I look at the iPad and I think, “This is obviously the future of computing. Why am I not getting on this faster?”
I’m the kind of person that likes to be ahead of the curve on technology and figuring out ways to do things simpler, cheaper, and with more purpose. The iPad fits that in a lot of ways.
When I look at my Dock on my Mac, there’s a lot of overlap between the two platforms:
- Toggl (a work timer we use for client billing).
- Reminders
- Messages
- Tweetbot
- Slack
- Calendar
- Safari
- ReadKit (an RSS reader)
- Transmit
- iA Writer
- Soulver
- Pages
- Keynote
- Numbers
- Photos
- Notes
- Coda
- iTunes
Every single one of those have really good, almost identical iOS counterparts. I also have Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, though I mostly use those for viewing and not editing.
There are a few others, though:
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- InDesign
Unfortunately, those are also my bread-and-butter applications. I spend most of my time in Photoshop and Illustrator.
I don’t even mind that I can’t have multiple apps “running” at the same time on an iPad. In that, there’s not a bunch of windows displayed at a time. Maybe it’s better that only one or two can be seen at once. Do I really need to see my work timer? So long as it runs in the background and tracks accordingly, I’m okay with that.
Maybe it’s better that Tweetbot won’t be running in my face all the time.
Maybe it’s better that my email isn’t always in my face.
If only there were some way around this “Creative Apps” problem. Chrome and Firefox both have iOS versions, but the rendering engines are different so it makes for troublesome debugging of a website.
There’s Pixelmator and iDraw, among a few others, that are like Photoshop and Illustrator, but are they enough? And to my knowledge, there’s no replacement for InDesign. Which I do use from time to time. I have a request to design business cards today, for instance.
What makes me sad, however, is that Adobe seems to be on this kick of splitting up functions across a bunch of different apps. Want to adjust color, go here. Want to draw a rectangle, go here. The names are confusing and I don’t know the difference between what Mix can do vs. Create or whatever they’re calling it now. I think there’s a Fix app, too.
My hope is that Adobe’s pushing those out as beta tests for certain functions and that, internally, there’s a push to develop something more like a “full” Photoshop and Illustrator for iOS.
If this is the future of computing, and if Adobe is serious about creative apps and the platform, then this conversation has to be happening, right? The iPad Pro fixes all these resource constraint problems, right?
…right?
Maybe next week I’ll see how far I can get using iOS-only. As a graphics and web designer, I can’t be the only person that wants to at least try, but hasn’t bothered to adjust to the different workflow, apps, and learning curve.