Gadgetory

okay winds up guys mkbhd 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 know sometimes they'll boost the camera quality a little bit or it'll smooth out some bugs or give a little performance boost here and there but iPad OS 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 iPad OS 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 grey half a terabyte of storage and the iPad OS 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 needed 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 it 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 amah cos ition 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 wobble 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 iPad OS 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 milliamp hours it's by Ankur it's got fast charging USBC 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 a 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 luma fusion there's iMovie and other youtubers much braver than me have taken the dive and 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 iPad OS 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 for the new rumored 60 inch 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 peace