This is a modified version of my iPad Pro 9.7 Review that appeared on SlashGear last July. The content has been revised to take on the perspective of a Free and Open Source Sofware (FOSS) user.
I open my eyes, ears actually, to the sounds of a specially curated playlist that gently wakes me up before picking up the face to get the heart pumping just a wee bit. After a good fifteen minutes of trying to meditate (and failing), I go grab a mug of coffee and some chow to kickstart my brain and body for the day, while leisurely browsing through news feeds and whatnot on my tablet. Once food has been consumed and the dishes cleaned, I take the tablet over to my work desk, attach a keyboard, and start typing away for the day’s labor. Without realizing, lunch hour has arrived so I detach the tablet yet again and prop it up for some midday entertainment. Getting through the afternoon was more challenging, thanks to a hearty meal, so I decide on a change of pace and vista. With tablet, keyboard cover, and a battery pack in hand (actually in the bag), I stroll over to the nearest coffee shop for a dose of caffeine and a few minutes of ambient noise. An hour or so later, however, the chatter starts to become more distracting than productive and the air conditioned space starts feeling a bit stale. So I stow my gadgets back into my trust man bag and head on over to a park for some breath of fresh air and a few more minutes of tapping away on the keyboard. Satisfied with a job well done, I start the trek back home, resisting the urge to hunt some Pokemon along the way.
That, dear friends, is a totally fictional day. But it is, to some extent, my dream day, a dream that would not exactly be possible with a laptop. At one point in time, I considered the Surface Pro 3 (and by extension, the Surface Pro 4) to be the lightest I’ll get to a “tablet that can be a laptop” that will let me work productively. Getting the 9.7-inch iPad Pro changed that perception, somewhat. The smaller iPad Pro is, of course, a lot lighter and a lot more portable than the Surface Pro 3, or even the Surface 3. But it raised the question of whether I can actually use it for real work.
So I took it for a spin, first in addition to the Surface Pro 3, and then in a one-week sprint solo. And the results actually surprised me.
iPad Pro for work: the bad
I write, actually type, for a living, so it stands that my iPad Pro experiments would revolve around using the tablet as a writer/journalist more than anything else. Apple has pushed the iPad Pro heavily towards those in the creative business, particularly artists and multimedia content creators. My use case was different enough to warrant a separate experiment. And while the iPad, actually any iPad, has been used by novelists and fiction writers to varying degrees of success, the peculiarities of technical and news writing are significantly different. The tools are different, the workflows are different. And so the experience will also be different.
While I have gained an appreciation for the physical design of Apple’s products, I am no fan of its software. Android is far from being perfect, and yet I feel more at home there than I ever have been on iOS, both as an open soure users and just as a plain end user. So naturally, I expected my experience to suck real bad. But while I wasn’t totally disappointed, I was mildly shocked to realize that, yes, I can actually work on the iPad Pro, with iOS. Given a few workarounds, sacrifices, and compromises.
I found that the biggest, most painful part of iOS that bit me hard when working is the inability to access the file system. This rears its ugly head when it comes to downloading and uploading files or renaming and organizing them. Uploading a photo from the gallery to Wordpress results in an increasing number of “image.jpeg” files in our CDN server. Forget downloading and opening ZIP files without some specialized software. That is, if iOS even supports or recognizes the files inside those archives. Apple may have reasons to lock users out of the file system, like security or just plain lockdown, but it can really hamper a knowledge worker’s ability to be productive. It still amazes me how hard core iOS users have managed to rewire their brains just to adapt to Apple’s enforced view on reality.
The lack of support for a mouse, Bluetooth or otherwise, was also painful. And I do mean that quite literally. On an iPad, even with a nice keyboard attached, you are still force to lift up your and reach out to your screen to manipulate items there. For a device advertised to be productive, that is really counter-productive. As a side effect, attaching an external display to the iPad Pro is pointless outside of mirroring a video or presentation. In other words, you can’t use a larger monitor to boost your productivity. You can, technically, but you’ll still have to take away your eyes from the monitor to look at the tablet long enough to tap on buttons and swipe and whatnot. Again, counter-productive.
iPad Pro for work: the surprise
Those were actually the only really significant hurdles to using the iPad Pro for my line of work. The rest of the experience was shockingly positive. I have to same, I am somewhat impressed by some of the apps on iOS, enough to wish (some) Android apps would be as good. I am starting to see why some consider iOS to have the better app selection. That said, it’s a chicken and egg problem in my opinion.
Another theory is that iOS has so many limitations that app developers had no choice but to develop apps to work around those. But in some cases, those workarounds are actually impressive.
However, for work, I tried to limit myself to apps that are either available on other operating systems, on Android at least, or have close analogues on other platforms. iA Writer became my primary text editor for three reasons: it was totally plain text (Markdown, to be exact), had an Android app, and synced with Dropbox. The latter means that, when not on iOS or even on Android, I can work with any text editor on any OS, as long as I can access Dropbox. For editing images, I have discovered MediBang Paint, which has apps for iOS, Android, macOS (yuck), and Windows. Sadly, no Linux, though it actually “works” on WINE. In any case, I mainly use it for image editing as a substitute for GIMP.
I have other thoughts on iOS apps, but as far as just my work is concerned, I believe I have found a set that works just right for my needs. I have still to hone that workflow, however, especially when device reviews and photos are concerned. But for the day to day writing that I do, I think I can survive with only an iPad Pro.
Is it worth it?
That said, I’m not going to be switching exclusively to the working on the iPad only. It’s more of a “I can work on it if needed” rather than a “I will work on it as desired”. I wasn’t in hell when I ended by adventure, but I was’t in heaven either. iOS presents a lot of obstacles that I don’t see will ever change, but I know my way around enough to survive unscathed.
Is it even worth working on an iPad Pro in that case?
The answer actually surprises even me. Yes, yes it is. But only because of the freedom in mobility it affords you. The size and weight of the iPad Pro, especially the 9.7-inch model, is already a given, even more portable than its older brother. In fact, I would have never even bothered with an iPad if Apple had not released a 9.7-inch version of the Pro. No, it has to be the one with a stylus Pencil. But the mobility goes beyond that. Unlike even the lightest laptops, the iPad Pro sips power instead of gulping it. On a good day, I can last the whole “8 to 5” shift before needing to juice up. And even when I do, I can top off from a battery pack instead of panicking in search of a free power outlet. A 10,000 mAh power bank can get me to 50% in three hours before it runs out of power itself. And that’s while the iPad Pro was still in use.
It’s really liberating to be able to take your work where and when you want or need to be, without getting bogged down by weight or power cables. Sure, you still have to worry about Internet connections, but that is true even for a laptop. And being able to scribble down or (in an ideal world) sketch at a moment’s notice is a large boon for myself as well.
But an iPad Pro will never be my primary computing device.
What I’m missing: the open source equation
The iPad Pro is, of course, an iOS device and iOS to me is the epitome of a closed ecosystem. I would even dare say more closed than Windows. Aside from being proprietary (which is what Windows is, of course), the operating system itself is pretty walled up, even in comparison to macOS. So it combines the ugliness of proprietary software with the worst of mobile ecosystems.
If I were simply a writer I could probably live with just an iPad Pro even. It’s definitely good enough for both content consumption and content creation, whether be it text, art, or music. Heck, one can even create games on it, but with very constrained limits.
I am, however, more than that and my needs go a lot beyond that. I am not the iPad Pro’s target market. I might not even be Android’s. What I’m missing the most is the flexibility to be able to do anything I want or need and to install any software likewise. Yes, mostly talking about desktop software here. But even with sufficient equivalents, I’m still missing some things that are important to me. Primarily, being able to code in my language and libraries of choice is near impossible on mobile, iOS or Android (with some exceptions). iOS does have admittedly impressive apps like Pythonista and Codea (Lua-based) that, sadly, Android has no equivalent. But those are limited to Python and Lua. And while there are C/C++ compilers on both iOS and Android, they are either simply just learning tools or have very limited support for libraries that matter most to me (again, with some exceptions on Android at least).
So, yes, while I can do my work on iOS on an iPad Pro, I cannot, and refuse to, live there. I would prefer a device that can run a desktop operating system but can function as a tablet and a laptop but isn’t as heavy as one. But that’s a blog post for another day …
