iPad as a laptop replacement

[Kal Madda]

Thank you again for taking the time to make them! I only managed to play around with it briefly. I liked the idea of it, but I was hoping for something more I could use in Numbers itself. Like I can open an Excel file in Numbers, do whatever I need to do, then run the shortcut that saves it as a .xlsx file and deletes the autosaved .numbers file.

My workflow involves a lot of duplicated Excel files, which are separated into different monthly folders, which then are separated into years. I have a daily bank deposit. What I do is duplicate the previous day's Excel file and modify that with the new checks and cash. And also daily sales reports, so I’m working with a lot of duplicated files in lots of different folders.

I know I can do this manually as Numbers can export as an Excel file, and then I can just delete the Numbers file after. Or I can just use the Excel app despite all of its issues. I'm not great with Shortcuts, but I sort of looked into it, not really sure if it's possible to do what I want or not? I'm sure it's possible to modify the shortcut you made and let me select the file, convert it and delete the Numbers file after. Though I'm not sure if that will really end up being faster than just manually doing it anyway.

So, I created a version that grabs all files from Numbers’ folder, converts them to Excel, and then deletes the Numbers versions. And it’s set up to be added to the Share Sheet. And if you want to remove the “Do you want to allow Shortcuts to delete these files” popup, you can go to Settings > Apps > Shortcuts > Advanced > Allow deleting without confirmation. Hopefully this is more helpful. 🙂👍🏻

You can use it via the Share Sheet inside Numbers similar to an export option. 👍🏻

Export Excel

 

[Steve Adams]

Once my current M1 iPad Pro is obsoleted, I’m thinking of getting a Framework laptop and using Linux to replace the iPad. For me the iPad works fine as a travel computer. But, I leave it on the keyboard 95% of the time and I hardly ever use the pencil. So a small laptop makes sense.

With cloud computing, I can integrate the Linux OS with what I do on my Apple hardware and then no worries about Apple’s forced upgrades. I can tinker with the Framework and use FOSS. The downside is that I’m pretty used to Apple’s excellent hardware.

Here in lies the problem with everything. Apple has the best hardware hands down. I am on my 10th gen Ipad with logitech keyboard (I find this better than the apple version), and the overall package is great. I have a cheap dell 11 inch 2 in 1 running zorin os, and while "fine" it's not this iPad.

Same goes for Mac, even more so. Even premium PCs feel cheap compared to the macbook lineup.

I would love to have my Ipad as my only machine, but I don't think it would work for me because of some software I might need for my work situation soon.

 

[DeepSix]

I am impressive with the improvements Apple has made in iPad IOS. You can now drag and drop files from folder to folder with your finger. And when plugging in external storage devices it shows up in the left column. And there's now options to move and copy files. Very impress.

 

[sparksd]

I am impressive with the improvements Apple has made in iPad IOS. You can now drag and drop files from folder to folder with your finger. And when plugging in external storage devices it shows up in the left column. And there's now options to move and copy files. Very impress.

Yes. Integration with external attached storage is important to me as I travel a lot to areas where Internet connectivity is poor or nonexistent, so I have no reliance on the cloud. There were hiccups early on with corrupted data but those have been addressed.

 

[Moreny]

It is not possible to remove the external SSD correctly (Eject button in Files app not work). You have to constantly resort to “workarounds” and force close all applications and make sure that nothing is being copied or read on the SSD at the moment of disconnection. Or I know that some people prefer to turn off the iPad altogether so that files are not damaged during extraction. 🤯

It is not possible to simultaneously play an audio or video stream and do several things at once. For example, when music is playing in the background, if you launch a video, banner, shorts, or reels at the same time, the music is immediately paused. 🤬

On the new iPad Pro M5 13" 1TB, it is not possible to purchase professional editing software such as Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro like one-time purchase. I am not interested in a subscription, and I do not need other unnecessary subscription-based programs. Why is it possible to make a one-time purchase of Pixelmator Pro and FCP on MacOS, but I cannot do so on the iPad Pro M5 13"? 😤

And this is a tablet with an very powerful M5 chip... Very annoying.

 

[DeepSix]

Yes. Integration with external attached storage is important to me as I travel a lot to areas where Internet connectivity is poor or nonexistent, so I have no reliance on the cloud. There were hiccups early on with corrupted data but those have been addressed.

I'm just glad file transfer is easily done on iPads now, as my new iPad is my new on the go everywhere device. Each time I plug in a USB device into my Samsung tablets and unplug it, I get this super annoying pop-up everytime to reboot after. That doesn't happen on iPad, woohoo!

 

[xxFoxtail]

I'm finally all in on my iPad again. I have a friend who wanted to buy the MacBook Neo, offered to sell her my M2 MacBook Air instead for the same price.

 

[Kal Madda]

It is not possible to remove the external SSD correctly (Eject button in Files app not work). You have to constantly resort to “workarounds” and force close all applications and make sure that nothing is being copied or read on the SSD at the moment of disconnection. Or I know that some people prefer to turn off the iPad altogether so that files are not damaged during extraction. 🤯

iPadOS doesn’t require “ejecting” the drive the same way as macOS. Files aren’t being dynamically cached between the drive and device. So long as you finish using or transferring files to the drive, it’s perfectly safe to unplug the drive. Turning off the iPad isn’t required.

It is not possible to simultaneously play an audio or video stream and do several things at once. For example, when music is playing in the background, if you launch a video, banner, shorts, or reels at the same time, the music is immediately paused. 🤬

Yeah, it doesn’t support multiple audio streams, personally, I don’t really have any want or need for such… 🤷🏼‍♂️. I do think they’ll probably add it though if enough people want it, and I hope it’s added for those who want it. 👍🏻

On the new iPad Pro M5 13" 1TB, it is not possible to purchase professional editing software such as Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro like one-time purchase. I am not interested in a subscription, and I do not need other unnecessary subscription-based programs. Why is it possible to make a one-time purchase of Pixelmator Pro and FCP on MacOS, but I cannot do so on the iPad Pro M5 13"? 😤

It depends on the professional editing software you’re talking about, there are plenty that are one-time purchase. In the case of Apple’s apps, I’m guessing Apple is going to remove the one-time purchase options at some point. They’re extremely expensive for one, I would have to be subscribed for at least 6 years before I would have paid for just a couple of those apps, let alone all of the ones in the bundle. And it makes support and improvements more sustainable. Development and new feature updates for these apps are coming much faster since the subscription option was added. My guess is they will drop the one-time purchase model once the Creator Studio is more established. I think it just makes a lot of sense…

And this is a tablet with an very powerful M5 chip... Very annoying.

No device can ever make everyone happy I guess. To me, I couldn’t replace my iPad Pro with a MacBook, nor would I want to. I find so many aspects of iPadOS far more efficient, streamlined, etc. than macOS. The apps I use on the iPad are better than the alternatives I’ve tried on the Mac. I use several iPad-only apps for things like 3D modeling, sculpting, and animation. I vastly prefer the iPad versions of Affinity over the Mac ones. I’ve had the exact opposite experience. I know your mileage may vary, and I’m not trying to come across as discounting your experience or anything. I just have had a very different experience apparently. 🙂👍🏻

 

[Kal Madda]

I'm finally all in on my iPad again. I have a friend who wanted to buy the MacBook Neo, offered to sell her my M2 MacBook Air instead for the same price.

Awesome! Which iPad are you using? 👍🏻 (Sorry if you’ve already said before and I forgot).

 

[xxFoxtail]

Awesome! Which iPad are you using? 👍🏻 (Sorry if you’ve already said before and I forgot).

It's an 11" M4 iPad Pro.

 

[Kal Madda]

It's an 11" M4 iPad Pro.

Awesome! The 11” models are quite compact. I had an 11” M1 I used as my primary computer for about 4 or so years. I just ended up upgrading to the M4 13” last year. I found that the 13” was still portable enough for me, but it was better suited for my workflow. But I did end up with a spare iPad 11th Gen, so now I have kind of the best of both worlds. 🙂👍🏻

 

[DeepSix]

11" iPad IMO is the best form factor. I considered the 13 and just about got it because I like that aspect ratio even more over the 11. But it would make no sense in having another tablet that's so close in physical size to my S9 Ultra.

 

[xxFoxtail]

Awesome! The 11” models are quite compact. I had an 11” M1 I used as my primary computer for about 4 or so years. I just ended up upgrading to the M4 13” last year. I found that the 13” was still portable enough for me, but it was better suited for my workflow. But I did end up with a spare iPad 11th Gen, so now I have kind of the best of both worlds. 🙂👍🏻

I had a 13" M1 iPad Pro before this one. I just wanted something a little more compact this time around. I never traveled with the larger iPad, but I take my 11" everywhere.

 

[Kal Madda]

I had a 13" M1 iPad Pro before this one. I just wanted something a little more compact this time around. I never traveled with the larger iPad, but I take my 11" everywhere.

Awesome! 🙂👍🏻. Yeah, the 11” is definitely more compact. 👍🏻.

 

[rui no onna]

iPadOS doesn’t require “ejecting” the drive the same way as macOS. Files aren’t being dynamically cached between the drive and device. So long as you finish using or transferring files to the drive, it’s perfectly safe to unplug the drive. Turning off the iPad isn’t required.

Has Apple fixed this? Because unplugging my USB flash drive from the iPad (circa iPadOS 13 or 14) corrupted it.

No, I wasn't reading/writing anything but it looks like the system itself was writing a bunch of metadata files to the flash drive.

 

[Kal Madda]

Has Apple fixed this? Because unplugging my USB flash drive from the iPad (circa iPadOS 13 or 14) corrupted it.

No, I wasn't reading/writing anything but it looks like the system itself was writing a bunch of metadata files to the flash drive.

Perhaps you were encountering a bug? I’ve never had any drives corrupted. I’ve heard that early on, some people encountered issues with it corrupting drives, but I’ve not heard of many issues in recent years, so I think they improved it. 👍🏻

Bear in mind also though, some lower quality drives can become corrupted and it’s not really necessarily anything to do with the particular OS. Even Sandisk drives can get corrupted, though I’ve never personally had that happen, but know people who have, and they were ejecting their drives properly on Windows or macOS. Often drives getting corrupted can be a problem with the drive itself, not the OS.

But yeah, Apple’s official documentation doesn’t say you need to do any special steps to eject a drive from the iPad, just unplug it. And in my experience, that works and I’ve never encountered any issues. 👍🏻

Connect external storage devices to iPad

On iPad, use files stored on USB storage devices and SD cards.

support.apple.com

 

[sparksd]

Has Apple fixed this? Because unplugging my USB flash drive from the iPad (circa iPadOS 13 or 14) corrupted it.

No, I wasn't reading/writing anything but it looks like the system itself was writing a bunch of metadata files to the flash drive.

I haven't run into corrupted data or damaged media for quite some time now and feel the earlier problems have been addressed.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Has Apple fixed this? Because unplugging my USB flash drive from the iPad (circa iPadOS 13 or 14) corrupted it.

No, I wasn't reading/writing anything but it looks like the system itself was writing a bunch of metadata files to the flash drive.

What was it formatted as?

I had issues with exFAT formatted USB hard drives at some point. No corruption but they would just randomly disconnect. But it's been pretty solid for a while now. A few years for sure.

 

[rui no onna]

What was it formatted as?

I had issues with exFAT formatted USB hard drives at some point. No corruption but they would just randomly disconnect. But it's been pretty solid for a while now. A few years for sure.

exFAT as I needed to copy files from Windows to iPad.

Since I don't need to write to the drive from the iPad, I've reformatted my 1TB flash drive to NTFS which is read-only on iPadOS and I've had no corruptions with that. I keep a 128GB flash drive as exFAT when I need to copy from iPad to Windows.

 

[sparksd]

What was it formatted as?

I had issues with exFAT formatted USB hard drives at some point. No corruption but they would just randomly disconnect. But it's been pretty solid for a while now. A few years for sure.

Yeah, back in 2020 I had this long thread on file corruption with exFAT storage -

File corruption on copy to external storage

Over on Reddit, I've been in a conversation with a user who was seeing photos being corrupted on copy from his iPad to a Samsung T5 SSD. He was seeing around 5% corruption in just over a hundred files copied. He suspected the T5 was a problem but I have not trusted Files with large numbers of...

forums.macrumors.com

I haven't seen this for years now.

 

[JamesMay82]

I’m importing my family videos into photos app via a external drive but I can’t seem to see a progress bar once i click save video files… does the iPad photos app not show the progress bar?

 

[Kal Madda]

I’m importing my family videos into photos app via a external drive but I can’t seem to see a progress bar once i click save video files… does the iPad photos app not show the progress bar?

I actually don’t know, I’ve never noticed. I may be able to check it later. But I think on iPadOS 26, any of that stuff should show a progress bar. 👍🏻

 

[JamesMay82]

I actually don’t know, I’ve never noticed. I may be able to check it later. But I think on iPadOS 26, any of that stuff should show a progress bar. 👍🏻

Unfortunately I can’t figure it out. I’m finding the best way at the minute is to send in small chunks via air drop which is taking forever… I’m trying to move just over 1TB. Very frustrating

 

[Kal Madda]

Unfortunately I can’t figure it out. I’m finding the best way at the minute is to send in small chunks via air drop which is taking forever… I’m trying to move just over 1TB. Very frustrating

I would use Files. You can navigate to your drive in Files, select all the files you want to transfer (and you could still do it in smaller chunks if you wanted), and use Share Sheet option “Save Image”. This will move the files into Photos. And it’s much faster than AirDrop. I hope that helps. 🙂👍🏻

 

[Brettka7]

I was really hoping for an 11” or 12” MacBook, but we got the Neo.

I ordered a refurb M4 Air for pickup, but decided it doesn’t really bring me any more joy than my aging Intel MacBook Pro. Cancelled the order for someone else to snag.

Decided to order a Magic Keyboard for my 11” iPad Air M1 instead, and man am I glad I did this. It makes the iPad feel “whole” and on iPadOS 26, it mostly feels like a mini touchscreen Mac. I still have my MBP for anything the iPad can’t do, but it’s perfect for when I want to use Instagram and Reddit (Narwhal) on a larger display too.

Super happy!