Pages on the iPad

It’s Tuesday, and as such, I’m going to talk to you about my iPad. Have I told you how much I love it? I guess in a way there is a love hate relationship. I love it because I’m never without something to do and I hate also because I’m never without something to do.

In my efforts to go green I currently download all my documents to my iPad. All the large regulations that I need to be analyzed (these go into Goodreader) all the articles that need to be read and organized, my email (these go into Evernote) my books and now with Pages and Keynote I have created additional ways to stay busy.

Today I’m going to tell you about Pages.

I’m sitting on the train, typing this article in Pages. Before the iPad, I would either have to carry my laptop or wait until I got home to write my articles. Now, that’s no longer an excuse. I have convinced myself that I have one hour of uninterrupted time to write. When I get home I insert pictures and links on the post (eventually, WordPress will figure out how to allow me to do this from the iPad). So that’s the reason for the love hate relationship. I no longer have to carry the laptop in order to feel productive but I also no longer have the excuse that I don’t have the laptop and therefore I don’t have to be productive. It’s a daily battle of wits with myself.

Pages is Apple’s word processing software and it has been formatted to work perfectly well with all the mobile devices. Since the iOS 5 it’s now on all my devices, the iPhone, the iPad and on my MacBook Pro. I can do everything on the iPad the same way i can on the computer. It’s intuitive and works very smoothly with the touch screen systems. I have not tried it on the iPhone and I’m not sure I will have a need to do that. However, I have looked up documents that I’ve created on the iPad on the iPhone and they look the same, only smaller, which is the reason I don’t draft or edit on the iPhone. I think I’d go blind trying to do that.

One of the best things about the application is that the documents can be emailed as Word documents to another computer. So if I’m doing something for work, such as a statement of facts or correspondence, I can do it while on the train and then email the document to myself at the office as a word document and finish working on it at the office. The only issue I have encountered with this are the fonts. We all know that Apple’s fonts do not match Microsoft’s fonts, so if the document is created with one of Apple’s fonts, it does not convert properly when you open it on a PC. Nothing you can’t fix, just have to play with the document a little and format it for the PC. But, in my opinion it’s still better than having to do everything from your desk at the office.

The other great feature of Pages on the iPad is that the document saves up in the cloud as you type. You never have to worry about saving as you go. This is great because normally, I’m still typing by the time I reach my destination. However, knowing that the document has been saving in real time I don’t have to worry about losing any of my work and I can just close the iPad and know it will be there when I open it again. Not only that, but because it is saved up in the cloud I can pick up any of my other devices and continue working on them. So for instance, let’s say this article is not finished before I get home tonight, I can just pick up my MacBook Pro and put the finishing touch on that and upload it. Very convenient right? Now do you understand the love hate relationship? There are no excuses.

Have I told you how much I love my iPad? Tell me how much you love yours.

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