Category: Articles

It’s that nag that keeps you awake at night. The trigger which spins your morning from the enjoyment of a well rested night, to a deep sinking feeling. I don’t know how to make it go away, not for you, and not really even for myself. I do know when I am stressed, and I do have a few top tips for you to help delay the feeling of stress in the morning, and to keep it at bay through the night. To help focus during the day.

My advice is to use two tried and true methods:

1. Bury your head in the sand and;
2. Always get some small wins.

I’ve been working through most of these ideas since the beginning of this year, so allow me to share them with you now.

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November 15th started off like any other day, and then Tom Warren, a verified twitter user (I suspect that’s important to him, so I’ll note it), [tweeted](https://mobile.twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1063216386573504512):

> Nilay made this point on Vergecast, but the people who have replaced their laptops with an iPad are people who do fuck all work. The rest of us hard working people use a laptop, because we have real stuff to do other than send emails and fart around. Don’t @ me `¯\_(ツ)_/¯`

I respected his wishes not to “@“ him, and am instead posting some longer thoughts here. Before we dive into this, I do want to point out the best response to that [tweet from Steve Troughton-Smith](https://mobile.twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1063220129931149314):

> Real hard-working people don’t use a computer at all 😛 You don’t know how easy you’ve got it

That’s a very kind way of telling both Warren and Nilay Patel to fuck off. A less kind way is to say that — as someone (me) who has worked manual labor in construction for years, has started two companies which were very small (2-3 employees) and as someone who has run a tech company — that Patel and Warren can fuck right off with that arrogant bullshit they spout everyday. How a website dedicated to technology can so loathe new technology is beyond comprehension.

It is, though, worth actually diving into this topic of “real” work versus “fuck all” work.

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On November 1st, I wrote about how Apple’s new Keyboard Folio doesn’t make a lot of sense for the money, and I made a small note at the end of that post:

> Fundamentally, typing on a slab of glass should be possible on the slab of glass.

Shortly after publishing, I cleaned off my desk, and put away all my keyboards. I’ve been using only the software keyboard on my 12.9” iPad Pro since then. Let’s see how that’s been going.

## First, Why ?

Ideally you don’t have to carry around or use a keyboard, right? Ideally the *device itself* is enough for everything you need to do. Which means you need to be able to input text without an accessory. So you either dictate everything or use the software keyboard. I started by testing the software keyboard, because I wanted to know where and how it fails.

## Speed and Accuracy

Going into this I knew it would work, because many before me have done this. Hell, there’s been entire novels written on smartphones, so surely a bigger keyboard on the 12.9” would be just fine. What I was surprised by was the accuracy and speed with which I could type. It’s not faster or better than other methods, but it’s a far cry from being the deal breaker I assume it would be — it has lasted me 19 days now.

For speed, I’ve found that I am fast enough, but not nearly as fast as I am on a hardware keyboard. That said, it’s only been two and a half weeks, and I am sure I will get faster. When I’m really not thinking about it, I can move quite quickly.

Accuracy is the big issue, or I assumed it would be. Finger placement is the hardest part of typing on the glass. You have to trust the system, you have to keep going even when you see an error, because there’s a really good chance the system will fix that error for you. All in all, I am not sure I am any less accurate than I am on the Smart Keyboard cover, it’s just different errors than before.

Which really brings me to the big part of typing on the software keyboard: confidence. You have to be confident in where your fingers are landing and with the system itself. If you slightly miss, that’s ok because the system will likely fix it for you. You also need to not look at your fingers and trust where they are and that they know what they are doing. Which is why I think this only works on the 12.9” model as the smaller iPad models don’t have a good enough layout for most people to be able to use them how they need to be used.

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A post I recently read about overbuying cars, wherein you come in with a budget of X per month and leave having bought a car of X+30% per month for about two years longer than you wanted too, had me thinking a lot about how this applies to everything we do in life. Because we want the best, we want the shiny, the new, the features. We want it all.

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For this week, let’s talk about running a VPN full time on your iPad, again, then we can dive into software keyboards for iPad users before wrapping up talking about the state of the iPad in light of the new iPad Pros. It’s going to be a busy one.

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I said I wanted a faster iPad Pro, same 12.9” screen size, with a smaller overall footprint. Face ID, *sure*, USB-C, *whatever*. We got all that, and honestly I am not sure I see a reason to buy these. Which seems absurd given that just a couple days ago I was writing how I was noticing my iPad Pro (12.9” which is version 1, not the 10.5”) was feeling a touch slow in areas.

Apple produced everything I was hoping for in an iPad Pro — except a kickstand, I mean what are they waiting for — and I feel completely ambivalent about upgrading. I’ve not ordered one, and might not for a few days, weeks, months, ever.

And if you already own an iPad Pro, then you probably don’t need to upgrade either.

Before we dive into all that, let’s talk about the new goods in general.

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Rumor has it, that tomorrow there will be new iPad Pros coming out, and that’s always the best tech day of the year. The basics of the rumors are Face ID, USB-C, and a more edge-to-edge display. I’m sure some of those are true…

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