The iPad Only Challenge! By Marques Brownlee

Okay winds up guys MHD here so a little while ago on Twitter I've started a challenge with myself to use an iPad, as my only portable computer, so for about the past two weeks, that's what I've been doing, so this has been fascinating with the iPad. You know it's not very often that a software update has such a huge effect on a relatively new piece of tech. You sometimes know they'll boost the camera quality a little, or it'll smooth out some bugs or give a little performance boost here and there, but iPadOS, Seth, that's come out in this. Public beta form has really transformed the iPad Pro and a bunch of ways should it have been this way in the first place. Probably, but you know here we are, so originally I thought I would want to do this laptop replacement challenge with the bigger 13-inch iPad Pro, since it's closer to the size of the laptop that I was already using, but when I installed that early iPadOS I put it on my 11-inch iPad Pro thinking, I would just take it back off, but then I really liked it and I kind of felt it was way more portable and easy to use and type on, and I got really into it. So now this is my iPad Pro of choice.

It's the 11-inch cellular iPad, pro space, gray, half a terabyte of storage and the iPadOS 13 public beta. So basically the premise behind all this is your ability to use an iPad, as your primary mobile computer will depend on, of course, exactly what you're doing on your computer when you're mobile. So what do I need to do? Over the past couple weeks we've been shooting season, 1 of retro tech, which is super exciting. You guys probably saw the pilot episode with the Game Boy we're shooting season 1. So in between shooting and traveling, my computing needs are actually relatively simple: I need to read emails and email, people back download and sign attachments.

Do social media, that's pretty normal, photo editing, watching videos, publishing videos and listening to music and that's about it. You know when I actually come back into the studio for work, I work on the desktop on the iMac Pro on a real computer, but any time I leave I, don't take any laptop with me any time. I'm home I resist the urge to use any desktop, I'm, all iPad Pro all the time. So, of course, this has had its pros, and it's cons. That's what this video is about, and I've been taking my notes as this goes along.

So these are those the main one, the one that dictates it all is the whole reason I wanted to try this in the first place, the iPad Pro is just more fun to use like I said this in the full review, and it's true, especially the smaller one, I'm super likely to take it out of my bag and just use it when I can even over my phone in the back of an Uber for flipping through emails or just web browsing just the thinness, the metal of the form factor, the light balanced weight, 120 Hertz display it's just fun. We've been over this by the way the iOS Gmail app. Has this profile switcher, that's just by swiping up or down on the profile picture. Google, please! The Android version needs this too, just putting that out there, but anyway yeah it's fun to use, but the tough part about using an iPad. All the time is the ergonomics for sure, so I'll carry it with no case no skin and for me, no keyboard, folio or anything.

Just the naked iPad Pro and I feel like that's partially, because I guess I'm stubborn about cases I, don't really think there are any good cases or keyboards that I like using for the iPad, but I also just want to appreciate the impressive design of this thing and covering it up with a cheap rubber feeling case just feels wrong. Maybe it's just me, but of course the laptop has the obvious ergonomic advantage of a hinge if it's a good one right, so the keyboard at one angle and the screen at another. Now with the iPad, the three main positions I found myself using the iPad were holding it up with two hands, propping it with one hand and poking with the other or lying it flat on a table or in my lap just for typing. So luckily, it's lightweight so holding it up is actually pretty easy to do for a long time. That was the most common position.

I found in the prop position when you're resting it with one hand and poking with the other, was more common with sometimes gaming or just like lazy, browsing and scrolling and then with the emailing or writing a bunch for making videos and things like that. Anything that involves a keyboard for a longer period of time. I'll put it down on my lap or a table and type away. This is easily the worst organ ayah cos ITIN for the iPad and that's when I miss a laptop the most like typing over long periods on an iPad screen with both sizes. No matter how you do, it is not anything quite like typing, on a real keyboard, and I've gotten used to it for brief bursts.

But that's the downside. I've had apples, keyboard, folio cases for the iPad for a while, and you can, you know, sort of prop it up like a laptop with the magnets and then type on a silicon keyboard and there's usually a lot of wobbles but I, don't know I'm, just not a big fan of that, so I always just default to taking it off naked iPad and just typing on glass, oh and of course, iPadOS now has that pinched down smaller keyboard, so you can swipe type on the side or drag that thing anywhere. You want. If things are in a pinch, pinch I'm also way more likely to game on the iPad Pro than a MacBook Pro. That's just fact! So.

Here's another downside, though, there's a couple of dongles needed to sort of match the laptop some extra things you carry with it. So I keep the naked iPad in the laptop sleeve in this backpack. So it's just sort of loose in there, but it's fine. It uses the same USB-C charger as the laptop would, but also in the same sleeve I can toss an Apple Pencil, a flash drive and an SD card reader, which sounds kind of fine, but then the laptop just kind of has a little extra loose stuff hanging around in it. Not a big deal, I guess also.

If anyone else wants to take on this challenge. I highly recommend, like a battery bank like this one, so I've I've linked this below and other. What's in that bag stuff in the past, but it's 20,000 William hours it's by Anger. It's got fast charging USB, something like this will back up the iPad multiple times over now the iPad does have a plus battery life. Like it's excellent, even on this LTE version, it won't die in a full day of use, but if I ever get low, I'll just toss it on my backpack wall plugged into the battery and then when I take it out, it's full again, so I'll link all the stuff I'm talking about below the like button, of course, but the biggest workflow difference I found that it's enabled, but that works better.

Now that the files' app is improved is photo editing. So now I can go from Canon EOS R to the SD card, then from the SD card to the SD card reader, so plugging that into the iPad, then I can use the new and improved files app to go through the files tree of the SD card to pick the exact raw file that I want import, that one file or multiple if I want, then hood over to Lightroom or really, whatever editor of choice, supports raw import, the raw image and then start editing, which is usually awesome with the pencil. This is something I've had a lot of fun, with, of course, connecting via USB type-c directly to a camera is an even better workflow for certain cameras, so that's awesome, but yeah overall, the iPad makes a fantastic mobile image editor and just as good as a trackpad. So in summary, using an iPad as your only mobile computer has its ups and downs in 2019, so I found the good parts were the awesome performance, the great battery life and just the fun form factor. We already know the iPad is fun to use Plus having LTE everywhere was a nice bonus.

The desktop class browser is excellent. The desktop feeling files app is a great improvement and there's a download manager in Safari. That also ties it all together, beautifully and then editing photos with the Apple Pencil is dope and then the pain points. The downsides were mostly typing and ergonomics. So anytime, you need to reply to an email with a lot of text or just a lot of typing or writing on this glass screen or if you don't like the keyboard case, that has the keyboard built-in it's just not as good, and then there is a solid learning curve to all the new multitasking gestures in iPad.

Os I went over all of them in this video. If you want to check it out and then some of them are pretty useful, but there are so many extra things that I didn't really use most of them and in my opinion there still isn't really a great, solid, non-wobbling keyboard case for the iPad Pro, sadly, and then also something I. Never really did is video editing, so I've stopped like I said: I stopped video editing on the go, because red footage is really heavy. Laptops can barely keep up so I. Just don't do that I bring it to the desktop, but if you don't shoot red or if you have you know, 1080p footage or something like that, and you have simple video editing to do it's possible.

There are solutions. There's Adobe Premiere rush: there is Lima fusion, there's iMovie and other YouTubers much braver than me have taken the dive and mess with video editing on the iPad Pro, so I'll leave a Tod video, for example, link below for that I'm, not that guy. But if you are that guy, you can also do video editing, so iPad Pro with iPadOS beta feels the closest to not a computer replacement, but a computer alternative more than anything else. I've used lately with all that being said, I am still really excited about the new rumored 60 inches. MacBook Pro, like a lot of this, really just comes down to what you really enjoy using, so I happen to love using the iPad Pro.

So I wanted to see what it would be like using it all the time. But if you have a laptop that you really love using, then that changes all of that who knows maybe with Johnny I've, not designing Apple products anymore. We'll get these crazy, radical new Apple laptop designs in the next year or two I, don't even really know fingers crossed we'll see some good stuff, hopefully worthy of the pro in the name, but only time will tell we'll see until the next one thanks for watching catch. You guys later days.

Source : Marques Brownlee