All iPads Productivity

For work:
Penultimate - taking handwritten notes
Goodreader - pdfs
Dropbox - files in the cloud
Numbers - spreadsheets
Pages - word documents

It helps to also have a LTE iPad if you are going to travel at all.

Depends on what you do as far as work goes. I would say good apps to start off would be iWork suite (Pages, Keynote, Numbers), which is pretty handy when it comes to school, work or anything. They are similar to word, excel and powerpoint. There are thousands of apps out there. There is an app for pretty much any kind of productivity you do.

my iPads are generally for entertainment purposes. Until the MS Office suite for iOS comes out, it use is limited for work. Email is the closest it comes to real help.

HowardSmith said:

my iPads are generally for entertainment purposes. Until the MS Office suite for iOS comes out, it use is limited for work. Email is the closest it comes to real help.

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That completely depends on what your job is. I am in sales and travel, it has been a huge help for me to have all my pdfs, spreadsheets, and other documents readily available since the iPad is instant on. Previously I would have to get my laptop out (annoying to do in the car), wait for it to wake up, launch my hotspot so I have internet connection, maybe realize my hotspot is dead so plug it in, wait for laptop to connect to hotspot, then finally begin whatever work I needed to do. Now I just pickup my LTE iPad and get done whatever I want. There are lots of normal business needs that the iPad can have quite an impact if you find the right apps.

However they are great for entertainment too

GBR said:

That completely depends on what your job is. I am in sales and travel, it has been a huge help for me to have all my pdfs, spreadsheets, and other documents readily available since the iPad is instant on. Previously I would have to get my laptop out (annoying to do in the car), wait for it to wake up, launch my hotspot so I have internet connection, maybe realize my hotspot is dead so plug it in, wait for laptop to connect to hotspot, then finally begin whatever work I needed to do. Now I just pickup my LTE iPad and get done whatever I want. There are lots of normal business needs that the iPad can have quite an impact if you find the right apps.

However they are great for entertainment too

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Would you not find it also very useful to have Apple allow us to have a file system where we could download our files on our iPad for our use when we do not have WiFi.

I, too, plan on using my iPad 4 LTE in the field to access our Dropbox files which holds all of our company bids and files. It would be really nice if Apple would allow us to download these files onto my 64gb iPad 4 but it is NOT allowed. This is my biggest complaint against Apple vs Android. Apple will never let the iPad be all it could be, you got to live within it's restricted ecosystem/iTunes.

I've been quite successful with loading documents into Goodreader if they are documents i need access to without a data connection.

Writing projects:

Drafts app for quick notes
Pastebot for collecting text snippets
GoodReader for PDF annotations
Pocket and Instapaper for articles
NewsRack for RSS feeds
Kindle app for e-reading

sorry to thread hijack, but this is related..

are excel apps such as numbers on ipad compatible with open office on mac/pc?

for example..i open work emails that are .xls and use open office on my mac to input into them. could these files work on the ipad version of numbers?

Yes, the lack of a file system is just plain stubborness for the sake of being stubborn on Apple's part. People understand what a file system is if you're less than 60 years old. It's not hard and a not even close to dead metaphor.

And put me in the camp that believes that the iPad, b/c its lack of a keyboard, is highly limited as a true productivity device. I can't do anything productively on an ipad except read a book and surf. Any input-related features, are severely lacking. I write emails faster on my iphone, and longer emails faster on my laptop. There are no input cases where the ipad beats either of these. Never understood the usefulness of tablets. The macbook air 11" is the ultimate mobile productivity tool.

HowardSmith said:

Would you not find it also very useful to have Apple allow us to have a file system where we could download our files on our iPad for our use when we do not have WiFi.

I, too, plan on using my iPad 4 LTE in the field to access our Dropbox files which holds all of our company bids and files. It would be really nice if Apple would allow us to download these files onto my 64gb iPad 4 but it is NOT allowed. This is my biggest complaint against Apple vs Android. Apple will never let the iPad be all it could be, you got to live within it's restricted ecosystem/iTunes.

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You can move files Fromm Dropbox to apps like Ifiles.

unagimiyagi said:

The macbook air 11" is expensive.

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Just sayin'

Thegolem said:

Just sayin'

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It's a wash if you are using it for work. Lightweight and productive paid back in spades.

joshsage said:

It's a wash if you are using it for work. Lightweight and productive paid back in spades.

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Doesn't it depend on the work?

As a college student I generally use:
Evernote. - note taking
Fourpoint - keeping track of my grades and GPA
Google drive - since our school email runs through Google, this is a lifesaver for presentations/research papers
Dropbox - backing up programming files from our windows CS lab
Mail - for mail of course

I generally just use it for school, but I'll play the occasional Angry Birds or Tiny Wings

I'm a university student as well,

And I use OmniFocus on a daily basis, I have numbers, pages and keynote, mail, iCal, Dropbox (starring saves offline), kindle (just started buying books) and etc.

16gb's is just enough for me with my music, but that's a different thread.

Pages - I have written 1000 word essays on the iPad, and did the research and kept notes in Evernote.

Goodreader - All my important documents locally, and everything else in iClouds reach.

Photo editing - Editing photos as a hobby is fun on the iPad. I have no rush or deadlines to meet, so speed in processing 100's of images is not an issue.

Omnifocus - All of my tasks managed. It is great.

Other than that, I pretty much use it to check out content.

For developing the website in my signature I used all of these and a little bit more...

GoodReader as others have said

Dropbox

Textastic for coding

SSH Term Pro - access to my server via terminal session

iFTP

FilesConnect is also good for unzipping and file management/upload etc.

Blogsy for updating the site with articles...

luqtotheman said:

Looking into an ipad and how do some of you guys use your iPad for productivity? For school? Home? Work? etc.

any apps would help too

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Going to repeat some already mentioned but which are worthy of a second shout:

- Evernote (love this app)
- Dropbox (SugarSync to a lesser degree, but that's just my setup) => I have access to 12GB of storage between the two
- GoodReader (tried PDFpen, but am not as happy with it as GR)
- Pages

- Wunderlist, a free task manager app, with a desktop version I run on my iMac which syncs (also there's a web-based version you can access), all free!

Starting to play with two new apps, both of which seem excellent
- Penultimate
- Notability

So many more, not the least of which are all the games, essential if you plan to be fully productive on this device, a little fun/downtime is required! My favourite of late are: The Room, Tiny Wings (my new fave), Water? and Lep's World 2.

HowardSmith said:

Would you not find it also very useful to have Apple allow us to have a file system where we could download our files on our iPad for our use when we do not have WiFi.

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You can, there are lots of ways (I've been out of the iOS world for awhile, newly back with my mini purchase, which I absolutely love).

I've never tried iFiles (which someone suggests in this thread, I've heard good things about it, reminds me to go try it now).

Dropbox allows for offline synchronising, as does SugarSync, both of which allow 6GB of free storage (offline, which can then be synchronised to your iPad). You can then open the file in another programme (such as Good Reader or Pages or PDFpen or whatever you want), which acts like a "send to" operation as far as I can tell.

Good Reader is also a great tool for managing files as it allows you within the programme to connect to external servers (so you don't have to open Dropbox first, then send the file to the programme of your choice).

There's lots of threads like this, but...

GoodReader: great for PDF files and annotations, but also does a fine job of acting as a "file system" for saving miscellaneous email attachments and such and organizing my reference library of PDF files & articles.

Noteshelf: great handwriting app. Like Penultimate but more features. I also have Notes Plus if I need to do handwriting-to-text conversion.

Evernote: 'nuff said.

Keynote: I use it constantly, and I'm able to - for my purposes - author a great percentage of my talks right on the iPad; no desktop or laptop intervention. I also present right off my iPad to the projector and/or HDTV in our conference room. And I sometimes use my iPhone as a remote (via Apple's Keynote Remote app).

Pages: does a fine job for basic word processing.

Calendar & email: the obvious.

Wolfram Alpha: handy for the occasional algebraic equation.

Adobe Acrobat Creator: converts nearly any office-type document into a PDF file, including complex Word files I receive as email attachments.

Citrix Receiver: connect to the Citrix server at work for the custom Windows apps I occasionally need.

I can do 90-95% of what I need a laptop for on my iPad.

Edit: forgot one. TouchDraw for flowcharts and cheaper by far compared to Omnigraffle.

Omnifocus for iPad. I've got their whole suite: you get what you pay for.
Simplenote for notes taking
Mail.app
Reeder en Tweetbot for news gathering

HowardSmith said:

Would you not find it also very useful to have Apple allow us to have a file system where we could download our files on our iPad for our use when we do not have WiFi.

I, too, plan on using my iPad 4 LTE in the field to access our Dropbox files which holds all of our company bids and files. It would be really nice if Apple would allow us to download these files onto my 64gb iPad 4 but it is NOT allowed. This is my biggest complaint against Apple vs Android. Apple will never let the iPad be all it could be, you got to live within it's restricted ecosystem/iTunes.

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Can't you import them into an app such as goodreader? Not as flexible as access to a file system but it is workable. I just downloaded an app called Notebooks that allows you to create a file system of sorts within the app. I haven't played around with it much but it does seem like another option.

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Another useful productivity app is LogmeIn Ignotion for accessing files from other computers. It's fairly expensive at the moment, $100 or so.

reputationZed said:

Can't you import them into an app such as goodreader? Not as flexible as access to a file system but it is workable. I just downloaded an app called Notebooks that allows you to create a file system of sorts within the app. I haven't played around with it much but it does seem like another option.

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Another useful productivity app is LogmeIn Ignotion for accessing files from other computers. It's fairly expensive at the moment, $100 or so.

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I could, but I got over 1200 Word and 300 Excel files I need access to. I would just like a stupid folder that I could put all my docs in without jumping though the hoops created by Apple/iTunes.

It will cost more by my answer is soon to arrive, my new 64gb LTE iPad 4 will be here soon and I will just use LTE to get to my Dropbox account.

Stupid restrictions like this is why lots are leaving Apple and going to Android, it is more open and versatile. It sucks that Apple tells me what I can do with my 64GB of memory. The iPad could be SO MUCH MORE! Kinda feels like the government telling me what to eat.

HowardSmith said:

Stupid restrictions like this is why lots are leaving Apple and going to Android, it is more open and versatile.

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What are you talking about? iPhone sales have increased steadily since it was launched (see here). They are hardly *leaving* for Android, they're coming to Apple products in greater numbers. As for the iPad, those numbers have also increased since its launch (see here).

I found this interesting article talking about how the main reason people choose Android is because that's what's available on the carrier of their choice (here). And this article (here) says that while 76% of current iPhone users will definitely upgrade to the latest phone, 32% of Android users want it as well. That's not a huge exodus from iOS to Android. The market is growing, and both sides are increasing sales, but I don't see the mass switch away from Apple as you say. Further, Android is locked down by each carrier to the point that you can't even upgrade to the latest Android version sometimes, so this whole "Android equates with openness" concept is a fallacy.

ob81 said:

Pages -
Photo editing - Editing photos as a hobby is fun on the iPad. I have no rush or deadlines to meet, so speed in processing 100's of images is not an issue.

.

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What app do you use?