5 reasons why you may use the iPad Pro less. One year ago I wrote about moving from the Macbook Air to the iPad Pro

Thanks, Brendan Duong for asking how it’s going one year later.

All the apps I mentioned in the initial article are high quality and work well, but I have to make special mention of Microsoft Outlook — who decided that restricting pasting content out of Outlook makes any sense at any level? “Security”, you say? Easy to get around — email it to Evernote or your private email account. Silly and incredibly annoying. Treating Microsoft Office apps as a walled garden defeats the purpose of working on a highly mobile and integrated device.

Another standout is Dropbox. The integration is excellent and serves as the glue binding many of the apps together.

On reflection, I’m probably using the iPad around 30% of the time if I average it out. 100% when I travel.

The reasons are:

• Gorilla shoulder is a thing. A few hours use and shoulder pain is an issue, which compounds over a few days. Reaching out and touching a screen in front of you is not a natural motion. An iPad with a mouse would solve this.
• Creating content is painful. A simple blog needs lots of task switching compared to dragging stuff around on the laptop. Spreadsheets are unworkable.
• I love Dashlane for passwords, and it works with the iPad, but it’s still clunky.
• It’s faster for my working style to copy and drag between few windows.
• I’m testing iOS11 Beta, and some of these issues will be solved, but the show-stopper is the Gorilla Shoulder.

I’m going to do the opposite experiment for a month. Use the laptop exclusively and see if I miss the iPad. I love it for travel and meetings for note taking so I’ll miss that. Also, it’s super light and manageable, so it’s always handy.

Steven Sinofsky and Benedict Evans I know you’re heavy users of the iPad. What’s your experience after one year?