For Digital writing needs, nothing outclasses the IPad Pro plus Floating Keyboard cover.

Hi, I’m a Dad with two rambunctious kids who are constantly learning and exploring every nook and crack they find. Quickly grabbing anything they can spot with their eyes. So with my motley crew of explorers off finding the next lost ark or some other doodad, I can spend time watching them while at the same time sitting here on the couch without a worry in the world. Why or how this became the case where I would favor an Ipad pro 12.9 over any other choice comes down to the sheer versatility of this device. But first, some history.

How I got to this point a quick trip through some recent history:

I grew up with windows as my home environment was dominated by some version of windows going back to Microsoft dos. During that time, I’ve seen the rise and fall of AMD, only to see them rise again. I’ve lived through the great days of XP, so full of hope. To see the dawn of a new age with longhorn development only to see it transform into the turd that was windows vista. The institutional rot would become windows 8 through 11(soon to be 12). At the same time, Microsoft is more focused on turning me into a product to be sold to the next Bing ad platform. Despite all this, I persisted and plodded along as I looked over my shoulder at the comparatively worse apple machines. It was overheating, lacking configurability, and devoid of individualization. Also, more importantly, suffering from the same battery life issues that windows laptops have suffered from for ages. But then I got my first I pad which was my introduction to the IPadOS workflow.

Why the Ipad pro first life benefits me the most:

As I alluded to before, the reasons are its sheer versatility no matter what life throws at it. With a Rubberized keyboard case and an ultra slim, throw over the shoulder, get things done vertical messenger bag. I can be happily typing away from the beach, on a lounge chair, or, as I am right now, typing away on a couch, waiting for my kids to wake up from their nap. The Fanless design means I never have to worry about dust or debris working their way into the sensitive areas of the laptop. If I brought my Ipad pro to the beach, I would not be destroying my fans. If I’m working while wrapped up in a blanket, I don’t have to worry about the Ipad pro overheating (super useful for the late-night anime binge in bed). That peace of mind leaves me reaching for the Ipad pro 12.9 times out of 10.

The screen real estate provided feels much more extensive. I know it says it’s 12.9,” but it feels like a large 13″ laptop screen due to its 3:2 aspect ratio. Let’s not forget the 5G option on IPad pro. Most people dispense with the LTE and 5G and wonder why they have useless expensive tablets anywhere but at home. The LTE and 5G modems with a good data plan turn the Ipad pro from a (Nice to have by the bedside) tablet into a “Computer” you can use anywhere and never need to rely upon flaky WiFi. Or, If you like me, you combine the flaky WiFi from the coffee shop with your life and 5g modems for some serious rock solid internet. I use Speedify to achieve this. What do you use? Leave your comments below.

The downsides:

Nothing hits you in the face faster than the Ipad pro needs improvement than trying to set up any folder structure for the organization of files. I must admit I have gotten more tuned into the apple ecosystem and refined my processes. I find I rely less and less on file structure, but for once, I would like to have a dedicated folder structure for the camera roll so that I can dump Canva images into its own folder. Having a blog where I upload and download pictures quite a lot for posts means that I am constantly slogging deep into the camera roll for the post image I used months ago.

Also, the dream of an Ipad OS 16 cannot come fast enough for me. I have been suffering from lackluster external monitor support. As someone who used their cellphone for a year as their primary computer. It’s embarrassing that it took apple until 2022 to wake up enough engineers who were sleeping on the job to say: “Hey, supporting external monitors is super important to people who use IPad pro to get things done.” I must say, though, that the demonstration of Stage-Manager and support for external displays will be a significant plus in convincing me to leave my MacBook pro on most days.

Focusing more on the downside, I have another one in that apple cannot design a good quality case for the IPad Pro to protect the pen and sides of the Ipad pro. I had to purchase a 3rd party case to ensure that the pen does not get knocked down or lost, but it blocks the USB c 4/Thunderbolt four-port (an updated case from MOFT fixed this issue). So I have to do this rather lame ritual where when I want to dock the Ipad pro with an external monitor, I need to pop it off the keyboard, then pop it out of its protective shell, then dock it back on the keyboard and then plug in a cable. All this could be resolved if apple sat down and designed a good case for the IPad Pro. Aesthetics be damned.

TeamViewer experience

Can you call it an “experience” when it works nothing as an average computer would? It lacks support for the Ipad pro mouse, so you have to move the remote mouse via your screen on the tablet. Every time I have to use TeamViewer to remote into a client’s (or my own) machine, it’s not a good feeling. It’s so bad that, at times, I would rather remote into Amazon workspaces first and then use team viewer to connect to a remote client’s pc just so I can use Amazon’s engineer’s handy work of supporting the iPad pro mouse experience properly. Come on, Teamviewer! It’s 2022. Get your act together!

That’s a lot of negatives. Are you planning to jump ship?

I heard that the Surface might be what you’re looking for. Please, how can I look at that question seriously and not laugh a deep, hearty, belly shaking from my soul laugh. It was the surface line that drove me straight to an apple store gleefully. A quick trip down memory lane for me was my first actual laptop after living on a desktop for ten years was a top-of-the-line surface book, gen 1. It had a GPU base and a killer amount of ram and ran like dog shit. The average Battery life was about 4 hours at best by babying the laptop. Now I must admit that chrome had an excellent hand making battery life horrible. However, bad programmers aside (I’m looking at you, google engineers), Microsoft’s inability to reign in 3rd party vendors, and their terrible code means that the only way I could get longer battery life was to use the then-proprietary edge browser. But windows was the best, I told myself at the time. After all, Apple had overheating MacBooks (which was accurate at the time) and other hardware defects like scissor keys that meant that apple was never on my radar.

So what changed for me to switch to Apple, you say…

Why the IPad mini 3….. My good friend Leighton lent me the IPad mini 3 (still is lending it to me), and in 2022, it’s still useful. You can’t say that about an android tablet, as most stop getting updates when they are released to the public. But using that IPad mini three got me thinking. If apple stands behind their IPads for six years, won’t they do the same for their laptops or bigger tablets? I cannot say the same for the Microsoft Surface line or the Surface Book, as nearly one year after I got it, the surface book was hard bricked due to Microsoft trying to “update” their drivers… GREAT! Not to worry, Microsoft sent me another surface book that also, one year later, was bricked due to a software update. Now on my third surface book, I figured 3rd times the charm and would have a rock solid machine, right? Nope, the battery on the third surface book expanded and nearly blew out the screen.

Turns out that Microsoft ran out of surface book 1’s and sent me a fully decked out surface book 2 with a new GPU base. They could do this because Microsoft still had a physical presence at stores, and the managers could call the shots on the floor if a customer’s product needed direct replacement. Now on lucky number 4, I felt that Microsoft had gotten their act together with drivers and hardware as they were introducing the third generation surface book and surface pro seven at the time. But if you’re reading this, you know the drill by now. Microsoft sent another update for the drivers on the surface book two that bricked the surface book. At this point, I was done with Microsoft surface. So I RMA’d my surface book and had to wait computerless for the seven days it took for my old surface book to hit their RMA plant and send me out a “new” surface book pro two they had in stock.

Samsung Dex to the Rescue? I think not!

So I used my phone with Samsung Dex for a year until apple announced the m1 pro and m1 max laptops, which supported triple 6k monitors but, more importantly for me, supported dual 4K. Something Microsoft claimed the surface book would support via their dock before modifying their marketing material. So Why didn’t I stick with the m1 laptop vs. my IPad Pro? Well, the M1 laptop sure has its place when I’m following my old traditional workflow of file management or video editing in resolve (I still need to figure out luma fusion on the IPad pro).

Back to the Surface, as in many ways, it checks off all the right boxes. It has support for LTE in certain versions. Support for thunderbolt four, so if I want to do an e-GPU, I can. It has an external keyboard for quick typing. Combine them all together, and you get a hot putrid mess. The Surface runs around with an ancient x86 processor architecture that can run programs from as way back as 1972 (great for compatibility, terrible for efficiency). It lacks a fanless design, so you are limited in where you can use the Surface. It has a terrible battery life due to 3rd party code bases for programs that will never get optimized for the modern os. It runs windows 11, which can’t help but install the most bloat and spying telemetry on your device. And the LTE “experience” is the worst you can get as all the phone carriers look at laptops with a suspicion that all you ever use the computer for is BitTorrent. Carriers price their data plans and the pathetic buckets you get with the plans as high as the market will bare only for PCs.

The advantages of controlling your own silicon.

My Bill for 5g Unlimited LTE from ATT is a flat $25 monthly. I can do anything I want on my Ipad pro without worrying that the data tap will be murdered in a back alley by some shady mobsters. I can’t say the same for LTE surface as you get a small bucket of data, and then after that, you are cut off for the rest of the month or buy another bucket. Also, the LTE modems on the Surface are a few generations behind the latest and greatest chipset, which matters A LOT. Why? Because different generations of LTE and 5g radios support massive input and massive output aggregation where multiple frequencies can be combined into a big fat data pipe. Have an older chipset that lacks this ability and gets stuck on a congested band? I hope you like going slow because you have no other option. With the Ipad pro, I have options; every year, when apple releases it’s latest and greatest, I can upgrade my modem should I choose to.

Stick around for the next part of my foray into the apple way….

If you like what you read be sure to click here for more mobile content curated for you!