Tag Archives: Tablet

Power to rival a laptop? The iPad Pro leads the way

3-bottom, Citizen Journalism, Tech Trends, , , ,

iPad Pro

By: Deidre Doezema-Burkholder

 

Apple debuted the iPad Pro last September. A full size tablet with a 12.9-inch screen made it nearly the size of the laptop that I use on a daily basis. However, the iPad Pro came with a more beautiful Retina display for a crisper and cleaner viewing experience.

 

After it was introduced, my business partner – and husband – and I took the time to look into the tech specs and read hands-on reviews from other tech experts. When we completed our research, we looked at each other and thought: Is this the iPad we’ve been waiting for? The iPad Pro seemed powerful enough, and the drawing features kicked it up a notch from finger painting to a much more detail oriented Apple Pencil.

 

You see, it isn’t that we haven’t had an iPad before. We had bought the original iPad the year it was released, and we (me) liked it, but a full-sized laptop was still a better option to suit our needs. Fast forward to 2016, and we are again talking again about an iPad. While the both of us are heavy computer users, we started to find it almost necessary to have something just as powerful but more compact. We have our phones, but even on the largest phone screen it can be frustrating at time for our needs.

 

iPad ProEnter the iPad Pro… but smaller?

 

A few months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the iPad Pro….again…this time with a smaller, more manageable, 9.7-inch screen. The size was certainly attractive, but Apple doesn’t just take the same product and shrink it down. Along with a smaller size, the smaller iPad Pro also added better features including a 12-megapixle camera in the back and a 5-megapixle camera on the front. With the better cameras came the ability to shoot 4K video and still work with the Apple Pencil.

 

So, we caved and bought a space grey 9.7 inch 128GB iPad Pro from $750, and it fits right in with our Apple family. Setup was easy and it seamlessly  integrated into our daily lives. Now I don’t have to pack up my laptop when going to clients. My purse is big enough to slide in and carry it around.

 

After purchasing our new work tool, the next logical step involved purchasing the Apple Pencil to take advantage of one of our favorite features – writing and drawing on the tablet. The pencil, costing $99, has some girth and feels like holding a nice, heavy pen. The touch sensitivity allows me to quickly change the pressure with how I write. I can change from a nice fine tip ball point pen with just a light touch to the screen to a much thicker line much like a sharpie when I press harder. Both the pencil and the iPad share by a lightning cable and charge quite quickly. The pencil requires bluetooth to function properly but I find that it lasts several days between charges.

 

Apple PencilOf course, once we purchased and had the device in our hands, it was natural to set out to find apps that were designed specifically for the iPad Pro. Drawing/Design and writing apps dominated the types of apps we searched for. When looking for a drawing/design app, we went to Adobe for our first choice.

 

Adobe Photoshop Sketch creates expressive drawing and painting without opening sketchbook. The artwork can be sent to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator via the Creative Cloud.  So, if you are already a member of the Creative Cloud family, it’s a pretty handy app to have.

 

Adult Coloring books have become a recent trend and of course there’s an app for that. My favorite is Pigment. Pigment is a free app comes with several coloring “books.” Each book allows 3 free coloring pages, additional pages can be purchased with either a monthly or yearly membership. I’m currently making my way through the 135 free coloring pages.

 

When it comes to writing, searching for a note taking app wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Several of the free apps felt clunky and unrealistic to writing on a sheet of paper. While part of the challenge comes from writing on the smooth glass surface of the iPad Pro, the other difficulty is completely unrelated to the writing surface and deals with finding an app with the right type of features. A few of the apps gave me the option of just writing on a piece of plain white boring scratch paper. It took me about four different apps before I settled on one designed by Evernote called Penultimate.

 

Penultimate states that it “combines distraction-free, natural handwriting and sketching with the power of Evernote’s sync and search.” While an Evernote account is needed to utilize their ‘sync and search’ feature, you don’t need to have an account to use the basic program. Penultimates gives many options for writing like note taking, daily planners, graphing paper, music scoring, and even classic games like tic-tac-toe and hangman.

 

In the weeks since we brought the iPad Pro home, it has become integrated into our daily lives. By day, the iPad Pro is a tool of the trade for an executive assistant (me) to help clients near and far. When the sun sets, it’s becomes a release for my creative side!

 

Deidre owns and operates Organisum: Technology Services, a business serving the West Michigan area. In her free time she likes to hike & bike local trails with friends and family when she isn’t pinning, instagram’ing or Netflix’ing.

Technologically Fit

Citizen Journalism, How-To's, Tech Trends, , , , ,

iphoneBy: Deidre Doezema-Burkholder

My sister-in-law confuses me. She likes to run…without music. I do not understand how she is able to do it. I must have music in my ear when I’m attempting to run, jog, exercise. I have used several different apps in the past to help get myself in better fitter shape.

Just as I’ve used different apps I’ve also had different products too.

Before I had a piece of technology to help it was the classic pencil and paper. Log your food and log your work out. Then I got an iPod Touch and my world changed. All of a sudden I had apps that would help me. Log your food in this app. Watch how to do weights on this app. Track your bike ride on this app. Apps, glorious apps, everywhere! Then I realized, as I was losing the pounds on myself, my iPod was starting to become bloated.

I see a lot of mobile devices in my line of work. People mention that after a while their device starts to feel slow. Sometimes it is due to age, but 8 out of 10 times their devices is bloated with data.

For example, if you have an iPhone 6 that has 16GB of data storage, a few of those gigabytes are set aside right away for the software to run your phone. So now that brings us down to about 12GB of space. That is still a lot if you maintain the space properly.

Devices work best when they have breathing room. I usually recommend a minimum of 2GB of free space. Photos and videos take up a lot of room. A LOT OF ROOM. It is probably one of the things I see the most; 600 photos or more taking up space. Out of those 600 photos, probably only 120 of them are actually wanted.

Cleaning up your photos gives back precious space. Delete them from the phone or what I like to do is download them into my computer and delete them there, I find it to be faster that way.

Music can clog up your memory as well. When is the last time you took a look through your play list? This is another thing I try to keep up on. I actively keep 3 playlists on my phone. One for the gym and two for the car. With the addition of iTunes radio and other music streaming services you may not realize that you are not using your playlist anymore. If you’re not using them, get them off the device!

Then there are apps. As I write to you today, I have 50 apps on my phone. I like to review the apps on my phone every couple of months. There are apps I’m more likely to use in the summer than the winter. If I’m going on vacation I have more travel apps on my phone than when I’m just doing my usual business. Sure there are a lot of apps that you use frequently, and I’m not saying you have to take things down to a bare minimum, but I’m suggesting that maybe you don’t need to have every app on there. I use a guideline I made up myself. If I haven’t used the app in about 1 month, then I don’t need it on my phone.

Mac StorageAlso a reminder, all of this memory clogging is true not just for our mobile devices but for our actual computers too. Your laptop or desktop machine store massive amounts of data.

Quick! When was the last time you went through and deleted emails? Not just the spam or the junk but emails. Imagine if all those emails were printed out and lying around the house. Can you see that in your house? The nice thing is that usually with your computer you have the option of upgrading your hard drive to add more space. Your computer likes some breathing room just like you.

Happy-to-sad-iphoneOur phones, and our computers, are a machine, just like our body, and it needs to be taken care of to run at its peak. Sure, on vacation we like to let ourselves go a little bit and enjoy the trip – taking pictures and downloading new apps – but we don’t live everyday life that way. Watch what you put into your phone and make sure to trim the fat when it’s needed!

Deidre owns and operates Organisum: Technology Services, a business serving the West MI area. In her free time she likes to hike & bike local trails with friends and family when she isn’t pinning, instagram’ing or Netflix’ing.