Can You Run A Business On An iPad?

Back in 2014 I spent an entire year working from a tablet and a bluetooth wireless keyboard. Back then I was an indie game developer, with no employees, working on a small, retro, indie game and I somehow managed to get the work done. It was a horrible process and I vowed not to do it again for a few years, at least until the tablet technology gets better. With iPadOS 15 I decided to try and go full time with managing my business entirely from an iPad Pro and things were a lot better than before. With iPadOS 16 on the horizon the ability to use an iPad as your only computer is closer than ever to reality, but not without many issues and hiccups. So, can you run a business on an iPad?

You can 100% work and manage a business from an iPad. You can send email, write reports, edit documents, manage spreadsheets, do client calls and conferences, release and receive payments, take notes and process payroll from an iPad. From a top-down perspective the iPad is a manager’s dream. But if you have to get hands-on with your work, code or use a multi-monitor setup the iPad isn’t ready for prime time.

I’ll walk you through my process of managing two separate businesses from an iPad. I’ll talk all about the teething issues, the horrible workarounds and the bad experiences you’ll have to contend with as iPadOS matures. However I want to let you know that working and managing your business primarily or exclusively from an iPad is completely possible nowadays – but it’s not easy.

In this article we’ll start by looking at what my needs are in order to run both my game development business and my blogging business. I’ll walk you through my setup, both in terms of hardware AND software. After that we’re going to talk about the limitations of the iPad as a platform, what current work-arounds are and explain if it’s worth pursuing them.

Please note that this article is an ever evolving one. I plan to transform it in the most comprehensive guide to working on the iPad and that means I’ll come back and update it with future developments in iPadOS. Aka when Stage Manager will be improved and have issues fixed? I’ll come back, strikeout the issues I had with it and update the article with how things are going.

How I Manage My Business(es) With An iPad

Like I mentioned in the introductory part of the article I manage two separate businesses:

• A game development business in which I make games for myself or do work for hire, consult and help design video games for other companies or clients.
• A blogging business that serves three goals:
  • Inform, help and educate readers to the betterment of the industries I am in.
  • Build an audience of readers and a source of traffic to which I can promote my own games, apps and software.
  • Build a passive revenue stream.

Both businesses have a few things in common:

• I have to write a ton of documents and documentation
  • Game Design documents and plans for a game’s development. If you want to learn more about what a game design document is and how it looks like you can read my article about it on my gaming industry blog.
  • Handle spreadsheets and accounting.
  • Project planning and game economy proposals.
• I have to do a ton of Image editing and graphics design.
  • for advertising, game characters, in-game textures or images for my articles
  • this includes amateur photography using an iPhone.
• Handle client meetings or team meetings.
  • On the game development business side I have, on average, 3 to 6 zoom and Google Meet calls / day.
  • On the blogging business I have various freelance writers, editors and virtual assistants to help me gather information or that help me format and edit my articles.
• I need multiple monitor and windows on screen in order to:
  • Be able to do level editing for my games while being able to visualise and browse the levels at editing time.
  • Write articles while watching videos and taking notes.
  • Showcase and share my screen with clients while keeping notes off screen.
• Be able to work on the go, not only in my office.
• Demo my projects and work anywhere.
  • Be it at a conference, in a meeting or at my favorite pub.
• Be able to create and edit videos, for trailers, advertising, youtube or to have fun with the team.

And when you go over this list with the iPad’s form factor, features and abilities in mind everything is 100% doable and possible on the iPad. However, there’s a startling contrast between doing some of those things on the iPad or on a computer (Macs in my case).

I think a common theme in this article is that the iPad can do everything a computer can, but not necessarily better, faster or in a more streamlined fashion. At least for now. So let’s take a look at my various iPad setups (Work Office, Home Office and on-the-go setup) and see how I’m currently integrating the iPad into my workflow.

Note that this article talks about how I use my iPad for my own business however I wrote an entirely different article that gives you examples How iPads Are Used In Business. I recommend giving it a read if you looking for ideas.

My iPad Pro Desk Setup

I currently have 3 iPad Desk Setups that I rely on:

• I have a work office where I do game development, take photos, edit images, hold meetings and handle everything that’s client-facing or work for hire related
• I have my home office where the iPad is mostly relegated to media consumption, testing my own games or is used as an external 3rd monitor in my setup.
• My on-the-go office is a mix between the two. I write a lot of articles, take note and draw blueprints or sketches for any of my business needs.

Let’s go through them 1 by 1.

Work Office iPad Desk Setup

My Work Office iPad Desk Setup is the setup I dreamed of owning ever since tablet computers became a thing. It’s the ideal setup of the future – a setup that has me arriving at work with just my iPad.

I can then put it on a stand, plug it in and I suddenly have access to multiple monitors, various peripherals (keyboards, mice, trackpads, dials, knobs and gamepads) and use it as a powerful workstation (and the iPad Pro with an M1 is more powerful than multiple computers I used over the past 15 years).

The setup is comprised out of the following:

This setup is designed to solve quite a lot of issues that iPadOS has. For example, when connected to a display via USB-C or HDMI (through an adapter) the iPad relies on the monitor to output the sound. If the display doesn’t have built-in speakers but has an audio output you can connect it to a pair of speakers or, in my case, an Amazon Alexa for audio output.

The Dell U3023E 2K Display has USB-C Input and USB + USB-C hub capabilities and Audio Output and charges my iPad Pro while in use. It’s connected via a cable to the iPad Pro itself. It’s connected to a Monitor Stand that also acts as a USB Hub which itself powers my wireless charger for the iPhone, Airpods Pro and Apple Watch.

When I need to charge my Magic Touchpad I can plug it in directly to the monitor stand hub and the same goes for some of my wireless keyboards. For those keyboards (like the Logitech POP Keys Wireless Mechanical Keyboard) that use swappable batteries? The monitor stand has a few drawers that perfectly fit 4 batteries. And I keep them there.

The iPad Stand that I’m using is a FIXED Magnetic Floating stand but you can find it online under a variety of names from the MagFlot to the LULULOOK magnetic floating stand and it’s made to fit the 11″ iPad. For the 12.9″ iPad Pro you need a bigger one.

So what do I do with this setup? It’s the standard managing the business setup. I’m either in zoom calls, on slack or discord on it. I write all my emails and pitches on it and I routinely send money to my contractors from it using Revolut.

The biggest hurdle I have with this setup is due to Stage Manager. We now have multi-monitor support and I want to use it. The problem is, when using it with Stage Manager activated and apps set to Windowed mode there are a ton of unwanted behaviours:

• Websites rendered in safari get cut off.
• Stage manager crashes when swapping apps in and out of memory.
• WordPress Dashboard (for my blogs) in sometimes unusable with half the page not being rendered and the pointer becoming hidden.
• Slack refuses to load on the main screen.
• Apps in stage manager become dark and it’s hard to tell which are open.
• Many many app crashes that cause apps to reload and progress to be lost.

So how do I mitigate this? For now, until Stage Manager and iPadOS 16 becomes stable enough, I use the external monitor as another iPad. I don’t mean in mirror mode. I just keep a single app, opened in zoom mode, full screen at all time. And the iPad screen itself becomes host to another app. For example:

• Safari opened on my 2K Monitor, Slack opened on my iPad
• Remote Desktop (into my home iMac Pro from the 2K Monitor), Safari on the iPad
• Mail App Open on the iPad + Notes in Split View, Google Docs in Zoom on the 2K Monitor

This way I am using the iPad with two or more apps on two different screens and it seems most of the issues mentioned previously are resolved. I really cannot wait for the day until iPadOS is going to be really really stable and usable.

Home Office iPad Desk Setup

My Home Office Desk Setup heavily leverages Apple’s Ecosystem and relies a ton on Universal Control. I do most of my game development work at home, the kind of work where I have to render and push a ton of polygons and spend hours waiting for lightmaps to be generated.

This is an extremely powerful and beefy setup and I cannot rely on a single machine to be able to do my work. For example, the iMac Pro does most of the heavy rendering. I control it and the iPad Pro with my M1 Macbook Pro using universal control (it allows me to share the M1 Macbook’s keyboard and mouse with the rest of my apple devices).

The benefit of this is that I can do some really intensive tasks on the iMac and have my other devices unhindered by expensive calculations. Let’s look at the contents of this setup.

This setup is a game developer’s dream setup, or as close as possible to it. Since I do a ton of my game development work for mobile devices I can start a built on my iMac Pro and test it directly on the iPad Pro. The Magnetic Floating Stand allows me to change the iPad’s orientation on the fly.

I can play the game directly with my Macbook using it’s mouse and keyboard for easier debugging, type code on the fly on the iPad and correct and fix stuff for the game from the iMac Pro. It’s also a setup that does wonders for tech meeting where I can follow the meeting on the Macbook, stream the game directly from the iPad Pro and be able to do a last minute build straight on the Macbook without the meeting/conference software lagging or dropping frames.

So this setup is rightfully setup for a specific use-case, geared towards intensive tasks and has conferencing and showcasing in mind. And what the heck, sometimes I can do work on the Macbook, intensive work on the iMac Pro and watch a movie or something on the iPad Pro.

P.s. When I got to the office I take my Macbook Pro M1 and my iPad Pro with me. WIth a bit of luck and more iPadOS improvements I’ll be able to leave the Mac at home.

On-The-Go iPad Desk Setup

My on-the-go setup revolves around the ever praised iPad Magic Keyboard, a Play Station 4 controller, the Apple Magic Pencil 2 and one of the many battery banks I have around. This setup is the setup that works the best out of all of them. Not in terms of workflow but in terms of stability.

Let’s face it, I have an 11″ iPad Pro and by just using Windowed Mode I loose about 30% of my screen real-estate if you factor the stage manager’s side windows and the dock. This is the mode in which Stage Manager is completely off and at best I use Split Screen Multitasking and an app in roll-over (aka the old way of doing multitasking). Look at the screenshots above. Floating windows are cool but for this situation, they’re mostly useless. However, on a wide screen monitor? That’s where stage manager shines.

My iPad Use Cases

You know what my needs are from an iPad and you now know what my 3 main desk setups are. So let’s see how exactly I use and rely on them.

Writting documents on the iPad

Normally I should say that the iPad, any iPad, is perfect for writing documents. However there’s a big caveat with this situation: Typing text in a document on an iPad works flawlessly. Writing & editing documents on another hand is not and I regularly find it 3 times slower to do any kind of documentation on my iPads. Regardless of setups.

This is painfully true in iPadOS16 Beta (both developer and public). Let me give you an example, as I am writing and editing this article now. Look at the video below. I’m trying to go to a new line for this paragraph but the interface is jumping all over the place. Sometimes, the pointer to where the text is written disappears, other times it’s present in another location.

Other times when I press return I’m sent to the bottom of the page and trying to scroll up back to the text editor isn’t possible. Until the 4th try.

And while I’m using the wordpress interface, the same is true with google docs in the online version. The funny thing is, the google docs app has an arguably much worse User Experience and I prefer to use the online version.

The thing about editing text and documents on the iPad is that it takes a tad longer to get things done compared to using a Macbook or a PC. And this is not due to the hardware specs, the iPad (especially the iPad Pro M1 I’m using right now) is faster and more capable hardware-wise than 90% of the computers out there.

It’s a problem with the way the OS is designed, going from a mobile-centric approach to a keyboard and mouse input has growing pains. I can type just as fast on my iPad Pro as on my Macbook Pro but the problem comes from trying to move fast and edit fast.

For someone that grew up on the iPad and is used to working on an iPad? It won’t be much of a problem. You can get used to the quirks, expect and work-around them. But someone like me who uses a mix of both Macs and iPads? Egh…

For writing documents all my desk setups are great for the tasks. The most stable one is the on-the-go setup with a Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil. But I love the desk setup from my work office, especially with a mechanical keyboard at my fingertips.

Image Editing and Graphics

The next step in my workflow is editing images and graphics. Both for my games, my articles or to make graphics and advertising images. Let’s say I want to include a screenshot of my wallpaper in this article, but I want to re-size is and blur/hide some data from a few widgets.

In the above video I do just that. I take a screenshot, go to photos and I use my Apple Pencil to draw over the text I want to hide. It’s a fast and awesome interaction that shows the versatility of an iPad Pro with moving from mouse and keyboard input to Pen input.

But when I want to resize the image? There’s no option to do that. Just crop the image aka select a much smaller part of it. So I have to use an external/separate/third party app for that called Image Resize. Why such a feature isn’t present by default on the iPad is beyond me.

And there’s another problem with this. The third party app I’m using does not automatically keep track of the aspect ration of the image and I have to know the good width and final height sizes myself. You can say why not use an app like Affinity Designer for this?

The reason is that for some short edits using Affinity is like programming a text editor from scratch every time you want to edit a document. And by the way, there’s no blur option by default on the iPad either. I can’t select a region and select blur in order to get things done.

The gist of the matter is, if you want to resize an image you can’t do it natively on an iPad. If you want to blur a text? You can’t do it natively on an iPad. You can enhance the colors, apply filters, rotate and mirror an image and that’s pretty cool.

For any kind of work you do on an iPad you’ll need a third party app to handle it. And the problem with a third party app is that it doesn’t get Apple’s TL&C (tough love and care). So you’ll have to learn and work around the quirks of another developer to get your job done.

Or you can learn to use photoshop and affinity designer for quick little edits. For more intensive, commercial stuff? Sure. But if purchase an iPad for your employees to use instead of a laptop and they’re not used to working on an iPad? You’re going to have an initial overhead that’s much bigger.

For image editing I like to use the on-the-go iPad Desk Setup or the work office desk setup. On the work office desk setup I can just pick up my iPad and draw or edit using the Apple Pencil with the 2nd screen still connected. On my home office setup I use the iMac Pro or Macbook Pro for most image editing needs.

Handling Clients Or Team Meetings

This is an area where the iPad itself shines! You can setup meetings using google meet, skype, discord, slack or microsoft teams without a problem. The only little issue you can have is from having to record audio or the meeting itself if the app in question doesn’t support that feature.

But I have you covered with a little article on that topic that solves the issue of recording Microsoft Teams meetings on iPad with audio.

Any of my iPad Desk Setups work flawless for this situation.

Multiple Monitors and Windows

In previous iPadOS versions this wouldn’t be possible. With iPadOS 16 multiple monitor support on M1 devices has been added and you can use a big, ultra-wide, external display and multiple windows with Stage Manager. It’s a dream came true.

However iPadOS isn’t officially released and it’s only available as public or developer Beta. Bugs abound. Stage Manager crashes more often than my self-esteem when it comes to a Taco Tuesday. Windows sometimes go completely black without rendering anything.

When it works? Stage Manager and iPadOS 16 is amazing and it bridges the gap between an iPad and a computer. But when it doesn’t? It’s a complete exercise in frustration. I do hope they’ll solve all bugs and issues or else this entire blog will be mostly useless.

I’m saying this as a person who wants to work exclusively form the iPad for reasons mentioned in the previous chapters. And a way to make sure this happens is for Stage Manager to be feature complete and bug free.

One thing worth mentioning here is that stage manager is much more stable on the iPad itself vs stage manager on an external screen. However using Stage Manager and Windowed Apps on a 11” screen isn’t that practical. If you want to leverage Stage Manager on a single screen go for the big big iPad (or the rumored 14” iPad).

Naturally the On-The-Go setup isn’t good for this. I mostly rely on the work office desk setup for multiple monitors and windowed apps.

Be Able To Work On The Go

Not much to say here besides the fact that the iPad is one of the most perfect work on the go devices. It’s got a whole day battery, you can use just the screen to annotate documents, connect it to a keyboard and a trackpad/mouse and take it with you on the train, the airplane, on a couch or on the bus.

One of the reasons I want to exclusively work on an iPad is that I can see this kind of versatility saving me a lot of time in the future.

The On-The-Go setup wins this part hands down. Kinda hard to carry an external monitor and keyboard + power source and dock on a train :).

Demo My Projects And Work Anywhere

Same as with being able to work on the go. I’m a mobile game developer and a blogger. My iPad runs my games anywhere and I can even write them on the iPad directly. For my blogging work? When talking with an advertiser I can just pull up the iPad, show them the site and show them the site’s stats.

I can connect to my iMac Pro at home and do builds while waiting in the airport lounge. I can edit videos on the iPad and upload them to youtube. I can write articles on it (badly sometimes) and publish to the web.

If the kinks get ironed out, the iPad will be a perfect device for my business (and possibly yours).

The On-The-Go Setup is king for this as well.

Conclusion

You can 100% work and manage a business from an iPad. You can send email, write reports, edit documents, manage spreadsheets, do client calls and conferences, release and receive payments, take notes and process payroll from an iPad. From a top-down perspective the iPad is a manager’s dream. But if you have to get hands-on with your work, code or use a multi-monitor setup the iPad isn’t ready for prime time.

The iPad’s biggest problem for business doesn’t come from it’s hardware but instead from the platform’s heritage. If you are to train people to use an iPad expect a bit of an overhead with getting basic or simple tasks done due to the need to rely on 3rd party apps with various degrees of polishes and abilities.

However as the iPad as a computing platform matures expect all of these quirks to be ironed out and I’m betting my entire blogging business (and part of my game development business) on this.

If you want to know if an iPad is good for your business I have multiple articles that can help you make an informed decision:

• Which iPad Is Best For Entrepreneurs?
• What iPad Is Best For Business Use?
• Are iPads Good For Businesses?
• How Are iPads Used In Business?
• Is An iPad Good For A Small Business?

Related posts:

Are iPads Good For Businesses?Will The US iPad Work In The UK?Where to Put My iPad On My DeskWhat iPad Is Best For Business Use?