Should you carry a laptop while travelling?
No, I don’t. There are better options now
I don’t have a laptop. The last laptop I bought was a MacBook 15 years back. It is still running. Only that I downgraded from Mojave to High Sierra for better performance. But I don’t use it for any purpose. It has gone to my collection of gadgets which include a hell lot of ones that you must not have even heard today.
There is always a doubt in mind whether to buy an iPad if you have a MacBook. Well, I have something opposite. Since I don’t have a fully functional MacBook I use iPad for my work and travel. Now I have iPad Pro and with the new iPad OS. I don’t really think I will ever buy a MacBook. I will explain why you should also have only one of these.
My work involves a lot of editing, content creation, audio and video editing and capturing and a hell lot of pagination. I don’t carry my office work home. I get a raw Indesign file with a lot of editing and chopping work to do. I normally use precision to the level of characters with space to determine each article I put on the magazine. But even then there are changes that happens and I use my Windows Desktop High power machine to do that. This is because my designer also uses a Windows.
Barring that, everything else is done on both the desk top or iPad depending where I am. With Apple coming up with iPad OS, you will get the MacBook experience and may be you need not have two of them together. Here are some reasons why I am saying this:
Mail: You have the choice to use the Apple Stock App Mail in case you need to have some basic stuff. But the problem is that you will end up using multiple apps if you have multiple devices running different OS. The best way to solve this problem is Spark Mail or subscribe for Office 365 to use your favourite Outlook. There have been so many Mail apps which sprouted with a bang but ended prematurely because they could not sustain after their initial funding got erased. Spark comes from the Readdle family which has other apps and so far it looks it will last and you can trust it. It has all the features that Gmail has but for your company email.
Ideas : The first and the foremost App you should have is Trello or Notion if you are little bit tech literate. It can be termed as one of the most TO GO apps of all time. It is available across all devices and the best part is that you pay only if you need those extra Power Ups. Every part of my work and my personal details are stored here. To the extend of planning the study of my 9th standard kiddo is also planned here and shared with her mobile where she gets notification what to do and when.
Word Processor: If you use any word processor for your daily work like composing email or some memos for co workers or just some casual writings, all you need is the inbuilt Apple made Pages. Since we are so obsessed and habituated to Microsoft Word, we are not comfortable with anything else. And this is precisely the reason why Pages are not used even by Apple fans. But trust me, this is better and way ahead of MS Word. Once you start using it, you will realise it. But if you are a writer, you will need the best one which can help you in your writing. I use IA Writer for my writing work. It is simply incredible and incredibly simple. What lies beneath the simple lay out are some of the best tools you will ever need for your writing. It highlighting of adjectives will blow your mind.
Camera: You can use the powerful camera of iPad Pro but there are two more option I am going to list here. You may completely ignore it if you are not comfortable to spend that extra buck. I use the most versatile FilmicPro for recording any of my work. But more than that, I use my DJI Osmo Pocket for my daily use. Osmo because it is easy, handy and fast to use if you are on the road that taking out your iPad for recording something which takes a little time. And it gives 4K resolution videos which is far better than the iPad result. But when you are using videos for simply getting across a message, it doesn’t matter if you are not using any 4K result.
Video Editing: The one and the only App I use is Luma Fusion. It is one of the best apps ever made for iPad or iPhone. It has all the editing features you can imagine. And it is not that hard to learn it too. You can also use the stock App iMovie if you need only the basic editing features.
Notes: Good Notes 4 is an awesome app that can give you the creative imagination. But now that Apple has improved its stock Notes, it is also a great way to keep your notes. But I am a Notion nerd and all my notes lies in Notion. But you could try this new coda.io.
News: The new Podcast App from Apple is awesome. I normally avoid reading news because there is hardly any time to sit and read. But you always have time to listen. So I have chosen some podcast stations to keep myself updated. You can choose yours too depending on your taste. In terms of news from various sources, Curio is a fantastic app. It reads out stories from some of the best news outlets across the globe. And in any case you need to listen to books, then go to Audible.
And you will now believe me that this entire story was typed on my iPad Pro using IA Writer.
