Macworld’s Dan Moren has completed his three-day experiment in which he resolved to use nothing but his iPad to get his work done. He reports that on day two, he pushed himself a bit harder than he had on the first day, and in so doing ran into some problems.
For one thing, the iOS doesn’t support AppleScript, which amounts to a deal-breaker for those of us who have become AppleScript addicted and dependent over our years on the Mac OS. Dan managed for three days using some kludgy workarounds, which unfortunately is a dominant motif when attempting to use the iPad for serious production tasks. Moren says to be forewarned that if your workflow depends on AppleScript, you’ll need a workaround on the iPad.
Curiously, Dan found implementing macros for applying boilerplate text snippets problematical, although that’s something your editor has found the iOS does relatively well, using the configuration provided in the iOS General preferences under the Keyboard category.
Another major stumbling block was encountered when Dan needed to upload a picture to accompany a story, something the iOS version of Safari couldn’t accommodate, due to the iOS’s lack of an accessible file system – another major biggie deficiency for would-be iPad power-users.
Drag-and-drop interfaces also don’t work with touch-based devices, and Dan found that the iOS interface for Google Docs, a tool he says is used extensively by Macworld editors, leaves much to be desired, and makes collaboration difficult, leavng him postponing things until he got back to his Mac – one test the iPad really and truly failed.
However, by Day 3 Moren says his brain seemed to have rewired itself, although the thing he found the hardest to get used to on the iPad was the lack of windows. On the Mac, he says he typically arranges a Web browser and a text editor, or two text-editor windows, side by side, referring to one while typing in the other, and on the iPad, that’s impossible, making, say, composing an article working from notes cumbersome to say the least.
Google+s Hangout feature didn’t work so well using the iPad either. iOS has no PDF reading capabilities built in, so you’ll need a third-party app for that. Dan also found the iPad’s battery life at best marginal in real-world workday use.
He does praise how well the iPad works with an external keyboard, in some contexts an improvement on time wasted wrestling with the iOS’s magnifying glass interface, but concluding that the iPads keyboard integration works just well enough to make you wish it worked better, and in some instances the iPad’s keyboard support is wildly inconsistent.
He also notes that spending a couple of hours, or for that matter 20 minutes, with an iPad will convince you that a touchscreen Mac doesn’t make much sense. He notes that “Having to constantly raise your hands from the keyboard to interact with the screen just feels wrong. Its not simply the unfamiliarity of it: The effort of lifting your arm instead of, say, shifting it sideways to a mouse or trackpad is significant.” He says the iPad’s inconsistent autocomplete behavior from app to app can also be frustrating.
Like me, Dan Moren says he likes having a lot of things going on while he writes, and when presented with nothing but a blank page, he find it harder to concentrate, so oddly-enough, he found writing on the iPad the biggest adjustment. In summary, while like it or not this might be the future of working on computers, it’s not quite ready for primary use yet in his estimation.
I concur.
For the full reports visit:
Day 2:
http://macw.us/y3Uej4
Day 3:
http://macw.us/zYIExy
