It’s a new decade and it seems that I’m marking it with a really new way of working. I decided back in December that I was going to trade in my trusty Surface book 2 and go for something more portable. I love that device. It’s powerful, the keyboard is particularly comfortable and the battery life is exceptional. I have happily left home and attended a full conference without even considering the need to bring a plug. With standard note taking, checking Email and talking with the office over IM, the laptop seems to be happy to work well over ten hours without a charge.

But it was too big. And let’s face it, too powerful for my day to day needs. I ocasionally jump into some serious development in Visual studio but that’s the exception, not the norm. I certainly go in and out of remote desktops a lot and I use a lot of administrative tools but overall, I used the Surfacebook for writing. Be it in Microsoft word, Emails, instant messaging, blog posts, technical documentation etc, it was primarily a device that I used for some kind of day to day stand by machine. The main worker at home is my destop which is a beast of a machine. In work, I have a reasonably powerful laptop and desktop so really, the Surface Book 2 just wasn’t getting to stretch it’s legs often enough.

So I’ve decided without much deep consideration to give the iPad pro a shot. My priorities this year have changed a little compared to last year. I intend to create more video and audio content and I don’t want to be teathered to my desk so this little device is kind of perfect, I think, for what I’m going to attempt.

Of course, I need something to write on regularly so a device with a keyboard is vital but fortunately, the iPad pro comes with a really nifty little keyboard and the typing experience, although not as nice as on the Surface book 2, is certainly passable. However, let me confirm that in a week or two when I’ve spent a few dozen hours typing things out.

One thing that concerns me is the lack of great spell checking facilities. My spelling is absolutely terrible. I’m not sure how I’m going to cope without that. For example, I deliberately misspelled the word cope there and tried to figure out if it was incorrect. The only way I could figure it out was to read word by word. There is a popup that may be displayed given a certain situation however I haven’t been able to trigger that reliably yet. I should probably read a manual. I’m learning the more complicated commands by trial and error at the moment.

This is just a short blog post to get started with authoring on the iPad. Let’s see how it goes.

So far, reading the content back on the iPad has certainly been accessible. That’s really nice as a year or two ago, the WordPress app wasn’t very accessible when trying to read text in edit areas.