I use an old shitty netbook for this. I prefer that to my Nexus ... 7? tablet for three primary reasons.

The screen naturally holds itself at whatever angle I set it. If I'm just casually watching a video in bed, I can put my hands back under the covers where it's warm.

It has a keyboard. So the other half of the time, when I'm interacting with the machine in a meaningful way, input is way easier.

There's an entire other world of stuff to do with a full fledged OS. Programming, Steam games, the works, it's all there.

I haven't bought another tablet. It's not really better at anything than my phone.

Xcode is too expense for iPad by minimal hardware requirements.

Animation CPU should be good for dev apps too

https://twitter.com/acpustudio

I completely agree with you. A really good drawing surface with Pencil, handwritten notes + handwriting recogniser, a distraction-free writing environment with a keyboard cover, comic book reader, ebook reader* and light as heck? Also, a display of that quality for that price? Oh yes.

*Reading O’Reilly Safari books only works well on the iPad, I’ve found. Ever since they killed Kindle downloads. In any case, most technical books look better on the iPad anyway.

The apps are still a bit limiting. Eg some bank apps still assume you’re using a phone, but iPadOS’s desktop-like browser does help. What’s more irritating is that some apps, like Gmail, still don’t allow attaching documents from Files. But I suspect they’ll catch up.

Eh, I'm still not particularly excited about iPads or tablets in general. Tablets are awkward, to the point that I prefer:

- my phone for casual reading and watching (6" max) - my Kindle for longer reading sessions - my laptop for mobile productivity and gaming - my desktop for serious work/gaming

We mostly use our tablets to distract our kids, especially for long road trips. My wife has started using a tablet for drawing in lieu of a desktop drawing tablet, but that's about as close to "real" use of a tablet that we have.

It works out really well for some people, but I just don't see it.

Somepeople definitely love the device. It depends on what these things mean to you. My iPhone is fine for reading for me. Paperback novels aren't as large as ipads. The column width in a print magazine and newspaper isn't as large as an ipad, it's about as wide as my iphone screen. Text wrap is important for comfortable reading. Therefore, in my eyes, having something larger than it needs to be to actually read is a waste.

Similarly, the web isn't any better on an ipad vs. an iphone; its the same mobile website but with more white space to fill the scale.

I could never stand gaming on a touch screen device, personally. I know people play fortnight on their phones these days, but I can't stand the lack of tactile response with virtual thumb sticks and the fact you have to block the screen with your thumbs to do anything at all. Games tailored to the device, like tap tap revenge, were fun but only for 10 minute spurts.

I get the merit of having a 12" light weight screen that connects to the internet, but apple hasn't sold me on the utility to make it worth dropping the couple hundred bucks, especially when my phone does it all while also being a phone.

There’s no Xcode (yet), but there’s a growing number of coding apps available for iPad and even iPhone. My all-time favourite is Codea, which is a Lua game development environment that exports to Xcode so you can publish your games to the App Store.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/id439571171

"just going to be a big iPhone (...) lay back in bed and casually browse the web, read magazines, watch movies, play games? On something with a decently large screen" -- isn't that just a big iPhone, then? Especially now that the iPhones are fairly large themselves, and mobile layouts are almost universal. I have an iPad, but I've never really found a good use for it. Web browsing, reading, and watching videos I find more comfortable on a phone (or a Kindle) I can hold in one hand. The form factor of the iPad combined with its touch screen means I can never find a comfortable way of holding it long-term.

To me the big draw of the iPad is that it combines the simplicity of a phone OS with a screen that can render large fonts and still be usable. That's great for people with poor eyesight, like my grandparents, who can fit only a few words at a time onto a 5" phone display and who find the Windows interface frustrating (being full of small buttons, accidentally-pressed keyboard shortcuts, things minimizing to the tray, and multiple windows containing multiple tabs). As someone lucky enough to have escaped that problem so far the iPad exists in a strange halfway point between a laptop (large, powerful, keyboard-equipped, capable of running and doing anything) and a phone (comfortable, portable, long-lasting) that's never quite right for the job.

Admittedly I've never used the Pencil which I imagine can be quite nifty.

> I do think it's a shame you can't really develop apps ON the device

I'm happy you can't. My old boss was so cheap he asked our head developer if this was possible, instead of having to buy me a Macbook.