Tag Archives: Computing

A few links and thoughts on iPad after WWDC 2017

Well, well, well. The 2017 WWDC has come and gone and much that iPad users hoped for has been announced. As far as I’m concerned Apple hit it out of the park. If the features announced work as well as they look then I will be very happy and more productive. While no operating system is ever really finished with iOS 11 we see the most significant complaints about the iPad being addressed. Perhaps the two most significant of these were lack of a user accessible file system and the lack of drag and drop. Not only will iOS 11 have both of these but Apple has implemented each of them in ways that are fully featured and in some ways may well surpass the abilities of the Mac. I’m really looking forward to trying the new features. I’ve been getting along very well without them but I don’t doubt that they will come in handy for some tasks and workflows.

The new Files app looks pretty great. I use DropBox as my primary file system these days so having that integrated along iCloud and local documents will be great.

Drag and drop in iOS goes beyond what we have on a Mac because it’s multi-touch. On a Mac I can select multiple files on the desktop or in a folder and drag to a new location or a new mail message. With iOS 11 I can select multiple items from multiple folders and apps and drag and drop to multiple locations. Finger ninjas will be able to select an image from Safari, text from Safari, and the url of Safari all in one go and then drag to a destination or multiple destinations to drop them. This will require a bit of practice but I imagine it will be really powerful when mastered.

The new dock is going to be far more useful as it will now hold far more apps and will have added functionality with a contextual menu for recently used documents as well as the swiping up action to bring an app into a multi-tasking window. But what about adding an app to the multi-tasking that isn’t in the dock? Well, luckily, we will be able to use Spotlight for that. I’m already in the habit of opening all my apps from Spotlight so being able to drag one down from Spotlight to a multi-tasking window will be a welcome addition.

Paired apps in spaces will probably be very nice too though I’m curious about how it will work to have apps paired up and how easy it will be to change those pairings. I use split view a good bit and will likely use it even more with the 12.9″ but I don’t necessarily have two apps that I consistently use together with the exception of the Podcast App which I use with Pages to do podcast transcripts for a couple of clients.

Notes is getting some nifty new features. Document scanning and inline notes/sketching look great. The new bits with Apple Pencil will come in handy I suspect. I don’t do a lot of work that requires mark-up or screenshots but on occasion it comes in handy.

There are so many other goodies coming for both iPad and iPhone. With iOS 11 it’s obvious that Apple has no plans to back-track on the iPad. The above notes are just the most obvious for those of us using iPads everyday. Any notion that the iPad is not a fully capable computer for most people should really be put to rest at this point. With the increasing power of the hardware and the deepening feature set of iOS the iPad is maturing into an incredible tool that is not only as capable as a notebook but one which surpasses that form factor in it’s flexibility.

I’d been waiting for the new 12.9″ update so I ordered that, along with a Pencil and Smart Keyboard the minute the store came back online. I’m very excited to put the bigger screen to use. It will come in handy with the newly released Affinity Photo and will be even more useful when iOS 11 is released. The Smart Keyboard was not my first choice as it lacks iOS shortcuts I enjoy: volume, play/pause, Siri activation but the only other keyboard I was interested in and which I would have preferred was the Brydge but I’ve read far too many reports of those having poor build quality with people having to not only go through an exchange process because the out of the box keyboard was broke but of the replacements also being broke. Bummer. Hopefully the Smart Keyboard does the trick!

A great deal has been written in the past week about all of the WWDC news. Here’s just the tiniest sampling of links that caught my eye.

Harry McCracken, writing for Fast Company: With iOS 11, The iPad Will Make More Sense To A Huge Market: Skeptical PC Users

Serenity Caldwell: iPad Drag and Drop, Multitasking, and Split View in iOS 11: Everything you need to know!

iOS 11: The MacStories Overview

Jason Snell asks:Three big questions about Apple’s new iPad announcements

A more general overview is offered up by Steven Sinofsky: WWDC 2017 – Some Thoughts

iPad Preferred

A few weeks ago Federico Viticci wrote a very nice article about his transition to the iPad as his primary computer: A Computer for Everything: One Year of iPad Pro – MacStories

"There's no doubt in mind now: the iPad Pro is the best computer I've ever owned not only because it's powerful, but because iOS apps unlock a different kind of productivity on the big screen. More than any other iPad before, the iPad Pro is the strongest argument in favor of iOS for as a primary computing platform."

"My first year with the iPad Pro has been a success. By embracing new ways to work and manage my time, I was able to optimize my workflow on a computer that can transform into a laptop, a book, a videogame console, and a focused writing machine. I've had fun working on the iPad Pro, but, more importantly, I've accomplished more thanks to the power of modern iOS apps. What I do on the iPad Pro today can't be done on a Mac."

Serenity Caldwell has also been using the iPad as a primary computer – mostly.

The potential of the iPad platform remains huge, but Apple has made great strides in realizing some of that potential, giving its users more control over the last twelve months. Thanks to third-party apps like Workflow, I've been able to recreate — and in some cases, better — daily work tasks.

There are more and more people doing this and along with the trend there is growing concern in the Mac-using community that the Mac might be on the way out. Maybe in the distant future. Maybe not. But if so I don't see it happening anytime soon. Jason Snell has a great video about the Mac as truck, tablet as car comparison that Jobs used several years back.

At this point in time it is a given that the iOS ecosystem will only become more powerful in terms of hardware and software. From iOS to new iPads to other as yet unreleased iOS devices, we don't know where this road will lead, but we can plainly see that the platform is increasingly capable of handling a greater variety of tasks and is often capable of things the Mac is not capable of. And with the recently introduced "Pro" branding it seems Apple intends for the iPad to become more people's primary computer. With iOS 10 many iPad fans were a bit disappointed with the lack of iPad specific features. If Apple truly intends the iPad to take a more prominent role they'll have to do better.

I've greatly enjoyed my increased time on the iPad in the past year and there's no doubt that it is now my preferred device. There's something about holding this impossibly thin and light pad of glass and metal that just feels right. It feels like the future. Maybe I've watched too much Star Trek? In any case, I suspect with each year more of my work will be iPad based and less will be on the Mac. It's safe to say that the Mac is now a secondary machine but truthfully, I'm still happy to have it around. I'm beginning to think of macOS the way I used to think of Mac OS 9, the "Classic" Mac OS. Not that the old system was ever as stable or as enjoyable to use as OS X but it held a special place (and still does) in my memory of Mac experience. OS X/macOS has been an incredible workhorse for 15 years and I've made my living using it. I've enjoyed every version beginning with the public beta all the way through to today.