True Mobile Working — Why You Should Consider The iPad Pro For Work
How the iPad Pro liberates us from the shackles of a fixed desk
Being able to work remotely has a huge appeal.
Whether it’s being inspired to write in the great outdoors, getting ahead of the game on your daily commute, catching up with paperwork while staying away from home or even just walking through the hallways of your office to get a new perspective on your creative work, the increased productivity potential of working away from your desk is huge.
Unfortunately, that increased productivity potential is usually undermined by the frustrating realities of being away from your fixed desk.
Working on the go means trying to get out all your resources in the cramped space of the train or the bus, bumping elbows with other passengers as you try to type up your notes, fumbling around with multiple documents while your heading up the stairs to attend your next meeting or running out of battery on your laptop, in the middle of nowhere without a charger port in sight, just as you reach the critical point of your presentation or essay.
In short, it is a pain in the butt.
Or rather, it used to be.
It used to be that working away from a fixed desk was something you did out of necessity, rather than desire. Working remotely was a pain, the last ditch attempt to get things done.
We used to hate the idea and avoided it at all costs. But lately, we switched out our bulky laptops and underpowered tablets for iPad Pros, and things changed as a result. While tablets were a staple of our leisure time, we’d always wondered how to use the iPad Pro for work, and whether they’d actually deliver the goods.
What we found was that using the iPad Pro for work productivity increased our away-from-desk output exponentially.
The reason? The iPad Pro actually has those functions that so many devices in the past have promised but never delivered on. So, if you’re considering using the iPad Pro for work, but still aren’t sure on the merits, read on…
It Has Everything in One Place
Carrying around a backpack full of textbooks, resources, and articles used to be the standard for any self-respecting student or businessperson. And for many, trekking to seminars, meetings and study groups with a kilo of books on their back is still the norm.
It’s not good for your morale. That’s especially true when you realize you’ve forgotten an important document and are forced waste time traipsing back to your apartment or desk to get it.
It’s not good for your health either. A 2012 study found that over half of school children carried backpacks exceeding 10% of their body weight, resulting in a 50% higher risk of back pain.
iPad Pro is not as heavy as a textbook. Not even close. It’s 6.9mm thick and weighs 1.57 pounds. You can throw it in a messenger bag and you’re good to go. All your textbooks, articles, notes — everything, can be stored in digital format on your device, and you can cloud-store all your documents meaning that essential paperwork never gets misplaced.
It Makes Digital Note-Taking a Breeze
When working on a laptop, a lack of cross-program compatibility used to be a huge productivity killer. There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to copy and paste a quote from a PDF, for example, but finding that it isn’t compatible with a given word processor document, and having type the whole thing out.
Then there’s the frustrating clunkiness of having to prepare even the simplest figure or graph manually in another program before being able to insert it into a PDF. One of the most inefficient and tedious parts of studying, as any self-respecting student will be aware.
iPad Pro, on the other hand, completely changes the way that digital note-taking works. The iPad Pro’s QuickType bar allows you to italicize, copy/paste or add attachments with a single tap. By placing two fingers on the touchscreen, you can turn the iPad Pro into a trackpad allowing you to select text simply by dragging. It allows you to open multiple apps simultaneously, with features like Slide Over, Split View and Picture-in-picture that are optimized for working between applications. And, the integration of the Apple Pencil brings handwritten note-taking into a digital format, making things much quicker, more intuitive and is amazing for visual learners. Finally, all markups, notes, drawings, and sketches can be added right to the actual document. Just like writing on a piece of paper but just so much better.
It Brings True, On-The-Go Portability
Devices have promised true, on-the-go portability for years, but few have actually delivered. Laptops give you the grunt you need to get your work done, but they’re still bulky. If you’ve ever tried working on a laptop on the subway, for example, you’ll know full well the limits of their portability. Many tablets, on the other hand, are more lightweight, yet underpowered and limited in functionality.
What’s great about the iPad Pro is it combines the portability of a tablet with the power of a laptop. It’s lightweight and portable, yet fully spec-ed. Boasting Apple’s new A10X Chip, it’s been described as offering “desktop-class performance.” From our experience, you’d be hard-pressed to disagree. It effortlessly handles things like 4k video and high-res DSLR photos and has a 10-hour battery life to boot.
Then there’s the ridiculous adaptability of the thing. With the smart-keyboard attachment, it’s like using a laptop. With the Apple Pencil, it’s like note-taking in a notebook. If you’re researching and need it to function like a book, it will function like a book; the 2732x2048 resolution retina display makes reading a breeze.
Working on trains, airplanes, in hotel rooms or anywhere away from your desk used to mean compromising your productivity.
But, we’ve found that with iPad Pro, it doesn’t.
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About GoodNotes:
Our app GoodNotes 4 is the perfect note-taking app for the Apple Pencil and the iPad Pro. Take notes longhand on digital paper, markup, highlight & comment PDF, Word & PowerPoint documents — everything will be saved in a single place. With a few taps, documents can be shared with colleagues or uploaded to a cloud storage of your choice.
