The iOS Facebook app never sends me message alerts—which I wanted it to do after Chat Heads was added. Everything’s checked where it’s supposed to be, the app just doesn’t do it. I submitted a bug report from inside the app today.
Now that I think of it, there were chunks of day in the past few weeks in which I didn’t receive notifications that were waiting for me when I opened the app or site.
I’ve been experimenting with an iPad as a laptop replacement recently, too. My setup is an iPad 2 with a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard—which I find great. Charging isn’t really an issue, though having Bluetooth on all day drains the iPad battery faster than usual. Still, I get more than a laptop’s charge out of it.
I use Photoshop Touch, which gives me access to Adobe Creative Cloud for saving native PSD files for access from other computers (as well as other file types), and lets you set the page resolution. It’s retina screen-enabled now, though it doesn’t have ALL of the desktop Photoshop’s features. It works well by hand but even better with a stylus.
I use Pages when I need changes tracked in a word document (but keep in mind there is no commenting capability for it). When I need comments on a document, I use Google Docs (though that does not have traditional tracked changes—only “versions”—and you can only edit while online). For shorter-form writing, I use iA Writer and sync it to Dropbox so I can continue to write on my phone in the subway through Write for iPhone (the iA Writer app doesn’t store Dropbox files offline to sync later like Write does).
For drawing, I used Paper for a while and loved it, but it seems to only export as PNG, and I don’t like that. I’m thinking Sketchbook Pro might be better, and I plan to try that soon.
Evernote is my best friend since I can access it from any type of device/PC/web browser, can e-mail notes to it, and can attach files to notes.
WorkFlowy is fantastic for making outlines, and it’s free and accessible on iPhone and browsers.
iAnnotate is great for marking up PDFs and keeping them compatible with Adobe Acrobat, and it syncs with various popular cloud services for easy file management. There’s also an Adobe Reader app with more limited functions.
I love UPad as well. It’s the best handwriting experience I’ve come across. Penultimate is OK, but my handwriting always comes out clunkier there and the wrist guard doesn’t always work perfectly. Penultimate exports everything in portrait, too, which is annoying. I do like that it automatically saves pages to Evernote as PDFs. But I’m not sure that makes it better than UPad. I think I want to like Penultimate but actually prefer UPad.
As for an InDesign substitute, I haven’t heard of anything. I’d love one, though.
And of course you have VLC Player, the iTunes store for TV/Movies/Music, streaming music apps, iPhoto (or just the regular photo library), and all kinds of games.
Keep in mind: You will quickly have to pay close attention to how much memory you’re using/have left. That’s the biggest issue right now, I think, with the tablet-instead-of-a-laptop setup. And you need to always have a chunk of free space so the iPad continues to run smoothly. (I used nearly all 32gb once and Mushroom Wars wouldn’t start at all, and other apps ran sluggishly.)
This is the setup I have right now, too: an iPad 2 and a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard. I love never having to remember to charge either (and I’m obsessive about keeping my devices charged). The keyboard is the perfect width for my hands and the shortcut functions feel very natural. (It’s basically a touch-enabled laptop running iOS.)
I haven’t tried Pages for design (I imagine it would only be suitable for lighter work and less-complicated projects), but for word processing it works well—though the fact that it doesn’t support commenting makes me avoid it for some documents that I know will need it. It only recently added tracked changes.
