I’ve started looking at if/how to do iOS development on an actual iPad. I currently use an 11″ Macbook Air. It’s portable and powerful. But I find myself doing everything on the MBA instead of learning how to really use the iPad.
With that in mind, I’m trying to force myself into really using the iPad for everything. It’s clear that most things will be a snap (email, chat, conferencing, etc), but iOS development is a bit of a challenge.
A couple approaches appear obvious:
- Remote Desktop to a development system
- Edit on iPad, and use FTP/Dropbox/etc. to sync to a development system.
- Get Apple to recompile Xcode for iPad (or JetBrains to recompile AppCode for iPad).
The first option is fairly straight forward. Tools such as TeamViewer and PocketCloud make this fairly simple. The only trick here is to set the development system’s screen resolution to match the iPad. This eliminates the need to scroll over the viewport.
The second option is perhaps more interesting. It should have a definite performance advantages, but somewhat greater complexity. There are several blogs talking about using DropBox to expose files on the iPad, then using Textastic or Koder to do the editing.
Option 3 is of course Nirvana for this, but totally out of our control. Anyone from Apple or JetBrains listening?