I received lots of positive responses to my last blog post about my new 2012 home office where I highlighted how I had to redesign my home office to accommodate my two new working habits: working most of the time standing and going iPad-only. However there were a few questions about my setup - mainly why do I need a Mac Mini with a giant Thunderbolt Display when I'm usually working on my iPad... In this post you'll know why:

I work on my iPad 80% of the time so I still need a "normal computer"

I'm a computer geek and a founder of a software / productivity company so how can I test our Mac or Windows versions of Nozbe if I don't have a computer? How can I test other software and see where the industry is going if I don't have it? Even though I no longer need a "traditional computer" for day to day work so much, I still need it. But it goes beyond that, I use my Mac Mini in many different ways that compliment the iPad.

Why not to use my MacBook Air hooked to my display rather than a Mini?

Before we dive into my usage of Mini, let me explain this one - Mini is a desktop computer and it's ON all of the time. Like, 100% of the time. Like, 24 / 7 / 365 of the time. My MacBook Air is a "portable computer" that can be unplugged, moved, used somewhere else, put to sleep... etc. And I need a computer to be ON all of the time in my home office. I even bought a special UPS device to keep it powered up even if the electricity goes down at my home for a few minutes. My Mac Mini is ON all of the time and it's there waiting to be used... and being used... now let me tell you in how many ways I use it.

My Mac Mini compliments my iPad and does so much more

1. Mini syncs my "clouds" locally

My iPad only setup is a cloud setup where I use Dropbox, Evernote, iCloud and other cloud services. It's all nice and sweet, but call me paranoid and I like to have a local copy of my "clouds" in my home. My Mini is on all of the time and has all these services turned on and syncs everything locally all of the time. I add an Evernote note? It syncs to my Mini. I upload something to Dropbox? Box? Google Drive? It syncs there. This way I have a local copy of everything I do on my iPad right there on my Mini. And the Mini is being backed up to Time Capsule securely every few hours every day so I even have a second local copy of everything.

2. Mini runs "LogMeIn" with M$ Office for Mac and other apps

Because my Mini is running all of the time, it has a LogMeIn session open all of the time, as well. This way I can log in to my Mini and see its desktop from anywhere in the world. I can fire up a fully-working MS Office Word or Excel file if it renders so-so on my iPad and other apps that still are not working well (or do not exist) on the iPad. I have also access to all of the files I have so I can copy something to the "cloud" if I don't have it there yet for some reason.

3. GIT and Dropbox and Textasitc

Speaking of apps that still work poorly on the iPad, it's hard for me to get the latest versions of our source code on the iPad from GIT. I can access GitHub repositories but it's still not the same as getting all the source code locally. With my Mac Mini running GIT software I can pull the files from GIT to my Mini and they'll automatically sync with my Dropbox and later I can code on the iPad using Textastic and push them to the GIT later. It's a geeky setup and I don't code as much anymore, but it's useful to have my Mini as my "code management" computer.

4. Heavy Lifting and scanning... and printing

Although I try to edit all of my Productive Show videos on my iPhone or on my iPad directly, sometimes I need to edit them a little more on the Mac. My Mac Mini has 8GB of RAM and is powerful enough for such tasks. I use it for video editing, photo management and other tasks that still make it better than the iPad. I use it basically for all the "heavy lifting" tasks.

I have a multi-purpose printer and my Mini runs an "AirPrint" server on it so that I can print stuff directly from the iPad. The Mini is also connected to the scanner so that I can scan the documents using Image Capture app and put them in my Evernote or Dropbox (depending on the files). Mini is my "back-end" :-)

5. Background flows

Apart from syncing my clouds, the Mini can later do something with these files. I have set up a number of "Automator tasks" (Automator is an amazing "batch creation" tool that helps you create automated scripts on the Mac) that run in the background. This way when I upload a video file to the Mini, it uploads it to appropriate folders and web servers without me clicking anything. In the background. It does a lot more, but the flows I design for the Mini make my iPad even more powerful. It just works in the background and does all the magic there :-)

6. Mini is our "home computer"

It's a Mac, so I set up several accounts there and if someone from the family wants to use a computer, it's there for them to use. It has fast internet, Skype, Facetime camera and other goodies so anyone can use it. It's there if someone really needs it and they do sometimes.

7. Increasingly important in my transition period to the iPad

I'm working 70-80% of the time on the iPad. And I'm aiming at 90% for the 2013 and maybe even more than that. But for the time being I still need my Mini to help me make the transition smooth and painless. If I need to get something done quickly on a traditional computer, it's there for me. I expect to use it less and less each month but it's my backup computer and as I for the reason I mentioned above it gives me a piece of mind and the fact that it syncs all of the "cloud" work I do to my local file system is a nice bonus.

And my MacBook Air? I don't know. I still use it from time to time but now that my office is Mini and iPad based, it's starting to collect dust. We'll see what I do with it next year.

How do you use your "traditional computer"? What do you think I should (or shouldn't) use Mini for? Do you have your "Mini" in your home office?

Last week I watched the keynote where Apple showed off their newest generation of iPhone, the iPhone 5. Before unveiling their "new baby" they reminded us of some great statistics concerning the adaption of iOS and "iDevices" in general... and this prompted me to write this blog post - to highlight to you how going iPad-only is easy when you are an iPhone user. Here's why:

My iPhone 4s and the new iPad are made for each other

First off, both the iPhone and the iPad use the same operating system - iOS, which in many cases means the same (or very similar apps), the same file system (or lack thereof), the same cloud services and practically the same workflows. It's very easy to set up the iPhone the same way you set up your iPad - with very similar home screens with apps.

Now, thanks to iCloud, Dropbox and other syncing mechanisms, most of these apps can "talk to each other" and stay in sync. This way, you can very easily start your work on the iPad and finish it off on the iPhone. And the other way round. This happens to me all of the time.

Some apps I use on both the iPhone and the iPad:

I've got the same email accounts set up on both iPhone and iPad's Mail app. I use Reeder to read RSS news and Pocket to read the articles I saved for later; I use Evernote to store and access my notes, I use Nozbe on both devices (duh!), Dropbox and apps that sync using Dropbox (like 1Password for passwords and Nebulous writer for my texts), I access Facebook, Twitter (using Tweetbot for iPhone and iPad), Pinterest, Socialcast and other social apps as well. And Skype too (making my iPad a giant telephone :-) And these are just a few examples that come to my mind. There are a lot more apps that I use on both platforms.

Why it makes sense to work on both the iPad apps and the iPhone

1. I don't need to take my iPad everywhere... and still can be productive. As I mentioned on one of my Productive! Show episodes it makes perfect sense to forget a laptop or even iPad and just take a smartphone on a business trip and still be productive. Although my "iPad only" bag is pretty small I'm very often surprised how much I can get done on my iPhone only. Just because it has the similar apps as my iPad.

2. I'm used to working with constraints... when you go iPad only - so working on an iPhone is no more a problem. Before I started my iPad only experiment I was already getting some stuff done on my iPhone... but now that I'm mostly iOS-based as I work on my iPad most of the time, working on the iPhone is not a big deal so again, I can just leave home with my iPhone in my pocket and still get a lot stuff done if I need to just on this small device. I have the same flows defined on my iPad as the iPhone, after all.

3. iPhone has some "other apps" that are very useful at times. Still, there are more iPhone apps than the iPad apps out there - and sometimes I even get to the point that I install an iPhone-only app on my iPad to use it infrequently there "scaled", because I need it so badly, but most of the time I just keep those on the iPhone only. Again, that's a great thing about the iOS - you can install iPhone apps on the iPad... they just look very weird. But they are there if I need them.

The last argument - the look-and-feel is the same

That's the thing. I can't imagine working on the iPad and using and Android or Windows phone. I do have both of these phones for testing purposes and I do need to use my Android phone from time to time, but my main phone is the iPhone. And its look-and-feel is almost exactly the same as the iPad's - and this boosts my productivity as well. I don't need to adjust to a different menu, set of apps, anything else... when I'm on the iPhone. The only thing I have to adjust to is the small screen. And nothing else.

How do you like your iPhone/iPad combo? Would you give up one of these or do you think they're made for each other?

With so many posts about the iPad many folks still don't trust me when I say working mainly on the iPad is a really fun and joyful experience and it makes my day... every single day. The promise of a simpler setup, consumer/creator device that switches from a computer to a reading/watching machine, easy flows that get the job done, better browsing experience and amazing portability... well, it's hard to convince everyone but I can say honestly I'm not going back to a traditional computer. It's the "zen" feeling again:

I've simplified my wardrobe and home office

Seems unrelated, but I do like "zen minimalism" and I like the fact of having less stuff and less gadgets and cleaner workspace... I went down to less than 100 objects in my home office (and going further down now to about 70) and ~140 pieces of clothing and only 10 pairs of shoes (and going further down now to about 100 clothes total). It still sounds like a lot, but count yours. You'll be surprised :-)

The fact of the matter is that not only I have less stuff, but I'm more aware of what I really have, I know where the stuff belongs (I stopped asking "where did I put this?") and thus I enjoy it a lot more.

Now I've simplified my working machine

I kinda did. I still own a Mac Mini and a Macbook Air and I'm still struggling which to keep (I guess the Air will have to go), but I know where I do the work is on my iPad. Because I've set up many "flows" and "simplified" and "shortcut'ed" many things, I tend to do less of "administrative stuff" and more of "higher-level" stuff.

Focusing on doing the great work

The initial switch was hard, as you've seen over my last posts, I've invested lots of hours into thinking "how do I do that?", "how do I simplify this?" and eventually I found the way. Now I'm in the moment where I just take my iPad and go - I do great work - I focus on the work and not on the "administrative" stuff like file management, document management, email management... I focus on writing, reading, posting, watching... you know, the stuff that actually makes a difference.

Would I be able to do it on my laptop? Of course I would. But because my laptop is so powerful, I was never inclined to make a radical shift of moving most of my stuff to the cloud, simplifying my setup, setting up more shortcuts... and of course I wouldn't have the additional benefits of the iPad like portability, the pleasure of touching things and much much more.

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!

Switching to the iPad forced me to simplify many things. Forced me to cut out many chores I was doing on my computer. Forced me to go "zen". And changed my computing life and... kinda forced me to enjoy it even more than I did before (c'mon, I was working on a beautiful Macbook Air, I shouldn't complain, right?). It forced me to simplify. Less is more.

When was the last time you have re-thought your computing setup?

I mentioned in the very beginning how exciting it was to go iPad only. I remembered back in late 2008 when I bought my first Mac and had to change and simplify many things I was doing on my Windows machine. It felt very similar now with the switch to the iPad. But even more so, as the iPad is the future of "simple" computing... but this new kind of simple computing that can do a lot more than you'd have thought. And what do you think?

P.S. As all of my posts these days, I sent it from my iPad (writing on an external keyboard and iPad in a vertical view)... but you knew that, right? :-)

We've covered many aspects of my iPad-only journey in this series of articles but as they say, the deeper you go... Today I'd like to talk about another aspects of the iPad that makes it such a joy to use. It's the appification (is that a word?) of the web - meaning more and more web sites now have their own iPad apps - and it's really great. Why? Well, for a number of reasons:

The apps are made-for and thought-about the iPad

Many web sites from established players just collected so much dust over the years that they really suck. I mean seriously, they look bad. Just go to IMDB, eBay, Amazon... and many others. They seem like they're stuck in the 90s enjoying the first Internet gold rush. We're in 2012 people, where's HTML5, CSS3, people, responsive web design? Well, it's not there.

But... they have dedicated iPad apps that rock!

I am a movie-freak so I naturally looooove the IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) but I hate their web site... but I love their iPad app. It's sweet, high-res and lets me learn all about the movies I'm about to watch, the actors, see (and queue) the trailers and much much more. Same applies to Techcrunch - I no longer subscribe to their RSS channel, I just fire up the app and read a few trending topics. Great job there. And recently I was searching for a flat to rent for some friends so instead of firing up the web site, I checked if the company had an iPad app and they had, and it worked with my GPS position and the browsing experience of the flats was just amazing. A lot better than on their web site.

Here are some advantages of these apps:

• iPad-like navigation - swipe, scroll, tap... perfect browsing experience on the iPad. Although I'd love all the web sites to adapt responsive web design (like we do at Nozbe) they usually don't - but their apps do :-)
• retina-ready - unlike their web sites, the graphics are already retina-ready for my new iPad and look completely stunning.
• one-tap access - no bookmarking - they are on my home screen, with easy access, usually even support app-switching very nicely. Great stuff. Use them more and more.

There are mediocre examples, too, but they keep getting better

Yes, I'm talking to you GoDaddy! I have lots of domains with you and the premise of managing them directly on my iPad is great but your app doesn't support app-switching, doesn't remember my password, doesn't support retina and is darn slow - get it fixed, please.

Appification is good for you

If you're stuck in a laptop land, you don't get the benefits of these great apps and it came to me as an additional incentive, simplification and surprise. I just love it and hope many more web sites come on board and follow suit. Keep them coming! Let's appify (again, not a word) the Internet :-)

And which iPad apps do you use instead of their web sites?

OK, now that I've been working on my iPad for many months now, it's time to evaluate it as an "office computer" - can it be used for "real" Office work, the documents heavy-lifting? The spreadsheet cranking? Well, yes... and no. Here's why:

First off, I don't use "Office" apps anymore that much

In the 90s and beginning of the 21st century the basic productivity suite on each PC was the "Office" bundle from Microsoft. We used to produce Word documents for nearly every type of text processing and Excel for every type of more complicated than 2+2 (how much is it anyway?) results. And Powerpoint for those pretty (kidding!) presentations. That was the standard, right?

I don't do office anymore. I use plain text files to write stuff, I use email to write stuff, I use Numbers to do spreadsheets stuff. It's pretty (prettier than Excel) and flexible (in a "design" kind of way). I run my own company with my own product so I don't need those things. And I love Keynote for presentations much more than Powerpoint.

As I mentioned before, I'm a heavy Evernote user so instead of writing yet another Word document I prefer to write a note in Evernote.

And there are some alternatives to the Microsoft kingdom anyway

Google Docs is one of them... and while it looks promising on the web on a traditional desktop computer, the web version on the iPad is bad. OK, you can type and paste stuff, but to do more complicated editing you have to switch to the "desktop" version anyway and it's painfully slow... and sharing is even slower... I have tried two apps to manage Google Docs locally on my iPad: iDocsHD Pro, GoDocs - both are OK to have local copies, but nothing more (certainly no document heavy-lifting there!)

But there is QuickOffice PRO HD

The app I actually use daily is the QuickOffice HD Pro - the only app to rule them all. Works both with Google Docs and with Word and Excel docs - I update my company's Excel sheet every week with this app. The app is really good... so no wonder Google bought them a few weeks ago - hopefully this means a better integration with Google Docs!

All I do is just put my Docs and Excels in my Dropbox and access them directly through QuickOffice Pro HD - I get the file, edit it... and it's being posted back to my Dropbox so that I can access it on my Mac if I really want to.

What about PDFs?

I'm a big fan of PDFs - if they are eBooks (or magazines) I usually send them over to my Kindle account and use the Kindle app to read them. An Amazon Kindle storage has 5 GB of space, plenty enough for lots of things to read.

So what about these Apple variants of Docs and Spreadsheets? Are Pages and Numbers and Keynote any good?

Yes, they are. These apps have been designed from ground up for the iPad's screen so I use them every day. And now that the Mountain Lion is there, I can actually put my documents in the iCloud and use them directly on my iPad. This is the sweetest deal of them all. All my presentations and spreadsheets (and Pages docs which I don't have that many) reside on the iCloud and I can access them anytime. Good the new cat is there. Before that I used to do a complicated WebDav to Dropbox kung-fu translation to be able to access my files. Not anymore.

All in all, is the iPad good for "Office work"?

Depends on you and your flow. If you want to review complicated Word documents and macro-heavy Excel sheets, you can try "OnLive Desktop" to have the real-desktop Office Suite virtualized on the iPad... but I think you're better off working on a desktop computer or a laptop. If you're like me, iPad is more than enough and the new apps like Keynote, Numbers and Pages are a joy to use with the touch interface. Meaning - office work is fun on the iPad... and what I've discovered over the last few months is that the "fun" part in work is what really drove me to go the "iPad only" route.

And your experience with "office work" on the iPad?

Here's my newest Productive Magazine Show video where I talk about all the necessary accessories I need to take when I hit the road with my iPad only. I tried to nail the list down to only the most essential ones, here it is:

Again, I tried to keep the list only to the essentials.

Steve Wozniak is less minimalistic than me

There is another geek who also likes to keep a cool gadget bag and likes retractable cables... but unlike me, he has a different idea of what "essentials" really mean - here's the bag of Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak (courtesy of Gizmodo):

And what do you carry in your gadget bag? Would you travel with iPad only?

In my iPad-only series I highlighted time and time over that one of the main apps I use (besides Nozbe) is Evernote. This is true - I love this app (and Nozbe syncs with it because of a this love) and I can confirm what they say is true: "Evernote should be your extended brain". Here's why:

I don't generate files anymore

Well, I do create files because the world seems to still like them and I have to use Dropbox to sync the files... but I don't generate as many files as I used to. Instead, I create "Evernotes", meaning, I create notes in Evernote.

The beauty of Evernote is that the size of things I store there is limitless and I can access my data not only on all of my Macs but also on my iPhone and (yay!) iPad.

1. Basic note-taking - no more MS Word

Whenever I need to prepare a spec for my great Nozbe developers, need to put a mental note for myself, need to comment on some design or some inspiration I got... anyway, need to make a note - I create a new note in Evernote. The cool thing is that notes there are "rich" meaning I can mix text and images.

So where I used to create "Word documents" I now just write in Evernote. The images I put there between the text are usually "Skitched" screen captures - meaning I use an app called Skitch on my Mac and iPad to annotate on a screenshot (add arrows and stuff) and paste it later to the note.

When I want to share these notes with my team, I either send it to them directly from Evernote or print to PDF and mail them like this. The original note always stays in Evernote.

Now that I'm working a lot more on my iPad I use Skitch for iPad and Evernote here as well. I store my all handwritten notes in one Evernote Notebook called "AllNotes" and that I'm an Evernote premium user (costs only $45 per year) I marked this notebook at an "offline" notebook so I have access to it on my iPad even when I'm on a plane without an Internet connection.

2. I scan business cards to Evernote

I have special Notebooks: "Contacts" and "ContactsJP" (for my Japanese friends) where I scan all the business cards. Here's a video showing you how I do it.

3. I scan documents to Evernote

I have a scanner on my desk which directly scans to Evernote - I put the scanned documents into their appropriate Notebooks:

• Papers (quite important documents - like certificates, passports, IDs)
• Bills (utility bills - both personal and business - I share this notebook with my father who is also my accountant)
• Stuff (unimportant documents but for some reason want to keep them)

Why do I scan all these things to Evernote? Because they have this OCR technology so when I want to search for a phrase that was on the scanned document or business card, Evernote most of the times will find it. Brilliant.

As mentioned above, I can share a notebook with someone which can come in handy.

4. I send travel info there and boarding passes

All the travel info, apart from going to Tripit is also going being sent to a notebook in Evernote called (you guessed it) "Travel". This way should I fail to print something, I can always show my boarding pass to a lady at the gate on my iPad or iPhone.

Note: Evernote, as many other apps nowadays has a fantastic "email gateway" which is very useful. Now that I'm on my iPad most of the time when I process my email I just forward stuff to Evernote.

5. I clip shopping ideas there... and web pages in general

Evernote has a great clipper for the Mac on Safari and Chrome so I "clip" web sites to Evernote. When there is an item I'm thinking of buying (like a cool accessory for my iPad or something) I clip it to Evernote to my "shopping" notebook.

6. I send interesting articles to Evernote

I read blog articles with my Google Reader account on the Reeder app on my iPhone or iPad or Mac (totally recommend this app) and later I've set up two IFTTT actions - when I mark an article as "starred" it sends the article to my Pocket account so that I can read it calmly later and sends the URL of the article to Evernote to a special "Read" notebook - just so that I never miss it.

Once I've read the article in Pocket, I decide if it's worth keeping for later and when I do want to "memorize it" then I send the entire article to Evernote to my other special notebook called "Articles".

7. All the rest of the stuff I want to remember...

Loose thoughts, quotes, numbers, IDs, coupon codes, emails with interesting info... you name it - stuff that I'm not sure I want to keep but want to keep it "just in case" is being sent directly to my "Stuff" notebook.

8. Other drafts and writing goes to Evernote, too

I've also set up my Mac mini this way that when it detects I've added a new note to Simplenote, it gets sent directly to Evernote just in case, too (notebook: "Writing"). The same applies to my Dropbox folder where I keep blog posts and essays (just like this one) that I write using Nebulous Writer. All goes to Evernote automatically.

Evernote has become my external brain now

I have it running on my Mac mini and Macbook Air all of the time, as well as on my iPhone and iPad... and even on my Google Nexus S phone. This way I have access to my "external" brain anywhere I like.

Going Paperless now... step by step

I try not to store paper anymore. I scan and later shred all the receipts (I wish I could do that with the invoices but I need to keep them for the next 5 years), documents sent from different institutions or companies. I still keep originals which I really believe I need "on paper" but most of the stuff goes to Evernote and then straight to my shredder. Now I'm in the process of revising all of my past documents and scanning them folder by folder to reduce the amount of paper to minimum.

The magic is also in the fact that Nozbe syncs with Evernote so when I start a new project, I very often "magically" discover all the notes that are related to this project. Sweet.

My stats for now: 2268 notes in 24 notebooks and 100+ tags

How do you use Evernote? Did I miss something? Or maybe you use something different as your "external brain"?

As I started my iPad-only journey I didn't know what to expect and if I can really be productive on my iPad... What I have found out is that it's really great fun to work on the iPad and I'm less likely to use my laptop now... and actually less likely to use my keyboard. iPad is not a netbook, it's a tablet so you should design your flows in such a way that you don't use keyboard anymore as much. Here's how I work.

The keyboard is an "addition" and not the "main part" of the iPad

The keyboard is still important, but with the raise of Siri (coming to iPad on iOS6) and dictation (improving with each iOS release) and gesture-based navigation, the keyboard is really only needed when you have to type something longer. Other than that, it's not really necessary. When using the iPad we need to forget the traditional "keyboard shortcuts" (Ctrl+Alt+Del anyone?) and all these PC-era things and focus on the new. It takes some time to get used to, but boy I love the new experience.

iOS Keyboard shortcuts

This is built into the iOS itself - go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts and define them there. I can't believe it's so hidden - it should be very prominent in the Settings. It works across all of my iPad apps, so when I type "hn/" it automatically changes that to "http://www.nozbe.com", when I type "m@@n" it types my email address, when I type "brm" it types "Best regards, - Michael" - it's that easy. The shortcuts are one-liners and I've added the most I use and I keep adding new.

Hopefully this will later sync with iCloud and push shortcuts to my iPhone, because it doesn't do it now and I need to define them from ground up again there. Fingers crossed for iOS6.

I also bought an app called TextExpander that allows me to define longer, multi-liner shortcuts. The downside is it works only in supported apps (it doesn't work in Apple Mail) but it does work in Nebulous writer which I use for typing this article, so it is very useful.

Clipboard History

What I miss on my iPad and I didn't see it was coming in iOS6 was the support of clipboard history. This would save me so much time of adding stuff to clipboard and later pasting it in some other app. For now I just need to stick with the "Clipboard History app" I found on the App Store. The app is great, but crashes a lot and doesn't save clipboard items in the background, but it's the best I could find. Multi-item clipboard is something I miss in the iOS and would love it come here at some point. On my Mac I was using Alfred app with clipboard history, that's why I'm spoiled in this sense :-)

Less conversation, more action please

When I process my Email Inbox to zero, I tap on emails and hardly ever use the keyboard... and when I switched to the iPad I learned to reply to emails quicker. I practice max-5-sentences replies (usually less) and move on to the next email message. I know I'm not being as polite as I used to be but over the years I've found out people preferred quicker reply than a politer one. With Email speed is what matters. I use shortcuts here as well to speed up answering emails (like "sfl" for "Sorry for my late reply.") - and I'm planning to define more.

Dictation

I haven't been playing with dictation as much yet. In fact I'm not sure if it's as fast as typing on the keyboard. Like dictating this paragraph takes me a lot longer than if I'd type it. And because English is not my mother-tongue my accent needs improving. But if you don't have a keyboard handy it's actually fun to talk to your iPad and see what it comes up with. Anyway I'm still getting used to it but I'm planning to play with it more over the coming months. By the way I dictated this entire paragraph.

What would be interesting for me would be support for other languages like Spanish and Polish. German support is already there but my accent is even worse in that language (but the Germans do understand me). What I believe though is that the dictation support will improve over time and I'll be using it even more on my iPad.

Physical Keyboard

As I mentioned in the past posts I'm using the Zagg Flex Keyboard and I love it. I'm using it mostly when I need to type the blog posts like this one or write a longer email. The keyboard supports dedicated keys to copying, pasting and other iOS-specific buttons and the keyboard also work with Android devices (haven't tried it with my Nexus S yet). It's very nicely laid out and I can touch-type easily on this keyboard. Again, I type faster than I dictate or even think, so a great keyboard is essential for me when I'm into writing.

What I really like about this keyboard is that its "cover" changes into an iPad "stand" and this way I can easily put the iPad in vertical mode. It's a great writing experience - having just a screen that looks like a blank sheet of paper in natural, vertical orientation and a keyboard next to it - it's a better typing experience than on the panoramic screens of the laptops. The writing is a lot more "focused".

Again, I didn't want to have the keyboard being a part of my iPad cover like all the "folios" pretend to be. iPad is not a netbook and I don't want it to be a "smaller notebook computer".

The keyboard is an accessory - it's not the iPad's main thing

Again, iPad is a post-PC device where keyboard comes up when it's needed, but in most cases it's out of the way. That's how I treat it and that's how I learned to work. And I love it. Switching to the iPad made me re-think the way I work and the amount of typing I did on the laptop because I could (the keyboard was always right there!) and because I was able to (I'm a touch typist so I can type plenty fast). Not anymore. Now I type less and enjoy computing even more. It's hard to take the switch but it's definitely worth it. Sometimes I'm slower because of the on-screen keyboard, but most of the times I'm happier, because I'm not typing as much as I used to.

How do you find iPad's typing experience? Do you use a keyboard on your iPad? Which one? Why?

Going iPad-only is pretty fun if you think about the social media. Most of the apps for that purpose are just done very well, much better than their web sites so the iPad is a perfect device for managing your social media presence. Here's how I do it.

Twitter using Tweetbot and Twitter integration

First off, the Twitter integration is amazing on the iPad, I've added my Twitter accounts (both the company account and my personal account - you're following me, right?) to the iPad settings so tweeting from within Safari or any other place is just easy. Loving it.

As my regular Twitter client on the iPad I use Tweetbot - I like how it's designed and how powerful it is. And the integration with "Pocket" (formerly Read-it-later) is just great. I've divided people who I follow into lists and Tweetbot lets me browse my timeline through these lists and when I find an interesting article people tweet, I add it to my "Pocket" list.

I still go back to the Twitter client on my iPhone from time to time because for some reason only this app has the "Connect" tab where I can see who favorite'd my tweets or started following me. Hope this comes to the iPad soon (along with the Twitter's new logo) :-)

Facebook app

I'm not crazy-active on Facebook but when I want to browse it I use the iPad app - it has some bugs but most of the time it works really well and I don't remember last time I browsed the Facebook web site. On the iPhone I use the same app, too.

Instagram

I post my photos using Instagram, especially using the "Kelvin" filter. I use the Instagram app on the iPhone and I've set up the IFTTT service in such a way, that all of my Instagram photos automagically are added to my Evernote account. Sweet.

Buffer

I schedule most of my Tweets using Buffer application on my iPad using their bookmarklet (it works pretty well in Safari) and I mange my updates using their iPhone app (hope their iPad app is coming soon!). I try to post every two hours something useful to my followers (this is how it's scheduled in Buffer) and later throughout the day I respond to replies and RTs using Tweetbot.

Reeder

I sync my Google Reader account with Reeder app on my iPad and when I find an interesting article I'd like to share with my circle, I either do it directly from the app (tweet or buffer via email), or simply "star" it. Thanks to the IFTTT magic every "starred" item gets added to my "Pocket" reading list. This iPad app is one of the most polished apps I have on both my iPad and my iPhone - works every time and enables me to read stuff offline.

Pocket

Pocket (again, it used to be called "Read it Later") is where all the interesting articles show up for reading them later. From here I decide which articles I'd want to share with my circles, which I want to save in Evernote for future reference and which I just want to read (or watch in case of videos) and be done with it.

As I mentioned, the articles show up here when I add them from Safari browser (using a bookmarklet), Tweetbot (using its integration with Pocket), Reeder (using IFTTT or the Reeder's native integration) or Email (I also email myself articles sometimes to Pocket). That's why "Pocket" is my central reading place and it's the place that helps me decide what I do with what I just read.

Again, thanks to additional IFTTT magic, every article's URL I mark as "read" in Pocket is being added to a dedicated Evernote notebook so that I can find it easily later. Evernote is my external brain after all.

Pinterest

I just started with Pinterest recently and I'm learning more about this platform. For now I'm using the iPhone app and the bookmarklet on my iPad. So far I find this new social media platform intriguing.

Google+

Don't use it all that much, their API is closed so I can't post automatically from the services I use daily, so it's too much hassle for me at this point.

That's it - this is how I handle my Social Media activity from my iPad and iPhone - how do you do it? Do you have any tips for me?