What I learned by using an iPad Pro as my main computer for two weeks
To make it short: a lot!
What’s a computer?
This little question asked by a little girl in the iPad Pro ad really stirred up the tech community. Some (including me) smiled watching this ad, thinking about the implication, that you could use your Netflix- and YouTube-Machine to get serious work done. And so I thought, maybe it would be something I could see myself doing. So I thought, why not and headed over to Apple’s Website to check for pricing. And then I closed the website and didn‘t think about it for two years.
And then my father, who is a classical musician, got one. He uses it to display the sheet music at concerts. Together with a Bluetooth foot pedal which he uses to change pages, he performs only with the iPad Pro. This got me thinking again. Could I use an iPad to be more productive or even replace my laptop? Could I be the first among my friends to make the futuristic and scary jump to an iPad? I have had some experience using an iPad for university. Back then I got myself an iPad Air (1st gen) and a Zagg Folio Case. They connected over Bluetooth and were a bit slower than the iPad Pro with the Apple Folio, connected via the 3-pin Smart Connector located on the bottom of my iPad Pro. But they got the job done. One professor even declared that he wouldn‘t allow laptops in his course, but small notebooks and iPads were ok. (This professor was very oldschool and didn‘t accept eMail, we had to come to him to have a talk with him. I changed courses because it was very frustrating, but the iPad saved my ass in this regard, that I still could write digitally. My handwriting is very bad…)
A month ago, almost 3 years after I left university to be an apprentice media producer, I got lucky on eBay. Now the device on which I am typing this very article ist an iPad Pro from 2017 with 12,9“. At first, I was shocked by how big it really is. Sure, I‘ve seen it in the past and in Apple-Stores, but it‘s somehow different holding it in person. I started to install apps and started using it almost daily and I have to say, it really started to grow on me. Not that it has to get any bigger though. 12,9 inches are more than enough for me. And I think that the size helps to use it as a computer. I can use two apps in splitscreen-mode and can comfortably see and read the text in both apps. Safari and Medium for example. That is I think the biggest plus for the 12,9 inch in comparison to the 10,5“ or 11“ versions. Two colleagues of mine both have the newer 2018 11“ version and those tablets feel so small in comparison, even if the difference in screen is just 1,9 inch.
The other big thing for me is iPadOS (how couldn‘t it be?). The relatively new OS is such an improvement over the old one. The improved Files-App, the trackpad support and so on are very nice, but the most useful thing for me is by far the desktop-class Browser experience. I use safari on my MacBook and it has grown on me. At first I thought of it as I thought about Internet Explorer on Windows: the perfect place to download Google Chrome. But then I used it more and more and nowadays I use Safari on my Mac almost exclusively. And to now have a portable, but still full-fledged version of Safari on my iPad Pro is a game changer. Because let‘s face it: almost everything we do is done in a browser or can be done in one. And for everything else, well there is an app for that. Mail (if you don‘t like the standard Apple-App for whatever reason)? There is spark. To-do list manager? You can count on Things. Messenger? Choose between WhatsApp, Threema or Telegram (or use all of them). Need to write a paper or make a presentation for work? Use Apple Keynote or Pages. There is even the complete Office-Suite from Microsoft available. You can even edit Video with Luma Fusion or paint with Adobe Fresco or Procreate. You get the point. Most work can be done on an iPad. And if your work doesn‘t involve much more than the basics, the iPad Pro maybe the only computer you need.
But the big question is always? Can it replace the computer for everyone? No, of course not. Creative Professionals, while an iPad can be useful or even the only tool you need, it is more than often not enough. For example: if you need to edit video with more than 6 video tracks, Luma Fusion isn‘t enough. The iPad version of Photoshop, while being very, very powerful is not as versatile as the Desktoptastatur version. And don‘t get me started on 3D-modeling. There is just no good option to use an iPad for that. At least that I know of. But there is hope! If you trust the leaks by Jon Prosser (Twitter @jon_prosser), Apple is developing Final Cut and Logic Pro X (my favorite DAW) to work on the ARM processors found in the iPad. That would be a gamechanger for me. I only use my MacBook theses days to work in Logic Pro X, because it is so much more capable than the alternatives on the iPad (there ar Cubasis and NanoStudio 2 and they are very capable, but nothing in comparison to the industry standard that is Logic Pro X). If Logic comes to the iPad, I really could completely switch to the iPad as my main computer. Almost.
As I mentioned earlier, there is no capable 3D-Program available for iPad. The best case scenario would be blender developing an iPad version of their very famous program Blender. I use it all the time and even wrote an article about it here on medium about learning a new program like blender in quarantine.
So finally: Can the iPad Pro replace your computer. For some, the answer is absolutely yes. For me? Not yet!
