Federico's review of the iPad Air 2 is far more than a breakdown of its specs and features. It's a credo for why the iPad has become his primary computing device.
“The iPad’s screen and body are glued together physically and conceptually. [...] as a computer [it] truly disappears in your hands, feeling like a display that you grab and touch and swipe and throw away when you’re done.
[...]
Three years ago, when I was stuck in a hospital bed and I wanted to continue my work, I started using the iPad out of curiosity, challenging myself to get more done on iOS in spite of its limitations and differences from OS X. Today, some of those limitations still remain, but the iPad and new versions of iOS have solved most of my problems in new and unexpected ways.
The iPad is the best thing that happened to my professional life.”
Like Federico, the iPad—mine is the 4th-gen model—is my primary device. In fact, I don't even own a traditional computer anymore (unless you count my wife's Windows 7 laptop, which I avoid using at all costs).
I'm in a better position than most to find any holes in Federico's argument, but I can't disagree with a single word of his review, or more importantly his philosophy concerning the iPad. It truly is an incredibly versatile device. Most shortcomings with it I've ever come across have been due to lack of developer interest, but even that problem is getting less and less prevalent by the year.
Just to give an example, here are some of the apps that help me get my writing work done:
- I write in Editorial, with a bevy of workflows and TextExpander snippets that make my life at least 10x easier.
- I publish in Squarespace Blog.
- I capture ideas in Drafts and often move my more long-term personal notes over to Simplenote.
- As I come across interesting links in Twitter and RSS, I save them in Instapaper and archive the best stuff in Pinboard (which I often access using Pinner).
- My teammates and I at Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup use Slack and Basecamp to communicate and stay on top of upcoming projects.
- I use a mixture of apps for managing blog photos: VSCO Cam for editing, Pixelmator for creating and/or combining images, Reduce for resizing images to appropriate widths and file sizes (with EXIF Wizard Pro to double-check EXIF data), and Droplr for hosting Spark Journal images.
And this list is just the tip of the iceberg. The iPad has limitations, sure, but those are more and more becoming edge cases. Nearly all my needs are covered by the iPad, and I have almost no desire for anything more.
Further reading: Josh Ginter's review + gorgeous photos of the iPad Air 2 on Tools & Toys.