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iPad Pro A college student's review of the iPad Pro.
- Thread starter JawneeWin
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I'm not sure if anyone here can answer that. It will be very specific to your school... Do they use an app? do they use web pages?
I was able to do all of my online based master classes on my ipad, but I was not able to write my papers, submit them for plagiarism checker (was required) and grammar checker from an ipad. I also needed multiple screens for writing, as I needed one screen for sources/research.
I used it, with Connect and a couple of other systems.
It's not the best for some classes, it saved me in other classes.
I'd say my "biggest" problem with the iPad Pro is the charging time of it. I have to make sure it's charging overnight and ready to go for the next day
1. You're right, I don't think it's perfect for all college students, but it's definitely useful for other majors out there.
2. This is true. Buying a desktop while dorming is inconvenient. But a lot of students actually commute due to the high costs of dorming.
3. The iPad Pro is about the size of a piece of paper, and the weight of it is pretty evenly distributed. If anything, I think a laptop would cause more problems since the screen section would make it heavier on one end. You could also always lean the iPad Pro to youself while writing, which is a hassle with a laptop - or not practical.
4. There are some textbooks that are not available on eBooks. However, I'm finding that a lot of science majors specifically have eBook versions available. (I'm a nursing student) An updated edition of an eBook vs. an updated edition that is used is usually the same. Even if the physical textbook is cheaper in price, I wouldn't mind paying a little more to save space/weight and be more portable. It's also useful because you could essentially screenshot diagrams/images and annotate on them. The issue with students going on Facebook while in lecture is due to lack of self-control, so it can't be completely blamed on the iPad. The same could be done on a laptop.
It might not work out for you, but I'm sure that it would work out for many students out there who are looking for a way to be portable. At the end of the day, it all depends on what a student requires. I see a lot of students with handwritten notes, and I think an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil could be a good alternative for those wanting to be more portable. This is what works for ME, and I just wrote my review to suggest it to other students based on my experiences. Before purchasing my iPad, I couldn't really find much information about the use of it in lectures, so I thought it would be helpful to post a review
I would like to add, for the person who said some profs won’t let you use electronic notes during an exam, you can always print them off before your exam! And if you have that one class that doesn’t allow electronics, I think simply speaking to your professor should solve that. And if not, you can bring a thin notebook for That one class (because it will only be one of them) and then take pictures of the notes later using notability and then further annotate.
Exam notes? In my day we called that cheating. You're meant to memorize and understand the course material, not rewrite the course materials into your answer paper from a bunch of notes you brought into the exam. Don't you feel you're cheating yourself doing this?
Absolutely NOT!!!
It depends on the context!
You would NOT be expected to bring in a cheat sheet, and REWRITE them into your exam. That wouldn’t test anything. Some courses would have you bring in a cheat sheet, and then throw challenging questions and things at you that would not only *require* you to have had your cheat sheet prepared properly, but have also *required* you to have a thorough understanding of the entire course in order for that cheat sheet to even allow you to answer one single question.
Sure, if you want to stick to traditional methods of “memorize in school and never be able to apply what you memorized in the real word,” which have become increasingly unpopular over the last FIFTY or so years, sure!
But in my college experience over the last two decades, there has been a shift in testing. And with an increase of people in college, it’s more competitive so it’s not like school is suddenly easy.
There are the courses that require memorization, with zero notes allowed.
There are the courses that allow you to bring one cheat sheet of formulas, because they are choosing to test you on your ABILITY to USE the formula, rather than to MEMORIZE (because sometimes they need to test you on your ability to do math, and NOT your ability to MEMORIZE math)
Then there are the courses that allow calculators, especially graphing ones, where they are actually testing you ON YOUR ABILITY TO USE CALCULATORS
And then there are stats courses, for instance, where professors take the position that in the real world, you would have all notes and resources available to you, but they are testing you on whether or not you can come up with the correct solution and utilize those.
The real world isn’t made up of tests. It is made up of situations where you have certain resources available or unavailable to you, and certain courses and subjects may test on memorization, and others like to match the real world, depending on what the real world requires.
I would definitely say that a history class would involve much more memorization than a test about correctly diagnosing a psychological disorder, in which a psychologist would CONSULT THE DSM.a
And as far as I am concerned, it is NOT called “cheating” unless you are not allowed to do it! That’s like saying that in a course that has questions about daylight savings time and the history of watches, looking at the wall clock on the wall as a reference point is considered cheating, even though it’s available and allowed.
Occasionally they let us have "cheat sheets" in electrical engineering courses. Basically, they intend you to fully understand the material, how to analyse and evaluate systems, etc, rather than just memorizing formulas.
It's pretty unusual but when they allow it, it's just a toolkit that you'd also have in real life... the real work is in the problem solving and applying your knowledge.
Depends on the school, apps and your preference. My university uses Blackboard and their app is useless if you want to actually submit work. I use the iPad Pro to read and mark up pdfs, and watch required videos but outside of that, but I need my iMac for Blackboard and the vast majority of homework I write and hand in. I would recommend Notability it's a great app for note taking, pdf mark up etc.
There are some folks who have successfully used iPads alone, but I'd look into the school first and maybe ask professors or other students if they've used the iPP successfully.
It’s totally normal to use an outline of notes on law school exam. It doesn’t really help THAT much. You still have to spot all the crazy legal issues on your own. But it might help you with which case to cite to support your argument.
Then law studies aren’t your thing indeed, we’re allowed 12000 pages of cheat-sheets! It’s called college law text books and they can be a big help if you studied. Or a waste of real-estate on those tiny exam desks if you didn’t study (enough/right/smart/long enough)
I can't answer for him but for me is a lack of options for coding as a CompSci student.
I just want proper apps for coding and I want to be able to dock the iPad so I can use a keyboard + mouse.
But I am very happy with my custom PC so I guess I can't complain much
I agree in principle with your reasoning, but there are some things to take into account. College tuition is artificially inflated to maximize profit. This model allows a university to get the money from those who can afford it (the very rich) while being low enough that most families cannot afford it without taking government-backed and private loans. If it were priced for families to afford it, the universities would lose out on federal loan money (the biggest source) as well as private loans and the few who can afford sticker price.
So, it makes sense that someone cannot afford tuition but has enough money for a "fancy" laptop like an Apple. The universities can keep raising prices as long as they keep it within the limits of federal programs (i.e. the maximum federal loan per year per student plus pell grants). It is a very unfair system--and both the government and universities are to blame.
Most colleges are non-profit entities. The biggest reason tuition keeps going up is one of supply and demand. The more parents and students expect and demand a college education, the more they're going to cost. If anything, that means colleges don't try very hard to keep costs down, because they don't have to.
Apple, on the other hand, will try to maximize profit. The more I read through some of these iPad posts, I've got a feeling they're going to take the position that the 'iPad is all you need for school' - and try to make this sound like a win/win. iPads are cheaper than laptops, pretty good, and you can draw on them (compared to mac). More importantly, Apple makes more money on them vs laptops. They'll try to sell educators on the idea they're the best solution.
But are they? There are many compromises. A very closed ecosystem, the inability to develop software, lack of freedom... That's too high a price in IMO.
What the world needs is some kind of CNCF for phone/tablet os's...
They are non-profit for tax purposes. And true, they don’t try hard to keep costs down. In fact, they consistently try to spend great deals of money. They can’t get this money entirely from donors and the federal government so they raise tuition. No, they don’t search for profits like companies, but that doesn’t mean they don’t constantly need to increase revenue.
To me, iPads still can not be my only computing device. I can use it for web surfing, emails, and a few other things, but when I really need to do work, I have to RDP into a real computer for the ipad to be useful.
When I was working on my Master's I would have spent 2x the time working on papers, if I had to do all of it on my ipad. The university provided MS Word Add-Ins (that were required) wouldn't have worked. Plus the web loading interface wouldn't have worked, because there is no local file system.
Things may have changed over the past 3 years, but it wouldn't have worked for me. And as a college kid, there are much better options than an ipad (financially and time management).
An iPad still requires finding a way to make things work to be productive, as opposed to things simply working like a laptop (PC or Mac).
When I was working on my Master's I would have spent 2x the time working on papers, if I had to do all of it on my ipad. The university provided MS Word Add-Ins (that were required) wouldn't have worked. Plus the web loading interface wouldn't have worked, because there is no local file system.
Things may have changed over the past 3 years, but it wouldn't have worked for me. And as a college kid, there are much better options than an ipad (financially and time management).
An iPad still requires finding a way to make things work to be productive, as opposed to things simply working like a laptop (PC or Mac).
Although the OS is WAY better than it was, to me a college student would still be better off with an laptop. An iPad is a good accessory, that can be used in addition to a laptop, but if you had to choose one, a laptop is better.
If you can afford both, then both is the best option.
I agree with you. I feel like an iPad would be good for some things for students like taking quick notes but as a full on laptop, I'm going to have to say no. Even with the keyboard there are still a lot of flaws.
Taking notes: Check.
Researching the internet: Check.
Quick photos of whiteboards & doodling on them: Check.
Calculation, Vectorisation and more apps: Check.
Which flaws would prevent the usage for a student? What would be the use case where an iPad couldn't be used because of a flaw?
This is even better than using regular notebook
.For me personally is not a check. When I do research I use multiple tabs and need multiple monitors. The iPads currently do not support this so this is why for me it is not check.
Agree on those.
For example I had to write some papers and reports. Ergonomics wise I do not find the iPads good for this. I switch between languages numerous times, I do research while writing papers which expects big screen real estate and basically multitasking (and no tabs/apps reloads).
And I am Software Developer. iOS just does not have the support for the applications I need. The university where I studied as a whole expected Windows machine. We had students licences for Windows applications and we were expected to use them.
And this is where "use the right tools for your work" comes in. When people are studying languages, medicine, psychology and whatnot, chances are that the iPad is more than sufficient for their needs. I agree with you that
- when a university expects you to bring a Windows machine
- when you're doing multi-monitor research work
- when you need huge screens
an iPad just isn't cut for this work. That sounds reasonable enough
And this is where "use the right tools for your work" comes in. When people are studying languages, medicine, psychology and whatnot, chances are that the iPad is more than sufficient for their needs. I agree with you that
- when a university expects you to bring a Windows machine
- when you're doing multi-monitor research work
- when you need huge screens
an iPad just isn't cut for this work. That sounds reasonable enough
Yep. This is why I always advice new students (my time was time ago) to do their research (both in terms of university/college specifics and studies specifics) before deciding on buying device for studying. iPads have their pros, laptops have their pros, desktops as well. Not to mention that based on the case you might need Windows, Mac or Linux. There is no perfect machine for everything. There is good machine for your specific needs.
I think the iPad can definitely do for most non technical courses. Unless your course requires you to run specific software then the iPad can do it.
I studied accounting, one would think the lack of Sage would be an issue here. But we never needed to run it, in fact we had to calculate things manually on paper despite never ever needing to do it in practice, so that we'd understand the fundamentals.
I switched to marketing. You'd think we'd need to run SPSS and other statistics packages / research packages? Nope. University PCs had them installed and they didn't offer a way for students to have it free to use, nor any requisite for it.
As far as the iPad could go, Notability, Files for downloading materials, Microsoft Office... it copes very well. It runs BlackBoard in browser well as well as a dedicated app. And Office is well suited for the light use of university - which I was shocked at to be honest. I did my personal notes on Pages as it was so much more a pleasure to use.
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That's very true. I found the library PCs were more than enough from the time to time I needed Windows during university 2016-2019. But as we know, the iPad updates in that time such as Files and all have really made this less and less needed in my cases and perhaps some others.
I studied accounting, one would think the lack of Sage would be an issue here. But we never needed to run it, in fact we had to calculate things manually on paper despite never ever needing to do it in practice, so that we'd understand the fundamentals.
I switched to marketing. You'd think we'd need to run SPSS and other statistics packages / research packages? Nope. University PCs had them installed and they didn't offer a way for students to have it free to use, nor any requisite for it.
As far as the iPad could go, Notability, Files for downloading materials, Microsoft Office... it copes very well. It runs BlackBoard in browser well as well as a dedicated app. And Office is well suited for the light use of university - which I was shocked at to be honest. I did my personal notes on Pages as it was so much more a pleasure to use.
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That's very true. I found the library PCs were more than enough from the time to time I needed Windows during university 2016-2019. But as we know, the iPad updates in that time such as Files and all have really made this less and less needed in my cases and perhaps some others.
There is no “right” answer. It depends what you need to do as part of your degree.
Also, when discussing whether an iPad can act as the “only” device that one needs for uni, people appear to be comparing an iPad directly to tasks that a laptop can do, and then concluding that an iPad can’t replace a laptop for education because “iPads can’t do this.” “iPads can’t do that.”
Rather than doing a like-to-like comparison of features or abilities, where laptops are treated as a sort of “gold standard” for education that iPads must align with, perhaps the iPad’s strengths over laptops aren’t being discussed enough. Laptops are definitely a safer bet for university/college, but there are plenty of things an iPad can do that a laptop absolutely cannot, and yet laptop owners probably, on a daily basis, find ways of getting these things done without an iPad.
The vice versa is also likely true. iPad users can’t do absolutely everything a laptop owner can do, but there may be very simple ways around some of these shortcomings.
Also, when discussing whether an iPad can act as the “only” device that one needs for uni, people appear to be comparing an iPad directly to tasks that a laptop can do, and then concluding that an iPad can’t replace a laptop for education because “iPads can’t do this.” “iPads can’t do that.”
Rather than doing a like-to-like comparison of features or abilities, where laptops are treated as a sort of “gold standard” for education that iPads must align with, perhaps the iPad’s strengths over laptops aren’t being discussed enough. Laptops are definitely a safer bet for university/college, but there are plenty of things an iPad can do that a laptop absolutely cannot, and yet laptop owners probably, on a daily basis, find ways of getting these things done without an iPad.
The vice versa is also likely true. iPad users can’t do absolutely everything a laptop owner can do, but there may be very simple ways around some of these shortcomings.
I'm not trying to argue, I'm genuinely interested. Can you please provide some examples of what an Ipad can do, that a laptop can't?
Thanks