Gadgetory

can you actually get work done with nothing more than a tablet I'm here to answer that question i Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is going tablet only for a day ever since Apple announced its first iPad and even when the very first tablets were created the idea of replacing your typical machine with something much more portable simple effective and wealth fun has filled the minds of many myself included of course the naysayers are in mass why would you want to work from a tablet what sort of benefit does it pose or simply that's stupid but some have persisted truly believing it's possible to leave your laptop at home and get real work done from nothing more than a tablet is it really possible can you actually work from a tablet the answer isn't so clean cut there is no blanket answer for everyone we all do different types of work you have different needs and most importantly different tolerance levels for dealing with and learning to overcome the sacrifices that inevitably have to be made to go truly mobile I want to answer an easier question first is it really more portable yes my laptop is an early 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display it's 1.8 centimeters thick and 4.4 6 pounds the tablet I use every single day is an iPad Mini with Retina display paired with the Zagg Keys cover combined as 13.8 millimeters thick and 637 grams the macbook weighs 1,300 and 86 grams more and it's larger in every dimension by a significant amount affordability is objective number one a tablet and keyboard combination wins every time even against devices like the MacBook Air or an ultrabook the larger question is of functionality can you actually get everything done from a tablet ultimately that depends on what your work requires are you hammering out emails all day long the setup will excel in that area with the proper email client are you creating spreadsheets it may not be as bad as you think writing this set up is fantastic no seriously 90% of all the words I published on pocket now or you hear me speak here on YouTube are written from an iPad in fact I'm writing this very script using an iPad Mini every day I love it it's easy to talk hypotheticals though sure you can take care of business from a tablet but at what point do you stop and pull your hair out how much can you actually accomplish from a tablet before time wasted trying to find workarounds defeats the purpose altogether why not actually put it to the test that's exactly what I did last week I set out to spend an entire day working with nothing more than an iPad Mini and the Zagg Keys covered I chose a long-form piece I had been scheduled to write which needed research and a lot of fact-checking and I went to town not allowing myself to use a laptop unless I hit a wall the writing aspect is something I'm largely familiar with I've written literally thousands of articles and scripts from iPads there are literally dozens of plain text or markdown editors that are perfect for the job I use I a writer for its minimalism and Dropbox Inc and they're also just as many office suites which offer rich text formatting perfect for that term paper writing this article was no different aside from the additional fact-checking I had to do the one thing that makes me more productive on the iPad it's comparatively poor multitasking is also what makes browsing and researching a little more difficult and time-consuming with the keyboard shortcuts however you can quickly switch tasks and jump back and forth between writing and researching with the exception of writing actual words everything from a tablet seems to take two to three times longer this is the part that takes patience and temperance I've been doing it long enough to have found a rhythm that works well for me start to finish writing the feature comparison of the HTC One m8 Galaxy s5 and Xperia z2 took around two hours and copy-editing for mobile is hardly any different from a fully fledged OS transforming those written words from a body of text into a finished piece however is where this experiment transition from a casual jog into hurdles very quickly there is an official wordpress application for Android and iOS and used it in the past and it works it just isn't my favorite instead I used blog Z the UI is cluttered and it has a learning curve but it's easily the best iOS based blogging tool hands down it was smooth sailing from the start I typed in the headline and paste of my edited text into the body porn and a categories tags and the custom slug all fine then I stuttered hyperlinking all the references not a single problem adding pictures was the first hurdle you can pull from your own WordPress database of images but I can safely assume blog Z isn't built to handle image databases heaviest pocket now's so instead of scrolling through a single column of thumbnails that wouldn't even load I had to find the images on Pocket now download them to the iPad re-upload them to the site from within block Z and then drop them into the body the other images I gathered from around the web I added it using photoshop touch a fantastically capable and awesome mobile photo editor this wasn't so bad except when I added pictures my formatting started bugging out big time random line breaks were added and no matter how many times I deleted them from the HTML editor it would reappear the more I tried to fix the formatting the worse it got another issue with blog Z is that while it tries to be a one-size-fits-all client it doesn't have support for third-party WordPress plugins so our SEO plugin wasn't supported after roughly four hours of tinkering with format and adding pictures I decided to save and try once more from Safari there I added all the typical SEO stuff and saved again I reloaded the latest draft from within blog see one more time to try and fix the formatting again no cigar the more I tried to fix it the worse the situation got after a total of nearly five hours tinkering with it I caved broke out my laptop fix the formatting and was done in a matter of minutes this article on any other given date using a combination of a tablet and a laptop would have taken me approximately four hours total but going mobile only double the time it took for me to finish and I still had to break out a laptop it's easy to write this off as a major lose on the part of mobile tablets but it's not nearly that black and white tablets have strengths they can be utilized beyond playing games or reading 30 reasons your cat is your actual soul mate I discovered years ago that I focused better when I have one thing in front of me and it's actually difficult to switch between tasks over and over one of iOS is worst features is actually one of my favorite things about working from the iPad most importantly the line of work you're in most definitely matters I wouldn't dare try to edit a serious video from the iPad I don't even have enough storage to load all the raw footage on the tablet it's illogical as long as you set your expectations and don't approach mobile work with an unrealistic goal working from a tablet can be enjoyable and beneficial I journal using day one on my iPad almost every day I prefer it I prefer writing anything and everything from the iPad but I know its limitations and I either use them to my advantage or use another device to fill the gap with so many applications at your disposal there is an application for virtually everything Office for iPad is surprisingly impressive Photoshop Touch is a mobile photo editor on steroids and there are hundreds of other productivity apps I haven't even heard of not everyone will be able to or even want to work strictly from a tablet but the takeaway is that it's a possibility growing more and more likely every day thanks for watching everyone if you enjoyed this video be sure to click the thumbs up button below and of course subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this one in the future be sure to follow us on all the usual places Twitter Facebook and Google+ head PocketNow i'm taylor martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time