2023-02-23
The iPad works better if you learn how to use it
Continuing with my theme highlighting recent examples of Mac users having difficulty with the iPad. This was a recent thread over at the MPU Forums: My next iPad is going to be a MacBook Air! that consists primarily of disgruntled Mac Users who have, to some extent, tried making the iPad work as a Mac laptop replacement. In one of the most recent posts a user wrote this:
I was trying to create a presentation with PowerPoint pulling slides from different presentations. Very unintuitive and laborious. The iPad doesn’t need to be a Mac (or vice versa) but it does need to provide a smooth experience where I’m not focused on the device mechanics at the expense of what I’m trying to produce. I can’t help but agree with the group that says the device is hobbled by Apple.
That, to me, is an example of someone who’s not as familiar with iPadOS as they are with the Mac. His wording expresses exactly what seems to happen with folks who spend far more time with a Mac and less time with the iPad. When they do, on occasion, try to use the iPad they have to think about it more, they have to focus on the mechanics and as a result, it feels more difficult. For those of us that fully switch, there’s a moment in the process when the mechanics of the iPad become 2nd nature, like walking. The only time I have to think about the mechanics of the iPad is when Apple makes a big change like Stage Manager or when I start using a new app that does things differently.
I can’t say a whole lot about PowerPoint as I’ve only used it a couple times on the iPad to check the export of a Keynote presentation to confirm everything was working before handing it over to a client. I do all my presentation work on Keynote and in that app it’s possible to open multiple files at the same time and simply select a slide from the sidebar, control click or long press to copy, then in the new presentation control click in the sidebar and paste. Or, even easier, just drag and drop a slide from one presentation to another and the slide is copied over. Stage Manager allows for 4 windows so I can have 4 presentations open. I’ve never needed to do that but it would be possible.
I only have the free copy of PowerPoint which doesn’t allow for editing but from what I can tell based on reading the Microsoft user forums the kind of multi-slide selection for copying or dragging and dropping between presentations isn’t possible. Sharing content between files in this way is easy in the various iWork apps on iPad and on the Mac too. Regardless, in the case above, the user was quick to blame the iPad rather than consider the possibility that the fault might be with the application lacking important features fundamental to the iPad experience.
It’s a long thread dating back to January 2022 and is full of examples of users for whom the iPad was never going to be a good fit because of their particular work flows or of users for whom the iPad, especially the iPad Pro with a keyboard/trackpad, would likely work well if the user had only taken the time to become proficient with the device and its OS. Proficiency and comfort with an operating system take time and effort and I would speculate that in many if not most cases the user simply is not making the necessary effort to switch. This is especially true with the latest versions of iPadOS which increasingly offer the features long requested by “power users”.
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