iPad Pro improves my work/play
When I was little, I remember my Dad had all sorts of work-given gadgets that made me jealous. Nokia 6210, Palm Pilot – they all seemed so damn executive.
When he wasn’t looking, I’d steal said gadgets and play with creating calendar events for meetings or *gasp* scheduled calls. As a child who never even received letters, this seems the ultimate idea of having made it.
Anyway, working with my 9.7" iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard, I’m starting to notice something interesting. When I return to my desktop, I feel like there are all sorts of little distractions, flourishes and habits that feel much more like “playing” at work than actually getting on with it.
There’s something incredibly focused and satisfying to me personally about the screen containing only the things I immediately need, instead of a cacophony of Windows and “look at me, I’m useful” anchors. It helps me get on with what I need to do.
Here are a few further thoughts about working on this device that have really helped me get to grips with it.
Get a right pane/ left pane system
Splitscreen is pretty much make or break to being productive on here. But it’s not immediately obvious how to get the most of it or what the dynamic is. On touch, it seems the right pane is really easy and quick to swap out for other apps. On keyboard, you suddenly realise Alt-Tab, Copy/Paste and other features default to the left pane. So what’s your system?
Personally, I tend to default to the right pane as a space for anything I don’t mind being up persistently. Tweetbot, Slack, Asana most commonly sit open there if I don’t need the full screen width.
Then, if I need to add links or images to something I’m writing, I juggle it out for Safari and keep that there to look up what I need and quickly paste across. In many ways, Safari is the workhorse that makes split screen work on iPad, like Dropbox used to be the connective tissue between iPads and desktops in the early days of iOS.
Another example: Checking RSS. Feedly in right pane, Safari as left. As you click links to read full articles, Safari opens them and you always know where you were in your RSS list. Also works well with Twitter on right side.
Don’t be afraid to think more roughly
Apps like Drafts and Paper have opened my eyes to the flexibility of creation on iPad.
When I first started using Paper (and Apple Pencil) to replace my Moleskine, I was still trying to build nice notes as I created them. But then I started to realise that if I need a heading, I can just draw it in the middle of the page and select and drag it up to the top right corner.
The best apps present a kind of shifting surface which is solid when you need it and entirely flexible. The same can be said for Drafts, an app which I’m increasingly using for scratching our the basics of any piece of writing, and then can export to an unfathomably large number of different apps, formats and services in follow on.
It’s liberating and strangely uncomfortable at first to undermine the old muscle memory of workflows and the sanctity of notes and information. But I have found clicking into this new way has always allowed me to think in slightly different ways.
VNC of last resort.
Friends don’t let friends try iPad working without a safety net.