Category: Member

A shorter report this week, as I took vacation last week, but I wanted to touch on WiFi only iPads, and the auto-correction hubbub.

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Something special seems to be brewing for those who care about the future of iPads: momentum. Since day one, there has been people using iPads for their work, then as their only computer. This was always a niche market. Now, in the past few weeks, I have seen so many people talking about, or even making in part, the move to iPad being a primary computing device I can’t help but see the snowball starting to roll down The Mountain. It should be one hell of a year, and mercifully lead to more interest in iPad app development.

Which leads us right into the topic for this week: the basic apps matter, not the pro apps. I also answer some reader questions, and talk about iOS 11 multitasking.

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The iOS 11 beta cycle is beginning to get to the point where it is likely to not expect any major changes, so I will start talking a little bit more about changes which impact the workflow on iPad users. This week also saw the launch of what’s likely to be one of the top 10 in iOS pro level applications with OmniGraffle 3.

Oh, and I get into my move away from 1Password.

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It’s astounding to me how many people are completely in love with the 10.5” iPad Pro. Be sure to [read my thoughts on it](https://brooksreview.net/2017/07/the-ipad-that-should-have-been/), if you haven’t already.

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This week I cover the basics of what you need for general computing on the iPad, and then I take a comparison look at scanning with Notes on iOS 11.

## Back to Basics

It’s been over 6 months now since I started writing these weekly posts, and in that time a lot of new members have joined (welcome, all) — it seems like a good time to step back from each week having a specific focus. So this week I want to go back to the basics of working on an iPad to talk about how I do many of the more general “work” things one does on a computer.

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This week I dive into printing high quality photos from an iPad, and iOS 11’s bad ass new Notes app.

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It’s been almost a week with the 10.5” iPad Pro, so let’s talk about how amazing that is. Then a couple more things: Affinity Photo, and iOS 11 multi-tasking.

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From now, and until the fall, this report is going to be formatted into two sections: the normal productivity report you’ve come to expect, as well as a second section with iOS 11 (beta) specific thoughts. This way, if you don’t care to hear about something you can’t have your hands on right away, you can gloss over that section.

This week, I have a few notes about iOS 11, and a lot of thoughts about one of the biggest productivity features coming for iPad-only users: the 10.5” iPad Pro. Let’s dive in…

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What a great couple of days. If you watched, or read, about the announcements from Apple yesterday then one thing was made very clear, as I said last week: they’ve figured out the iPad. I’ve not read any reaction posts from the general “press at large” but judging from private messages I am getting, as well as the overall tone of the headlines: this is day one of the iPad being generally accepted as a “real computer” by the masses.

You can insert whatever emoji the kids use for a really smug smiling blogger, here.

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This week I want to talk about the Surface Pro and how it plays into the evolving transitional period we are in with computing — the move from “traditional” computer like MacBooks and iMacs, to things like Surface Pros and iPad Pros. (Realistically, many might even suffice with only an iPhone, and an argument could be made that most people almost do this already without giving it much thought. Another post, perhaps.)

First, let’s look at the new Surface Pro, which has dropped the numerals, and the bundled accessories, and pivoted its own marketing.

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This week I want to talk about task management apps — [something I used to cover in depth](https://brooksreview.net/2010/08/omnifocus-v-things-mac-ipad-iphone/) at the outset of this site, but which has only been of passing interest to me of late. What is spurring this is Things 3 ([iPad](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/things-3-for-ipad/id904244226?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d), [iPhone](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/things-3/id904237743?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d), [Mac](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/things-3/id904280696?mt=12&uo=4&at=1l3v36d)), which is made by a company I loathe, but I mostly certainly bought and am using. ((It’s a complicated relationship.)) I can’t and won’t speak to the long term impacts of this tool, as it simply has not been enough time — but there is one thing we can talk about: design.

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This past week I spent a couple days at a conference, nothing out of the ordinary, except for whatever reason I started to inventory the devices people were using and trying to pick up on how they were using their devices. (This is also usually the part when I start to tweetstorm about force quitting apps.)

I think the most absurd of the bunch I observed was a blogger using a 13″ MacBook Pro, an iPhone, and a small point and shoot camera. From what I could tell the main apps being used were: Chrome for Wordpress, Slack, and Photos. The workflow was simple: take some notes in a Wordpress draft, chat in Slack, and take photos of the presenter with the camera, transfer those images to the Mac and upload to Wordpress for an eventual blog post.

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This week, I want to talk about images for the internet — when you have an iPad Pro and nothing else. Specifically, I want to dive into how I prep images for blog posts, and how I share a link to an image on services which don’t support native image embedding.

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