Well, so do I! I’ve been an iPad user since mid 2010 when the original iPad was released. Over the years the iPad has become far and away my preferred device for a few reasons ... and they would be high on many people’s lists I guess ... namely the great battery life, fantastic screen, instant on, light, small form factor, built in camera, and of course the many thousands of apps. But like anyone who has been a tech user for a long time (and at my age, that time is scarily long) you become set in your ways. For me, I now teach Digital Technologies at the secondary school level. I’ve taught Mathematics too to senior levels. So working my way around spreadsheets and databases has become common place. Similarly with programming and web design, these are the areas I mainly work on in a normal teaching day. I also provide PD for teachers and provide advice for parents about tech related matters. So a laptop has been my primary tool of trade for nigh on 30 years. But I hate having to manage 2 devices. I remember after the 3rd iPad model was released saying to an old friend that I was really hoping that I could replace my laptop with an iPad ... but always managed to find some reason not to. It was usually around the need to write some computer code somewhere or connect to some server or other or to do some database or spreadsheet work and it was just easier on a Mac ... and in some instances probably impossible on an iPad anyway. And not to mention that multitasking was a bit of a foreign concept for an iPad back then.
When I saw the launch of iPadOS back in June this year I thought ... hmmm, that could be a game changer for me. I’m a big Google Docs user, and finally I saw a version of Safari that looked like it would function like my Mac and allow me desktop access to G-Suite. While basic “multitasking” had sort of been around since around iOS 9, it was hardly useful (in my view) and not until iPadOS 13 can you have the same app open in different documents ... so again, a changer for me. And the ability of the Files app to finally read and write to removable media, and to make working with various cloud providers (E.g. Google, DropBox, OneDrive) was another huge plus. So I recalled my discussion with that old friend, and thought I’d revisit it. I still love the iPad look and feel - to me it just makes sense and I prefer using it. So I contacted Graham and suggested to him that I thought it was about time I stopped talking about it and started to try and live with an iPad as my only device. I’m grateful that he thought it was a good idea so I am writing this entry on a new iPad Pro 11” (2018 model) and using the Weebly app. Thanks to Graham (and his company Cyclone Computers) for the iPad that I work with. Over the coming months and into 2020, I’ll document my journey here. The good, the bad and the down right ugly. If you want to hop on for the ride, great. I look forward to sharing what I find. My next post will have some detail about my starting setup for the 11” iPad Pro - covering the starter set of apps that I will be using and why. That’ll be in about a week’s time. That will be followed by another post about hardware and peripherals ... like keyboards and other stuff. If you’ve read this far, thanks. Look forward to the journey.
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