Using an iPad as a laptop replacement?

Hi, I don't think teat iPad can replace a LepTop.
It has a lot of problems, mostly focus problems, mostly about Braille Display users. Experience it.
I it.

It could possibly work given what you said you want to do. I'm not a power user of iOS or iPadOS, as I prefer the power, efficiency, and lack of arbitrary restrictions a desktop OS like Windows, Mac, or Linux provides. I don't know how well VoiceOver keyboard support on iOS/iPadOS is working these days.

I used an iPad Pro for a year as my priamry device. It worked however with lots of workarounds to do even the most basic tasks. File management is not that reliable and usable, multitasking does not live up to that of MacOS and Windows, editing is horrible, productivity apps like Numbers and keyNotes are still not given enough of accessibility thought by Apple. Again, it is doable if you are patient enough and happy to try something new. I suggest giving it a try with some older iPad you have, and trust me if you get the latest and greatest iPad your experience wouldn't be different. I tried lots of iPad variants, and now I have the one with the M processor, VoiceOver does not care much of how fast your iPad is, it crashes, it slows down, it does not respond sometimes, so get something cheap that you would not regret spending money on.
Good luck!

Great hardware so so iOS. Not to good with external keyboard for function use. Get a computer.

There are a few more keyboard shortcuts on iPad than there are on the iPhone, but not many, and they often have to do with things like switching apps, i.e. if you have two apps side by side.

All of the stuff you'd want to do with an iPad can be done with your iPhone and a Bluetooth keyboard. That's not to say you'd necessarily want to stick with a phone, Esp. if you have any usable vision left.

But for instance, Google Docs is going to do whatever Google Docs does on iOS with a Bluetooth keyboard and your browser of choice whether it's an iPad or a phone. You've got Safari, Firefox ,and Chrome for both, so you should be able to find out which browser works best with something like Docs.

Here are keyboard shortcuts for iOS.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-voiceover-with-an-external-keyboard-iph6c494dc6/ios

The focus issues can more or less be solved by having your device next to you and touching the screen. For instance, sometimes in web browsing if you go back a page, and try to navigate with VO-left/right, it appears as though the screen is blank or empty..

Touching the screen to get into the area with the web page pretty much solves this, and I'll note this sometimes happens if I'm only using the touch screen, iPhone XR in case that matters, this can happen with apps as well.

Keyboard shortcuts, not Voiceover specific, for iOS.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-shortcuts-iph3da414515/ios

Keyboard shortcuts, not Voiceover specific, for iPad OS.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102393

The Voiceover specific shortcuts in the first link will obviously be the most helpful, but there are the more general ones, for the sake of comparison.

I'll add that the guy who wrote Personal Power iOS Edition:

https://www.applevis.com/guides/personal-power-getting-most-ios-totally-blind-user

uses his phone as a laptop replacement. Also, though I have no specifics, here's another Applevis contributor who mentions doing the same.

https://www.applevis.com/blog/alone-life-without-applevis

Specifically: "And, since I eventually turned my iPhone into my only computing device, the entire AppleVis community became my competitive edge in the world. Being empowered together is grand!"

This is not to say that you *should* do this. I'm trying to use my phone for more stuff, and having it as my only or even primary device seems nonsensical to me. And I mean, I'm having fights with people about using iOS to make some kind of actual music, lots of people insist it can't be done, I say it should at least be possible. They reply that even if it's possible, it will be a terrible experience for me.

We'll see. I'm determined to at least try, because you'll never know what you will and won't want to do with the thing if you just assume everything will be so much of a pain that you never bother to do it.

What I'm trying to point out here is that it seems entirely possible, depending on what you're trying to do. Michael Feir wrote an entire book on it, lengthy and IMO quite good. True, he used Ulysses, not Word or Google Docs. But it seems that's exactly what you're going to try and use it for, mostly anyway.

You've got an example of two people doing exactly what you're wanting to try, and even if we hear no more from the latter, the former wrote an entire book to help you give it a shot. Try it and let us know how it goes.

Tip: give yourself plenty of time. For me, doing things in a totally new way, like on a phone, can get frustrating. You need to be able to have time to just experiment with small things and get used to stuff. If you just wait until it's time to reply to some critical email but you've never messed with the mail app or entering text or whatever, not just typing but correcting and all that, you're just going to get super frustrated if it doesn't work like you expect it to ... at least you will if you're me.

Personally, I'm finding some things easier on the phone, or at least, equally workable. Dealing with email, at least in terms of going through stuff and reading it and deleting stuff I don't want, (I haven't written any yet because I need to work on writing more generally), was easier on the phone until recently because the mail program I use in Windows was pretty slow, that's mostly been fixed now. But it's actually still really simple on the phone, so I do both.

As another example, we've got a program through our insurance where if you track things, you get points and if you get enough points, you can get a gift card to various places. Using their app is a lot like using the website, in the sense that you can pick a link and go and fill stuff in.

But the app is so much easier to deal with on the phone. Part of this is that if you link Apple Health, it tracks some stuff for you. But even things that you manually need to check off, e.g. started your day with a glass of water,are way simpler and quicker to deal with in the app than they are on the website on a desktop computer.

I look at it this way. Will I ever entirely replace my desktop/laptop of whatever flavor with a phone? No. There's just stuff I want to do there that I can't do on a phone. But there are pretty portable Bluetooth keyboards out there nowadays. So I think, what if I'm out somewhere, and all I have is my phone? That makes me want to push myself to learn it, and learn it well, so even if I'm not regularly browsing on the phone or writing email or whatever, I can if I have to or want to.

One of my sisters-in-law had to travel out of the country to help a sick relative. She wanted a keyboard to keep with her tablet to take notes if she had to. I recommended the Logitech K380. She kept it and her tablet in her purse, and she loved it, because she was ready to go at a moment's notice to take notes on what doctors were telling her. She's sighted, and it was an Android tablet. But you see what I'm getting at here

It depends on what you want to do. File management is not what you know on desktop operating systems like macOs or Windows. However, mailing, web browsing, online banking, note-taking, and media stuff works quite well on iPad. I use the iPad Pro 11-inch M4 myself with the Apple Magic Keyboard. For me, it has successfully replaced my laptop. However, I needed the laptop only for mobile stuff like mailing, web browsing and such stuff. If I want to do real work, this happens on my Mac mini because the iPad cannot replace a fully-featured desktop-class OS.

Regarding keyboard issues, there are still a few issues I experience:

• If you hold a key, key repeat does not work if VoiceOver is enabled
• Sometimes, the cmd key is stuck and causes the keyboard shortcuts menu to open after an application was launched. This can be fixed by pressing both cmd keys one time.

Besides the keyboard issues, there are a few VoiceOver issues that make the use of iPad more inefficient:

• When switching apps with CMD-tab, the focus does not stay on the element where it was. Let's say you are in Safari and switch with CMD-tab to Notes. After switching back to Safari, you need to search for the element you were before again. That's really annoying.
• In many apps, elements are not placed as they are laid out on the screen. For example, the sidebar which should be left on the scrren and therefore the first element that VoiceOver finds after the show/hide sidebar button, is place somewhere in the middle. You can navigate by container with a keyboard shortcut, but anyway, it's very annoying as this is very unnatural and not what you'd expect.
• When you are in a text field and press CMD-right arrow to go to the end of the line, navigation by up/down arrow keys no longer works. This does happen especially in big text fields. I've experienced this in Notes, for example. If this happens, you have to press CMD-up arrow to go the the beginning of the document, then search for the line you were and bavigate by words until you are at the end of the line. This is very annoying while processing text.

The rest works fine. As I don't use the iPad for work tasks like text processing, programming, audio editing and processing and so on, I'm fine with it. However, it would be very appreciated if Apple finally could fix those issues. Most of them were added with iPadOS 18.