Transcription
This is iPad Mini Series 7. It's not quite an unconventional iPad because it can fit in your pocket, and not quite a Mac that you can basically use it for everything. But I think this is a device that's probably going to change how people work.
The thing about an iPad Mini is that you have to play to its strengths instead of try to make it something it isn't. But if you're like me, you're trying to find a device you can carry with you everywhere you go, replace your e-reader, occasionally use it as a gaming console, and most importantly, build a productivity machine that can partially replace your work computer. If that sounds interesting, this video is for you.
Now, I've owned a lot of iPads over the years, and I can tell you I've been disappointed more times than I can remember about the reality Apple envisioned in that 2017 commercial. Because all those years I've been using my iPad well, like an iPad. Watch a movie, read a book, pretend to be an artist, and occasionally smashing my head, binge-watching Friends for the 14th time. It only took me 8 years to realize all I really needed from a device like this is for me to get things done wherever I go. And this setup I'm about to show you will help you do just that.
I'm going to tell you how to properly set it up, what input method you should use to interact with it, the best accessories to help you work comfortably, and what apps and shortcuts to get to enable a seamless workflow. Let's start with iPad OS setup. The core idea of this setup is to be as minimal as possible. To do that, we go to the iPad settings. First, you want to scroll down to Home Screen & App Library. You want to change this part to App Library Only. This means the apps you recently downloaded won't automatically appear on your home screen, which will keep your workplace clean. So, you can always add it back after it's downloaded, but it has to be your choice.
Next, you want to tackle this page, Show App Library on Dock, which gives you this little icon that just shows everything you have downloaded so far. Since we're not adding apps to the home screen, obviously you need a place to put them all. The next option, Show Suggested and Recent Apps in Dock. Trust me, this is almost never useful, so turn it off. Head to Multitasking & Gestures and choose your multitasking preference. Now, here's an important part. Depending on your iPad OS version, you may see Windowed App like mine or Slide Over. But since we're working on iPad Mini, I strongly suggest you to pick the middle one. Stage Manager is useful in some instances, but you just don't have enough screen real estate to play around with this. You want to leave the option Close All Windows After Swiping Home off and enable everything else on this screen. This will give you full control of the use cases I'm about to show you. Of course, if you don't like any of the particular things I'm about to show you, feel free to come back to this menu and change it back.
Now, the second thing we're about to do is to organize your home screen. And we're doing this by setting up different Focus modes for your different use cases. Since iPads are designed with so many entertainment options in the ecosystem, they can easily become a distraction machine. The Focus mode function will help you split your entire iPad home screen and settings based on what you are working on at different times of the day. Let me give you an example. I've got four Focus modes that's on this iPad based on what I use it for. Home mode has absolutely nothing except for a bunch of dashboards. I intentionally hide everything because I want to wake up in the morning having a blank slate so I can consciously think about what I'm about to work on. I have several widgets here that give me a glance of the basic information like the weather, calendar, stock market, news, and that's about it.
Productivity screen is where the real work stuff lies. Besides the Focus mode feature, I kept two widgets on the left. One is my Notion database where all my work-related documents lie. For example, if I click on Video, you can see all my video planning pages in a Kanban format, and the other one is my to-do list. As I go through my day, I'll just toggle off things I've finished. The rest of the apps on the page are divided into two parts. On the top, I have all my AI tools. You notice I have quite a few. I'll cover my AI workflow shortly because developing your own AI system is probably one of the most important skills for working professionals today. These AI tools run just as well on an iPad as on an actual computer, which is a major reason why the iPad has finally become a true productivity machine in my opinion. There are a bunch of communication apps and planning apps on the bottom, which are pretty intuitive.
I also have an entertainment setup. It has a bunch of streaming services and games I don't personally play, but when it's your turn to look after the kids, sometimes you just got to have some last resort. Last but not least, I have the consumption mode. Here I have the ebooks and audiobooks and online courses that I bought. Some of these are Safari bookmarks that I made into an icon for better organization. If you don't know how to do that, just go to a website, click on this share button, and save to home screen. It will appear on your home screen as an icon. Many of the online classes we bought are just websites, not an app. So this way we can keep them organized. And if I finish the course, I usually just drag some into an archive for future reference.
Now you may notice each of my four modes only have one page of apps. I made a deal with myself not to exceed that because much like your house, you don't want to overclutter your digital space. Everything you're not using should disappear from your Focus mode. You can basically hide the icon from the home screen instead of deleting it. Let me show you briefly how to set up the widgets. First, you need to have the clean home screen ready. If you don't, just start a new page and set it up accordingly. Second, you just go to Spotlight, tap Focus mode. If this is the first time you do it, there will be a plus icon for you to add one. Give it a name and choose a corresponding home screen and lock screen. The lock screen doesn't really matter. What you want to choose is the one home screen you just created. Check that one and uncheck everything else. This way, when you enable the Focus mode, your home screen will change visually.
The first step, go to the Shortcuts app, add a shortcut folder, give it a name, and add a new shortcut. Give that a name and an icon. Next, you want to add a command block. Type "focus". Grab this "Set Focus" command. Change it to your Focus mode name. And then change "Off" to "On" until "Turn Off". At this point, we're pretty much all done. All we need to do is to add the widget to our home screen. Long press anywhere on the screen and then find the Shortcuts widget. You want to select the 2x2 size. Long press the widget. Select the appropriate folder that contains your newly created shortcut. This button will appear. Then you're done. And when you click it, your home screen will change. I also suggest you to repeat this process four times on all your home screens and put this widget on the same position on all four home screens. This way, when you switch between different Focus modes, the widget remains at the same spot.
Now, it's a bit of a complicated setup, but I've been using it for all my Apple devices like the iPhone and Apple Watch, and it absolutely changed my life. So, I encourage you to give it a try. I also have a quite unconventional dock. Most people fill out this dock area with most frequently used apps, but I find it more useful to have some of these, what I call, capture tools here. There are various apps that I use to record my thoughts in different formats. For example, I use Apple Notes when I want to type out well-structured thoughts or I want to scan a document. I use GoodNotes when I prefer writing instead of typing because it offers a superior writing experience. There's also a lesser-known app called Rindrop, which lets me import URLs into a nicely carded view. Since the dock is always there, you can document pretty much anything no matter which mode you're in. The idea is to capture as much as you can.
Once you get the Focus mode set up, the second thing is to get your input method right. This means you need one of four things: a proper keyboard, an Apple Pencil, a trackpad, and maybe a microphone for dictation. You really need to think about your own situation, how you're going to use your iPad as a productivity device, because that's going to make a huge difference on what kind of accessories you want to get. Let's start with the most useful one in my opinion, a good keyboard. The iPad Mini doesn't have an official Magic Keyboard, and honestly, I don't think it needs one given its screen size. A keyboard cover will be too small for comfortable typing. Well, you can connect it to a Bluetooth keyboard. Carrying something this big kind of defeats the purpose of owning such a compact device. My solution is this fascinating little device from a company called Newan. It's a Bluetooth keyboard, but can fold up into a tiny form factor. It's got some interesting hinge designs and the surface material is kind of a fake leather that feels pretty nice. The best part of this keyboard is that it only weighs around 276g and is only 8mm thick. When folded, the keyboard isn't that much smaller than a full-size one. The keys have good travel and sound feedback. And compared to the full-size Logitech MX series, it's really not that bad for something that's this small and compact. It charges through USB-C and connects up to three Bluetooth devices at the same time.
But what's amazing about this is that you see this number pad? This is a trackpad. This is basically a Magic Keyboard and a trackpad glued together and folded up into a tiny package. The key thing that it enables you is that you can do gesture controls on your iPad, which makes working with your iPad 10 times faster. Tap the trackpad, that means left-click. Double-tap means right-click. Three-finger swipe up to access the app switcher. Three-finger swipe left and right to switch between all apps. Anytime if you do a two-finger swipe down, you're going to open up Spotlight. These gestures are pretty easy to remember, but most people never use them because it's quite unnatural to use gesture control on your iPad screen. The trackpad though sits flat on the desk, which in my opinion makes the gesture control a lot more useful.
Now, most of the keyboard shortcuts for macOS also apply here. For example, Command-Space to open up Spotlight, Command-W to close a window, Command-Tab to switch between apps, just to name a few. If you want to maximize your productivity anywhere in the Apple ecosystem, it's best if you can memorize a couple of them.
Now, there are a lot of instances you want to use it without the keyboard. Many people don't know about this trick, but if you hold it like this, you can actually split the keyboard just like this. Pinch it inward will return it to normal. Pinch it again. You basically have the iPhone keyboard where you can do some fancy finger tracing. Now, if you're using it without the keyboard, it's pretty inconvenient to do copy and paste. There's another gesture control you should remember. You can take three fingers to pinch inward to bring out the copy menu and pinch outward to paste.
Sometimes it's easier and quicker just to write things down, like when you're reading a book or reviewing a PDF report. That's why you need the Apple Pencil Pro, which is going to cost you $129, but it has some important functions you will surely need. First, you can now write in text fields thanks to a feature called Scribble. And the iPad OS automatically converts it into text. You can also double-tap to switch between pen and eraser. What's more useful is this squeeze function on the side of the pencil. By default, the pencil brings out a writing menu, but that's quite unnecessary because most note-taking apps already have this manual somewhere in the UI. So instead, I have a shortcut that allows me to transcribe and record. Since I always carry a USB microphone for vlogging, everything I set will be perfectly transcribed.
Now, there are two more accessories we have to talk about that are pretty essential to this setup, which is this folio case and the Apple Pencil holder from Moft, who's kindly sponsoring today's video. Now, on my bigger iPad, I used to use a stand and Magic Keyboard case attached to it, but there's no way I'm bringing this with me on the road. They're just pretty chunky and heavy. There are also two more downsides when it comes to the Magic Keyboard. One, I keep losing the Apple Pencil because it looks to the side. And two, there are just a lot of instances you want to use your phone alongside with your iPad as a webcam or a secondary screen. And there's just no good way for me to do it. That's why about a month ago, I switched all my old iPad cases to Moft. You may have seen my comparison video for the iPad cases a while ago, and you guys overwhelmingly loved the new Dynamic Folio case. It's light with strong magnets, very well-thought-out design, and it can be folded into 20 different viewing positions. For productivity purposes, this is the lightest and most versatile iPad case I've seen in years. It says on our advertisement it has 20 folding positions, and based on the comments, a lot of you don't believe that. So I'm going to make this really easy for you guys by demonstrating all the viewing positions on camera. Three of them are my favorite. Let's go.
So the Dynamic Folio case comes with this instruction, but it's not the most intuitive thing there is. So for better understanding, I'm going to do this column by column. So if you can't follow it, feel free to slow down the video anytime. For all the positions in the first column, you want to connect the two circles. [Music] The second column, you want to connect these two lines. [Music] For the third column, lift the square in the middle and insert this flap into it. [Music] The fourth column, pull out this front cover. [Music] Fifth column, resist lower side. To be completely honest, I don't use this tool at the end, but that's still 20 viewing positions. I think those are pretty good. But I got to say, doing all 20 different viewing positions, it's not easy to figure out without instructions. But if you go through it just once, I bet you're going to find a couple that you really like. You can just stick with those and forget about everything else because that's what matters, right? To simplify your workflow and make your device more productive as well as more enjoyable. This is my favorite iPad accessory I found this year. And I'm happy they decided to sponsor this video. So, if you like to order them, there will be a link in the description below that's going to give you a small discount. I will also be giving away a couple of extras at the end of this video. Thank you, Moft, for sending this to me. And let's get back to the video.
So, right after that, let's talk about how to use your iPad as a secondary monitor. But let me just be a little bit more specific. Because of this recent iPad OS 16 upgrade, many people don't realize that the connectivity between your iPad and Mac has significantly improved. For example, if you click on the Control Center and select Display, you can connect your keyboard and mouse directly to your iPad. Now, this is different from just a traditional dual-screen setup where everything is run from your computer. The second your cursor crosses the screen edge, your desktop keyboard and mouse actually move over to control your iPad. It feels like a secondary screen, but it's like running two computers with the same input devices, which just makes so much more sense. You can have one note-taking app on one side and one online course on the other screen without sacrificing any screen real estate or memory resource on your Mac.
Now, let's talk about apps. Here's a quick rundown of what I think are the absolutely most essential. Starting from the top, I have a suite of AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, Cloud, and NotebookLM. I find each of them has its strengths and weaknesses. But generally, whenever I'm working on a research topic, I will use ChatGPT or Gemini to do my first round of deep research. I have a shortcut to open both of them simultaneously, and I just copy and paste the same prompt for them to run it. They often give slightly different responses. I find it quite useful to cross-compare their responses to minimize the chance of hallucination. After that, I usually ask both AI models to give me some credible references like textbooks or some very good YouTube videos, and I can feed them to NotebookLM. This narrows down the scope and resource of reference of the AI model so I can have a more in-depth conversation with it. Once I'm there, I'm usually become quite proficient in the area. I'll then go to Cloud and start drafting my report or anything writing-related. This is because Cloud has the best writing style support amongst all the models, and I think it's best to use it for creative purposes. There are also a bunch of communication apps as well. Depends which client I'm talking to. They usually have different communication software. So, I basically have all of them. But the important thing is to keep things minimal and organized as possible.
Now that you've seen the entire setup, let's also take a moment to talk about the battery life and performance. Now, there are a couple of limitations I think most of you may care about. For example, the infamous jello scrolling. This iPad Mini has a 60Hz refresh rate. For average use, I think that's more than enough as long as you don't use it as a gaming console. The battery life is also quite decent. I can easily use it for an entire day and never drop below 30%. The iPad Mini has an A17 Pro chip, which is the same chip in the iPhone 15 Pro Max. If you care about benchmark scores, it's basically an M1. This setup is meant to be non-graphic-intensive office work. Meaning that if you want to run something like Final Cut Pro, Lightroom, or anything design-related, this is probably not going to be my first choice. But I have a feeling that if you are a designer, you probably have a completely different setup in your studio and you're not expected to do a lot of work on the road. So I really think this setup should be enough for 99% of working professional people.
Now, the final limitation is probably the price. If you add up all the accessories I talked about, that's $599 for the iPad Mini 7. The Newan keyboard is $17. Apple Pencil Pro comes in at $129. The Moft folio case is $39, which puts the total just under $840 or €715. Is that a dealbreaker for you? I think it depends on where you do business and how much that added benefit is worth to you. For me personally, it means I don't have to carry my MacBook Pro around 50% of the time. It's probably not going to replace my laptop anytime soon, but it makes working on the road much, much more enjoyable with much lighter weight and much greater versatility. And if you are thinking about getting an iPad for work, I do encourage you to give this little guy a chance.
Now, before you go, I often do giveaways for any accessories I review. So, if you do want me to give you one of these, not the iPad, if you want me to give you one of these folio cases or the Newan keyboard, leave a comment down below and let me know which one of these accessories is your favorite. And I have quite a few of these. If multiple people want the same thing, I'll buy you a new one. Congrats to Alan who won the last round of a draw. Make sure you check your DMs for my message so I can get your shipping address. And that's it, folks. Hope you liked this episode of Ultimate Productivity Machine. If this video interested you, you may want to check out the older video I did about how I turned my Apple Watch into a productivity machine. I believe there's a new Apple Watch Ultra 3 coming out. So, it's a perfect timing to revisit the old topic. I'll see you there. Bye. You and I. Don't run. Don't hide.