Transcript of how I made my iPad the ultimate productivity machine

this is my iPad Pro my favorite productivity device that I bring with me when I'm not at my workstation i use my iPad to write code edit videos take handwritten notes access my Obsidian Vault review an cards and even read books since the iPads now support cellular I can literally use it anywhere like on trains and cafes airports without ever having to connect to any sort of public Wi-Fi in many ways I actually prefer using my iPad over my MacBook especially since I've been staying out in Taiwan and Japan for the past 3 months the iPad has been a staple in the devices I use for productivity and I've come to realize how powerful it is to use in conjunction with my MacBook so in this video I'm going to talk about why the iPad is so powerful how I use it for productivity and then show you how I have set it up with the physical setup and my favorite apps on there at the end of the video I'll also explain why I think the 2022 iPads are probably one of the best iPads that they've released so first why use an iPad the first thing is the portability the smaller 11-in iPad is really unbeatable for portability it's basically the size of a notebook it fits in a small tote bag or even a sling and it's super easy to carry around the battery life is also pretty good especially if you turn off promotion and turn on battery saver and you can charge it with a regular phone charger the second thing is a cellular connection because the iPad supports eim you can add on a cellular plan to get unlimited data anywhere that you go for my cellular plan in the US I only needed to add on $10 to get unlimited data on my iPad when I was living in Taiwan Japan I used this app called Arrow and I was able to just buy cellular data and install an EI right away on the iPad so it made it convenient to use my iPad in trains and also in cafes it's probably a lot more secure than connecting to a bunch of random public Wi-Fi and I never have to ask for any Wi-Fi code or worry that I only have a limited amount of time before I have to leave the cafe i think the cell feature is one thing that makes the iPad super powerful and convenient because I can quickly pull out my iPad and get some work done or look something up if I'm on the train or in a subway the next benefit of the iPad are the cameras with the Magic Keyboard which I'll talk about later in the video it makes it so it's a built-in tripod if you want to record yourself or capture any moment so I've actually used my iPad before to take home videos cuz the ultra wide on the front back is actually pretty insane the back camera is useful if you want to capture a talk at a conference lectures the next major benefit of the iPad is the touchcreen so this might seem pretty obvious considering that it's an iPad but this is something that I've come to miss whenever I am using my MacBook the ability to have another form of input to be able to move stuff around with your fingers and to write on it to either take hand notes or even just sketch is something that the MacBook can't do at all and that's why I think in some ways it's actually faster to use an iPad than a computer because you have more forms of input instead of dragging your cursor or using a keyboard to launch an app you can tap it really quickly with your finger or you can quickly jot something down with the Apple Pencil and the last reason why I really like using the iPad is because it feels a lot more intentional than using a computer compared to using my computer where I might have a bunch of different windows open the iPad kind of forces me to just have one app open at a time and at most two with a split screen later when I show you the apps I use I'll also show you how I set up limits so that my iPad stays purely a productivity device and not a entertainment machine all right so now I want to talk about how I use my iPad and my favorite accessories so usually if I'm just at home I like to use my iPad as a second or third monitor i talked about this in my productivity workstation video but I have this magnetic mount that makes it easy to just attach my iPad and use it as a third monitor once I attach it I can either use a native iPad app like the calendar app or todos app or with one click connect it to my MacBook and use it seamlessly as another monitor if you plug it in there's pretty much zero latency but even if you don't use it as a second monitor you can still use the same mouse to control your iPad i think that's one thing about Apple products I really appreciate the continuity between devices like even copying and pasting between the iPad and computer is seamless when I actually want to use my iPad then I'll take it off and put it on the Magic Keyboard which is also a magnetic mount i think the Magic Keyboard is really essential to the iPad because it's what makes it feel like it's actually a computer laptop replacement it has a nice trackpad the keyboard is super clicky and nice to type on and you can adjust it to be any angle they've made it so that the Magic Keyboard supports a bunch of different keyboard shortcuts like the ones that you might be already used to on your Mac for example command space to open up any application or to search your iPad you can pull down the notification center pull down the control center command tab through different apps and there usually are also custom shortcuts for each application there's also some multitasking shortcuts that I think are pretty fun to use with the touchcreen on the back of the Magic Keyboard I have two different accessories that attached on here the first is an Apple Watch holder so even though the Apple Pencil is magnetic and attaches to the side of the iPad I found that it's pretty weak and would usually fall off if I throw in a backpack or something and there'll be times where I like don't even know where my Apple Pencil is so I found this accessory which you can basically just stick to the back of the case and slide the pencil in when you're not using it and I think this is a lot more sturdy and a better place to keep it and it also acts as a handle when I'm just holding my iPad and when I want to use it I just take it out and I can write it or charge it for a few minutes so yeah that's the pencil and the second accessory here this is actually a Mac safe holder so really the only benefit of this is that I can attach my phone here so that you know there's a place to put my phone when I'm working or if I'm on a call I can flip this out and use it simultaneously like that sometimes I also use my phone to display my calendar or to-do list if I'm working on the iPad now I want to share with you my favorite productivity apps that I use on the iPad all right so the first app I want to share is called Apollo which is this app right here so this is an app that allows you to install a local AI onto your iPad so that means you can use it without an internet connection right out of the box there's a bunch of different AI models that you can download which includes the DeepSeek model Mistro model and Llama which are really good and pretty solid uh LLMs that you can install locally so none of the data gets sent to any server and you can use it without any internet connection this has come in handy a couple times if I'm working without an internet connection like if I'm in an airplane for example but it's also nice to know that I have a local chat GPT that I can use at any time the next app is called Jump so this is the app that I use to remote log in to my Mac so if I'm going to a cafe or I'm going to the office and I don't have my MacBook I can easily just remote log in and do anything I need to do like code or edit videos directly on the iPad you can change the aspect ratio and settings if you wanted to fill it up completely but I like it kind of widescreen like this and for example if I want to code Yeah right there so I can have the terminal right here and uh if I have my magic keyboard then I can easily do anything here but the latency is not too bad you can definitely do work on this so yeah the app is called Jump you just install on your Mac and then you install on your iPad and it's pretty easy to set up the next app here is an flashcard application that I use to study Japanese and remember anything else the next is Chatt which I'm sure you're already familiar with the next application here is Perplexity which is a AI search app this app is really powerful to look anything up and to do any sort of research like you can do really in-depth analysis on a company like their financial statements you can have it summarize events and news so for example if I wanted to summarize like the US tariffs I just click that and it gives me a very comprehensive summary of everything that happened the sources used and I can also ask follow-up questions one thing that's cool about Perplexity compared to using Chad GBT is that you can select focus and have it only search throughout Reddit YouTube or academic papers so that's Perplexity the next app is Obsidian so yeah I've been a Obsidian user for about a year now and it's probably the most powerful note-taking app that I found i made a dedicated video showing how I set it up the extensions I use but yeah I think this is one of the most powerful note-taking applications especially since there's something called a graph view you can see how your notes connect to other notes and you can see how different things that you've taken notes on connect to each other so this is a really cool feature one thing that's unique about Obsidian are something called daily notes so when you open Obsidian it creates a new note with today's date as the title and in that daily note you can add anything you want like anything when you record and you can just keep track of notes in there all the notes are saved locally on iPad so it works even without an internet connection and you can even use Vim Shortcuts on the iPad if you know what that is i do occasionally use the Apple Notes app because that is the app that has the best support for the Apple Pencil so if I'm taking any sort of handwritten notes or drawing any sort of diagrams I'll use the Apple Pencil application one tip that I found to be pretty useful with the Magic Keyboard is that if you wanted to turn it into a writing surface you can just flip it around like this and put it on the table like this which acts like a raised ledge and then you can just easily take notes right here the next app I use is the Books app so this is just the default iOS books app but I use this to listen to audiobooks and to also read books within the app i've tried out a few different book apps but I think the native Books app is probably the best one in terms of UI and speed even if you download books from the internet you can still add it to the Books app and sync it across all of your iOS devices so it's pretty convenient one workflow I like with the iPad is I can pull up Obsidian make it split screen and just take notes on the right as I read the book right here okay so next to that I have messages the default Gmail app which has some keyboard shortcuts that makes it easy to go through emails and then I have things three so this app is my favorite to-do app it syncs instantly across my computer my phone and even my Apple Watch it is a little bit pricey but it's a onetime payment so there are no subscription fees i think the UI is really nice and minimalistic and it just works for what I needed to do the way I've set this up and how I use it is based on something called the GTD system if you're interested I did make a dedicated video in my channel membership talking about how I've set this up and what that system looks like the next app I use is Notion so the only thing I use Notion for is project management so I use it to plan out and make these videos i use it for Doco which is the app I'm working on you might think why don't I just do those things in Obsidian but Obsidian is more suited for note-taking or learning things for yourself whereas with Notion it's really powerful for planning out different timelines or working with other people because you can share different documents one thing I found to be really helpful with using my iPad as a productivity device is to set up limitations so that it doesn't become an entertainment device and I've talked about this before with how I set up my phone but how I do on my iPad right now is I use this app called Burnout Body so this app is completely free and you can pretty much use it to set up a schedule for when you want to allow social media or any sort of distracting apps and for me I just have it on a schedule but you can also set it up so that it's blocked completely one app that works really well with Burnout Buddy is Untra for YouTube so this app allows you to make customizations to what your YouTube looks like in Safari so for example here's a video on YouTube there's no comments there's no description there's no related videos and I don't get distracted or go down different rabbit holes and my homepage is just a search bar so you can set all that up with the app Unrapped for YouTube all right some additional tips for the iPad is to take advantage of the screen real estate and to use different widgets so for me I just have one widget that shows me the things I have to do today but you can also have calendar you can have different habit trackers on here and you can also add ones in the notification center which I've done as well another thing that's useful is to add shortcuts to the control center so on the Magic Keyboard you can access the control center with a keyboard shortcut or you just drag it down from the right here and the first shortcut that I've added is for my to-do app so I can just tap this and make a new to-do really quickly next I have a shortcut which turns on grayscale with one click so this is done with the zoom setting in accessibility next I have a color filter shortcut which removes all the blue light so this is helpful if I'm using the iPad at night and I don't want it to disturb my sleep so this pretty much has the same effect of wearing blue light blocking glasses so yeah recommend adding those two personally I found that setting up the blocks and limitations on my iPad to be really helpful in helping me see my iPad as just a productivity device but everything I show in the video is just what works for me and the applications that I use if you don't have an iPad and you're considering getting one I do think that the 2022 iPad is probably the best one that they've released mostly because there are two cameras on the back including a super wide angle and a normal camera on the back and the front camera is also wider on the old one versus the new one the newer iPads are a little bit thinner which I'm not really sure why they did that i think this is the perfect size like this is the exact width of the Apple Pencil the new one is actually a little bit thinner than the Apple Pencil which makes it even easier to have the pencil fall off but I will say that the Magic Keyboard of the new one is slightly better because it has an escape key but it's not really a big drawback because you can just remap the escape key in settings to caps lock which if you do that there's basically no difference they recently refreshed the iPad Air which also has a Magic Keyboard and it's probably just as good as this one except for the fact that it has one camera so I would probably recommend either getting the 2022 iPad Pro or the newer iPad Air with Magic Keyboard if you already have an iPad that you don't use I would highly recommend setting it up and giving it a second life that's pretty much what happened to mine about 2 years ago but you could also find a used or refurbished one online for me I think the iPad is a really great underrated productivity device the fact that I can just leave my MacBook at home and just bring this on a short trip or to a cafe or to the office uh makes it really nice and portable if you enjoy the video and you want to support the channel consider subscribing or joining my channel membership i recently just made two Q&A talking about entrepreneurship relationships YouTube and even how I learn Japanese i also have videos just like this one where I show you cool productivity setups that I've discovered either way I'll see you in the next video let's get it [Music]