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iPad as a laptop replacement
- Thread starter Omar Comin' Yo
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I have been trying to use my iPad as a pc replacement but I just don’t think this will work for my needs.
I have tried copying all my photos from the iPad to an external drive but get file corruption on lots of the photos. Trying to do it this way I lose all the album structure as well which is a deal breaker for me.
The iPad needs some kind of backup feature like time machine, that’s if apple are serious about where they want the iPad to go in the future.
I just don’t want to rely on iCloud or any kind of PC for backups.
I have tried copying all my photos from the iPad to an external drive but get file corruption on lots of the photos. Trying to do it this way I lose all the album structure as well which is a deal breaker for me.
The iPad needs some kind of backup feature like time machine, that’s if apple are serious about where they want the iPad to go in the future.
I just don’t want to rely on iCloud or any kind of PC for backups.
That works but, it also chews up iPhone battery rather quickly which can be a problem when you are mobile.
Also I have been against tethering ever since incurring £300 excess data charges when I did the last time. The thing is the device being tethered treats the tethering as being on WiFi and will therefore download GB’s of data without regards. I also find tethering unreliable. Having iPad Pro on LTE is so much better!
Agree. Great marketing by Apple who took the concept of System on a Chip (SoC) from the iPad and put it in a MacBook to keep it alive a bit longer. At the same time they launched Big Sur, the new iPhone / iPad like features including being able to run certain iOS apps with the common SoC architecture.
Most of the worlds personal computer is a phone. An iPad, makes apps that need more screen easier to use.
Not long ago we required local storage to house everything because online storage wasn’t available or cheap. I still had to print Digital pics to share with my 80 year old mom. Now I just text her an image of the kids.
I used to have to burn CDs to listen to music on the go or in my car. Now I stream music and tv shows. We also cut the cable cord at our house and watch everything online.
Now, more than 3/4 of us create and consume thinks shared digitally. We need an input device to upload it, and an output device to view it.
I’m a programmer. A small portion of what I do requires Xcode, if Apple had an online IDE, or one ported to iPadOS, I could ditch the laptop. I’d just plug in the iPad to a bigger display device when I needed more screen size. I can already set up websites and databases from my iPad to servers I manage.
The future is a portable, handheld, use anywhere device, for most, but not all.
I agree it needs this. A device that doesn’t have a versioned backup system can never be my primary device. It even struggles as a secondary device for me because of this. I kind of work around it by backing up to iTunes regularly which is backed up to time machine, but restoring individual data or apps is still either difficult or impossible.
I can do that but can easily run out of data which is why I like my cellular option. Phone has 30GB for hotspot and iPad has 15GB. Youtube and some other websitex/apps can eat data faster than a hungry pup.
I'm thinking about replacing my 2016 MBP 13", as i don't use it much, with a 11" or 12,9" IPP 2020.
The only reason i want to do this is because i want to edit my Photoshop/Lightroom project with the pencil which i think is more productive for me. I tested the IPP with pencil in storen on Pixelmator and it looked really good and easy.
I have a Mac Mini 2018 i5 32GB RAM in house so the IPP would be an add-on.
Are there any photographers in here who can advise me?
The only reason i want to do this is because i want to edit my Photoshop/Lightroom project with the pencil which i think is more productive for me. I tested the IPP with pencil in storen on Pixelmator and it looked really good and easy.
I have a Mac Mini 2018 i5 32GB RAM in house so the IPP would be an add-on.
Are there any photographers in here who can advise me?
Is this not covered by automatic iCloud backups? This works for me - I can restore everything onto a new iPad without problems, and I have 1TB iPad Pro, so LOTS of data
I personally think iCloud backups are more than sufficient, but there are some users who prefer a Time Machine style backup, where you can access multiple points in time to go back to a specific state if needed. iCloud backups will only give you the last backup made. To each his/her own. I was always fine with iCloud backups on my iPad/iPhone, and I'm also fine with Time Machine backups on my Mac. I can't think of a situation in my workflow where I'd need multiple restore spots, but some people really value that ability.
I do wonder if many people do not realise that you can get to previous versions of say Numbers spreadsheets or Pages documents on the iPad (from menu page, click select, select spreadsheet, then versions) - if you do need to go back to previous point.
I tend to think from comments I read, a lot of users (maybe most?) are not aware of a lot the iPad is capable. Often things don’t work like the Mac (in fact often), but there is usually an iPad way of achieving the desired result if you know how. It has been my practice ever since I started using the iPad as my main device in 2015 to do a web search whenever I want to do something on the iPad and don’t know how. 9 out of 10 times there is a way, either using some process which is not obvious, or using a specific app.
The thing is that you can access iCloud backups through a computer. iPad in itself is not a sufficient advice. Based on what I know you do not need another computer to access backups done for your Macbook. For me personally this is the difference. Primary device for me means a device that can live on its own. As it is iOS devices cannot live on their own. You need a computer to service them. Yes, it does not happen every day but occasionally it happens.
I create content daily and work on a lot of long term projects, both for work and in my personal life. There have been several times over the years that I’ve needed to retrieve older versions of files and even restore older software to get something working. It doesn’t happen often but when it’s needed it is EXTREMELY critical.
You don’t need anything but the iPad and Wi-Fi access to backup, or restore from iCloud. No Mac is required
Except that I don't always have relying WIFI connection. I want to be able to work with the device independently from my Internet connection as I cannot always rely on it.
But how can you do it? I mean how can I revert my iPad to an older iCloud backup from the iPad? I am asking because honestly I cannot make this work. There is nothing like that in any booklet when I bought my iPad and I am not old timer Apple user so I really do not know the full extend of iCloud and how you can use it from your iOS device.
I really don't think you can do that, honestly. As far as I'm aware, iCloud backups do NOT work the same as Time Machine backups. Every time a new iCloud backup runs, it overwrites/deletes the old one. I would think it works that way by design so as not to fill up your iCloud storage with old copies. I wouldn't think it would be that hard to build "Time Machine for iOS/iPadOS" though. They support external drives now, so you could just create an external Time Machine drive just like you do on Mac I would assume.
I really don't know the technical details on any of this though. I could be totally wrong, and maybe iOS just can't support that the way macOS does.
If you want versioned backups saved for the iPhone and iPad, you have to use iMazing. I do agree that Apple should offer something like Time Machine for the iOS side of things.
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Yeah I wish I knew about imazing when I lost an important note in Simplenotes. There was some sort of bug that deleted most the content of my note and I didn’t know for weeks or maybe months. In any case, the app’s built-in version history didn’t go back that far. I was only able to find and restore a portion of the note via an old time machine backup and iTunes, but it was a huge pain to find the data and restore it because of the way iOS is.
I still have yet to get imazing though. Need to hurry up and do that. It seems the only bad thing is still can’t back up and restore older app versions though, only the data, but that’s probably just due to Apple’s tight control over which versions of apps people can install in iOS.
Oh I forgot, most recently I found my checkbook app had somehow reset on its own and deleted all my account balance information. Once again I was only able to retrieve data (though only partial) because I had versioned backups via time machine. People and companies make mistakes, software acts unpredictably. Versioned backups is like a seat belt, you use it every day and hope you never need it, but it only takes once to make it worth it. In my case it’s saved me several times, so it’s simply indispensable to me.
Wait a minute, is there no way to delete emails with the magic keyboard? That’s pretty annoying.
I know, but on the Mac I like quickly highlighting emails with the arrow keys and just hitting the "delete" button real quick. Also selecting multiple emails with the command button.
Yeah I know it's a bit strange the iPad doesn't do it the same way as the Mac. It confused me at first too.
Oh wait I meant shift button not command button, lol. But that doesn’t work either.