After using a MacBook Air as my go-to travel computer for a few years, I switched to an M4 iPad Pro in 2024. I thought the transition would be reasonably smooth, but unfortunately, I had to make several sacrifices. Let’s discuss them one by one.

1Magic Keyboard’s Limited Viewing Angles

The first thing I noticed after I attached my iPad Pro to theexpensive Apple Magic Keyboardwas that the viewing angles were pretty limited. I often use my laptop while lying on the couch, but the flexibility of a MacBook’s lid was missing here.

The Magic Keyboard offers a good viewing angle when you have it on your lap or place it on a desk. However, if you tend to use your laptop elsewhere, like on your bed or couch, know that you’re able to’t push the iPad further back than what you see in the picture above.

2Inferior Battery Life

The iPad Pro offers decent battery life for a tablet—Apple rates itfor up to 10 hours of web browsing. However, that’s a lot less than what my M1 MacBook Air offers—up to 10 hours of browsing or up to 18 hours of video playback.

Ever since Apple transitioned to itsin-house Apple silicon chips, MacBooks have offered amazing battery life across the board. Unfortunately, Apple decided to make their iPad Pros thinner in 2024 rather than putting a bigger battery to narrow the gap.

3Stage Manager Is a Downgrade

Stage Manager is Apple’s half-baked attempt at improving the multitasking experience on iPadOS. Sure, it’s more advanced than Split View and Slide Over forrunning multiple apps simultaneously on an iPad.

However, it simply cannot match the native app window management in macOS. Stage Manager is also available on macOS, but it immediately felt like a downgrade when I started using it.

For starters, you can’t resize windows and place them according to your liking; you’re restricted to Apple’s preset layouts and positions. iPadOS also limits you to four apps at a time if you don’t have an external display connected to your iPad.

4Managing Files Was Cumbersome

Finder makes it easy to manage all the files on your Mac. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with Apple’s Files app in iPadOS, which is pretty limiting. Because, unlike Finder on Mac, the Files app doesn’t have full access to your iPad’s file system.

Additionally, the Files app doesn’t allow me to choose a desired app whenever I try to open a natively unsupported file; there’s no “Open With” option. I also can’t sort files by type or batch rename them to be able to find them easily.

All in all, consider Files an app for storing all your files; it’s not a system-wide file management utility like Finder.

5Lack of Desktop-Class Apps

Apple tries hard to push the iPad as a laptop replacement, but at the end of the day, iPadOS is still a supersized mobile operating system. We need actual desktop-class apps before we can solely rely on an iPad as our primary computing device.

In 2023, Apple introducedFinal Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPads. But from my experience using Final Cut Pro on both an iPad and a Mac, I can confidently say the iPad version is essentially a stripped-down product.

For example, if you’re a professional, you’ll have a hard time color grading with Final Cut Pro on an iPad. It also lacks some features that are available on the Mac counterpart, like Object Tracker, Speed Ramping, Optical Flow, and Scrolling Timeline.

Likewise, I paid for an Adobe Photography Plan hoping I can take advantage of Lightroom and Photoshop on my iPad. While Lightroom for iPad is nearly identical to its desktop app, Photoshop is a cut-down version, lacking vector support, Pen tool, and many filters and effects.

6No Extensions for Third-Party Browsers

As much as I love and enjoy using Safari on my iPhone, I prefer using Chrome on my computers, including my MacBook. One of the main reasons for that is extension support. Safari’s extension library is very limited, even on macOS.

Once I switched to an iPad, I quickly started to miss some ofthe best Chrome extensionsI take advantage of. That’s because Chrome and other third-party browsers for iPad don’t support extensions at all; your only option is Safari if you need extensions.

More importantly, there’s no parity between the Safari extensions offered on iPadOS and macOS. For instance, the Grammarly extension functions differently than the one available for Safari on macOS. It doesn’t feel like a desktop browser extension, even though Apple calls Safari for iPad a desktop-class browser.

Now, you understand why I regret switching to an iPad as my primary computing device for travel.My iPad can’t do everything my Mac could, but that’s mainly due to iPadOS limitations rather than the hardware that powers it. At this point, I can only hope that Apple turns iPadOS into a desktop-class operating system over time.