For the love of iPad. Fun things I’m doing with the iPad Pro.

I have to say, I enjoy the iPad Pro quite a bit. I enjoy the large screen and improved camera, not to mention the huge amount of storage. With that, what have I been doing with it?

Even though it has no practical use for me, I’ve been scanning things like a madman with the LiDAR camera. Even though the App Store software is lackluster at best, it’s still incredibly fun. A 3D model of my desk amuses me to no end. I can’t do anything with it, but I like it.

From a practical standpoint, I’ve installed a few productivity apps.

Notion so I can work on article projects.
GoodNotes for taking notes with the Pencil.
Notability for taking notes with the Pencil.
MarginNote for reading and annotating .PDF and .EPUB files.
Mindomo to create Mindmaps.
AdGuard Pro to kick ads to the curb.

I’ve added a couple new games:
Pascal’s Wager
Lowlander
Rush Rally

For photo editing:
Affinity Photo
Affinity Designer
I haven’t done much with these yet, but I love the apps on the Mac and wanted their iPad counterparts, just because.

For note taking integration back to the Mac:
DevonThink To Go
Mini Note

For some fun with images:
A large collection of apps from JixiPix, including Portrait Painter and Spektral.

Things I won’t be installing:
Mail
Slack
Zoom
Any sort of “Office” equivalent.
I don’t feel these are practical for the iPad.

I have a Bluetooth keyboard, so the iPad Pro has replaced my MacBook Air for a few tasks. I have the 11 inch Air, which is a great machine. However, the iPad has 1TB of storage where the Air has 128GB. The iPad Pro screen is larger. Reading and annotating files is much easier on the iPad than the Air. And there are still quite a few apps that don’t have equivalents apps for the Mac.

My next round of purchases will include Scrivener for iPad, as well as an outlining tool. I’d like an equivalent to TaskPaper for iPad. For now, I’m using Notion, but I want a tool that can work offline.

I will also say the new iPad Pro charges incredibly fast compared to my other models that are just a few years old.

I still believe the iPad Pro and MacBook Air will eventually merge as a single device. The storage and power share a lot of similarities. I don’t know what the finished product will look like, but I easily see them coming together.