “iPad guilt” – the nagging sense that maybe I should be using the iPad for more tasks, even though I prefer doing many things on the laptop or my iPhone. It sounds like David and some folks in this thread also feel it.
I have an iPad Pro, and honestly navigating it (especially with the infuriating inability to get the dock up or switch apps with a Pencil) and messing with multiple instances of Word Docs, PDFs, etc. is a pain. I even like doing my Omnifocus reviews on either the computer or the iPhone.
What I love the iPad for is working with PDFs. That’s why I bought it, really. I deal with a lot of PDFs, including 1000+ page PDFs that are sometimes poorly scanned (and could make a regular iPad choke a bit when scrolling or searching – one of the few areas where an iPad Pro’s power is really nice).
It’s also nice to throw my iPad in a bag for a day or weekend trip to answer any long emails that might come in.
Yet, I can’t quite get over the guilt that I should be doing more with it, especially given its cost.
This episode was right on! I want to see Apple do more with the hardware they’ve equipped the iPad Pro with as well as balancing it’s capabilities with it’s consumer base - meaning being able to do more ‘power’ or ‘Pro’ things with it. I too am looking forward to improvements to multi-tasking. I use my iPad Pro as a computing device on the go: Minor document editing, PDF review (PDF Expert has been good to me), note taking, web browsing, (some) social media, reading, video watching, etc. Basically, if I want a bigger screen than my phone, I’m using my iPad. But I find myself waiting to get to my computer to do some things, unfortunately 
As a side note: I don’t think the comparison to the SurfacePro was fair. While I am invested in the Apple ecosystem, I have used both extensively. In fact, because of that investment, I replaced my SurfacePro with the iPad Pro. While I think Microsoft has the same goal (to find the balance with it’s consumer base), I think they’re at a different point on the spectrum. If anything, they’re trying to make it more user friendly - but I think the SurfacePro allows you to do almost everything on it and is the closest ‘tablet’ to a laptop replacement.
Today’s rumor that Apple is considering to allow third party apps to be set as default would be an amazing opportunity to provide an API for the “tap screen with Pencil” gesture so that people could set GoodNotes, Notability, DevonThink etc. to be started with a new note.
I love my 10.5” iPad Air. Bought it six months ago. Finding a keyboard that I like is the biggest headache I have.
A couple weeks ago I bought a refurbished Dell 2in1 laptop tablet thing. It runs WIndows 10. I have a use for some windows applications. The Dell is sluggish, cumbersome and not smooth.
The iPad is faster, smoother, and used more that the Dell. I thought long and hard about a Surface Pro.
I find that my iPad mini, my iPad Air and my older ipod work just fine in Spanish. In fact, the mini and the Air are truly bilingual! I’m using the Spanish daily and they figure out which language to use rather readily. Sometimes I need to switch keyboards but it’s not even necessary. That didn’t use to be the case.
Why would a Mac be advantageous?
The iPad Pro may have surpassed some MacBook models in CPU performance. However performance needed for “pro” apps isn’t just about CPU power. Memory capacity also comes into play and also SSD speed.
Right now iPadOS (and iOS) doesn’t make use of a swap file. Likely because the solid state storage of those devices are not as performant (or durable) as those in Mac hardware – iOS storage speeds are closer to SD cards than SSD drives. If apps ran out of memory (and can’t free it up), the operating system would just shut it down. You see this happening when you suddenly get kicked out of an app and into the home screen. On the other hand, when this happens on the Mac, the operating system would use the main boot drive as “extra memory” and thus apps can continue to run, albeit slower.
Having severely limited memory limits multitasking abilities. This also limits the features that developers can build into the app, as more features often means more memory. In turn memory is very precious in an iOS device.
That’s the technical side limiting “pro” apps on the iPad. Of course the business side of getting people to pay more for “mobile” apps also stands.
There’s just too much I can’t do on the iPad.
Ironically some Windows device manufacturers nowadays offers more capable Windows machines that are smaller (and cheaper) than the iPad. Sure the OS isn’t “optimized for touch” but computation-wise seem to be more capable.
For example, the GPD Pocket 2 is about as big as an iPhone Plus, yet has 8GB of RAM and able to run virtual machines. This may even be an acceptable machine for developer / data science workflows.
On this episode @MacSparky mentioned the frustration of multitask being limited to apps in the dock - however you can easily circumvent this by using spotlight - dragging any app into split screen or slide over even if its not in your dock. Hope this helps!
Awesome tip! Now the “magnifying glass” button on my keyboard case becomes a lot more useful!
As the hosts have discussed in other episodes, a common criticism of this solution is that it only works if you have a keyboard attached.
I was never an iPad guy. My first iPad was an iPad mini in 2015. I never really used it for anything outside watching Netflix and then I got rid of it pretty fast. I was a total Mac guy and I loved the my 2013 MacBook Air, which I replaced in November 2018.
Then the iPad Pro 2018 also came along, and I quickly made the shift from Mac to iPad a year ago. I haven’t looked back at all (that was an expensive 2018!)
For me it’s the form factor that’s done it. The 11-inch iPad Pro is the perfect size for me. I can rip that Smart Keyboard off and just have a table to read and even type with my thumbs on like an iPhone, or I can reattach it and write emails and do some work.
The iPad is now my favourite and go-to device of all. It used to be the iPhone, but I use the iPad for everything now. I can get by now with just an iPhone 8 because I don’t use it that much, I wouldn’t know why I would even want to update to a newer and much more expensive iPhone.
I don’t miss the Mac that much either. I’m definitely not a Brett Terpstra kind of guy, and while I did consider myself a Mac Power USer, I didn’t quite need all that amazing wizardry of an app like Keyboard Maestro etc or of the Mac command line. I can get by with less, and a lot of solid pro-user apps are also available on the iPad now. And with Shortcuts, although it has a lot of faults and weird behaviour still, does the trick for me. However, I was absolutely able to do many more things faster on the Mac. I miss TextExpander, but I can get by with Text Replacement on iOS and I miss being able to do top-notch OCR of PDFs. I don’t really have a good way of doing that on the iPad at all.
It was absolutely a learning curve going iPad only and I have taken a hit on the speed at which I used to work in the past. I was lightning fast on a Mac keyboard with shortcuts and app-switching etc. But I don’t miss the lag of an older Mac and I like that the iPad is just on and it just works and is lightning fast in itself, although slower for a power user.
I don’t want both a Mac and an iPad, and I think this might actually be more expensive for me in the end. Because I will absolutely be updating the iPad Pro more often than I did a Mac (4-5 years), I will however be able to update the iPhone less, as I’m covered with the iPad for most purposes.
So for me, goodbye to the Mac. I don’t certainly don’t miss that keyboard and I don’t miss the lag and I don’t miss the form factor.
I am a graduate student and have also found the iPad indispensable for grading papers and teaching classes. For the ancient languages I work with it is better than a Mac. The on-screen keyboard displays accents and other complicated diacritical marks that the Mac hides behind modifier keys. Even better for some of these languages is the Apple Pencil.
Good point - hadn’t even considered that as I almost always have a keyboard when doing the multitask thing. I saw this tip somewhere on YouTube and it made an immediate impact on my iPad productivity and wanted to share.