Unfortunately, the issue isn’t learning new workflows, the issue is that the available workflows on the iPad are generally terribly inefficient when compared with a desktop operating system. There are some things which I think are better—for example, I think it’s easier to focus on a particular task without distractions; I actually like Split View for working with two windows or apps; and certain things like iCloud Keychain, autofill, and similar features appear to be more polished and less glitchy than on macOS. If iOS on the iPad provided more core system services to the end user—like a file manager, cursor support, and a decent printing system—that would do wonders for productivity.
I’m fairly sure that I know most of the tricks. Multitouch to select multiple elements doesn’t work when you’re trying to select a diagram on a slide, and that diagram contains maybe 20-30 tiny lines and other elements which aren’t grouped together. You can’t even select them to group them and then move the grouped element. Sometimes, there are text boxes or other elements which aren’t easily visible or mostly overlap other elements, so you might select *most* of the elements but miss some which you now have to fix. Even if you could figure out a way to zoom in to all of the elements while simultaneously holding down the first touch to select everything that way, it would take exponentially longer than a 2 second click & drag to select just what you want with the mouse or trackpad on a laptop. Also, PowerPoint on iOS apparently doesn’t permit you to select multiple slides to move or delete—you have to do it one at a time.
I am somewhat amused by the number of folks complaining that they can’t run software development workloads on the iPad. I would never even suspect that an iPad (or any type of tablet PC) would be the proper device for that type of work. However, that is not the work that most folks are using desktops or laptops to accomplish. My point above is meant to illustrate that even rather simple office-type business tasks can’t be efficiently completed on the iPad, or can’t be completed on the iPad at all.
With regard to the iPhone, I’m not sure how people use them for any significant work apart from email and texting. When I had the iPad 3 LTE, I carried a flip phone. I now have an iPhone, which is with me all the time and lets me do much more in a pinch—but anything that the iPhone can do, the iPad can generally do better because of the larger screen. However, the iPad is a minor and not a major upgrade from the phone, because the core functionality is basically the same. Think about how crazy it is that you are suggesting using *two* devices to copy and paste between documents of the same application. That’s just another symptom of the rather severe limitations of iOS versus a desktop operating system (and assuming I have all documents stored on one device, it isn’t super convenient, either).
Again, I do like the iPad, but I sure wish that Apple would considerably enhance the capabilities of iOS on the iPad platform.
