Exploring the benefits and drawbacks of using Apple's popular tablet for data science work
A few years ago (2021), I posted a blog post about how I used an iPad for my own data science work, so I thought I would share a follow-up given that, yes, I am still using an iPad for my own work here in September 2024. I ended the 2021 post with the following note:
And so we finally come to the question we’ve all been waiting for, and that is: can we finally use solely the iPad for data science work? The unfortunate answer is ultimately no. Because iPadOS isn’t a traditional operating system, there are a lot of things I can’t do due to my reliance on command line tools, Docker images, and more. I’ll be interested to see if Apple can ever overcome these hurdles, but sadly they’re still here in January 2021.
In the end, unfortunately, this is still true. Apple's iPadOS operating system still prevents the iPad from being as versatile as computers that use other operating systems such as Windows, macOS or Linux.
Still, the iPad has seen a number of updates since my original post, both in terms of iPadOS and other software services that may be compatible with the iPad. Interestingly, much of the content in that post…
