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Is the Magic Keyboard worth it if you already have a MacBook Pro?
- Thread starter kht410
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But seriously, 16GBs and 32GBs of RAM for iPads, that’s beyond overkill. We barely started hitting 32GBs RAM for MacBooks and you know how long MacBooks been out. It’s going to be few years before we even start getting 8GBs of RAM for iPads.
Overkill if the apps are lightweight and mobile only. If you want to see more advanced apps, then you will need more RAM (among other things)
I have a 2018 13" MBP (as well as desktops), but I mainly use the new 12.9" IPP plus the Magic Keyboard.
I find I can do 90% of every day tasks with it. Editing/creating Word docs, no problem. But I wouldn't want to create an entire PPT on it, nor a serious Excel spreadsheet.
For browsing/email, I still find the iPad experience has some shortcomings. Even though it's "desktop Safari", I often find several e-commerce sites don't render checkout correctly, and have been seeing more and more emails not displaying correctly. So, it's aggravating to have to pull out my MBP to finish the last 5% of a task.
Still, the Magic Keyboard really takes my iPad to the next level. For basic use, it's still super fast, super portable, great battery life, and 100% silent. I'd miss it the most if someone came and took it away.
I find I can do 90% of every day tasks with it. Editing/creating Word docs, no problem. But I wouldn't want to create an entire PPT on it, nor a serious Excel spreadsheet.
For browsing/email, I still find the iPad experience has some shortcomings. Even though it's "desktop Safari", I often find several e-commerce sites don't render checkout correctly, and have been seeing more and more emails not displaying correctly. So, it's aggravating to have to pull out my MBP to finish the last 5% of a task.
Still, the Magic Keyboard really takes my iPad to the next level. For basic use, it's still super fast, super portable, great battery life, and 100% silent. I'd miss it the most if someone came and took it away.
I have a 2018 13" MBP (as well as desktops), but I mainly use the new 12.9" IPP plus the Magic Keyboard.
I find I can do 90% of every day tasks with it. Editing/creating Word docs, no problem. But I wouldn't want to create an entire PPT on it, nor a serious Excel spreadsheet.
For browsing/email, I still find the iPad experience has some shortcomings. Even though it's "desktop Safari", I often find several e-commerce sites don't render checkout correctly, and have been seeing more and more emails not displaying correctly. So, it's aggravating to have to pull out my MBP to finish the last 5% of a task.
Still, the Magic Keyboard really takes my iPad to the next level. For basic use, it's still super fast, super portable, great battery life, and 100% silent. I'd miss it the most if someone came and took it away.
Yes, for basic tasks it is certainly a great device. For me the situation is a bit different though. Since I got my 16" MBP my iPad usage has decreased dramatically. I just love the way macOS works and having a 16" display on my couch is great. I use my iPad about an hour a day, but most of my time is spent on my MBP and my iMac. Of course this will change when I start travelling again. I plan to use my iPad more when on vacation. As a serious productivity device the iPad falls short for me.
this is why I prefer not to use iPads. they use base features of an application I use on Mac and I don't want to be without that extra information I've already entered on Mac.
If you are using the "free" versions of Excel and Word, you are correct. They are not full featured. I have Office 365 and I can tell you I have no problems running Excel or Word documents from my workplace and use it everyday while I am work.
Free or paid, the feature set of the iPad Office apps is bad. There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever, even at the slightest. For people that use MS Office heavily, this is a no go and definitely puts them off from seeing the iPad as anything more than a very nice gadget but not a productivity platform.
Whatever dude, all I can say is this, We use Office 365 at work and when in the field we use iPads. Everything we are able to do on the PC's at work, we are able to do on the iPads in the field away from the office. The majority of the desktops at work are Windows based and we have not run into any issues with any of the spreadsheets or Word documents.
Then you are not doing anything complicated with your office documents. Try to use some Excel Macros for example, or just try to create a table of contents in Microsoft Word, just using your iPad. When that works, then let me know.
The frustrating thing here is that, other than the VBA coding options, Word used to have the same features. Microsoft broke a bunch of stuff and first denied it was broken, then decided it was too much work to fix.
How often is the iPad “just enough” I’m looking to get an IPP, but can’t justify it.
I don’t think such a combination would be that productive not to mention the high cost of the Magic Keyboard.
Hi Scott,
You may be saving me loads of headaches with the ipad! 😀
How do I install the office 365 version of EXCEL etc. though?
I’ve gone into App Store this morning, and there are not 2 versions there.
I’ve installed the only versions available. For those version, Excel for me on the ipad is really nerfed Etc.
Hope you can advise.
Regards
Martin
I’m pretty sure that’s the only version you can get on the iPad. All you need to do is download the app and sign in using your office 365 account to enable the full features. And yes, unfortunately Excel on the iPad is horrible.
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It really depends on the tasks to know what "just enough" is.
For instance, I'm a working student where I need to be mobile a lot. On some days, all I do is write down notes, read and do the occasional report writing. Those are the days I can get by with just my iPad. Maybe even more efficiently than a MacBook because the Pencil is the one that makes the difference, the Keyboard is just a plus.
On other days, I need a computer to do coding on VS Code and run graphical design apps like Solidworks or Fusion360. Those are the days where an iPad is just not enough and I would really need my MacBook. And because it's a MacBook, it's definitely nice to do these tasks either when I'm out and about, or when I'm just at home.
Over a year later we finally got 8gb and 16gb RAM on the iPads, and still Apple hasn’t taken advantage of it. Boy was that iPadOS 15 announcement disappointing.