I upgraded from a base iPad to an m1 MacBook Pro
It’s been a week since I’ve bought an m1 MacBook Pro for school, business, design, and personal use. I bought it as an upgrade from a base model 2019 iPad that I added a keyboard, Apple Pencil, mouse, and a few more accessories that made it feel like a computer. It was used for everything. Reading books, writing school papers, designing projects for my design studio classes, my content bingeing, and even a few date nights with my girlfriend. I thought it was the perfect device for me. Well, that was until I got my hands on an m1 MacBook Pro. So why did I upgrade in the first place if I thought the iPad was the perfect device? There are a few things that you have to put up with having an iPad as your main workhorse.
A big one for me was the unreliable file transfer system. I was unable to connect my external 1TB hard drive that I kept my designs, photography, and papers. Instead, I had to use limited internal storage or one of the many cloud storage options. I ended up getting 2 terabytes of iCloud storage with the Apple One subscription that came out in the fall of 2020 to backup all my files for school. While this is a great solution for my devices it doesn’t help me when I’m using a school/work computer that I’m not signed into. So my solution to that was to get a dongle that allowed me to connect an external drive but it was limited to a 128GB flash drive. While that did work the transfer speed pales in comparison to the MacBook Pros read and write. It would take 10mintues to transfer 20 high res photos from an SD card for work.
Another problem was I couldn’t connect an external display to extend my iPad’s screen. It’s 2021 Apple this shouldn’t be a problem for an iPad to extend a display. macOS already does an excellent job why can’t iPadOS. I’ve got my MacBook connected to an external monitor and have the iPad in SideCar mode at the same time allowing me to have a triple monitor setup from home.
It can’t run the certain “pro” apps I need such as Figma, Visual Studio Code, Affinity Publisher, Glyphs, and the Adobe Create Cloud. While the iPad does have Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo apps (this is how I was able to use the iPad for so long) they are only a small fraction of what I need to use as a design student and media creator.
In conclusion, the iPad is still a great “computer” for the majority of people if they want to get used to the quirks that are iPadOS. As for me, I think it will become a great accessory for my m1 MacBook. With SideCar, the drawing functionality, and the upcoming feature of cross workflows within the OS. My iPad isn’t going anywhere anytime soon it just might take a back seat while the excitement of the MacBooks continues.
