iPad Update

[Ed Rooney]

I bought an iPad about a year ago. The main thing I wanted to do with it was write prose outside in a pocket park or in a bar or a cafe. I bought the Pages word processor app and spent a day or two learning how the whole system worked. It didn't work, not for me it didn't. 

 

Pages on the iPad is very different from Pages on my desktop iMac, and I could not find a way to move my text from the iPad to the iMac. I asked the Apple people and they had no solution. It's a great toy and a great way to show an image collection, but I do not need it. I took down my Website, too, because I'm not looking for assignments. 

 

So just before the week was up I returned the iPad to the Apple Store. I must say they were very pleasant and cooperative about it. 

 

I'm just curious now if there have been any significant changes in the iPad and if any of you love it, hate it, or find it very useful? 

[Rosemary Hawkins]

Ed I do find mine useful if I simply want to show some images to someone informally (not professionally really) since the color looks so good.  I have the Ipad One, which I bought for $399 the day the Ipad Two was announced. Otherwise I really only use it for keeping in touch when away from home (I don't have to carry a laptop with a huge power brick), and occasionally watching video.  I do use it for Twitter since I set up a Twitter account for the artists group I belong to in Montauk, though I can also do that from my smartphone. I think it's useful to have one, or at least access to one, since at one point I had a website which wouldn't display on Ipads, and I ended up going to another host since I didn't want my site not to be viewable to people.  So it's some use though honestly I don't use it every day.

[Julie Edwards]

Moving documents between the ipad and the mac for pages is simple, just save to a free iCloud account. Both can access it.

 

Use mine all the time for writing, emails, ideas etc etc etc

[Ed Rooney]

Thank you, ladies. 

 

I'm wondering why the Apple people didn't mention iCloud for transfer. Hmm. Perhaps I'd be happier with an 11" MacBook Air. I have a Kendle for reading. 

[Ed Rooney]

Moving documents between the ipad and the mac for pages is simple, just save to a free iCloud account. Both can access it.

 

Use mine all the time for writing, emails, ideas etc etc etc

 

I'm wondering, Julie, if you ever actually move a document from an iPad to an iMac . . . or if you are assuming it would work using the iCloud? The two versions of Pages as different software, and therefor I cannot assume they are compatible. This guy here on YouTube  

 moves his doc and opens it as a Word file. That would be fine but notice the last thing he mentions about styling and fonts. I remain unconvinced. 

[DHill]

I bought an iPad a year or so ago, and wanted to like it. However, I had similar frustrations to you, Edo. Rather than simply being able to drag and drop documents across from computer to iPad, I had to go through all kinds of weird, unintuitive steps just to get a few PDFs onto it - rather painful when in a hurry. It turned out to be the most frustrating computer I've used - and I've used a fair few, since the late 70s! 

 

I understand that Android tablets have a lot more flexibility - you can plug USB memory straight into many of them, you can access the file system to drag and drop things, and so on. I've generally been recommending that people consider Androids as well. 

 

They say that iPads are good for consuming content (presumably if you've bought exactly the right app to consume it and don't want to do anything imaginative with it) but not very good for creating content. 

[Ed Rooney]

I think you've summed it up nicely, David. It's a fun entertaining toy; it's not a very useful tool. 

[Julie Edwards]

I reguarly move documents back and forth, usually job briefs so I am not that fussed n the formatting which does change between the devices, mainly because of differing fonts etc.

 

Usually I'll get a brief by email (.doc), open it in pages on the mac. Save it as a pages file in the cloud, edit on the pad whilst out and about and later reopen on the mac.

 

If you want me to try one of your pages docs, drop me a pm, I'll give you my email to send to, I'll transfer t to my ipad, add some text and email it back from the iPad.

 

(Of course, emailing on and off the iPad is another solution for transferring)

[MariaJ]

I recently got an ipad mini and was thinking of getting Pages, but I'm also curious about how well it transfers documents to my computer.  In the video above, the fellow is transferring to Word in a Windows system.  I'm wondering if there's less of a change in format if you're going to a Mac.

[MDM]

(Of course, emailing on and off the iPad is another solution for transferring)

Another option for file transfer is to use iTunes and wire the iPad to the Mac, using one of the apps that can do file transfer such as PDF Reader (not the Adobe app although this does something similar but is more limited). I've never used Pages so don't know if the iPad version can do transfer. It's a bit of a fiddly process (certainly does not conform to the simplicity of usability which made the Mac famous) but it works very well for pdf and rtf files both ways.

[Julie Edwards]

That's why I really use iCloud, I rarely plug my ipad into my mac nowadays.

 

Pages doers dad most.doc files changing them to its own internal formal. Both iPad and mac share the same format although the iPad does not support all the same fonts and layout constraints.

[MDM]

I use iCloud to sync my contacts and calendar but I've not set it up for docs. I don't entirely trust iCloud as I don't entirely understand it - in particular why it erases everything that was syncing on a computer if I decide to sign out. That could have grave consequences I think. For a similar reason I copy manually in iTunes rather than syncing - I'm never totally sure what it is likely to do. I don't like the feeling of passing control over to something I don't really trust or understand to the degree I would like.

[Julie Edwards]

It's just behaves like am remote disk which you cannot see when you are not logged in.

[Ed Rooney]

Thanks a lot, Julie. I can see how that would be useful to you, but maybe less so for me in what I would be doing. I don't like restyling. And thanks for the offer of a demonstration. Let me give it some thought. 

 

Maria, Pages is as good or better a WP as MSWord. I have both and prefer Pages. The app is cheap. You can open one program as the other with all the styling in place. (I think all that is true.)   

[MariaJ]

Well I discovered something my iPad mini is not good for, managing images. I am away and don't have a laptop so am using my new iPad mini. Some images submitted before I left passed qc but I can't keyword them because you need flash.

[TABan]

Goodreader is an app that sort of acts like a central file manager for iPad, which it lacks.. You can sync documents with your computer, email files, download files from the web or online servers like Dropbox. I keep the brochure PDFs for my biotech business on it. Well worth the small purchase price.