I miss my iPad. In fact, I’ve tried to go back to the tablet device to do a little work in the last few weeks. Now that we can travel again, it is much easier and less risky to take my four-year-old iPad Pro with me than my MacBook Air. Most of my travel has involved vacation and not work-related travel, so having my iPad has been plenty that I’ve needed. But traveling with it has really made me miss using it everywhere.

But it’s not Apple’s fault that I don’t use my tablet as much. Many users bemoan that iPadOS is holding it back, but I don’t. I think iPadOS could always improve and evolve, but really, it’s the apps that are still holding me back.

iPadOS Is Cool

Using my iPad on my trips has been cool and frustrating at the same time. For me, Apple’s slate tops the MacBook in two ways: usability and apps. So I want to tackle these separately below.

iPad usability

I love interacting with my iPad. I love the fact that Apple has built in cursor and monitor support. Now, when I want to use it, I can use it as a tablet, a writer’s notebook with the Apple Pencil, a laptop, a movie screen, or a docking station. With my Mac, it’s a laptop or movie screen. That’s all.

On my trips, I mostly used my iPad leisurely on the couch. Of course, this isn’t conducive to typing out a long piece, but it’s nice that I have options. On one trip, I wanted to sit down and write a little short story with a moment of free time. I tried the on-screen keyboard, but I couldn’t get my fingers and hands to fit right. So I tried to use my Smart Keyboard, but it grew hard to keep my hands at the right angle without pain.

Finally, I tried to use my Apple Pencil. It was so cool that I could just write out what I wanted and the software could turn it into text. It was even better than I had all these options to try out, finding the one that ultimately worked for me. While I could have sat up with my laptop on my lap, it might have been a more comfortable position, but I would be very limited in use. I couldn’t really lie down and write with a pencil-like device if I wanted to.

There is a learning curve with the Pencil and Scribble, the technology that turns your writing on the iPad into text, but it is pretty awesome that all those options exist.

Check out the video below if you don’t know about Scribble.

Of course, multitasking on the iPad isn’t like multitasking on the Mac. It seems many people just want a macOS tablet and they don’t like iPadOS. Some even want iPads to be able to turn into Macs when they get docked (more on this in a bit).

But I actually like iPadOS.

Sure there are areas that need improvement, like the app screen. But it feels new and exciting to me. I’m excited to see where Apple takes it every year, unlike the Mac. Apple does increment iPadOS every year (some years more than others). They keep making it stronger and stronger. Multitasking has gotten more visible in iOS 15 and the hardware is more than capable, it has the same processor as the Mac. I can’t wait to see what they do with iPadOS 16.

Apps

This is a funny one to add here because I’m going to complain about it later, but I love iPad apps when traveling. Traveling with an iPad is so much easier than with a Mac for me. Most of the streaming apps I use have iPad apps but not Mac apps. On the Mac, you are pushed to the web, which makes sense most of the time, but what about when you won’t have internet access?

What happens when you want to download the next five episodes of the series you’re watching on Netflix? You can’t do that easily on the Mac. On the iPad, you find them and hit the download button. Some media apps even have auto-download always to have an episode ready to go.

Also, it’s so much easier for kids to use the iPad than a Mac. For my son, I can just open the kid’s app, triple-click the sleep-wake button, and he is limited to that one app now. He can flip through the selection and pick the movie he wants. That’s much harder to understand on the Mac.

Lack of Great Pro Apps

But the thing that still holds me back from going back to my iPad full time is the lack of great pro apps. They are coming out, slowly, but more frequently than they used to.

And what I mean by great pro apps are apps that have feature parity with their Mac brothers. For example, my most used app right now on Mac is Scrivener. I love doing my writing in Scrivener because I keep my ideas and research separate but in the same app. I can break things down so that I’m not looking at one long document. And all that works on the iPad.

But syncing between macOS and iPadOS can be a pain. It takes a while to download changes.

Also, there’s no revision mode.

I’ve been heavily editing a short story (hoping to post here in the next month or so) and Scrivener for macOS has a great revision mode. I can see all my changes in a different color font without having to do anything but turn on revision mode. That’s not possible on the iPad. There is no revision mode on the iPad. I can’t track any changes that I make there.

So I keep looking for new apps that can do everything that Scrivener on Mac can do, but I can’t find anything. No app has all the features I need that Scrivener on Mac offers.

I’m not sure if Apple hasn’t given developers the tools to do it, or what, but I can’t find any good writing app that fits everything I use and has all the tools I need.

But there is hope. Adobe has updated Photoshop for iPadOS to have more feature parity with its PC apps. Apple has even updated Swift Playgrounds to allow developers to code and release apps on iPads.

But we need more!

So What’s Next

I’ve been saying this for a long time, but I think the best thing that Apple can do is to push this boundary itself. They need to release their pro apps on iPadOS.

They also need to help other companies push their apps to be better and bring more parity to their Mac cousins. That might be by creating new developer APIs or assisting developers with their code. Either way, Apple wins by getting better and stronger apps on their system.

I don’t think that blending MacOS and iPadOS is a good way to get things done. I think more apps and new minds to find new ways to do things will bring about a better experience. But would I argue that Apple brings macOS to a plugged-in iPad? Never. I just don’t see this making iPad apps better. It wouldn’t suddenly allow Mac apps to be used. There would need to be more coding behind that.

I want the most versatile device with me that I can use to get my job done. I would love to write using the Apple Pencil or type something out on an attached keyboard, but the apps don’t allow me to work the way I want.

I think that the iPad can be my mobile system of choice, but not until the apps I want to use are up to speed.

What do you think? Do you use your tablet as your primary mobile device? Do you have a better idea of where iPadOS can go?