Should you buy an iPad OR Macbook?

should your next portable computer be an iPad or a Macbook now on paper this should be an easy choice but the reality well it's a bit more complicated believe it or not it's been almost 15 years since the first generation iPad was released and in that time we've reached a really interesting point in Tech History where it's perfectly feasible that you could spend the same amount of money on an iPad as you could on a new Macbook both of these are port able insanely powerful devices and I've been really interested to see more and more

people seem to be turning to iPads lately instead of a dedicated computer in a lot of context in this video we'll take a look at whether your next device should be an iPad or a Macbook we'll explore the benefits and limitations of each one for different use cases and I'll also cover the biggest trap that most buyers fall into when they're trying to make a decision between these two devices but before we get into that let's talk about the elephant in the room and it's videos that look like this I don't know about you but

my feed is full of these videos that are about whether an iPad can replace a Macbook and I always think this is one of those situations where reviewers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn't stop to think if they should I just don't understand why anyone would attempt this kind of comparison because both devices are clearly designed for completely different types of user it' be a bit like asking can I replace a pair of scissors with a piece of paper well Apple a very unlikely to make a pair of scissors that

you can write on or a piece of paper that you can use to cut something with but you can use them both as tools separately or even together and that's of course exactly what Apple want how could you make that decision and one way is just to think about price and actually that's not as easy or objective as it might sound and that's partly because of the big trap that apple have set for you here let's take an example you've got ,000 crispy dollars to spend on a new device well Apple's topof the range MacBook

Pros they're definitely out of the running for now even in the refabbed area it's just not happening you're going to be way over a budget if you want a brand new machine you can actually spend upwards of $77,000 if you start going crazy with the specs on one of these now a budget of a grand though that will get you last year's 13in MacBook Air powered by the M2 processor or if you can find an extra $99 behind the sofa you can grab this year's brand new Macbook Air M3 Happy Days iPad wise with that

budget you could almost buy three of the regular 10th gen iPads or a couple of iPad minis but neither of these are really a viable comparison to a Macbook at all so you're probably going to be looking at the iPad Air which is $ 599 for the 11in version or $799 for the 13in model you could maybe even stretch to the iPad Pro which won't quite get you to the 13in version but we'll just buy you the new m4 11in model so for a decent budget that'll get you you either a brand new Macbook Air

or an iPad Air or a base speec iPad Pro so far so good right but it's not quite as simple as that you see if you buy any of these iPads and you're wanting to get pretty much anything done that isn't just browsing the internet you're going to need some other stuff quick side note if you're buying an iPad to browse the internet and watch Netflix and I know lots of people would do this just grab the cheapest one you can even if it's the 10th gen iPad anything else is going to be complete Overkill

and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise in terms of that stuff that you'll need the apple pencil for example is a great tool for drawing and taking notes even making amazing digital art but you will be spending an extra $80 to $130 on that depending on which one you need then there's some sort of protection maybe a folio case call that another $50 to $70 and then if you're typing anything more than a text message you're going to need a keyboard which could take you all the way up to $200 maybe a bit more

and this is the Trap once you've fallen into I ad territory you're going to be needing to buy accessories for different use cases and it will start to get expensive so suddenly all we can afford for our budget is actually just the smaller 11in iPad Air with maybe a keyboard and maybe the pencil included and at that price you might start day dreaming about all the extra stuff you could do with one of those shiny MacBook airs with a screen that's 2 in bigger hm so rather than use price as our guide let's take a

look at some typical tasks and see which device is best suited to them now if you can isolate which ones apply to your typical use case hopefully that should help you make a decision or at least let you short list from the six different iPad models and four models of MacBooks that are currently available and let's start with General Life admin I'm talking about browsing websites getting your online banking done managing calendars making a meal planning list for the week that kind of thing and when it comes to either device they will let you get

all of this stuff done really quickly and without much fuss the question you probably want to be asking here is how much fine control do you want over those things let me just give you an example so let's say you're shopping for a birthday present now on a Mac you might have a couple of browser tabs open and maybe some kind of note taken app so that you can grab ideas and perhaps keep track of spending in a spreadsheet you'd be able to do that really easily pretty much out of the box using a Macbook

now on an iPad on the other hand you're going to have a really nice experience browsing those websites but if you want to start saving stuff to a Notes app or copying pasting information to any other location you're going to be doing quite a lot of app switching and you'll find that probably will slow you down quite a bit you could try features like split screen or stage manager but you'll probably find that you'll still struggle to see multiple things on a screen at any one time and the way that the iPad software works just

isn't designed to have multiple apps open at once even if you hook this up to a display and connect to keyboard and mouse you're going to still find yourself limited by the way iPad OS has been set up so yeah I'm going to give this round to the Mac now depending on your preferences you might want to use your device to stream TV shows and movies maybe the odd YouTube video from your favorite hat wearing Tech Channel or perhaps you're into audio books and podcasts and magazines and maybe even Kindle style ebooks as a consumption

device the Macbook will let you do some of those things pretty well my MacBook Pro for example has an incredible display with a studing set of speakers and I frequently use this to watch high quality films on this big 14in screen screen with no problems at all however the form factor doesn't mean that I've always got the keyboard and trackpad with me which takes quite a bit of space so if I'm cooking dinner for example or sitting in bed it's not the most comfortable or easy size and weight to have with me now the iPad

on the other hand is so versatile for this use case and as a media consumption device it runs rings around pretty much anything else it's always on so I can easily fire up YouTube Disney Plus or any of my favorite streaming apps and then just prop it up wherever it needs to be also and this is a really important distinction most of these apps let me download content to my iPad to watch without a connection Which is far harder to do on a laptop and the screen particularly the tandem OLED screen on the new M4

Edition iPad Pros it's astonishingly bright it's got tons of contrast even with this paperlike screen protector on and it's a real joy to watch content on at the highest resolution I can get a hold of you can also have podcasts and audio book streaming no problem at all and there are dedicated apps for reading magazines books and pretty much any kind of content you can think of and it's literally at your fingertips these iPads are now so light that even this 11in version is comfortable to hold in one hand for extended periods without any issue

so if you're reading a book maybe highlighting some passages and making notes it's a really cool way to digest this kind of content so this round easily goes to the iPad it's an absolute no-brainer when it comes to consuming whatever you want to consume let's have a look at productivity work and by this I mean going beyond the kind of tasks that you do around the home and thinking about work activities staying organized and maybe even managing a team or a business and this is where things start to get a bit more complicated because the

one I would recommend here kind of depends on your particular use case and also the particular apps that you need to get stuff done as an example if you work for yourself and you've got complete control over what apps you like to use to be productive there's absolutely tons of included software on Apple devices that work brilliantly I'm talking about things like apple Notes mail free form kyot there's loads more and these all work brilliantly regardless of the device that you're using but in work mode not everyone gets that choice and the vast majority of

people will find themselves locked into either the Google Suite of apps or maybe even Microsoft when they're working if that is you by the way thoughts and prayers now both Macs and iPads have native Google and Microsoft apps available but they are not all created equally and again depending on your particular workflows you might start finding problems with the iPad user experience if you're finding that you need to hop between apps regularly to get your work done so in my case for example I might be running a zoom call where I need to share my

screen and then also see what's going on in the chat and that exact workflow means I have to use a Macbook it just wouldn't be possible on any iPad no matter how much money I threw at it so on the other hand if my particular brand of productivity was coding I'd probably be using something like xcode now this also doesn't work on iPad yet but you can download other apps that will let you work on writing and testing code out on the other other hand your particular version of productivity particularly if you're a team manager

might just be responding to emails signing documents and joining tons of meetings every day without ever needing to present stuff and actually for that kind of productivity there's no reason at all why you couldn't use an iPad I'm going to give points to both devices here with a special mention going to just how much you can get done on an iPad these days but if you're all about productivity power use I'm talking multiple screens multiple windows open all the time yeah you probably are going to be needing a Mac to get that stuff done this

is also a pretty broad term but tends to be how people describe their activities if they're responsible for any kind of creative output and apple as a brand is very much geared towards the creative industry whether that's professional audio recording video content creation or even detailed design work work and each of these different use cases tend to come with specialist software and require powerful Hardware to run them smoothly so for example when I'm making these videos I record in some of the highest resolution possible and I need my device to move around massive files sometimes

they're all stacked on top of one another before I'm able to render it to a timeline and then start applying what you might call the creative treatment that's the sort of thing that makes something go from looking and sounding like this straight from my camera to looking and sounding a bit more like this and this is when we get to the challenge of the word Pro now Apple sell both hardware and software with the word Pro in the title and at this point we have the iPhone Pro MacBook Pros Mac Pros iPad Pros Pro display

xdr and most recently Apple Vision Pro and the apple pencil Pro coincidentally these are also their most expensive devices and then to support them we've got software like logic pro and Final Cut Pro come to think of it even though it's not made by Apple we also have procreate now all of this hints that Apple really want creative professionals to be considering these Pro label devices first if you're going to be doing work a bit like this but is that fair well yeah it kind of is if you're a professional sound engineer or video content

creator you will be able to get by in fact there's a great productivity Creator called Jill who edits all her videos on an iPad Pro and her content is Fab I'm going to leave a link to her Channel just down there if you want to check it out but the difference here is that she started creating content on an iPad and hasn't known anything else I think for people who are used to the full unbridled access of a desktop version of Final Cut Pro they will likely feel hampered by things like not being able to

apply your favorite plugins and effects and just generally feel a bit handcuffed by having the power of an M series chip but without the software to back it up that is the biggest challenge that Apple need to overcome and the exception here is for creative design work and yeah you don't need a MacBook Pro to get some awesome digital art produced you don't even need an iPad Pro as the latest iPad Air models are really powerful and compatible with both the new Apple pencil Pro Plus the cheaper USBC apple pencil if you pick up the

13in iPad Air and one of these along with a cheeky $13 procreate purchase in the App Store you can have a nice big canvase to be able to create all sorts and it's like having a complete art studio right there in your iPad points wise this is really difficult to score cuz it massively depends on how you define creative work and what kind of apps you need to get things done I would say though unless you're a digital artist look at MacBooks first and then look at iPads to see if you can get the same

task done let's start rounding this up and I've got three big thoughts after looking at this comparison number one the big challenge with iPads is left over from the very first model in that they are this gorgeous piece of magical glass that appear to be mainly designed for the consumption of content content and not for producing content they've come a really long way in the last 15 years but it's still hard to get away from that simple distinction which is sadly emphasized by the way that iPad OS is designed if you want basic Computing needs

or something to use temporarily whilst on a business trip to avoid having to Lug around a heavy laptop and your primary use case for your device is consumption get an iPad with some accessories and you'll be super happy for most other cases yeah take a look at the MacBooks especially the MacBook Air which in my view is a phenomenal portable computer that most users probably should buy and it'll last you for years and number two if I had to sum this entire video up there's probably just one question you need to ask do you need

a device that lets you draw paint or write if the answer is yes buy an apple pencil buy an iPad there's no equivalent to that kind of interface on a Mac whereas accessories like the magic keyboard will make your iPad feel and behave in a very similar way to a laptop as well as being able to interact with your fingers or a pencil number three and this is a thought rather than a recommendation so just go easy with me on this one I do think there is a sweet spot which involves having both devices now

the main problem Apple have is that when you buy one of these products they're going to last you for years especially anything with apple silicon chipping it doesn't need to be this year's latest and greatest models but if you can afford to buy both of them look at refurbished secondhand eBay or even just the base models or cons consider of getting an iPad for portable use maybe combined with one of Apple's desktop machines like the Mac Studio the Mac Mini or the iMac and you will be covering yourself for pretty much all eventualities and then

with the beauty of the Apple ecosystem yeah you can take a shot if you're thinking that I might mention that at some point the beauty of that is that it just makes it so easy to flow between these devices if you're fortunate enough to be able to have both in your setup if you've reached this part of the video and you've come to the conclusion that you need to buy an iPad the next problem you'll probably be facing is which one you should be getting but good news I put together a really easy guide to

help you find which one is best for you with a thorough rundown of the pros and cons of each of the latest models and that is all over here when you're ready see you next time folks [Music]