Category Archives: iPadOS

Follow Up on Things I’d Like from Apple

It’s been a long time since I last wrote in this space and the blog had another name at the time. So it’s time to get back in the saddle. The world was in a much different place in April of 2021 than it finds itself in in June 2023, but some things remain constant, like the things we’d like for Apple to gift us with on iPhone, iPad, Mac and all the other Apple platforms.

Among the things I was asking St. Apple for in 2021 were the ability to use Excel formats natively in Numbers, a capability for the Apple TV make and receive FaceTime calls (with the use of an attached mic and camera), and an Apple display that did did not cost $5,000. So how did I do with my wish list? I score it 1.5 out of three.

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Web Clipping With Apple Notes

Sometimes when changing the applications we use to do things, our workflows must change. Such is the case with web clipping in Evernote. To clip a webpage to Evernote all you had to do was click on the clipper extension in the web browser and follow you nose to create a new note or add to an existing note. This created a static note with the information from the web page, not just a link to the page. It also stripped out ads and other cruft you didn’t want in the note.

Using iPad OS or iOS and Notes this experience can be largely replicated and pretty much just as simply. First you must know that if you are in Safari and use the share sheet to send a web page to notes, what you will get is a note with a link to the web page. This is not generally what I want because pages can change or disappear over time.

Instead the following work flow will produce a note with a clean PDF of the web site in it.

  1. Display the reader view of the website this cleans up the ads and other cruft. This will not work on a website without a reader view, but my experience is that most have a reader view.
  2. Use the share sheet to send the website to Markup, this will create a PDF of the page.
  3. Use the share sheet to send the created PDF to Notes. Select to create a new note and which folder or add to an existing note.

That’s really it. The only difference in clipping pages this way is that the links internal to the page are note live in the new note.

Follow Up to Using iPad as Primary Computer/Apple as a Service Company

Since early September I have been using my 12.9” iPad Pro Gen 3 as my primary computing device and I must say it is handling the task with very few complaints.

Furthermore, my complaints are mostly about how iCloud works rather than how the device works. All of them center around services that Apple offers that, if they worked better, would make a huge difference in usability on the iPad.

My first annoyance is with Apple Notes. It syncs across devices and across accounts with shared folders. But it does so with glacial speed. If I scan a pdf of a document and add it as a note it will take as much as a day to propagate across all of the devices and users it is shared with. I have noticed it comes in two stages.

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Spreadsheets on iPad

One of the goals of moving to an iPad as my primary computer is trying, as much as I can, to use native Apple tools. If, after having paid a premium for the hardware, I fail to use the software tools that come with it I have wasted the premium to some extent.


I have been a user and occasionally a power user of Excel since version 4 on Windows 3.1 and 3.11 and now use Excel 365 at work and home. Working with Numbers with its entirely different paradigm, was somewhat of a shock to the system. Just the idea that I couldn’t open an actual blank spreadsheet (with no formatting at all) that occupied the entire sheet seemed strange.



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