Thursday, January 7, 2016

Laptop or Tablet?

In 2012, I asked: "Are We Entering the Post-PC Age?" Then in 2013, I wrote about my experience with my iPad3 and iPad mini. In 2014 I outed my apparent iMania, and in 2015 I kept quiet. Let us start a yearly tradition when at the beginning of 2016, I write about a laptop or a tablet.

This question has perturbed the Community since Apple's CEO Tim Cook presented the iPad pro as the replacement for the laptop. For me, the continuing debate is just a tempest in a teacup: Computing is a field where everybody has his/her preferences according to her/his needs. So it is with Red Baron.

From small to big, my iPad mini, coupled with a Logitech keyboard, is my device to take notes in libraries or when traveling. Although some people call the iPhone 6S Plus a phablet due to its huge display, I never thought of it as a replacement for the small iPad. What made me change my phone was not the larger real estate but the excellent camera of the iPhone plus. Consequently, I did not take a separate camera on my last year's trips to the Holy Land and Berlin.

For working on my texts at home, I now use the iPad pro connected to the Logitech keyboard instead of the iPad air. The larger iPad pro display is just gorgeous for surfing the Internet. The split-screen arrangement lets me work on my English texts, with the Linguee dictionary readily available on the side.


The home screens on my two iPads reveal some significant changes between 2014 and 2016. Starting in the first row:


I continue using Pocket Informant to manage my appointments, tasks, and contacts. All iOS calendars and tasks stay perfectly synchronized in iCloud on all my devices: Desktop PC, iPad pro, iPad mini, and iPhone 6S plus.

Having tried out many other Mail clients, I eventually switched back to Apple's seamlessly integrated application. However, sending group emails is still not possible. Here I depend on Microsoft's Outlook on my desktop PC.

Of all those many weather apps for the iPad, I chose Weather Pro HD, the most comprehensive one. I still keep Meteogram, although its local weather prediction has shrunk to two days only.

Wikipedia's icon was produced with iHomeIcon, an app allowing users to program specific actions. My late son took a photo of Frederick the Great's monument on Unter den Linden on one of his trips to Berlin. Touching the icon will directly open my Wikipedia watchlist.


The second row starts with a special icon calling up Red Baron's Blogs.

Built-in Safari has matured considerably over the last two years. This browser is a must because most apps address it by default. A few apps, however, allow me to switch to my favorite Chrome browser.

Badische Zeitung allows me to read the latest local news about Freiburg. On the next page, another app will download the complete digital edition of the BZ. Since Elisabeth and I read the paper edition every morning, I could add the digital subscription for a modest fee allowing me to stay abreast of Freiburg news when away from home.

Flipboard is one of the more sophisticated newsreaders.

Third row: Remember PhatNotes? PhatWare Corporation never extended the iPhone app to the iPad platform. In fact, Phatware has now stopped all support for this innovative database application. In searching for an ersatz, I looked for an app with encryption to protect my stored passwords. This is why Microsoft's OneNote has left its shadowy existence on my computers, fulfilling my need to synchronize my stored data on all iOS devices and my PC perfectly.

There is nothing to add for Nebulous; my one and only text-typing app displays one row of programmable touch keys at the bottom of the screen, including fast cut, copy, and paste, as shown in the screenshot above.

Apple's new Notes app has become my favorite for taking quick notes synchronized with all my iOS devices. The only b-moll is that the information is not readily available on my PC.

Linguee has replaced all my other dictionaries in iOS. It comes in handy working on the iPad pro in split-screen mode (see above) and has the most extensive English-German database. In addition, German-English and French-English dictionaries can be downloaded locally and be used offline. A French-German online dictionary is presently in beta testing.

Facebook remains fascinating to me since I adhered to a couple of German-American Internet portals such as there are: German Community in Madison, The German Club at UV-Madison, The German Madison Freiburg Sister City Committee, German Wisconsin, The German School of Madison, Max-Kade-Institute for German-American Studies, German Culture, The German Way, German Heritage USA, and I like Germany. Facebook also serves the Academic Year in Freiburg (AYF) program to spread information to its students.

Fourth row: Utilities groups speed testers (at home with Deutsche Telekom, I now frequently clock up to 49 Mb/s paying for 50), unit converters, and other helpful stuff.

Sport1 allows me to look at the scores of all major sports events and even follow the US baseball season.

PCalc remains my favorite and frequently used RPN calculator.

Office contains the matured Microsoft Office Suite, the pre-installed Apple Office Suite that I never use, and a couple of other text processors, as well as PDF converters.

I tried a few fancy alarm clock apps but eventually returned to the built-in Clock.

The last row of icons starts with Photos. I carry around a couple of picture galleries on all my iDevices and photos of my most memorable events year by year from 2000 - the advent of digital photography - to 2015.

Evernote contains all my collected snippets of odd and sometimes helpful information I ordered into categories.

Status Board is a programmable app displaying your recent emails, upcoming events from your personal calendar, local weather, time, date, and information on selected news channels. This is an ideal app for a quick look at what is up.

Google gives me direct access to queries on the Internet.

No comments for App Store and Settings.

My answer is clear in returning to the original question, Laptop or Tablet. Some tasks are either not possible or difficult to perform on iOS devices. On my desktop PC, I use Microsoft Expression Web to edit my websites, I "photo-shop" my photos with Paintshop Pro, and I use Microsoft Outlook for group emails. Printing is still a pain in the neck with iOS, and I do not like to leave my printer powered continuously. Ultimately, I need my PC and two iPads to be efficient.
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