This is great, I mean, think about all the issues you run into with workstations -- gone. The iPad is so sandboxed that, barring poor memory management, this thing should always run like a champ. It'll be interesting to see if someone writes a full fledged editor, git/svn client, and development stack for the App Store. 10 hours of mobile coding would be sick.
A bit of framework to turn Javascript into a Hypercard-like environment would be cool. It would also be very amenable to the Freemium model. The for-charge services would include increased server-side storage and more flexible app/stack sharing options.
I'm thinking something like Coda for the iPad. I know there's a lot of flexibility lost, and for us hackers that seems too high a price to pay, but what about all the basic web editing, PHP, and Rails operations? Slap a virtual terminal or SSH client in there for kicks and we're golden.
On a sidenote, having worked from a Linux dumb terminal for a year and a half, I understand the limitations this sort of thing can put on you. That said, my productivity was so high using those things because there were less distractions. There was no need to configure, reskin, play with the desktop -- it would just be reset. Got a lot more done in those days.
the current iSSH ipad app is supposed to be getting a split-screen mode that will let you run a web browser next to an ssh terminal. i think its main purpose is to support browsing through an ssh tunnel, but it could still be used for some decent remote web development with screen/tmux and vi.
On a tangent: where are all the iPad apps? Aside from this one and some of the apps that were ready at launch, I haven't heard much buzz about apps in the last 4 weeks.
Perhaps developers are less interested in creating iPad apps in addition to iPhone apps (especially when their iPhone app will work on the iPad)?
I have a funny feeling devs are waiting for the 4.0 release and/or new hardware. There's also a bit of a price dichotomy going on too; the race to the bottom is going a lot slower than with the iPhone. Once 4.0 hits I think we'll see a lot more innovation in the App Store across both hardware platforms.
