Tag: Switch to iPad

Ah, home screens… Dragging and dropping those apps, figuring out where they go, it’s something some of us spend quite a bit of time on, and others couldn’t care less about. This week’s issue of Switch to iPad is all about home screens, and how I set them up together with Focus Mode.

How are you? And, perhaps more importantly, what are your home screens like? I’ve been fiddling with mine for quite some time, trying to find balance. What I needed, it turns out, was an unplanned reboot of my 11” iPad Pro. I had some issues with my cellular connectivity during my Easter trip a while ago, and while I was waiting for the provider to get back to me (not an easy task during Easter), I tried everything I could think of. In the end, and in my desperation, I resorted to resetting the iPad completely. Don’t worry, I had access to decent Wi-Fi at the time, so it was easy enough to get everything up to speed, but during this process I figured, hey, why not reshape the whole thing?

So, I did, and ended up with the most logical, albeit perhaps not entirely complete, home screens yet. This, paired with Focus Mode, has helped me consolidate my iPad use a bit, something that’s been beneficial for me the past couple of weeks.

Let’s talk home screens, then!

📧 Switch to iPad #95 is a paid issue, so you’ll need a paying subscription to read. It’s $5/month or $50/year, and you’d be supporting my writing with your hard-earned money. There’s a free trial too, if you’re uncertain. It’ll get you full access to the archives as well, which is more than two novel’s worth of iPad goodness.

Let’s talk iPad screen sizes again:

How’s your eyesight? Mine’s good, although I have invested in blue light-blocking glasses for work, with slight magnification. I find it relaxes the eyes a bit, or maybe it’s the placebo effect. It matters little.

I’m typing this on my 11” iPad Pro, sat in its Magic Keyboard. The keyboard’s a bit cramped, as mentioned previously, but it gets the job done. The screen size is large enough for most tasks, the middle ground of iPads, you might say.

However, the release of the M1 iPad Air (10.9”), the iPad mini 6 (8.3”), which I love, and the fact that I’m using Universal Control rather than Sidecar with my Macs, has made me think about iPad screen sizes again. This, obviously, means that I have to share said thoughts with you, so here we are.

📧 Switch to iPad #93 requires a paid subscription. It’s $5/month or $50/year, as usual, with a trial available.

I haven’t talked about Universal Control at all, up until now. There’s a reason for that: I wanted to actually put it to the test first. So, here’s this week’s Switch to iPad newsletter, about Universal Control.

Universal Control was introduced in iPadOS 15.4, and requires a Mac running macOS Monterey 12.3 or later. It’s a feature that lets you control your iPad with the keyboard and pointing device connected to your Mac, but also lets you do some things seamlessly between the two. So, while connected, you can move your pointer from your Mac screen, to your iPad’s screen, and back again. And yes, that means that you can drag a file between the two, which feels like magic the first time you do it.

But is this useful, or just a gimmick. I’ve been using Universal Control for weeks, since iPadOS 15.4 was released, and I’m here to tell you: It depends.

📧 Switch to iPad #92 has been sent to paying subscribers. Care to join them? It’s $5/month or $50/year. There’s a free trial, too.

Easter is upon us, well, almost, and I’m going on a trip. That’s what this week’s issue of Switch to iPad is all about.

How are you? Me, I’m packing for a trip down south (it’s not as dramatic, nor as warm, as it sounds) to attend my little sister’s wedding, and get some much-needed vacation. It’ll be good to see my parents and siblings, it’s been a while, as you’d imagine.

Oh, and it’s Easter, too. That’ll make it a joy to travel through half the country by train, I’m sure… I do hope to get some reading, writing, and researching done on the train, though, so that’s good. Sometimes, being confined to a certain space, and limited as to what you can do, is great for productivity.

I’m traveling light. That means I’ll bring my 11” iPad Pro, and not that many other things.

📧 Switch to iPad #91 is free for all to read. Have at it!

Here I am again, talking about default apps and features. This time, it’s Safari’s Reading List feature, and comparing it to the likes of Pocket and Instapaper.

How are you? And more importantly, how and where are you reading these letters? I like to put longer pieces in a read it later service, something I’ve talked about before. I also like to use the default apps as much as possible, since they tend to integrate well with iPadOS.

So, where does that put Safari’s read it later alternative, called Reading List?

I ditched Pocket and its ilk for a couple of weeks, in favor of Reading List, and I have thoughts. Read on, or save for later, to find out if Safari’s Reading List is good enough.

📧 Switch to iPad #90 is a paid issue. It’s $5/month or $50/year, which includes the full archives, if you’re interested. Thank you!

Remember when I said I was going back to default app, but not Calendar? Well, that changed.

How are you? Is your calendar as jam-packed as mine? I certainly hope not, it’s been nuts, and while I hope this week is the last crazy one, I’m starting to doubt it. These days, I put more and more things in my calendar, blocking time. That, in conjuncture with a to-do list app, keeps me organized.

You might remember that I’ve been going back to the default app to a certain extent. I’ve written about Reminders in Switch to iPad #85, the default to-do app, and extending it with Remind Me Faster (review here). I’m a dedicated Notes user, too. But Calendar, I just didn’t see it replacing Fantastical.

Now, Fantastical is a great app, but it comes with a yearly subscription if you want all the features. I don’t mind that, I’ve relied on it for a long time. However, a series of sync issues made me wonder if Fantastical was the culprit, and, in a weak moment, I deleted the app, and reverted to the default Calendar app.

Let’s just say that I’ve got thoughts.

📧 Switch to iPad #89 is a paid issue, so you need a valid subscription. It’s $5/month or $50/year. I’m matching all subscriptions with a donation for Ukraine, until March is over, so do consider subscribing if you haven’t already.

This week’s issue of the Switch to iPad newsletter follows up on the Logitech MX Anywhere 3 review published yesterday.

How are you navigating your iPad? I’m writing this on an 11” iPad Pro, sat in the Magic Keyboard, but that’s not always the case. More often than not, my writing setup consists of the iPad in a stand of some sort, and a bluetooth keyboard and pointing device. That last one is what I’d like to discuss today.

External pointing devices – mouse and trackpads – has worked with iPadOS for quite some time now. It’s something of a universal truth that a trackpad is the better choice, and with good reason. After all, you can recreate every swipe and gesture that you’d do on the iPad screen, on the trackpad’s surface. A mouse doesn’t have that, but they’re still supported. Are they then a reasonable alternative to trackpads?

📧 Switch to iPad #88 is available for paying subscribers now. Subscribe for $5/month, or $50/year. I’m still matching subscriptions with donations to Ukraine – we’re closing in on $1,000, which is both the limit and target, so please help.

It’s Wednesday, and that means that paying subscribers are getting this week’s issue of the paid Switch to iPad newsletter. It starts like this:

I have a confession to make: I seldom use the speakers on any of my iPads. That’s true for my Macs over the years, too. It’s not that they’re bad speakers, any of them. On the contrary, Apple is best in class more often than not. Especially the iPad Pro speakers, with their four-point system, is lauded for being enough for most.

Except, I don’t agree.

So, this will be a letter about iPad speakers, and perhaps help you decide if they matter to you, as you consider a new iPad. Because we’re always considering new iPads, aren’t we?

📧 Yep, it’s all about the speakers in Switch to iPad #87. You need a paid subscription for this, which costs $5/month or $50/year.

Remember, I’m matching all subscriptions in March with a donation to UNICEF, for Ukraine, up to $1,000. We’re several hundreds of dollars in, which is lovely.

Switch to iPad #86 has reached its subscribers. It starts like this:

I hope this letter finds you well, and that you have time to read it. If not, then feel free to save it in your read it later service of choice. Or maybe there’s something in here that you want to refer to in the future, something that you need to keep handy later on.

Where do you save those links?

In the old days, most links to articles and resources you wanted to refer to later ended up in various link-saving services. They weren’t really read it later tools, although they obviously could be. It was more akin to an extended bookmark folder, with tags and the like to keep your links organized. Delicious (originally, del.icio.us, so wonderfully web 1.0) and later Pinboard spring to mind.

I don’t use any of those services today, but I find myself needing to save the link for future reference, still. It’s tempting to just throw them in a read it later service because technically Pocket or Instapaper would work just fine. They have all the features needed, after all, with tagging and highlights, as well as decent search capability. But, to me, that’s not what a read it later app should do. I don’t want my GitHub link failing to load in a reader view, alongside that long exposé from The Atlantic, I want it someplace else.

I’ve been on a quest for some time, and maybe you have to. Let’s see where we’re at, and go from there, shall we?

📧 Switch to iPad #86 is a paid issue, so you need a valid subscription to read it. It’s $5/month, or $50/year, and there’s a free trial as well. Remember, I’m meeting all subscriptions with a donation to benefit the victims of the war in Ukraine, up to $1,000. Full details are here.