Disclaimer I code for the web, so I wouldn't be affected by the SwiftUI part.

Trying to make the iPad thing work for almost 10 years, I finally gave up and bought a Surface Pro (7 first, and upgraded to 8).

People use to joke about the length iPad user go to execute simple tasks.

Like logging to a remote server to reboot it. You can do it on an iPad, you just need an SSH app, share your keys with it, and you're done. Then you push a bit further to check out some git repo, change it and push it, and have your server update. But you're probably three apps down the line at this point, they can't really share a common working directory in the way you expect it to work as files are managed individually, there is the backgrounding issues etc.

You can make most things work, but through piles of hacks, workflow glue, paying for many more external services or basically moving everything remote, out of the iPad.

At some point I had a RPi stuck to the iPad to locally ssh into it.

Or you spend the same amount of effort and frustration, but on Windows, on a machine that has none of the silly limitations, can run an actual linux subsystem locally, Docker if you want to, a full VSCode available offline and any other real pro tool you need.

Basically, for the same amount of pulling hairs a Surface Pro actually delivers where the iPad always falls short in some way.

Not making any statement regarding the mentioned workflow issues (I mostly agree with them), I really like iSH [1] for this sort thing.

It’s a “good enough” solution for the “I just quickly need to do something in a terminal” problems.

And because it’s an x86 Alpine Linux it can even run simple binaries if needed.

But for me it still couldn’t replace a dedicated laptop for proper tasks.

[1]: https://github.com/ish-app/ish