The apps you’ll need
Apps to consider
AnyFont £1.99, anyfont-app.com iOS handles fonts across apps much like macOS, but has no Font Book to add or manage them. AnyFont is the answer, accepting standard font files from a Mac via the iTunes app, from email attachments, or from Dropbox. Admittedly, it’s a bit cumbersome to use, but it’s also a must for serious iPad document creation. Documents 6 Free, readdle.com/products/documents iOS 11’s new Files app is a convenient place to manage documents, and integrates third-party cloud services whose apps you’ve installed. But Documents is more capable and can view, play and download files from the web. PCalc £9.99, pcalc.com Apple’s basic Calculator app only exists on iPhone. PCalc is a solid substitute for iPad that uses the full screen for scientific functions, conversions and a Reverse Polish Notation mode. Worth the money for regular use.
With Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote available for free, every iPad has the productivity basics. Photos can manage your media and GarageBand is on hand for soundtracks. Safari covers web browsing, Mail should accommodate all your email accounts, and iBooks displays PDFs.
Unless you’re a die-hard Apple purist who only ever works with other die-hard Apple purists, however – and if so, we salute you – you may need a bit more to complete your do-it-all mobile workstation. Although Apple’s apps handle Microsoft documents, there are limits to the accuracy of their conversions, so it makes sense to add Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all designed for iPad and free to install, along with Outlook and OneNote.
To keep their full functionality after 30 days you’ll need an Office 365 subscription, from £59.99 per year from products.office.com. For arcane reasons, iPad Pro users without a subscription can only view documents, while other iPads get free basic editing for ‘non-commercial purposes’: see bit.ly/msoft_resources. Airmail £4.99, airmailapp.com Apple’s Mail app makes it easy to add accounts, and many people find it works fine. Others complain that searching is glitchy and it lacks convenience features. For the latter, Airmail is fast and lets you write messages in HTML or Markdown, as well as assigning incoming mail to Memo, To Do or Done.
Desktop deal-breakers
A few of the desktop versions’ more advanced capabilities aren’t available even if you pay, which could be a dealbreaker for the iPad if you need them regularly. For example, you’ll find that a smaller range of file formats is supported; Word includes key features like Track Changes, but lacks endnotes and equation editing; and Excel’s brilliantly useful Pivot Tables can’t be created or manipulated, although Pivot Tables already set up in a document are displayed.
To keep in touch with colleagues, FaceTime is ideal if they’re Apple users and the Skype app works fine if not; Slack also has an iOS app optimised for iPad, and integrates with Google Drive, Workflow Free, workflow.is This Apple-owned utility lets you build workflows (series of steps). You drag and drop actions, which then automate one or more apps to achieve your goals. A workflow might send a preset text, upload your last photo to a website or read you the time. The more you use your iPad, the more it can help.
Beyond the industrystandard, there are very powerful creative apps
Dropbox and so on. If you need to do more with PDFs, Readdle’s PDF Expert (£9.99, pdfexpert.com/ios) is particularly comprehensive for the price.
Creative thinking
Creative software companies haven’t entirely embraced the iPad as a primary platform. Adobe’s iOS apps are aimed at different tasks than its Mac software. Though Photoshop Sketch and Illustrator Draw use the touchscreen for freehand graphics, on the whole Adobe’s apps assume you’ll take your work back to the Mac (Premiere Clip handles basic rough cuts that can be imported to Premiere Pro CC), or act mainly as viewers for your content (Lightroom CC for iOS only really makes sense for users of the Mac app). Penultimate Free, bit.ly/mf321pen Microsoft OneNote is okay, but many people prefer Evernote to organise, annotate and sync their notes. Free for basic use, subscriptions give you more cloud space, formats and syncing to more than two devices – starting at £29.99 per year. Add the Penultimate app to handwrite searchable notes on the screen. macformat.com @macformat
Beyond the industry-standard names, however, there are now some very powerful creative apps for iOS.
While film and TV editors need top-end Macs, iOS apps like the established Pinnacle Studio Pro (£12.99, pinnaclesys.com) and the fast-rising LumaFusion (£19.99, luma-touch.com) have precise enough tools for serious work. Affinity Photo (£19.99, affinity.serif. com) provides most of the features of a desktop photo editor.
Musicians, meanwhile, have a better choice of software than on any other platform. Again, there’s no full equivalent of Mac digital audio workstations (DAWs) like Cubase Pro or Apple’s Logic Pro X, but Cubasis 2.2 (£48.99, steinberg.net) is capable, while iPad-only alternatives like Auria Pro (£48.99, auriaapp.com) are impressive if you don’t need roundtripping with desktop apps. OmniGraffle 3 £48.99, omnigroup.com While sipping their flat whites, power users swear by OmniGroup’s tools for organising and visualising information. This all-purpose diagramming app brings the precision of the Mac version to the touchscreen; a Pro version (£99.99) adds even more advanced features, including JavaScript automation.