I don't understand, what's compromised there? He's literally running only ssh client and a browser. What stops you from using the surface in this way?

I’m sure that isn’t all he is doing — who’d want to suffer through Surface for all the other tasks beyond ssh?

Also the iPad Pro refresh rate is double that of Surface; the screen is significantly better which matters when you spend 8 hours a day looking at small stuff.

iPad Pro is also thinner, lighter and has a far more powerful processor.

What advantage does faster processor give when you have to offload any dev work to external machine?

If you can't install your environment locally, you might as well use a $200 android tablet...

I use the iPad for more than ssh to remote servers. I write a lot, for example. I also use it for watching movies and playing games.

I have played with the Surface quite a bit and I know a few developers who use them (or have used them and given up). Partly it comes down to not wanting to use Windows.

You use your iPad as it was intended to. Multimedia consumption, light internet browsing, some simpler office suite work.

When it comes to development, what's the use case besides a terminal client?

You can't develop anything native, because of iOS.

You cannot do webdev, cause only browser you can have is safari.

Cannot do embedded stuff due to lack of ports.

I do all of my “office suite” work on the iPad, mainly emails and spreadsheets, but also writing specifications, reviewing issues and PRs in GitHub, etc. No problem with that, the iPad goes beyond mere media consumption.

I think I described that I work on remote servers belonging to my customers, so mainly I use a terminal and a web browser for that. I don’t do native development (anymore), I don’t do embedded programming. I do sometimes do front-end work and I have a Chromebook (and tools like Browserstack) for that.

I don’t try to do everything myself, or have computers that can do everything. I hire a lot of work out.