Long-time readers will know that for years and years I’ve used a hybrid approach to managing my tasks and time. I use both Things on my iPad and also a Baron Fig notebook.
But a few weeks ago I wondered how it would be if I went fully digital.
And then, of course, I wrote about it.
Over on The Sweet Setup you can get a look at how I’ve been experimenting with the GoodNotes app on my iPad and using some custom templates to plan out my weeks and days.
For me, the most important and exciting announcement at WWDC was iPadOS.
I spent most of this week writing notes, jotting down half-formed ideas, and trying to distill why iPadOS is such a big deal.
Then, on my flight back home, I finalized my thoughts and published them in an article on the future of working on an iPad.
Hope you enjoy. (And might I suggest brewing a fresh cup of coffee and sitting down to read it.)
On Monday I officially ran out of feature ideas and improvements for Ulysses. Because the iPad app now offers split-screen editing, and it’s fantastic.
I mostly use Ulysses from my iPad, and this was the last remaining feature request for me.
I don’t need a split screen editor all the time, but it is something that I often incorporate as part of my writing workflow. Usually I will have an outline on one side and my working draft on the other.
Before Ulysses offered split-screen edition on the Mac version, I had a Keyboard Maestro macro that would open up a new editing window and re-size. On the iPad, if I wanted to do side-by-side document work, I would usually copy all the text from my outline out of ULysses and put it into Bear so I could work with those two apps in split view (since iOS supports it, but Ulysses did not).
The way that they’ve implemented split view in Ulysses is just perfect. There are lots of little nuances in it to make it delightful, and it feels just perfect on the iPad. It’s an excellent example of an iOS app feature done right.
And it’s power-user friendly, too, of course. You can use the keyboard to enable the second editor and switch between which document is in focus. Or you can drag a document out of your library and over to the “side” to open that document in the second editor.
(This is one feature that now makes me wish ever-so-slightly that I would have held on to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro instead of trading it in for the 11-inch.)
On the Sweet Setup, we put together a review of this newest version of Ulysses that also walks you through exactly how the new split-screen editor works and how you can use it.
(And, of course, if you’re a Ulysses user — or want to be — we have a pretty fantastic series of training videos for you.)
Matthew Cassinelli put together this fantastic guide for quick capture in Ulysses on iOS. He goes over the built-in share sheet (which is what I use about 5 times a day). And he also gives several examples of custom Shortcuts (with download links) for automating the capture of ideas, notes, and more.
Side note: On this Tuesday 26 March, we are shipping a huge update our Learn Ulysses course over on The Sweet Setup. This article on Quick Capture is taken from one of the lessons in the new course.
Over the past two years, my usage between Mac and iPad has flip-flopped. And these days I use my 11-inch iPad Pro for just about everything. Especially all writing. So over on The Sweet Setup I just posted an article that gives a look at what I’m using these days to do all my writing.
(Side note: If you’re looking for the wallpaper I’m currently using on my iPad, it’s from my Blurry Kansas City photos which you can find along with the the high-res versions here.)
Last fall I helped Kickstart a new mechanical, bluetooth keyboard for my iPad: The Keychron. A few weeks ago it arrived at my house.
I’ve been a mechanical keyboard nerd for the better part of a decade now, using one clickety keyboard or another with my Mac since 2012. Now that I use the iPad for a significant amount of my work — especially my daily writing and editing — I’ve been considering a more fancy external keyboard for it as well. Because why not?
For about two years now I have simply been using the Smart Keyboard Cover (both with the 9.7” iPad Pro, then the 10.5”, and now the 11”). It is not a great keyboard by any means; but it’s been fine for me and I love the simplicity of just having it right there ready to go anytime I grab my iPad.
But when I saw the Keychron on Kickstarter, I thought it would be worth backing. While I don’t want to carry a keyboard with me when I’m out and about or traveling with the iPad. But I do like the idea of having a nicer keyboard at my home for the times when I’m using the iPad for writing while at my desk (such as at this very moment).
And so, what initially piqued my interest with the Keychron keyboard was that:
In a moment I’ll share more about each of the above items.
Overall the Keychron looks beautiful. It’s a very clean, sleek, well designed keyboard.
The Keychron uses low-profile blue switches. They are nice. While they are a bit less tactile they are also much quieter than my Filco Ninja with it’s Cherry MX blues, that’s for sure.
Typing on the keyboard feels like something right in the middle between my Cherry MX switches (which are big and bold) and the current bluetooth keyboards that Apple sells (which are thin and quiet).
Another delightful feature of the Keychron is that each key is individually backlit. I opted for the simple blueish-white LEDs you see above, but there was also an option for full RGB colors which I did not get. I don’t want my keyboard to be a disco holiday light show, I just want it to be backlit.
Anything which hinders the writing process is no good. Anything which aids is most welcome.
There is an LED “Light mode” toggle button. But, oddly and nonsensically, it sits just to the left of the arrow keys.
This keyboard takes it’s light modes a bit too seriously.
The first few days I had this keyboard I accidentally toggled the light mode about every 100 words. Which is not great.
There are 10 different LED settings. Nine of which are some sort of fancy, wildly-distracting, party trick of light dancing around underneath the keys.
Which means that if you accidentally hit the light switch on the keyboard, suddenly the LEDs are bouncing around and flickering. And since there are about 10 different settings, you have to hit the button 10 more times to get back to where you were.
Another selling point for me with the Keychron is that it’s bluetooth. Moreover, you can pair it with up to 3 differnet computers / devices. And you can then switch between those devices using the keyboard. Pretty clever.
It also has a USB-C connection that it uses for charging and connecting directly to a computer if you don’t want to use Bluetooth.
But for some reason, the USB-C to USB-C cable I use to charge my iPad doesn’t work as a way to wire the Keyboard to the iPad. I can connect the Keychron using my USB-C to USB-A adapter that I bought from Apple.
So, to reiterate the awkward and nerdy wired configuration: Even though the iPad and the Keyboard both have USB-C ports, I have to use a USB-C to USB-A cable and then plug that in to with a USB-A to USC-C adapter. And the adapter has to be plugged into the iPad. If it’s the other way around, it doesn’t work.
Also worth noting is that the iPad will charge the keyboard’s battery when the two are connected via USB.
On my iPad I use both Spotlight and “Text to Siri” as a sort of quick-action, keyboard shortcut workflow.
Having the ability to bring up the Text to Siri interface without having to press and hold the power button on the side of the iPad makes things much nicer.
Alas, on the Keychron, the Siri button is Mac-only. This is a huge bummer and I wish they would have been more clear / upfront about it on their Kickstarter page as I thought the Siri button would be able to bring up Siri on iOS as well.
Sigh.
Apple’s Smart Keyboard cover (which I use and have attached to my iPad 90% of the time) will only prop up the iPad when it’s in the keyboard orientation. You cannot prop up the new iPads Pro in “media mode” the way you could with the previous generations and their Keyboard Cover.
Thus, for me to use an external keyboard like the Keychron along with the iPad means I have to have the keyboard portion of the keyboard cover sprawled out, sitting in front of the iPad and just behind the bluetooth keyboard. Ugh.
Now, I’m not a victim here; there are some workarounds for this. I could buy an iPad stand (the Twelve South Compass is awesome). Or I could also buy another case that lets you prop up the iPad, and then use that case when I’m using the external keyboard.
There’s also a partial workaround using the keyboard case I already have, but it only works if the iPad is on a rough-ish surface. You can flip the keyboard cover around like an “A Frame” and prop the iPad up that way. But on my desk, it just wants to slide open.
As you may have noticed from the photograph at the top of this article, my current solution has been to put the iPad on top of a used Baron Fig notebook. It’s not ideal, but it works for now I suppose. Shrug emoji.
There is also a screen grab button and a dictation button. The Screen Grab button works just like pressing the hardware Volume Up and Power buttons on the iPad, or hitting SHIFT + CMD = 4 on iOS: it takes a full screenshot and the puts you into the screenshot editing interface.
The dictation button, alas, is like the Siri button: it does not work on iOS. It just brings up the on-screen emoji keyboard.
I’m sad to say that after using the keyboard for a couple weeks my current feeling is that it is less than the sum of its parts. It’s a beautiful and well-made keyboard, and the more I use it the more it’s been growing on me. But for whatever the reason, it’s not delightful to use. And if you’re going to have a big, noisy keyboard, it ought to be nothing if not delightful.
Now the question remains: Do I keep using it because I’ve got it; bust out the Apple Extended Keyboard II that I’ve had in my office for 7 years; go back to using the Keyboard Cover that I’ve been using for a few years; or…. start further down this rabbit hole of bluetooth mechanical keyboards for the iPad?
On the west wall of my office is a giant whiteboard. I use it often, but there are times when I want to use my iPad instead. And with the new iPad Pro and its #2 Pencil, I’m finally interested in a good whiteboarding app.
Apps that relied on the Apple Pencil never really stuck for me because I rarely had my Apple Pencil nearby, and if it was nearby it was probably out of battery. As you’ve probably heard a thousand times already, that all changed with the new iPad and the new Apple Pencil.
Now, I’ve long been a fan of Paper by 53 (though it’s now Paper by WeTransfer) for drawing and sketching. I’ve used it many times to draw visuals to accompany my articles from time to time. But the Paper app hits its limits when you start using it to flesh out bigger ideas and mind maps.
For a few weeks during the Christmas holiday I was checking out different whiteboard apps for iPad. (Yes, this was how I spent my free time during my Christmas break and I don’t regret a moment of it.)
I did a bit of my own research, plus asked people on Twitter what they use, and there were a few apps worth mentioning. The two which stood out to me the most were Thoughts and Concepts.
What’s great about Thoughts is how simple and straightforward it is. This app is very easy to use.
There are only 3 tools: a black pen, a color pen, and an eraser. It also has both a light and dark theme. And there is an iPhone app that it syncs with. Thoughts is just a $2.99 one-time purchase to get the app and you’re set.
For me, one big drawback to Thoughts is that you can’t import any types of media onto your canvas. Meaning your whiteboard canvas can’t include images, links, and the like.
Another tidbit which took me a while to get used to is that the pen size is relative. When you’re writing and drawing with the pen, it’s always the same visual point size no matter what “zoom” level you are at. At first this bugged me, as I wanted everything to be the exact same, but I then began to acclimate to it and it actually makes sense given the way Thoughts works.
Thoughts not only has an infinite canvas, it also has infinite zoom. And, what’s funny but not funny about that is that I actually lost my document. I literally lost some work of mine by zooming out too far. It disappeared in the view and I tried zooming back in but must have been off-center and from there I completely lost my bearings and I literally couldn’t figure out where my drawing went. I lost it to the abyss.
So all that to say about Thoughts: it is pretty great because it’s so simple. You just launch the app and get to work. But for me, I found it to be too simple for my ideal workflow. I want to be able to drop in photos, screenshots, text, links, and also have a bit more control over the tools I’m using.
The other whiteboarding app I was most drawn to (ha!) was Concepts.
Over on MacStories, John Voorhees saved me a whole lot of time by writing this in-depth review of Concepts before I could write one of my own. (Thanks, John!)
John’s and my use-cases and sentiments are nearly identical. I have no need for drawing or sketching or illustrating. But I do love to be able to quickly visualize bigger ideas / projects into something that make sense. And while there are some excellend mind mapping apps for the iPad, I prefer the free-form drawing nature of a whiteboarding app for the brainstorming and ideation process.
… I realized that the primary value of an app like Concepts lies in helping users record and refine their ideas. Whether your ideas result in something like [Yarrow] Cheney’s whimsical concept art for The Grinch or my messy soup of notes, screenshots, and highlighting, the core utility of Concepts, which is right there in its name, is the way it facilitates the exploration of ideas. That’s an important distinction that makes Concepts an appropriate choice for iPad users regardless of whether you’re an artist.
I haven’t yet spent as much time using Concepts as John has, and so his review taught me a few tips and tricks. And, like John, what I love about the Concepts app is how beautiful and simple it is, and yet how much power lies under the hood.
Compared to the Thoughts app, Concepts still gives you an infinite canvas that can go in any direction you like, but you don’t have complete freedom to zoom in / out forever and thus lose your work to the abyss. Additionally, Concepts puts little arrow darts on the edges of the screen, pointing in the direction that you have any drawings or media. Helping you stay oriented.
Using a whiteboard app like Concepts is definitely a scenario where the 12.9 iPad Pro would shine and be an excellent tool over the 11. But since I can zoom and scroll the canvas, I don’t feel hindered or cramped using the 11-inch iPad Pro.
All in all, the power and flexibility of an infinite canvas, whiteboarding app can be liberating to your ideas. Having both Concepts and the new Apple Pencil at my fingertips is a fantastic combination that has become a go-to in my workflow.
Speaking of very simple shortcuts, the latest update to Adobe Lightroom CC now has support for the Shortcuts app. It’s not much support, but it’s exactly what I wanted for my iPad photography workflow.
Basically the only option you have is that you can import photos into Lightroom and apply a filter to those photos if you want.
This is perfect for me because my iPad photography workflow is already such that I import photos from my Leica Q onto the iPad Photos app, and then I cull my list from there. Then, what I used to do was open up the Lightroom app and import photos. But being able to select a group of photos right within the iOS Photos app and can send those photos directly to Lightroom is much easier and more intuitive for me.
So I created a shortcut that lets me do exactly that:
How I use it that I first select one or more photos, then I tap the iOS Share sheet, I tap the Shortcuts and select my Send to Lightroom shortcut. The photos are then sent to Lightroom and the app is opened up for me to begin editing.
Note: You could also create a shortcut that automatically grabs all the photos from a recent import, or from a specific album or something. But since I don’t do my photo culling inside Lightroom, I prefer to choose the specific images I want to send into Lightroom for editing.
Gosh, it’s been about a year now since the 10.5” iPad Pro came out. I bought one right away, and it has become one of my favorite gadgets of all time.
I’ve had an iPad since the very beginning. I stood in line on that Saturday morning in April 2010 to buy the original iPad. And since then I’ve also owned an iPad 2, iPad 3, a 2nd-gen iPad mini, a 9.7” iPad Pro, and now, of course, the 10.5” iPad Pro.
The iPad Pro (with iOS 11) is not like the other iPads. In fact, it feels to me like what the iPad was meant to be all along: Fun, powerful, versatile, and not annoying.
It’s the “not annoying” part that has finally come around. The iPads of the past have always been fun and versatile and powerful to an extent. But they also have always had certain limitations that brought about frustrations at times.
Thanks mostly to iOS 11, the iPad is fun, powerful, and versatile. Full stop.
As you may know, on Monday Apple is kicking off their annual conference: WWDC.
I’ll be out there in San Jose for a few days going to live podcast events and meeting up with my fellow Apple nerd friends. And, needless to say, I’m excited about what Apple will announce on Monday at their big keynote event.
In conjunction with the jumbo-sized Baron Fig notebook, my iPad has become a regular part of my every day creativity and productivity.
Even though I have an iMac with a fun and clicky keyboard at my desk, I find myself doing nearly as much work from the iPad as from my Mac. This is thanks entirely to a few things that, up until last year, really didn’t exist on the iPad.
Obviously, there is iOS 11 (“The iPad Release”) with its side-by-side app views, drag and drop, and, of course, the Files app itself with its system-wide integration which has been a huge game changer. (I’ve got a whole other story about how Dropbox has basically become obsolete for me, but we’ll save that for another time.)
And then, there are the apps I use most: Ulysses and Things. Both of which are world-class on the iPad (especially so with the most recent updates to Things 3.6 and Ulysses 13.)
All that said, today I wanted to share a bit about my current iPad setup so that if anything changes next week, there’d be a benchmark to compare against.
Hardware-wise, I use one of Apple’s smart keyboard covers with my iPad. It’s a pretty great keyboard — it’s just fine to use for typing, and I love that it can also fold back behind itself to prop up the iPad, and it easily pops off the side if I want to use the iPad strictly as a tablet.
As for apps, here’s a list of all the apps I use on my iPad the most (not including Ulysses or Things which I already mentioned above).
I can’t wait to see what Apple has up their sleeve on Monday for iOS 12. One thing I’d love to see would be keyboard shortcuts for the share sheet (which is something that Michael Rockwell mentioned about a week ago). It’d mean being able to save a web page to Instapaper or add a URL to Things through a keyboard shortcut rather than through a few taps.
At some point the thought does become: why not just use a laptop?
There are a few things here and there that would be awesome on an iPad. But what is also so great about the iPad is how you can pop off the keyboard and use the device like a tablet. Rotate it into portrait mode and read from it. Draw on the screen. Drag and drop things. Build-in internet connection anywhere.
It’s all of those touch-screen-tablet-specific-abilities that make the iPad so great and versatile. It’s not about making the iPad more Mac-like, rather it’s about making the iPad easier to use.
Seven years ago today it was a Saturday morning, and I was standing in line to buy an original iPad.
Since then I’ve owned an iPad 2, iPad 3, and a 2nd-generation iPad mini. The latter is the one I’ve been using most for the past few years.
Until last week when I bought a 9.7″ iPad Pro. I picked up this iPad Pro for two very good reasons:
First of all, I’ve begun traveling quite a bit more, and needed a portable computer for when on the road.
Secondly, I’ve been trying to keep my home office reserved for work-only. Which means that in the evenings or on the weekends when I have home-related computer-y stuff to do, I needed another device I could use upstairs on the kitchen table.
It’s now been seven years since the original iPad shipped. And the basic landscape hasn’t changed all that much. This is simultaneously good and bad.
…bad because the iPad is fantastic device, and yet it’s not the go-to platform for the best apps and innovations.
But good because it means the iPad is still full of simplicity and promise.
* * *
P.S. Here are a few other fun articles I’ve written over the years:
Why the iPad is my New Laptop (A lot has changed since I wrote that article 5 years ago, but the sentiment still remains.)
Three Weeks with Two iPads — when I did a side-by-side comparison with the iPad Air and iPad mini.
I took some of my original photography and put together a set of holiday-themed wallpapers. There are a whole slew of files, with sizes to fit your iPhone, your iPad, and your Mac/PC.
The set includes 15 wallpapers for iPhone, 10 unique wallpapers for your Mac, and 12 wallpapers for iPad. They’re sized for iPhones 5 through 6 Plus, and work with the parallax effect in iOS 8.
I’m selling the pack for just $2 on Gumroad.
The always astute, Lukas Mathis, wrote a fantastic article about why he switched from an iPad to a Microsoft Surface so he could finally do “real work” using a tablet:
In general, I really love the Surface, and I use it much more, and for many more things, than I ever used any iPad I ever owned.
His thoughts on doing productive tasks with an iPad, and his review of Windows 8 — in which he clearly articulates the good, bad, and horrible — is all just excellent.
There are folks who are tiring of this whole racket around if we can or can’t use the iPad for real work. But I’m not tired of this topic at all.
The way I see it, being part of this ongoing conversation about “using the iPad for real work” is sort of like sitting in the front row and watching the personal and mobile computer landscape shift right before our eyes.
To quote Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
As amazing as mobile and personal computing is today, it is still in its infancy. The iPad is only a few years old, and think of how far it has come already. Twenty years from now, the average PC will probably be much more like a tablet (or a cell phone) and much less like a laptop/desktop. When my oldest son starts his freshman semester in the fall of 2030, I doubt we’ll be weighing the pros and cons of the iPad’s ability to do real work.
One day, as Lukas himself points out in his article, it won’t be newsworthy when someone does something creatively productive on their iPad:
If it was normal for people to use their iPads for creative tasks, there would not be newspaper articles about people using their iPads for creative tasks. The iPad will have arrived as a productivity device when news sites stop reporting about people who use iPads for productivity. So in the end, all of these links to articles about people who use their iPads to create things only seem to support the notion that this is not how most people use their iPads.
He’s right. Most people probably use their iPads for reading, surfing the web, light email, and checking Facebook and Twitter. And that’s fine.
But then there are apps like Drafts, Diet Coda, PDF Expert 5, Launch Center Pro, Editorial, and so many others (plus all the equivalent Windows 8 apps that I have no idea what they are) which are pushing mobile computing forward in small steps.
And those who are using these apps are also influencing the future of mobile computing. Because, and maybe I’m being grandiose, but I think those who are doing “real work” from their iPhone and iPad, are, in a small way, helping steer the direction of the personal computer.
Both iPads are an awesome compromise.
One of them (the iPad Air) has the bigger screen, and chances are it’s light enough. While the other (the iPad mini) is hyper-portable and light, and chances are its screen is big enough.
It’s easy to acclimate to either iPad. After a few days you’ll wonder why it was ever such a dilemma of a choice in the first place. When I’ve used just the iPad Air, I acclimated to its size and weight even though the iPad mini is nicer. And, conversely, when I used the iPad mini, I acclimated to its smaller screen even though the iPad Air’s bigger screen is nicer for some tasks.
I bought both an iPad Air and an iPad mini when they came out. I planned to use them side by side for about one month to see if I could come to a clear conclusion about “which was really the best”. I assumed it would take just a few weeks to see the obvious choice of which one I was partial to.
Boy was I wrong.
I’ve been using both iPads side-by-side for three months now and, well, I prefer them both. They are both favorites.
When I switch back and forth, after using the iPad mini for a while, the iPad Air feels almost comically large. But then, after using the iPad Air for a while, picking up the iPad mini feels almost tiny.
But, most of the time I find myself preferring the iPad mini. When reaching for an iPad around the house, I grab the mini. The mini goes with me when I’m traveling with my laptop. And I bring the mini when I don’t expect to need an iPad for anything but want to bring one anyway just in case.
There is only one cut and dry scenario in which I prefer the iPad Air: and that is for writing (with or without a bluetooth keyboard). But, yet, writing accounts for maybe 10-percent of my iPad usage. And using the iPad mini for writing is not exactly a horrible experience.
I have no reason to keep them both. (Well, I guess it’d be nice to have a day iPad and a night iPad.) And so I’m going with the iPad mini. And thus my recommendation to anyone on the fence: get the iPad mini, you’ll love it.
This is the iPad version of my App Playlist articles. You can read my iPhone App Playlist here; Mac version coming next.
Though the topic of iPads and content creation versus content “consumption” sure gets its fair share of air time, I have yet to tire of the conversation.
The first computer I personally ever owned was a Dell laptop. I bought it with my high school graduation money and took it with me to college. Almost all of of my college friends had HP towers, Dell towers, or (like in the case of my roommate) built their own machine. Laptops were (and are) more expensive, but had less power, less storage, and less screen real estate. But I didn’t care.
Laptops have always been cool to me. My Dell laptop was succeeded by a 12-inch PowerBook G4, then a 15-inch MacBook Pro (the aluminum body), and then a 13-inch MacBook Air (the computer I use now). In a way, laptops represent a sort of “free spiritedness” that desktop computers don’t. And, over the years since that Dell, the tradeoffs in laptops have grown smaller and smaller — today’s laptops are so powerful and fast that most people are not sacrificing any noticeable performance tradeoffs for portability.
And now, it’s the iPad that’s the new cool. Except with the iPad Air and new iPad mini, the tradeoffs are all but gone as well. While we could compare the nitty gritty specs of how fast a MacBook Pro loads a web page versus how fast an iPad does, most of that is inconsequential for most users today. Not to mention, there are many hardware features of an iPad which make it superior to a Mac: the hours long battery life, the built-in LTE connectivity, the very small and light form factor, the retina screen with multitouch input.
You could say that pretty much the only “tradeoff” of getting an iPad as your main computer would be the tradeoff of software. But I don’t think even that is accurate. Because defining something as a tradeoff requires you put that tradeoff in context.
Regarding software, for many people, I think it’s fair to say the lesser machine is actually the Mac, not the iPad.
Over on The Sweet Setup, we recently tested 17 different iPad apps that manage and edit PDF documents to find the best one. Our pick, PDF Expert 5, is a fantastic app. And guess what? There are things PDF Expert 5 does — such as merging PDF documents, making annotations, or zipping up a group of files and sending them to someone in an email — which are far easier and more intuitive to do on the iPad app than on a Mac.
Sure, iPad software — and iOS — has its limitations. For instance, I can’t hack together awesome system-wide shortcut keys and scrips using Keyboard Maestro, nor can I get TextExpander to work in iOS’s Mail app. But that’s okay. Never once have those limitations hindered me from doing some great work from my iPad. In fact, oftentimes it is the limitations of iOS which empower me to do better work. Because constraint breeds creativity.
This is why, for me, the iPad makes for a fantastic writing device. I am neither a programmer nor designer by trade — the bulk of my work day is comprised of reading, writing, tweeting, and emailing.
A cup of hot coffee, my bluetooth keyboard, and my iPad is one of my favorite ways to write. The one-app-at-a-time constraint of iOS, along with the relatively difficult way to switch between apps (when compared to the Mac’s CMD+Tab), make iOS a nice “anti-distraction writing environment”.
But there is much more I do from the iPad beyond writing. And that’s the point of this whole post. So, without further ado…
However… once a year, usually around the New Year, I like to step back and consider if the tools I’m using are still the best tools for me. If the answer is “yes” then I leave things alone and get back to work. But if the answer is “no” then I try to consider if its my use of the tools or the tools themselves that are flawed.
Lately, I have been wondering if OmniFocus is now too complex for me as I’ve settled into a grove with my work-from-home schedule. But, as I’ve considered other alternatives, I just can’t conceive of quitting OmniFocus — it’s a task management system that I trust. I know that if and when an important task becomes due, OmniFocus will show it to me.
This is something that I will be revisiting in the near future but for now, OmniFocus remains one of my “mission critical” apps (on all devices).
Tweetbot: My go-to Twitter app on the iPad. I am very much looking forward to an update influenced by the iPhone version.
1Password: 1Password is far more than just a password manager. If that’s all it was then the updates to iCloud keychain sync would have negated the need for 1Password. However, 1Password also stores secure notes, bank information, and pretty much anything else I can think of. Though I use 1Password most often from my iPhone or Mac, I couldn’t imagine not having it on my iPad.
Instapaper: Years later, Instapaper continues to be my go-to Read Later app. I love the design and I’ve got an IFTTT recipe that takes all of my Instapaper “liked” articles and drops them into Pinboard for me. I used to use the iPad version almost exclusively. But since having kids I now use the iPhone version almost as much as the iPad version. There are often times I’ve got just one hand free and it’s a great time to catch up on some reading. But still, my preferred way to read in Instapaper is on the couch with the Retina iPad mini.
Drafts: If you consider yourself an “iPad-toting power user” in any level at all, then you probably want a quick-capture text app. I’ve gravitated towards Scratch on my iPhone mostly because I like the design, but I use Drafts on the iPad.
There are a lot of articles I read in Instapaper which I want to link to on shawnblanc.net. For those, I have a cool URL-scheme workflow thing that helps me get links and text from Instapaper to Poster with Drafts as the mediator.
With Diet Coda I connect to my site, navigate to the file I want, edit that file, and then save my changes to the server. I don’t have to juggle both a remote and local version of the file — I just open it, edit it, and save it. This is how Coda 1 worked, it’s how Coda 2 works, and it’s how Diet Coda works. It makes working in Diet Coda feel comfortable and secure.
TextExpander Touch: Though it’s not really an app that I launch, many of the apps I use support TextExpander snippets.
Dropbox: This app/service could go without saying, but yet, at the same time, it’s worth mentioning because Dropbox is such a critical back-end component to so many of the apps I use. I use Dropbox to sync my 1Password database between my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I use it to keep all my “Currently Writing” articles available to me on all my devices. I use it sync Day One, and my TextExpander snippets. Moreover, since all my current projects have folders in Dropbox on my Mac, I can access those files at any time via the Dropbox app on my iPhone.
Calendars 5: This is, in my opinion, the best calendar app for the iPad. It’s very powerful but also simple.
Reeder: My favorite RSS reader, though, I don’t go nuts over RSS like I used to. I usually will comb through my folder of favorite feeds about once or twice per day and that’s it. I already am finding so much interesting things to read on Twitter that I don’t often comb through RSS hunting for nuggets.
Hands down, the main thing I lean on my iPad for when it comes to work, is writing. As I mentioned at the outset of this article, the iPad truly is an excellent writing device. You can couple it with any bluetooth keyboard (and I do), but you don’t have to. I know several people who love to type using the on-screen keyboard.
For my professional work writing text that gets published on the Web, the iPad is awesome. But I think the iPad is an even better device for writing prose sans hyperlinks. I have used many writing apps on my iPad over the years (the original built-in notes app with Marker Felt and all, to Pages, to iA Writer, Byword, Writing Kit, Editorial, and more). The best each have their own bit of charm.
As I wrote in my iPhone app playlist, when it comes to my writing workflow, I’ve basically got two buckets for all my text. First there is my bucket of ideas, lists, thoughts, and all sorts of other miscellany. And second is my bucket of current articles I’m working on. The former is what I use Simplenote for; the latter is a Dropbox folder filled with markdown files.
My thoughts on Simplenote always start along the lines of how it’s the app I’d chose if I had to pick just one app only for use on all my iOS devices. It’s not that Simplenote, as an app in and of itself, is the best app on my iPhone or iPad. But there are a few things Simplenote does really well which make it indispensable for me.
Simplenote has amazing and fast search. Searching for a note searches both the note’s title and the contents within. Then, tapping on a search result from the list takes you the search results within that note where you can the see all instances of that term within the note’s contents. Because I just toss all sorts of ideas and other bits of miscellaneous information into Simplenote, being able to quickly and efficiently search all my notes is vital. That, and its ability to sort notes based on their modification date (which means all the notes I’m dealing with right now are floating at the top of my list), makes it very easy to handle hundreds and hundreds of notes with very little mental overhead on my part.
Aside about Writer Pro: iA Writer was one of (if not the) original apps in the minimalistic-Markdown-writing-apps-that-sync-with-Dropbox category. The predecessor to iA Writer, Writer Pro, is an impressive app. While there are things about the iPad version that are deal breakers for me — primarily its lack of Dropbox syncing and its lack of auto markdown completion and markdown syntax highlighting — I do like the workflow paradigm built into the app.
For my work writing for the Web, Writer Pro is not the ideal tool because even if it did have the aforementioned features it will never include all scripts, workflows, and built-in browser of Editorial. However, for other a certain big project I am working on (like maybe another book) which does not require a lot of inline hyperlinks and other HTML-y stuff, Writer Pro could prove to be a brilliant app. Basically, the app itself could serve as the top-level folder for the book with each workflow state serving as the different “folders” for each chapter. I haven’t yet moved my current work into Writer Pro, but I think it could work quite well in this way.
Poster: This is the app I use to post links and articles to shawnblanc.net. Alas it’s no longer available for sale because the developer, Tom Witkin, now works for WordPress. Fortunately for those who already have Poster, it is still being updated.
Editorially: Editorially is a web app, not a native app. And technically it is still in beta. But Editorially has proven to be an invaluable tool for the collaborative and group work we are doing at The Sweet Setup. We are using it to get a lot of work done without losing our minds. I can’t imagine what our workflow would look like without it.
Marvel Unlimited: I’m not nearly the comic nerd I was in my early teenage years, but I do still enjoy reading comics some evenings. I have a subscription to Marvel Unlimited, which, if you’re not familiar with the app, is a bit like Netflix for Marvel comic books. There are a lot of comics available through the app, and you can read any of them you like. There are a few drawbacks to the Marvel Unlimited app such as a pretty horrible process for reading more than one comic in a row (after each issue you have to exit back to your library, select the next comic, then chose to read it); no ability to save a whole story arc into your library (you have to save each comic issue one at a time); and the fact that most issues don’t show up in the app until they are about one year old. However, the good (the huge selection) far outweighs the bad. For someone who enjoys comics enough to read a dozen issues or more in a month, but isn’t serious that it’s important to own every issue, then Marvel Unlimited is a great thing.
Kingdom Rush: There are a few games I’ve played on the iPad that I’ve really enjoyed. But none so much as Kingdom Rush and Kingdom Rush Frontiers.
Loom: After Everpix shut down I switched to Loom at Bradley Chamber’s recommendation. There are a lot of things I like about Loom (such as its design and auto uploading of images from my Mac) and it’s still better than Photo Stream when it comes to don’t-make-me-think-about-it photo syncing from all my devices to all my devices.
Paprika: I’ve recently migrated all my recipes out of Simplenote and into Paprika. I don’t have a lot of recipes, but the ones I do have are delicious and it makes a lot more sense to keep them in a nice recipe app. Paprika is great, and having a 3-app suite across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad has proven to be quite helpful. Over on The Sweet Setup we tested quite a few recipe apps and found Paprika to be the best.
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Earlier this year I began taking monthly screenshots of my iPhone and iPad Home screens so I could track, over time, how my usage of apps evolved and changed.
This is what my iPad’s Home screen looked like on May 1, 2013:
And this is what my iPad Home screen looks like today, Dec 23, 2013:
Most obviously, there is the visual change iOS 7 brought, and the new wallpaper I’m sporting. In terms of apps, my general types of apps has not changed, but a few of the apps themselves have. Most notably the replacement of iCal with Calendars 5, Writing Kit with Editorial, and the new Reeder with the native Feed Wrangler app.
As savvy readers of this site will know, I am an advocate for using the iPad to get work done. And often I prefer it to my laptop, especially when traveling. But, that is not to say I force the iPad into a workflow or use-case scenario that makes no sense just to “prove the iPad can be used for work”.
I enjoy the simplicity of the iPad, the change of pace its different apps bring, and, yes, sometimes I do enjoy the challenge of seeing what I can accomplish with it even when it’d be easier to just take my laptop. Because in a day and age where things are always speeding up and up and up, it’s nice to use a device that inherently causes me to slow down a bit.