Theory: Panic is developing an iPad version of Coda

As soon as the iPad was announced I started wondering if I could use the iPad as my only work machine. I love my MacBook pro with attached 23 inch monitor and full size keyboard so I don’t think a switch would be permanent. But the idea that one day people might use nothing but iPads to do their work fascinates me.

To prepare for a week of iPad only work I looked at what I do all day and what jobs I wouldn’t be able to do on an iPad. Most of my work has to do with email, browsing the web and reading my RSS feeds. Another part is mark-up and coding. I do most of the HTML and PHP work on this blog and frequently overwrite the index.php file at TwitterCounter.com.

Most of my work can be done on the iPad, no problem. A few exceptions are Photoshop and Coda. I don’t use Photoshop a lot, maybe one hour a week, but I do need access to it now and then. No photoshop for the iPad yet so I’m stuck there.

Coda is the other exception. I can’t find a decent iPhone app for accessing code via FTP. There are a few apps that promise to do this but, well, they look ugly. We can’t have that. So what I was secretly hoping for was a version of Coda for the iPad.

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I’m certainly not the only person who talked about that but it seems I’m in the minority of people who think it is a good idea. Most of the people commenting on the Coda message board think it is a REALLY bad idea to have Coda on the iPad.

So I headed over to the Coda blogs and I think I have uncovered some blurry evidence that indeed Panic is developing a version of Coda for the iPad.

Check out the Dashboard on the right here. it shows a live view of all projects at Panic. Prominently displayed in the middle is a “25 days until iPad launch” warning.

Why the hell would you display that there unless you were planning to do something for the ipad, right?

Now look at the blurry lines closely. 5 lines below “Coda” there is a green icon which MUST be the Coda icon.

The white blurry mess on the right of that looks like two words. It could very well say CODA IPAD. I think it does!

There, I rest my case: Panic is developing an iPad version of the iPad.

And for uncovering this mother of all cover ups I expect to be the first iPad user to get a version of Coda. Pretty please?