In this article, we’re going to be tackling the age-old question of whether an iPad can feasibly replace your laptop as a student.
As usual, to save you time, I’m going to start off with a conclusion and then I’ll be spending the rest of the article exploring the reasons for that conclusion.
So here we go.
Yes, I now think that for most people, whether you’re a student or not, your iPad can probably replace your laptop.
There’s a lot of caveats to this. It really depends on how much you care about efficiency, what sort of work you’re doing on your iPad and on your laptop. And so it’s not really a decision to take lightly and that’s what I’m going to be spending the rest of the article explaining. And I’ll be doing that with reference to three main points. Firstly, efficiency, secondly, complexity and thirdly, delight.
Efficiency
We can define efficiency as minimizing the amount of time between thought and action. So if I have the thought that I wonder whether Thomas Frank has uploaded a YouTube video recently, that would be the thought and then the action would be going on youtube.com, going on Thomas Frank’s channel, clicking on uploads and seeing what the latest video is. Or if the thought is I need to email a physiology essay to my supervisor, then the action will be opening up my email client, hitting compose, typing in the supervisor’s email address, clicking attach, finding the file, attaching it, typing something and sending the message.
The reason I say all that is because yes, an iPad can probably do everything you want it to, but it’s inherently going to be less efficient than using your laptop to do the same thing.
On Mac and on Windows, we’ve got these really powerful system-wide utilities like Alfred or like the Windows logo key that let you search across the entire system. So if you want to open a file, you can just search for it very easily. That sort of stuff is still quite difficult to do with an iPad. You have to tap a few things, click a few things, that sort of stuff. And if you’re doing any kind of work involving text selection and writing, you can do it on an iPad. In fact, I now prefer to get the majority of my writing work done on an iPad, but it is just still more efficient using the MacBook because you’ve got the trackpad, you’ve got a mouse, you can move stuff around, you can drag and drop, you can copy and paste. And all of that just isn’t quite the same experience with an iPad. It’s just a little bit less efficient.
So really the first thing to consider if you’re thinking of replacing your iPad with a laptop is how much do you value this efficiency saving? If you’re like me, I spend seven hours a day, if not more, in front of a computer. I’m doing a hundred different things, not at the same time, but sort of overall, I have a very high actions per minute. And the way I use a computer is I’m doing everything I can to maximize the efficiency of that. I’m using keyboard shortcuts for absolutely everything. I’m using apps like Alfred. I’m using automations and workflows and text expanders and other fancy features that help me shave off seconds off of each interaction. And that means that I can’t really replace my laptop with an iPad because it’s just so inefficient.
But if you’re like my housemate, Molly, for example, she is a more normal computer user in that she has a laptop that she’s had for several years. She mostly spends most of her time on her phone rather than on her computer. The only thing she really does on her computer is write essays, do research for projects and maybe watch Netflix. I think Molly’s use case is far more the standard use case for students. So in that sense, it is very reasonable to replace a laptop with an iPad because those extra few seconds of efficiency really don’t make any difference at all in the grand scheme of things.
Complexity
Secondly, I think we should consider the complexity of the actions that we want to perform on our iPad or on a laptop. So again, going back to my housemate Molly’s example, what’s the stuff that she does on her laptop? She watches Netflix, she browses YouTube, she browses the internet, she writes assignments for university and she makes the occasional PowerPoint presentation if she has to give a talk. That sort of use of a laptop, which again is similar to what most students seem to do, is very much on the casual end of the spectrum and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way at all.
We all have different hobbies and my hobby is spending a ton of time in front of the computer. Her hobby is wheelchair racing and running a food blog and doing all sorts of other things with her life other than spending time on a computer. So for her, it’s more casual complexity and therefore she can very feasibly replace her laptop with an iPad and that’s something I’ve actually actively been encouraging her to do.
Then if we take my use case, I’m a massive nerd and so I like to think that I use a laptop for complex things like video editing, graphic design, web development, coding of some sort, server management for my various businesses, audio editing for my podcast, music production if I fancy plugging microphones into my audio interface and recording a song. All of that sort of stuff is fairly complex and yes, you can do all of those things on an iPad but it just requires a lot more sort of hackery, a lot more sort of fighting against the system.
If you’re considering the iPad versus laptop thing then really consider how complex are your use cases feasibly. If you’re a student and you’re like most students and not sort of a massive nerd when it comes to computers then you can completely replace your laptop with an iPad. The iPad is just a nicer experience overall.
And that brings me onto my final point which is about the delight of using an iPad.
Delight
I’m not going to be replacing my laptop with an iPad completely because of efficiency and complexity but I actually do use the iPad for more hours in the day than I use my laptop. Like anything that’s light, you know, rising the web, writing something, planning out videos, making notes, all of that stuff I do on my iPad. I only use my laptop now for heavy lifting type things. The iPad is such a delight to use that I almost feel bad when I have to use my laptop now because this 15 inch MacBook Pro it’s a big lumbering heavy beast. I don’t like carrying it around. The only time I carry my MacBook around is if I’m going home for the weekend and I know I’m going to be plugging it into my brother’s monitor and doing some video editing. Otherwise, let’s say I’m going on holiday, I have no need for my laptop because I’m not going to be doing video editing on holiday, I will just take my iPad. And the iPad is this trusty device that comes with me everywhere. You know, this stains on the keyboard, that sounds weird. Some of the paint on the keys has broken off because I’ve just been using it so often. But this is the device that I use for the majority of the day. I take it to work, I take it to coffee shops with me. I do everything on an iPad apart from heavy lifting because it’s just such a delight to use. I would love to be able to replace my MacBook completely with my iPad, but I just know that because I value efficiency and productivity, it’s just not really going to be feasible.
Overall, this whole debate really between MacBook versus iPad really comes down to how productive can you be with each device and how productive do you need to be with each device? If you’re a student and you’re just getting basic stuff done, then you can easily do that on an iPad. And to be honest, unless you’re a major productivity nerd like me, you probably won’t benefit much from the efficiency savings that come with having a laptop, a real laptop to do stuff on. Instead, if you’re, let’s say a student and you’re aiming for productivity, you want to first get to a point where you understand and sort of you’ve got your own productivity system before you then start optimizing for speed. Sort of like if you’re learning a musical instrument like playing the piano, you start off playing it slowly so that you learn the basics. And then over time, you can speed up and start doing things really quickly.
In summary, if you’re considering iPad versus laptop as a student, then consider complexity and consider efficiency and consider delight. The iPad is so much more of a delight to use than the laptop, but the laptop is obviously just inherently more suited to efficiency and to complex computer-based tasks.