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iPad as a laptop replacement
- Thread starter Omar Comin' Yo
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Well, technically you can run a sandboxed linux via i:sh and there is a-shell. I run e.g. ffmpeg in a-shell and process via some shortcuts I created, audio or video files. Basically the shortcuts run via the Share-menu from any suitable app (Files, Filebrowser). This works similar for a bunch of other standard I/O FOSS I use, e.g. R - and *IF* there is a way to do this, it’s very nice indeed... almost like on desk- or laptop. 🙃
There is a huge difference in “using the terminal” versus the underlying *nix OS structure for which ”the terminal” is often used as analogue. The latter differentiates macOS from iOS/iPadOS.
And it simply allows to do certain things which can easily perceived and described for the moment as cumbersome, tedious or even simply not possible on i-devices. IMHO. YMMV.
This actual thread contains a few contributions addressing this 😂. For these occasional contributions you might always find a solution in here 🙅🫴🫵👆 🙅🫵👇… 😀
If the apps register with Apple Files you could probably do this.
IMHO - admittingly as someone who switches to a shell to solve something quite often - terminal&Co. allow you to stand on the shoulder of giants because it is very likely that there is a solution to most common problems through it available. And these solution are “hardened” in years long deployment… and are probably free. 🤓
And this powerful option is taken or - for various reasons - limited on iOS/iPadOS.
Having written that, there are gazillion of reasons why humans tend to use GUIs. 😃
And - while one might have personal likes and dislikes in relation to them - the GUI in iOS/iPadOS simply addresses and undoubted delivers on this. Apparently to the satisfaction of many (other graphical interfaces from different developers on other devices are available 🙃).
Personally I wish that the iPad would be a universal computing device like a laptop. But it never was and still isn‘t perceived by Apple as such, and actually never might. Again IMHO. Again YMMV.
I use my iPad as a laptop replacement. I have a few things I cannot do on it, but not much. I would say I only need to pull out an actual laptop once every few months. But most of my work - email, web browsing, powerpoint, excel, can all be done adequately on the iPad.
The biggest pain point for me is the lack of a proper file management system or one equivalent to MacOS
I have also been issuing my iPad with a secondary display and that works great too.
The biggest pain point for me is the lack of a proper file management system or one equivalent to MacOS
I have also been issuing my iPad with a secondary display and that works great too.
You may want to try FileBrowser or FileBrowser Pro, both of which are great file managers. I and a few others here, @sparksd being one, like it quite a bit. Definitely more functional and dependable than the Files app. Been using it for years, and highly recommend.
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Agree. +1 on FB Pro, one of my most-used apps.
How is the Adobe Acrobat Reader experience on iPad? Can you do all the things with it like you can with the Windows and macOS clients including making notes on files, highlighting, drawing lines through text, etc? Is this possible with a mouse? I have an M1 MBP 13, and I'm thinking of moving over to an iPad. All my other day-to-day work/productivity apps should be fine, but I use Acrobat a lot. Naturally, if there's an alternative app that offers the same basic functionality as previously mentioned that works easily with a keyboard and Apple Pencil I'd be all for it.
Sadly, I’ve never really used Adobe Acrobat Reader, so I can’t really speak to that, but I know you can do many of those things in Quick Look in the Files app. For notes, I’m almost wondering if Notes would be a good built-in alternative. You can import documents into the Notes app and you can highlight and mark them up, as well as obviously writing down notes within the note the document is in. I hope maybe that’s helpful? I wish I knew more about Acrobat Reader so I could be more helpful, perhaps I’ll install it and tinker with it so I can be of more help in the future. 👍🏻
I dont use Adobe because I don't like their business practices. It's a bit like HP with the toner marketing built into the printer. I use PDF Expert from the App store. It is inexpensive, easy to use and fully functional. I have PDF Expert across my phone, iPad and Mac.
Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about PDF Expert, I’ll have to give it a try sometime. 👍🏻. I’m not a big fan of what Adobe’s done with their business model either. I used to use Adobe Photoshop, but I switched over to Affinity Photo and the rest of the Affinity suite, and I haven’t looked back since. 👍🏻
love pdf expert. bought the full version with the swiftness!
I wish there was a Windows version available since I still need to interact with that OS on the daily.
Damn, today I had to hot-unplug a hard drive from the iPad. I did close the Files app, I locked the iPad, and waited for several minutes… and nothing, the hard drive was still spinning and on. So I didn’t have any other option than unplug it while still spinning… I hope the file system hasn’t been damaged.
C’mon Apple, just put a ****ing eject button on the Files app!
C’mon Apple, just put a ****ing eject button on the Files app!
When in doubt and really concerned, power down the iPad.
Also, while you can technically get away with using a mechanical hard drive with an iPad, it’s recommended to use an SSD because they’re much more stable and won’t burn through the iPad’s battery life as quickly. But I do think they could add an eject button to reduce confusion.
I hate unplugging things from my iPad after using Files. I wonder what Apple's official line is on whether it's safe to do so or not?
This is all they say -
"Disconnect the drive or card reader: Remove it from the charging port on iPad."
https://support.apple.com/en-al/guide/ipad/ipad75b7b23f/ipados
SSDs and other such flash memory drives are typically safe to just unplug. The only types of drives that are “risky” to remove that way are drives in “high performance mode”. Drives generally have to be configured this way by users, most drives don’t ship this way. Basically drives in that mode don’t immediately write all of the data, but cache it, so if disconnected before all of the cached data can be transferred, it can lead to file corruption. Again though, most new drives come configured to immediately write data. Especially thumb drives, SD cards and such.
The Mac requires you to eject disks because it does write caching for optimal performance, but iPad does not.
Oh so it's the Mac that does the caching? I always just assumed it was the drive. That explains a lot thanks!
I’m not a storage expert but I think the Mac enables the drive’s cache and the iPad writes through.
Original Unix file systems were notoriously unreliable. In the event of a power outage, it was possible to reinstall Unix from scratch using tapes. Several attempts were made to address this issue, such as Veritas. However, Apple introduced APFS with macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and AppleTV 10.3 in 2016.
Despite this, I am uncertain why iPadOS does not utilize caching. It is possible because iPadOS has never been installed on a hard disk.
Despite this, I am uncertain why iPadOS does not utilize caching. It is possible because iPadOS has never been installed on a hard disk.
To mitigate an interruption during a cache write, you first write a flag, then write the cache data, and finally delete the flag. If the flag remains present, the information is considered invalid.