So, I tried switching to an iPad Air 2022 for my main leisure/personal work computer and it didn’t work out. I’ve written about this here before, and tried to provide some objective discussion points (e.g. the small screen cannot ever be useful for serious work).
Before I sell-up I thought I’d try the iPadOS 16 beta. I’m especially interested in Stage Manager and also display scaling, which help make better use of the small screen size compared to a laptop.
Here’s what my thoughts are:
Before I sell-up I thought I’d try the iPadOS 16 beta. I’m especially interested in Stage Manager and also display scaling, which help make better use of the small screen size compared to a laptop.
Here’s what my thoughts are:
- Display scaling: This is the feature I’d been hoping Apple would introduce. I was already setting the zoom level in Safari to 85% in order to see the “whole” desktop website. So how well does display scaling work on the iPad Air? It’s like the entire user interface is zoomed out to 85%! Simple as that. As such, everything is made smaller. Is this an issue? Well, you could argue that if you’re holding the iPad in your hands then it’s closer, so things being smaller ain’t so bad. In desktop mode, though, attached to a Magic Keyboard and with the iPad around 60cm/24in away from your eyes… Well, it works less well. But there are also switches in the Settings app to make launchpad icons bigger and, of course, you can set the text size to be bigger too. Doing all this makes for a weird hybrid where some things are small, but other things are their “normal” size. I don’t really like the hacky nature of this though and once again it reminds me too much of trying to get desktop Linux to work. Apple’s whole mantra is “it just works”. On the iPad it’s often “it just works after you’ve delved into things like accessibility settings”.
- Stage Manager: My fundamental opinion is that you cannot do serious work on a screen smaller than 13in. You cannot multitask. Consuming media? Yes. Browsing websites? Just about. Anything else? Tricky. Has Apple changed my mind with Stage Manager? Almost. It’s ingenious how they’ve implemented it. It’s about as good as it’s going to get, and it’s very usable (when it doesn’t crash—this is more an alpha release than beta, Apple). But you‘re still working within the confines of a tiny screen that’s attempting to provide a desktop experience. I can’t see why, if you want that experience, you don’t just get a MacBook Air.
- Summary: In my opinion (please do remember that), iPadOS 16 is several bounding leaps in the right direction. Well done, Apple. But it doesn’t change the fact that the iPad remains a solution trying to find a problem. There’s certain folks for whom the iPad makes 100% sense. Artists, for example. Young people at school or college who effectively want a big version of what they already have on their phones (and who have great eyesight, natch). But for the rest of us above the age of 19, trying to use it for our home and work lives? It’s just not earning its place in Apple’s lineup outside of people who just happen to love that form factor.
