I’ve been using my iPad Pro 13 as a full-time laptop replacement for about two months now, replacing a 15" MacBook Air. I think it has been a success, but in qualified ways:

For most personal tasks I really care about it has been a seamless replacement: Personal writing, photo editing, mail, news, YouTube grazing, etc. I like being able to plop it into the keyboard or take it out depending on use. I got an inexpensive folding stand for it when I’m using it at the table.

I finally broke down and got a mosh server running on my Mac mini because I’m running a few MCPs on Gemini CLI, which I can’t do from the Gemini iPadOS app. With the Blink term app I can get to the mini and run the CLI.

It still feels like a number of apps aren’t as robust on an iPad as a Mac. It comes up sometimes, when I want to do something on the iPad in an app I also have for the Mac and the option just isn’t there. I suppose that’s the signal to pivot to work:

I don’t like to use it for many work tasks at all. It’s fine for Slack, the Gmail app, the Google Calendar app, and Zoom. I don’t like the app versions of Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides at all. The mobile web version of Google Tasks, which I use as an inbox for a lot of work stuff, is much better than the app.

So that’s created a dynamic where I don’t use the iPad much during the day for intense work. I prefer to just go up to my office, sit down to my Mac mini, and have a full computer experience on a big screen: As much as the window management has improved with iPadOS 26, it is still too fussy and the 13" display is too small to work comfortably.

At first, my ADHD-driven perfectionism made it very hard to manage those transitions between machines. I can get very focused on wanting things to work just one way across everything, but I stuck with this experiment past the initial uncomfortable stages, and now I don’t think about it much. I just realize that what I am doing needs more immersion and better “real work” affordances than I am getting on the iPad, and I go upstairs.

That’s turned out to be a real improvement for general work mental health anyhow: I ended up spending so much time in the office that I reinvested in its tidiness and organization, and I really enjoy going up there to a secluded, quiet part of the house to get things done.

With a Pomodoro timer, the Endel app, and headphones, I can work steadily in the time I have between meetings. When I remember my Slack hygiene, a two hour deep work block is a meaningful investment and not just a polite fiction. Shifting my time blocking practice away from apps and screens to a notebook and pen has been salutary, too. Writing has a very centering and calming effect when I attend to it, and I have come to look forward to the 8 a.m. planning/blocking ritual.

If the iPad didn’t feel a little bit limiting, I wouldn’t spend as much time at my desk as I do, and I don’t think I’d do some of the rituals I do, or work the way I do, if I were working out of my lap in the living room. It’s more comfortable to sit in a recliner with a laptop, but it’s harder to jot things into a notebook, rearrange planning blocks, keep a physical timer handy, etc. Working out of a laptop in an easy chair creates a lot of pressure to do things with digital tools because they’re easier to keep at hand. And personally — just me writing about my experience of the world — working out of a laptop makes my brain feel cramped and boxed in. I like a large screen, a work surface I can spread things out on, and a space to retreat to.