iPad2 + Content Creation?

For image work stick with a laptop. The iPad is great, but it's more for content delivery than productive/creative work.

 

You are going to run into the lack of a file system more than anything else. There are so-called work arounds, but it is not that easy. My wife and I are giving it one or two more days to decide to keep it or not. If we sell it, we will just get an 11" Air loaded and call it good.

It's really too bad, we are not asking to do on it what we get done on our MacBook Pro, just a little emailing of photos with file names, uploading of named files to websites, etc. and it is proving to be a big pain in the rear.

 

Well, a couple things.

We got the 64GB at&t model so I can sell stock images right from my iPad while on the road. But when I want to send a file to a client to check out for an ad comp, doing it out of the photo app assigns it a generic name like "photo.jpg" you also can't browse attachments if you are in mail and want to add one like in OSX, instead, having to launch an app instead. There is also no way to have two user accounts so in effect, the device can not be shared like a OSX based system with user logins which limits how one even works with Mail in the first place.

My wife did a bunch of scientific papers in pages 09 on the MacPro and then uploaded them to our iDisk to pull over to the iPad. Not only can you not upload them to a site in Safari like in OSX, they did not look right in the iPad version of Pages. So she would have had to have created them in the iPad version and STILL would not be able to upload them to a site.

Don't get me wrong, I love this thing in term of size, speed, giant touch screen, etc. It's just that for a lot of us in the real world, it is all hype, no productivity without major hoop jumping if that even works.

 

The iPad 2 is amazing... But it can't replace my computer.. or my iPhone. it's a great median between the 2. It is good for simple photo work.. nothing high end though.

 

No File System

Apple has deliberately removed the concept of a file system from iOS. They did this to simplify (most of) your interactions with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

As a result, content in iOS is app based, not file based. That is, content in iOS is related to an application, not a file stored somewhere and accessible by all applications. If your workflow is file based, then the iPad and iOS devices are not for you. Get a laptop.

By file based, I mean: do you create or modify something in an app, then need to use that something elsewhere? Do you move content from app to app or person to person? Even simple things like changing a PDF and then mailing it to a client is file based. Get a laptop for workflow like that. Note that some iOS apps are set up to handle this situation - Mail is the obvious example. But in most cases, forget it.

I should mention that I have an iPad and like it. I'm not anti-iPad.

If you have a file based workflow, you will be very annoyed and hampered by the workarounds you need in order to receive, use, save, and distribute files on the iPad. Use your iPad for its intended purpose - enriching your life.

 

The iPad is modeled as an appliance, not a computer.. Which is fine, I don't need an iPad that behaves the same as an iMac or mbp... I'd probably find dealing with a file system annoying on a pure touch device....

 

This is very subjective, a lot us would find our lives enriched by not needing to haul around a laptop, looking for a wifi spot to upload documents to. I buy the Apple products I need to spend as LITTLE time on them as possible, allowing me to get out in the real world, make salable images, hike, ski, talk to people face to face.

It makes no sense at all for Apple to have handicapped the very device that would otherwise best allow me to do this.

I have found a way to email photos with file names with Goodreader, but I have to use my my wife's email since I can not use my email on this device to attach a photo to.

 

A lot of people (myself included) use Dropbox (or similar) as a "shared location". It works, but you have to be online the whole time.

 

Why can't you use your email? Setting up multiple email accounts on an iPad is easy. In fact, one day, we were out with a friend, he needed to check his email, and I had my iPad with me, so we quickly set up his email on my iPad, he checked his email, sent a reply, etc. We then deleted my friend's account off my iPad, but I regularly have multiple email accounts on my iPad and switch among them as needed.

 

I second the Drop Box solution. It works really good and you files are available on any device using any platform!

 

Actually the iPad is a good mobile solution to many aspects of image creation. I am a professional illustrator and I use the iPad for roughs, a sketchbook, and live figure drawing. Adding photos to Flickr, blogging, emailing, surfing MacRumors, portfolio presentations, and shooting zombies are also on the list of uses for the iPad.

I agree the lack of a central file storage is unfortunate. But Drop Box and email holds all the files I need while I am on the go. I do have a 3G iPad so that makes Drop Box more useful.

Examples of work I've done on the iPad are on my website and blog- http://karichristensen.com .

 

If you're writing is just straight text, then Pages and a blue tooth keyboard will be fine.

Where you run into problems is going back and forth between Pages or Docs-to-Go etc. and Word with complex documents with lots of tables, figures, equations etc. as a lot of times the formatting gets all messed up when you go back and forth.

I'm mainly writing scholarly research article that have lots of those things, so it's too much hassle for me until something more fully compatible with MS office comes out.

And I agree with PatrickCocoa about the file system. That really hampers it for most work uses as well for me. My iPad is basically a toy and an information consumption gadget. I don't use it for any work beyond taking notes in meetings and reading some PDFs on it in Goodreader instead of printing them. All work gets done on my office desktop pc or my home, work provided, pc laptop (or my home desktop--though it's old so I don't use it much).

Hopefully eventually we'll get some full tablet pc or tablet mac that doesn't suck like past ones and we'll have one device that can do all the stuff the iPad does, while also being a useful work tool that for many can replace a laptop when paired with a blue tooth keyboard.

My ideal scenario is to eventually just need a desktop for real work when not on the go, and have a tablet be able to handle all my work needs on the go, as well as being a good e-reader and time waster like the iPad.

But we're probably a few years off from that so I'll enjoy my iPad now and just lug the laptop when traveling (and probably leave the iPad at home as they're to redundant to lug both on trips as I can read news, play games etc. on the laptop and take the smaller and lighter Kindle 3 for reading e-books on the plane etc.

 

+1 for Dropbox. And I LOVE iAnnotate for managing and editing PDF's. I keep all of my documents for dental school in Dropbox, syncing to and from iAnnotate. Works perfectly for me.

 

As far as photos go. Using photobucket allows for file naming, organization through folders and the added benefit that you are emailing weblinks to photos instead of 2-4pm files each time.

This also allows you to HTML link photos into blogs and also into forums (like this one).

 

artstudio is like a mini photoshop, I kid you not. Look it up, amazing app for $3 bucks

 

That is correct, I use ArtStudio because it has most of the tools I use in Photoshop. Sadly pixel based painting apps are currently limited to 1024x1024 so that is the size of my figure drawings on the iPad. Hopefully that image size will be bigger for the iPad2 but so far no app I own has been updated to handle a larger size. Photogene and a couple other photo editing apps can export a larger image of 2500x2500 pixels or more. I think I have edited a photo that was about 5 mega pixels.

I am glad it was helpful Shibbyville. Send me an email anytime if you have any questions. It takes a bit of researching different apps to make the iPad an effective creative tool.