Hey just read your post, agree with all your points.
In terms of the finance app I can recommend MoneyWiz for cross platform. Used for a while and pretty decent.
Thanks. I checked it out a while back (pre-Banktivity) since it’s part of Setapp but it didn’t click for me. I think it was the budgets that didn’t work—I couldn’t work out how to get a “zero-based” kind of envelope budget like I can get in YNAB. Perhaps I’ll take another look.
Edited to add: yep, I don’t think it’s for me unless there’s some clever trickery with the budget side of things I am missing. I just wish YNAB would add multi-currency support (and I wouldn’t mind support for Australian bank feeds either)!
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I was iPad only from the iPad 4 until the 2015 12.9 iPad Pro then I got a 2017 21” iMac from work. My iPad (2018 12.9” IPP) is my main mobile device.
Where it excels
Battery life
Portability
More full blown desktop like apps (affinity designer)
Pencil support in apps
Where it lets me down
Apps that lack features
For example: Pages is missing several tools that allow me to design like I would on the desktop. (Kerning mainly)
That really is my main gripe. Maybe lack of ability to hook up an external storage but that’s about it. I started down this path with the iPad 2 and you couldn’t even print back then so the iPad has come a long way.
I love my iPad Pro 12.9”. It’s the only laptop I carry for my every day work as a consultant (IT project manager mostly) moving between multiple client offices and the consulting firm I work for. These days that’s mostly in my home city but it would work just as well if I were travelling out of town like I’ve done a lot in the past just not in the last couple years.
That said, my iPad is often more of an easy use screen, keyboard and mouse for a remote Mac or PC. I mostly use Jump Desktop for that with some Parallels Access. Jump Desktop with one of the specified mouse they support works very well.
Delights
- Battery life While I carry a charger I very rarely need to use it. E.g. today I’ve used it pretty much most of the day and the battery is sitting at 38% just after 6pm.
- Mobile data means I can instantly be online almost anywhere. Wifi is increasingly available but not pervasive enough yet around here.
- Instant on Open it up (I have mine in clamshell mode with a Brydge Keyboard) and it’s instantly on and stable. That’s not been my consistent experience with macOS and Windows laptops as I find you need to reboot them too often. I reboot my iPad weekly for hygiene but it’s probably overkill.
- Lightweight Even with Brydge Keyboard. Although there are laptop options now that are both light and have reasonable battery life (eg new MacBook Airs).
- Cloud storage has liberated me from a local file system. Without it I’d probably still be stuck on a laptop. I still have my files sync’d to my Mac and PC at home, but mostly to enable backup etc. Other than that the cloud meets my daily file management and storage needs now. Until recently I’ve been a heavy Dropbox user but am about to migrate my historical files to OneDrive (1TB storage with Office 365). I only use iCloud file storage when I have to. Most of my clients now use SharePoint so most project documents etc are stored there; it works fine despite its reputation.
- I use native iPad apps when I want the benefits they bring. There’s some excellent and mostly functional enough iPad apps but only being able to have one or two apps open at a time means it is really only good for doing one thing at a time e.g. writing. While iOS multi-tasking is useful it’s not as powerful as a full windowed OS like macOS or Windows but they become increasingly confusing the more apps/windows you have open.
Disappointed
- No mouse or trackpad Except for when I’m using Jump Desktop which sees the mouse connected to the iPad via Bluetooth and passes it through to control the remote Mac or PC. Needs to be a specific mouse model though.
- Slide over is clumsy and simply gets in the way. I haven’t found a use for it yet. And when I mistakenly put an app into slide over mode it’s a nuisance to get it out of there.
- iPad apps still lack some key features available in Mac or Windows apps. E.g. I use Pivot Tables a lot in Excel but you can’t create them on the Excel iPad app.
- I’m often comparing two documents in Word or Excel but on their iPad apps I can only have one document open at a time.
I agree with a lot that others have written. A major problem for me is how bad Google Apps are on iOS. Many websites on Safari are also problematic. Otherwise, it makes a good laptop replacement for me.
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@MacSparky I don’t know if you are looking for people using the iPad as a Mac replacement, or just looking for people with opinions about it. 
If the latter, then this may be relevant:
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Oh, yes, this is a big one, especially for email. I just want an app that has email snooze, properly handled Gmail threads, push notifications and keyboard shortcuts. Why is this so hard?
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Agree with almost everything here. One delight I may have misse is the instant on aspect of the iPad. I am at multiple meetings every week where everybody else around the table is waiting for their laptops (mostly Windows based) to boot and wake up.
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Especially when combined with FaceID.
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My situation:
I use a 15” MBP for my main work computer (TB3 docks and multiple monitors at home and at work, so that computer really only travels between those locations). Most of the work that I do is not remotely possible on an iPad, so this will be my thoughts about how my iPad (11” Pro + Pencil + Keyboard Folio) compares with my travel computer (an original 12” rMB).
Delights with the iPad:
- Instant on, always ready, nearly always at hand (the best computer is the one you have with you)
- Exceptionally portable, usable nearly anywhere
- Fast
- Cellular networking, always connected
- GPS
- Fantastic travel computer for reading, watching, writing, communicating
- Coda and Blink mean that I can do software development on my couch or on an airplane (if there’s working WiFi), or just about anyplace
- If what you need to do can be done with a single app, it’s usually a great experience (continued…)
Frustrations with the iPad:
- (from delights…) The instant you need to share documents or data between apps the experience is somewhere in the range of mildly annoying to unbelievably frustrating to practically impossible.
- Related: Getting large data sets onto and off of the device is an exercise in frustration.
- Selecting, copying, pasting text
- Multitasking: There are times when I need apps to stay open, active, and connected when they’re in the background. (For example, ssh sessions that have things running in them, web apps)
- Safari that’s not desktop class and no real alternatives (they’re all wrappers around Apple’s web components)
- Automation: Automation on iOS is like training wheels on a bicycle; it’s easy to get going but it feels bolted on and the implementation is very limiting very quickly
- (edit to add) The Facetime camera is on the side instead of the top (I know that it’s on the official top, but I’m willing to bet that the cumulative number of hours that iPads spend in landscape orientation far exceed those of portrait)
That looks like pretty harsh criticism of the iPad, but I don’t really intend it that way. In reality, I spend at least 20 hours on my iPad for every hour on the 12” rMB, and for the most part the iPad is an absolute delight to use. For 95% of my mobile computing needs, the iPad has become my go to device.
However, when I travel, I still always cary the little MacBook with me, because if and when the brown stuff hits the fan back at home base, it’s a slow but full-fledged Unix workstation and I know that I can do the things that I need to do on it and do them without jumping through hoops or using byzantine workarounds that seem to be the hallmarks of more complex iPad workflows.
Have you tried the latest version of the IOS gmail app? It now has snooze, etc. and keyboard shortcuts on iPad (with external keyboard)
I prefer it to mail.app
I use it as well. I didn’t actually realize it has all those shortcuts. I swear that e to archive has not worked for me recently but I will try it again. Yes, if they’d just add split view support, it would indisputably be the best client. Nothing else handles snooze and threads remotely as well.
I failed to mention that you have to go into Settings on the gmail app and turn on Keyboard Shortcuts
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?co=GENIE.Platform%3DiOS&hl=en
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Delighted
-
Battery life
-
Screen (size and clarity)
-
Portability
-
Many iOS apps mirror 70 -to- 90+ percent of their macOS equivalents (but, Office is a bit degraded for the Mac, esp. Excel, so 70+ percent of an already degraded system is only “OK”)
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EDIT: It is just a joy to use a basic text editor and my Logitech Bluetooth KB and type, in sheer bliss, in a coffee shop! … Did so recently and appreciated the extra focus it gave me. I tend to fiddle too much on my computer or phone.
Disappointed
-
Needs PopClip! (Gosh I love that app!)
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Many tasks seem to take more steps on an iPad compared to laptop
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Selecting and acting on multiple items is so much easier on the Mac (example, selecting and acting on multiple to-do items in OmniFocus … file examples not quite here yet, as file-management is only cloud-based)
-
I love Dropbox; but using it on the iPad causes me a LOT of trouble – More than once, I’ve been quickly dragging through folders, to get to the one I want, and things will stop for a second… I know it’s about to drag one folder into another one!! No!!! No way to stop it. … I know “I did it;” but, did I? … All I did was have a moment where my finger caught a little more friction on the screen…
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File management not “real” yet (external device support and seeing all file types with browse, rename, edit, round-trip edit, etc.)
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iCloud sync still not as fast as Dropbox and other services
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Apple-made keyboards limit one to only a few viewing angles and is too close to the iPad (I use a 3rd party case and a Logitech bluetooth keyboard and have a much lower viewing profile to limit “shoulder surfers,” etc.)
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Photo management is SO much faster on the Mac
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Lack of mouse support – iPad needs mouse support across the board to replicate the speed and ease of some computer-only tasks and efforts
Quick example of a “head-to-head/live competition” between an iPad and a laptop:
I was just working with a friend over dinner at a restaurant. She was helping me sort the madness that is planning travel with multiple cities on the “far end” (“open jaw” or go to one city and return from another).
I brought my laptop and she brought her iPad.
I was initially envious because it was SO much more convenient for her on the iPad. The table was small and, in typical restaurant fashion, they wanted to provide good service and bring things rapidly.
I eventually had to close my laptop and give up. AFTER we were done eating though, her iPad did not work with all the travel sites, touch targets on destination dates and cities were causing her trouble, etc.
We had to go back to several sites via my laptop for them to even work.
I love my iPad, but this experience has made me nervous re: my pending trip, where I am attempting to go iPad-only!
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Perhaps this is a minor issue, but I’m still looking for a good iPad (or iPhone) app that can do an accurate OCR on a PDF file without hurting the quality of the image or vastly increasing the file size. Nuance Power PDF does such a better job that I keep going back to a “real” PC laptop for that task.
-Jeff
For me, I have below points to state about pros and cons of iPad as replacement of Mac/PC.
Pros:
- It is portable, even 12.9 inch one is thinner and lighter than MacBook Pro.
- Battery life is really good, even when I fly from Shanghai to NYC, it lasts long enough for entertainment include watch TV series and read books , even connect Wi-Fi on plane.
- Lots of useful apps, they are cheaper on iPad, I really can’t afford the Mac version: just list some examples here:
- Things 3
- Luma Fusion
- MindNode
- sPlayer
- Scanner Pro
- 1Password
- Notability
- Bear
- All Apple Apps
- Pencil is really good tool to replace mouse on iPad Pro, when I edit video, I use Apple Pencil rather than finger.
Cons:
I am a tech enthusiasm guy, that is to say, I like to try to use lots useful tools.
For example: wireshark, Pytcharm, Xcode, virtual machine to run linux, command line.
But swift playground is really nice app on iPad for people to learn code.
Whatever pros and cons iPad Pro has, I still love this machine, since besides very professional task I have to sit in front of my Mac, I spent most of my time with my iPad to get good use of it.
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My experience is with Scanbot’s IAP OCR option (good, not great) and Prizmo (handles complex documents and boxed text well), but I don’t know about all the apps out there today. For what it’s worth I usually resort to Scanbot for short documents, then clean up the OCR manually.
Zapier always has good overviews. They did one on this subject last fall:
Wow. Thank you for telling me about this. I am baffled as to why they’re optional like that, but Gmail on iPad is much better now! Now they just need to support Split Views and my wishlist is complete.
I agree with this statement. Apps are also cheaper while it has almost or full-featured same as the desktop counterpart.
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Yes you are correct.