Is Writing a Thesis on an iPad Do-able?

[palpatine]

LOL, true enough. But I think there are other people who are wondering the same thing. Plus, the answer might be very different today than it was 5 years ago, given how much iOS and apps have developed in that time.

Indeed. A lot has changed.

If a student asked me about writing a thesis or dissertation on the iPad, I'd give them the thumbs up, but would also mention the caveats.

There was a day, not so long ago, when people wrote by hand (perish the thought!) and asked someone with typing skills to type it up for them. Seriously, it wasn't that long ago. Some of those folks are still teaching in universities today. Technology has changed a lot (thankfully), but the key elements of a great thesis or dissertation remain the same: original ideas, significance, thorough research, strong reasoning, etc. For these, it doesn't matter if you have a pen (Apple Pencil?), typewriter, computer keyboard, or virtual keyboard on the screen.

Anyhow, I wrote a lot of my dissertation on the iPad. It is doable. It simply depends on your situation. The iPad isn't "wrong" or "right" for writing a thesis -- it is a tool, and you have to decide if it fits your project or not.

 

[Scuba-EMT]

OK, I'll wade in with my two cents...I am a 3rd year Doctoral student, I'll be attending my last residency after Christmas, with my Comprehesive Exams in January, and I'll start my Dissertation in March. I have an IPad Pro with the Logi Create KB and an Apple Pencil. I use the IPad Pro to view, review and annotate PDF research papers that are synced from my MacPro or rMBP via EndNote and PDF Expert. Yes, I could edit and save my work to and from Dropbox, and the IPP can have a use case as a laptop, but as a workflow issue it would be painful, but it could be done. In my opinion, the IPP's better use case is as I described to work with my research on the go. My more fruitful use is to bring up my research on the IPP while I type on the rMBP, on the MacPro this activity is done by using both 32" monitors. Hope this helps in the decision process of the other learners out there.
Cheers,
Mark

 

[friedmud]

Sure, just use a Bluetooth keyboard and any Latex App (Texpad and Tex Writer are both good).

You were planning on doing your thesis in Latex, right? Anything else would just be masochism....

 

[tonywalk]

Hello all, I have been writing my thesis on an Macbook Air which got dropped and is too expensive to fix. So I am debating between getting a regular MacBook and an iPad as a replacement.

The problem of course isn't the iPad's memory, but the typing function. My question is: How difficult is it to type for one or two hours at a time on the iPad? Is the screen to small for text docs?

Also, I read somewhere that typing on the same plane as the screen feels unnatural. Do you find this to be the case?

Thanks for your advice.

Turn shortcuts off if you can type at eny reasonalbe speed on an iPad. It's taken me 3 months to work out how to do it - press and hold the smiley face on the keyboard, then slide the slider.

Regards,
Tony,

P.S. remember that it only needs a light touch to register a keypress

 

[chinchillas]

Sure, just use a Bluetooth keyboard and any Latex App (Texpad and Tex Writer are both good).

You were planning on doing your thesis in Latex, right? Anything else would just be masochism....

No, I'm a humanities student and I only need MS Word to write. I don't know anyone outside my field that uses Latex.

I decided to ditch the iPad idea, as multiple folders and browsers with many tabs are essential for my writing. I'm sure a thesis can get done on an iPad, but it's just not the best option.

 

[friedmud]

No, I'm a humanities student and I only need MS Word to write. I don't know anyone outside my field that uses Latex.

I decided to ditch the iPad idea, as multiple folders and browsers with many tabs are essential for my writing. I'm sure a thesis can get done on an iPad, but it's just not the best option.

Ugh. I will pray for your academic soul. Latex is pretty awesome for thesis writing. Automatic figure and section number referencing wth automatic bibliography generation saves an immense amount of time. Being able to version control your entire thesis in a git or svn repository is also a bonus.

It may feel foreign at first... but once you get used to it you will never go back.

At any rate: it sounds like you got a lot of good advice here and have come to a decision. I think it makes sense... it would ultimately be quite frustrating to use only an iPad for thesis writing.

 

[phillyboy82]

Sure, just use a Bluetooth keyboard and any Latex App (Texpad and Tex Writer are both good).

You were planning on doing your thesis in Latex, right? Anything else would just be masochism....

No joke there. When I worked tech support at the engineering college there were a few people that came in because they did their dissertation in Word and it **** itself, and they either had a completely corrupt file or one that needed a lot of work done on it.

That was in the earlier 2000s though, so with the new file formats I expect it would be a better situation. Still did a lot of LaTeX back in the day though.

 

[Farrellcollie]

I would not be able to do it. It would take more extra effort due to the device limitations or needed work arounds for me than it would be worth.

 

[palpatine]

LaTeX is very cool, but completely unnecessary for a lot of folks. In my case, I just need plain text, and syncing with Scrivener on the Mac gave me a lot of the formatting options (minor) I needed for all but the final drafts. The iPad, for many use cases, is more than enough. In fact, without the distractions, it may actually prove to be better for just sitting down and getting your writing done.

But, the point about Word's unreliability raised above ought to be addressed here. There was a time, I remember, when I moved my work into Pages and something went wrong. I think an old version overwrote the new one, or something like that. I never trusted iCloud much, and I haven't used it much since.

I don't remember what I did to recover, but I am sure the multiple TimeMachine backups and the fact that I regularly save new versions separately saved me from too much trouble. The point is that TimeMachine is only available on OSX and relying on the iPad alone or someone else's servers can lead to disaster. Unfortunately, iOS is severely limited in this regard. The hardware, operating system, apps, and cloud services all assume an ubiquitous wifi connection from an iPad that never has trouble, through apps that always work, to the cloud that is 100% reliable. None of these things are even remotely true in my experience, so you have to develop workarounds to protect your data, and lazy users who swallow the Silicon Valley hype (mobile + cloud + "it just works") are exposing themselves to nasty, unnecessary risks.

To reiterate what I wrote before, get the tool that fits your workflow -- the iPad will,be fine for plenty of writing projects. I'd simply add here that you also need to take the security and integrity of your data into your own hands, whatever you choose. It just takes a little more thought and effort with something like the iPad.

 

[kazmac]

This is a great thread... I won't have to worry about thesis writing just yet.