iPad Work Fails on iPad — a list.

[erasr]

I haven’t seen any day-to-day issues / lists of problems the iPad poses when working on it. So I’d like to hear other people’s feedback, and if any of you have the time to feed this stuff back to the developers, that would be super helpful!!

The iPad is fantastic, I own the M4 11”, but every few days something so BASIC will pop up that I can’t do on it, which baffles me.

Today; using Microsoft Teams, I’m writing a new post in a channel (many of you will be familiar with this). I’m a senior manager, so I do this from time to time on my MBA.

I decide to do it on my iPad for once. So I create the post, start writing it, then realise that I need a website link. I go to the website, flick back to Teams and the post draft is GONE. Gone.

It appears that it’s impossible to have Teams open with a post you’re writing, grab a website URL, then go back to it and finish the post off. Incredible.

Am I being dumb?!

Let’s hear everyone’s bizarre iPad work fails. I think we need this thread as a place for people to see just how bizarre and awkward it can be sometimes.

Again, I adore my new iPad, but it’s so close to being great for work, then sometimes so far away…

 

[Slartibart]

split view or stage manager is probably your friend here 😃

 

[yellowbunny]

Biggest issue for me is working with files in onedrive or dropbox. I have to download the Keynote (or whatever) and then export back rather than just it auto saving there. It's so dumb and makes file management a nightmare!

 

[rui no onna]

Biggest issue for me is working with files in onedrive or dropbox. I have to download the Keynote (or whatever) and then export back rather than just it auto saving there. It's so dumb and makes file management a nightmare!

I use Microsoft Office apps and those work directly with files stored on OneDrive and Dropbox.

 

[Digitalguy]

For me the other day the issue was with having 2 Excel files (from dropbox) side by side, Excel just didn't want to, so I updated both dropbox and excel and at that point excel even refused to open the files. I had to use remote desktop to finish my work. I tried now, 2 days later, and it works, but it's still a pain, much slower, since I can't use the file app but I have to mess with Dropbox sort by name and sort by last modified, with folders at the end etc.
Problems with iPad often don't come from iPadOS but from apps themselves and the fact that they need to interact with each other becauce there is no proper file centric system and the file app does not work properly with could files (when I sync my dropbox folders to the iPad they don't sync in the file app).

 

[yellowbunny]

I use Microsoft Office apps and those work directly with files stored on OneDrive and Dropbox.

There’s no way I could do that. Would rather jump through Apple hoops!

 

[seggy]

There’s no way I could do that. Would rather jump through Apple hoops!

Good luck keeping dlp thru workflow for starters. But then consumers do consumer things of course with consumer simplisticness(sic)


Onto the topic at hand, the main issue with the iPad is that yes, you can *eventually* do all of these things some way, inevitably through >10x the number of individually simple steps, which ultimately adds up to frustration + waste of time especially if you know what you're doing - unless you're so incapable with an actual OS that you would do anything to shield your ego from that fact, or you're determined to make it work for some presently insane reason.

Which is why I stick to using my iPads for roles that make sense, or go in eyes open to the compromise between form factor and utility. There are entire days I can usefully employ an iPad with a slight frustration tradeoff. Then there are (still far more often) entire days that it would be mostly dead weight - but there are times that they're useful in small ways anyway, and in those cases I'll stuff the Mini into my bag instead.

 

[rui no onna]

There’s no way I could do that. Would rather jump through Apple hoops!

Our workplace is all Windows anyway.

I also use a Windows PC at home (on the very rare occasions the iPad can't do the job). It's just the iPhone and iPad that are in their own little world and for what I use them, I can live with iOS's restrictions.

 

[rui no onna]

Today; using Microsoft Teams, I’m writing a new post in a channel (many of you will be familiar with this). I’m a senior manager, so I do this from time to time on my MBA.

I decide to do it on my iPad for once. So I create the post, start writing it, then realise that I need a website link. I go to the website, flick back to Teams and the post draft is GONE. Gone.

It appears that it’s impossible to have Teams open with a post you’re writing, grab a website URL, then go back to it and finish the post off. Incredible.

As someone else has mentioned, Stage Manager might have worked for this. SM is heavier on RAM but I noticed it actually keeps apps active better than split view.

 

[rui no onna]

For me the other day the issue was with having 2 Excel files (from dropbox) side by side, Excel just didn't want to, so I updated both dropbox and excel and at that point excel even refused to open the files. I had to use remote desktop to finish my work. I tried now, 2 days later, and it works, but it's still a pain, much slower, since I can't use the file app but I have to mess with Dropbox sort by name and sort by last modified, with folders at the end etc.
Problems with iPad often don't come from iPadOS but from apps themselves and the fact that they need to interact with each other becauce there is no proper file centric system and the file app does not work properly with could files (when I sync my dropbox folders to the iPad they don't sync in the file app).

Lol, I probably would've just used two iPads for this. 😂 Of course, that doesn't help if you need to copy/paste data from one file to another.

To be honest, I don't even like using laptops for Excel. I need at least dual monitor or 27" 2560x1440/1600 for side by side Excel.

 

[KPOM]

Teams is a mess on iPad. Microsoft should re-write it. It doesn’t work well with Stage Manager. Sometimes it won’t pull up the screen to join a meeting unless I unplug it. And if you move Teams to the external display and have your camera on, your picture appears sideways on screen. Zoom doesn’t do this, so it seems like a bug in Teams, not iPadOS.

 

[joshuaiz]

Teams is a mess

FTFY.

 

[thelookingglass]

I’ve given up on this. Today, I tried to copy a table from one app into another. On my Mac, the formatting of the table is completely intact. On my iPad, it pastes only the text and not the table formatting. Totally useless. This type of thing happens frequently. It’s such a shame.

 

[allenvanhellen]

split view or stage manager is probably your friend here 😃

That’s the thing though. This just wouldn’t happen on a computer. With iPad, you have to painfully discover all these issues, then find and remember to use workarounds.

 

[Isengardtom]

Lol, I probably would've just used two iPads for this. 😂 Of course, that doesn't help if you need to copy/paste data from one file to another.

To be honest, I don't even like using laptops for Excel. I need at least dual monitor or 27" 2560x1440/1600 for side by side Excel.

Same. It’s barely ok to do a split on my 24” iMac. I’d probably do iPad and iMac in universal control for this

 

[Isengardtom]

That’s the thing though. This just wouldn’t happen on a computer. With iPad, you have to painfully discover all these issues, then find and remember to use workarounds.

True but you do get used to these things quickly. And there’s annoying things to get used to when you’re used to iPadOS and go to MacOS. I always seem to struggle with dragging screenshots / pictures around with my trackpad

 

[Bigwaff]

I’m a senior manager,

if any of you have the time to feed this stuff back to the developers, that would be super helpful!!

Ah… delegation. Spoken like a true “senior manager”.

 

[henrikhelmers]

It appears that it’s impossible to have Teams open with a post you’re writing, grab a website URL, then go back to it and finish the post off.

This is an issue with Teams not restoring its state. I have had similar experiences in other apps. You could argue that iPadOS should be better at keeping apps running, but currently the burden is on the app to restore correctly.

 

[RedWeasel]

That’s the thing though. This just wouldn’t happen on a computer. With iPad, you have to painfully discover all these issues, then find and remember to use workarounds.

Which of course is pretty much the oppositive of the "It just works" philosophy that Apple was once known for.

The user should not need to adapt to the computer. The computer should adapt to the expectations of the user.

 

[subjonas]

Biggest issue for me is working with files in onedrive or dropbox. I have to download the Keynote (or whatever) and then export back rather than just it auto saving there. It's so dumb and makes file management a nightmare!

This is not true (at least with Dropbox, not sure about OneDrive). Dropbox files show up in the Files app and get updated as you work on them. No need to do any importing, exporting, or transferring of files.

 

[subjonas]

This is an issue with Teams not restoring its state. I have had similar experiences in other apps. You could argue that iPadOS should be better at keeping apps running, but currently the burden is on the app to restore correctly.

I seem to recall this would always happen when simply doing a search in the Gmail app. Every time I switched away from the app even for just a second, the search results would disappear and it would reset to the inbox. Infuriating. Other apps didn’t seem to do that and it doesn’t seem to happen any more, so maybe it was a problem with the app and has since been fixed.

 

[Abazigal]

This is not true (at least with Dropbox, not sure about OneDrive). Dropbox files show up in the Files app and get updated as you work on them. No need to do any importing, exporting, or transferring of files.

Same for OneDrive as well. I open a document saved in OneDrive, made edits to it and changes are automatically saved and synced.

 

[gpat]

I'm just amazed that this stuff has been happening for 14 years, most fails would be trivially avoidable by the software developers, and users just keep using the iPad.

 

[Unami]

Just one thing from yesterday: I was looking for a file and realized that you can't sort files by "recently changed" so I had to sift through files manually. Also, the video controls in the files/preview app are not great.

 

[Thomas Davie]

Back in July, 2021 when I had moved & was refurnishing via Amazon, I was tethering evrything to my S20 Ultra. Cell phome service was spotty, and I as connecting to. Tower 5-600km away (I live in a cell phone dead spot, shrug). So I was buying JBL speakers (ended up with 9 instead of 4) and automated cat litter boxes ( instead of 1).But I really only attributehst to %%&&$ cell service.

Now that I’ve got rock solid fibre service, I just use wifi calling and a few extenders aroumd my external property.

But hat’s not really an iPad specific issue or oddity so much as very low/spotty cell signal.

Tom