iPad Pro is a better laptop replacement than you think

My plan was to use the iPad Pro as my only device for an entire week.

In the end I found myself heading back to the MacBook when I felt I needed to play safe.

My caution was unnecessary. In hindsight the iPad Pro may have been a better tool for the job in question.

View this as a miniature case study:

Newspaper production

Last Wednesday I was asked to help with final production on The New Zealand Herald's Deloitte Top 200 report.

For editors and writers, newspaper production is mainly about reading last minute page proofs. We’re looking for errors, writing and rewriting headlines or captions and so on. It can mean dealing with large files, usually PDFs of page proofs, from the NZ Herald’s editorial design system.

There’s also fact-checking; researching people’s correct name spellings and job titles.

Files can fly thick and fast during last minute production. Speed is essential.

Too many unknowns

Although iOS does a decent job managing personal files generated with iOS apps, there were too many possible unknowns to deal with.

I didn’t want to get all the way to the office then find the iPad Pro couldn’t open one of the file types. Nor did I want to find out too late that my iOS apps weren’t the right tools to make late page edits.

Also it could have been embarrassing if I needed to find out how to perform some unexpected or unfamiliar operation that is a cinch on a Mac but an unknown on the iPad while others were waiting for me.

MacBook instead

For all these reasons I packed the MacBook certain that it could handle all the work and that I know how to make it fly.

On the day we did the job with full-size printed paper proofs and pens. Someone else made the onscreen changes to the pages.

This may sound archaic to geeks, but proofreading is more effective on printouts than on screen. Eyes and brains read print and screens in different ways. Errors that stand out in print are overlooked on screen.

Fact checking

There was plenty of fact-checking, but no file-juggling. There was some emailing of photos to designers — I’ve worked places where you need to log-in to a server-based content management system to get the pics to the right place. That could have been a challenge on the iPad Pro.

On the occasions where I needed to read proofs on screen, the large high resolution iPad Pro screen would have been a better option than the MacBook. Granted there’s not much in it, but the iPad is a better reading device than a conventional computer.

I should have had more faith in the iPad Pro.