“From day one, the iPad to me never felt like a device purely for consumption. As half the tech industry fell over itself to claim you could ‘never do real work on an iPad’, I saw everyone from artists to technicians doing real work on an iPad. What people really meant was that the iPad didn’t have a full version of Microsoft Word, because that is the only ‘real work’ in the whole world. Or something.
That said, I’ve always wanted to do more work on an iPad than I actually do. The big blocker for me has always been interaction. Simply put, the iPad is an ergonomic disaster for long-term ‘traditional’ work.”
I’ve been thinking about this recently, especially because of the many problems in macOS Catalina. I’m suffering from tech fatigue lately: I’m tired of having to troubleshoot so many problems. My iMac, since I upgraded it to Catalina, is very unstable. I still can’t use CarPlay in my car because something in iOS 13 broke it (or because there’s corruption in my iCloud account; I’m waiting for Apple to get back to me). It seems that every day, there’s a problem with an app, with authorizations to access files on the Mac, with some hardware device not being compatible.
The iPad is the ultimate thin client, and it eliminates a lot of these headaches. I have friends who lament the iOSification of macOS, but I look forward to things working more smoothly. It’s not that iOS is perfect, but that its limits make it a lot easier to work with.
But as this article says, the iPad is not ergonomic. I’d been considering getting Apple’s smart keyboard folio for my 11″ iPad Pro, but at £179, it’s really overpriced, and the position of the device isn’t ideal. What I want in a keyboard for an iPad is the ability to place the device in portrait mode. This is possible with this Logitech keyboard, but a friend who has many keyboards says that the touch isn’t right. It’s not expensive, so I may try it anyway.
But Apple needs to consider the longer term use case of the iPad. Not everyone will be able to work with it handheld, and placing it flat on a desk is very bad ergonomics. I’m not sure what the solution is – it’s certainly not in making bigger iPads – but Apple would do well to try to solve this.