The only special setup that I had to do on my Mac was allowing ssh connections and adding the public key that the Blink app created for me. When I was on Windows I found that I had to map the command and option keys from my iPad keyboard to my custom vim keybindings, but now that I use a Mac as well that's not necessary.
Edit: here's a picture of my iPad ssh'd into my Mac and editing some F# code. It works well! https://www.dropbox.com/s/ilh16cesqj8ovi9/IMG_7535.jpeg?dl=0
Short version: after installing mosh-server on the remote machine, you run "mosh remotehost" instead of "ssh remotehost". It uses SSH to establish an encrypted UDP "connection" to the server. If your IP changes, Blink instantly re-establishes a connection. If you pause your iPad for a week and come back to it, Blink instantly re-establishes a connection.
What this means in practice is that I can start doing something at home. Oops, time to leave: I take my iPad on with me on the bus to the office, pair it with my phone, and continue working from the same session. Get to work and switch to Wi-Fi, and I keep using that same session. It's freaking magical.
Blink has mosh in addition to ssh, which if I understand correctly is much better suited to handling higher latency connections like that. I just haven't taken the time to set it up at home, so I can't really say how it performs.
All in all, if you're curious about using the iPad for this kind of thing I really recommend it. I absolutely love mine. Apple is pretty generous with their return policy too, I've returned a handful of their laptops just because I had buyer's remorse!
But thanks for generously replying with so much detail. Much appreciated.
