iPad-Enforced Focus

I recently got an iPad. When the new iPads Pro and Air (I think it’s an attorneys general-style pluralization situation?) came out a few weeks ago, I was intrigued. It was so much computer for a device that can barely multi-task, especially for the iPad Pro. It seemed (and still seems) unnecessary.

I guess, you can use them for visual and audio creative stuff that apparently requires some chunky compute (I wouldn’t know as a mere text-based creative). That’s what the now infamous commercial about the new iPads destroying art seems to imply.

As a software developer, I wanted to see if I could turn an iPad into a development environment. It’d be pretty cool to have a touchscreen, ultra-portable beast of a computer in the new iPad Pro—especially if it could run the hefty AI models like Llama 3 70b.

Unfortunately, after quite a few Reddit and Apple Support rabbit holes, I determined that it’s not realistic to use an iPad as a development machine. Even if the hardware is there, iPadOS doesn’t have good ways to multitask, use an IDE, or access the operating system.

But, while embarking on this unsuccessful journey of wishful thinking, I discovered that there’s an iPad (not Air, not Pro) for only $350. It’s not the latest M\d+ beast of a chip that can run Llama 3 70b or whatever, but it’s sufficient to browse, watch, and read.

I like to browse, watch, and read, so I spent a few months of my accumulated Amex points to get an iPad.

In the few weeks since the iPad arrived, I have unsurprisingly enjoyed it for browsing, watching, and reading.

However, I’ve noticed that the medium of the iPad has changed how I spend my time with technology. The same lack of multitasking functionality that makes the iPad so unappealing as a development environment, has made it quite useful for maintaining my focus on a given task for longer periods compared to using my computer. Also, the bigger screen has made me drift to reading longer-form content with better reading comprehension.

In the rest of this post, I muse on how the iPad has helped enforce my focus, and the effects of this on my usage of it.

Context Switching on an iPad Is Annoying

Let’s start with contrast. Context switching on a laptop running an OS like macOS is easy. Especially if you’re something of a power user (as I’d consider myself), modern operating systems make it quite easy to switch between many apps—browser, Zoom, Slack, VS Code, etc. On macOS, there are keyboard macros that let you move across desktops and between apps with ease.

This functionality is quite useful if you need to switch between a bunch of things. In my day job as a software engineer, it often feels like I’m doing at least five things at once. VS Code for writing code. Terminal for executing it and interacting with the OS. Browser for frequent ChatGPT-assisted troubleshooting, writing documents, and so much more. Slack for talking with my teammates. Zoom for meetings. The list continues.

While switching apps and contexts might be necessary, it comes with its own well-documented costs. Whenever I switch contexts, I am more likely to get distracted and procrastinate (looking at you HackerNews). I find this problem worse when switching between tasks in the browser since I can lose my focus by simply changing to another tab without even having to leave the application.

On my iPad, I am much less likely to engage in context switching-induced procrastination because switching apps on an iPad is much more annoying. For one, you cannot see the other apps lingering in the background like you can on a desktop. There’s also nothing quite as fast as the macOS keyboard macros for switching between apps. Of course, you still can switch between apps on the iPad pretty easily and the newer version of iPadOS does have limited support for multitasking. But it doesn’t approach the scale or speed of the macOS context-switching functionality.

Locking in on a task without distraction is extra pertinent for the things I’m using my iPad for, namely not my job. When I’m using my laptop for work, even if I get distracted when context switching, I will likely be pulled back into the task at hand because I have to do certain things to not, like, get fired, lose my health insurance, be evicted, etc. For the more personal use cases of my iPad, even if it’s for productive personal enrichment, I don’t have the same existential material concerns hanging over me if I don’t continue with a given task.

As a consequence of the iPad-enabled focus, I’ve found myself using it for tasks that require more focus. This includes reading longer-form pieces of content like academic papers.

I also love using the iPad for writing. This surprised me a lot. I’ve always enjoyed writing but struggled to write for pleasure while also working a full-time job. I’d have many ideas for blog posts and articles that I wanted to write, but didn’t have the energy or attention to follow through on them off hours. When I’d start writing something on my laptop, I’d get distracted by some tab in my browser, be pretty unproductive for 45 minutes, and then close my laptop in frustration and shame with barely a few bullet points of outline written.

Due to the comparatively high cost of context switching on the iPad, I am not losing myself as much down these internet rabbit holes. Resultingly, I am writing more stuff that otherwise wouldn’t get written. Exhibit A: the post you’re reading right now.

Though, it’s worth noting that I find myself less inclined to do research to include links and quotes on my iPad given that I’d need to context switch to find that information. Arguably, including quotes and links, with the research that this entails, would strengthen my writing, so the cost of context switching has a tradeoff. But then again, I wouldn’t be writing this at all if I weren’t on the iPad in the first place…

It’s worth noting that for me to do serious writing on an iPad, I must use an external keyboard. I was surprised by how well I can write with the on-screen keyboard in landscape mode, but it’s not nearly as fast or accurate as using a stand-alone keyboard. You also lose a lot of screen real estate to the on-screen keyboard. I’ve been using an Apple Magic Keyboard for my iPad writing, and I am quite satisfied with it.

Most recently, I started using a stand to keep the iPad propped up in portrait mode while writing. I am not sure why, but I prefer writing with the text in portrait mode. Perhaps this is because it more resembles how you usually read a document in portrait mode.

Writing on the iPad has been a great experience so far. I hope that this trend continues and I continue to use the iPad to write a lot more.

Screen Size Matters

On my phone, I am addicted to the Economist and NY Times apps the way many are addicted to scrolling through social media. (Pretty sick flex, right?) I can spend hours a day locked into these apps, doom-scanning the news. (The current doom du jour, as I write this in early July 2024, is Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, and its existential implications for the republic.)

The smartphone screen size lends itself pretty well to reading a news article. However, it’s suboptimal for reading many other forms of content. I find it hard to deeply engage with a longer body of text on the small screen. This is especially true for academic papers, which are typically PDFs that I can’t easily adjust the text size on.

Reading these papers on my phone has been a deeply unsatisfying experience. As mentioned in the previous section, I often have a “context-switching problem” when reading academic papers on my laptop.

The large screen size of the iPad also makes it easier to highlight and annotate these papers than if I were on my phone. Resulting, I’ve been reading a lot more academic papers on my iPad. (Even sicker flex, right??)

I also read more graphic novels, as I find they work much better on bigger screens. Most recently, I read the wonderful Daytripper by Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon. (The sickest flex of all?!?)

Using the iPad for these large-screen tasks has let me engage with new forms of content while reducing the amount of time spent on my phone.

What is(n’t) an iPad for?

My MacBook, iPhone, and iPad can fundamentally do the same set of tasks. Yet, I use each of them for pretty different things. They are each optimized for a different set of tasks.

The comparative advantages of using a smartphone and personal computers are fairly obvious. Or at least it seems obvious in hindsight, now that personal computers have been around for a few decades and smartphones ~15 years. Use a smartphone for personal things, things that require a camera, things that you do on the go, etc. Use a computer for productivity and tasks that require beefier compute.

The iPad falls somewhere in between a laptop and a smartphone. I am not sure quite what that means, but I think it makes hand-wavey sense. I think this opens up its surface area of optimal use cases to almost everything that smartphones and computers aren’t optimal for. For me, this primarily means reading long-form content and writing for pleasure. For others, an iPad can be good for other tasks that matter more to them, be it creative tasks like drawing or watching movies on a plane.

But Seriously, Where’s macOS for the iPad?

As I started writing this post, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to wrap things up. But now that I am reaching the end, I realize that I want to end it similarly to how I began: I think it’d be really great if I could use my iPad as a development environment. And more generally, I would love to be able to side-load some flavor of macOS on it.

Now that iPads are as powerful as they are, plus so much software being on the cloud anyways, most people don’t need the hardware specifications of a laptop. The main reason to use a full personal computer like a MacBook is for its operating system, multi-tasking, and dedicated applications.

Windows has had the Surface computers for years now that let you do some flavor of tablet-PC hybrid that I’m talking about here. I’ve never used a Surface so can’t speak to it firsthand. And given the previously-mentioned point about me doing less research when writing on an iPad, I am not going to look into how exactly Microsoft Surfaces do this 🤗

To make macOS work on an iPad at the Apple standards of excellence, I’m sure it’d require some clever UX design plus some low-level software magic. Do you know what company specializes in clever UX designs plus low-level software magic that meets the Apple standard of excellence? Hint: it’s named after a fruit.

This leads me to think about the fact that Apple hasn’t let macOS load on the iPad in somewhat conspiratorial terms. Given that it’s presumably a straightforward engineering effort that I and many other Apple customers would enjoy, why hasn’t Apple done this yet?

Based on my internet research, I haven’t found a compelling answer to this question.

So, let’s speculate on some reasons:

1. Apple wants to keep selling MacBooks in addition to iPads. Suckers like me will buy both instead of one if the iPad cannot do what we’d use a MacBook for. Apparently, most Mac users also have iPads, lending evidence to this theory.
2. There’s no appetite for disrupting the successful iPad and Mac product lines.
3. This is a feature that they have already developed or could quickly develop that they’ll roll out when business needs justify it.
4. There is a malicious cabal of Apple executives who personally hate me and are scared of the developer productivity that I’d have if only I could use an iPad as my programming environment. In order to bring me personal harm and curb my developer productivity, the executive cabal has quashed any budding initiatives to bring macOS onto the iPad.

We may never get macOS and I may never write a line of executable code on an iPad, but until then I’ll keep enjoying my iPad as a very large iPhone for reading and writing.