Saving files on iPad Air 2?

[Just_Me_D]

You are probably right.

I am

I either need to swap it out for something else,

That's exactly what you need to do

or just resign myself to just using it for the handful of things it was intended for, rather than beat my head against the wall trying to bend it to my will. LOL I will use it for a couple more days and see what direction I need to go in...

It, like any other tablet, is designed to do numerous things for a specific customer base. The operating system and supported apps go a long way in determining use, regardless of the brand. You've made it crystal clear that the iPad does not do what you need it to do and yet, you're trying to convince us that you need a few more days to decide what direction you need to go in. I can no longer take you seriously.

 

[SquireSCA]

I am That's exactly what you need to do It, like any other tablet, is designed to do numerous things for a specific customer base. The operating system and supported apps go a long way in determining use, regardless of the brand. You've made it crystal clear that the iPad does not do what you need it to do and yet, you're trying to convince us that you need a few more days to decide what direction you need to go in. I can no longer take you seriously.

You mean, because I am open minded enough to actually evaluate something and decide if I am being impulsive versus being realistic or whether I need to adjust my expectations, that I am not to be taken seriously?

Wow.

 

[Evilguppy]

Have you looked at the Note Pro?
The only reason I gave it up was that it got smashed and destroyed and it was going to take $$$ and too long to fix, so I went back to iPad, but the Note Pro is a good tablet.

I used it for work, drawing plans for job estimates (construction business), keeping track of jobs, hours, expenses and income, I used it for school, took notes, wrote papers, took tests, I used it for my other job (environmental studies) and again took notes, pictures, created documents, though the best part was being able to have 4 screens to work with at once.

I did experience a little lag at times, I don't know if that's been addressed.
Also because of TouchWiz, there's a possibility that the Lollipop update completely wrecked it, Samsung is known for that.
But with the OS it shipped out with, it was a solid tablet.

It certainly sounds like iPad is not the tablet for you.
Personally I won't go back to Android, I've found what works for me in Apple, but you might want to try the Note Pro.
You sound more like an Android kinda guy.

 

[Trees]

Healthy discussion (in my view) about one of the limitations on iOS (iPhone and iPad) that are frustrating and make little sense to me. I know that iOS has a user level file system. That fact and that it's obfuscated while not on other mobile OSs is irritating.

But as Just_Me_D said, you have to make some compromises and tradeoffs. This would be true for Android, as there are some behaviors or features that also equally irritate and frustrate me. Knowing that, for what I need though, iOS works quite well and is enjoyable to use for almost every other use case that I can think of.

I used an iPad for years for iTunes, web, and a few apps; but have since handed it down to one of the kids (replaced a failing/aging original iPad). In its place, I went with a MacBook Air. Provides file system access, and much more given OS X. That choice may not be the right one or feasible for others, but is the path I chose when deciding to whether or not to get another iPad. If I was in the same spot now, I'd consider the Surface or a MacBook Air.

 

[SquireSCA]

Have you looked at the Note Pro?
The only reason I gave it up was that it got smashed and destroyed and it was going to take $$$ and too long to fix, so I went back to iPad, but the Note Pro is a good tablet.

I used it for work, drawing plans for job estimates (construction business), keeping track of jobs, hours, expenses and income, I used it for school, took notes, wrote papers, took tests, I used it for my other job (environmental studies) and again took notes, pictures, created documents, though the best part was being able to have 4 screens to work with at once.

I did experience a little lag at times, I don't know if that's been addressed.
Also because of TouchWiz, there's a possibility that the Lollipop update completely wrecked it, Samsung is known for that.
But with the OS it shipped out with, it was a solid tablet.

It certainly sounds like iPad is not the tablet for you.
Personally I won't go back to Android, I've found what works for me in Apple, but you might want to try the Note Pro.
You sound more like an Android kinda guy.

I am looking at that and the newer Tab S 10.5 with the Octacore processor.

I guess I can look at it this way... It's not the ability to have root and custom ROMs and unlimited customization, alternate launchers, etc... I can dabble and tinker with that stuff with my phone if I want. I can use this as a generic media consumption device, and just keep things simple.

If I need something portable for getting more robust tasks done, I have a solid Linux laptop, and I still have my Dell Venue 11 Pro Windows tablet and keyboard doc, that is getting a free update to Windows 10... That tablet, while over a year old, is still a solid tablet and runs full Windows, integrates perfectly with my network and media server, etc...

Problem solved, I will stop trying to get the iPad to do everything, and the few times I need something else, I have devices for those tasks...

 

[sparksd]

I think this answers an earlier question I had:

https://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/icloud-drive/

It says while talking about iCloud --

"Your apps can now share files, which means you can access and work on the same file across multiple apps. For example, you can create a drawing in a sketching app, then open it in a painting app to color it in. Or create a chart in one app and place it in a slideshow using a presentation app. No more making copies or importing documents from one app to another. It’s a whole new level of collaboration among apps."

This seems to mean then that if I have a file resident on the iPad and I want to be able to open it with two different apps (e.g., open the same PDF in iBooks or Acrobat) that there must be two copies of the file, one for iBooks and one for Acrobat. To have just one copy used by either, the file would have to be resident in the cloud.

Another twist to this - not all apps are set up to use iCloud. In this particular case, iBooks apparently cannot access iCloud and Acrobat is set up to use Adobe's own cloud implementation. In short, it does not look like PDF files can be iCloud-based. I was able to import a PDF file from iCloud using FileBrowser and from there select both Acrobat and iBooks to open it with. The PDF file then shows up in the libraries of both iBooks and Acrobat. But the question still remains - how many physical copies of this file now reside on the iPad? 3, one for each app that it now shows up in?

 

[SquireSCA]

Another twist to this - not all apps are set up to use iCloud. In this particular case, iBooks apparently cannot access iCloud and Acrobat is set up to use Adobe's own cloud implementation. In short, it does not look like PDF files can be iCloud-based. I was able to import a PDF file from iCloud using FileBrowser and from there select both Acrobat and iBooks to open it with. The PDF file then shows up in the libraries of both iBooks and Acrobat. But the question still remains - how many physical copies of this file now reside on the iPad? 3, one for each app that it now shows up in?

It really does get confusing... I wonder why Apple does it this way? I mean, you assume that there is some benefit and reason why, but sometimes I wonder...

On hardware, I can sorta see why they do what they do, even if I would do it differently... SD Slots... maybe they feel that would be a security risk... removable batteries, would take away from the super slim profile, and they would have to use a plastic back rather than metal.

So just examples of why they do what they do, that do have some logic and reasoning behind them that does make sense.

But these usability issues, they confound me. How people use tablets is evolving. Phones did too, and Apple's strict adherence to the status quo under the tyrant Jobs, cost them the smartphone market. Early on, they set the tone of how they felt you should USE the device... Copy and paste between apps, who needs that? You want to text someone a pic via MMS? No, you should use email... All sorts of little things that don't threaten the ecosystem, don't alter the design philosophy... but would take a great product and make it truly remarkable, while still keeping things "in the Apple sand box"...

They don't need the "Anything goes" system of Android, despite that obviously resonating with consumers the world over... They can keep things fairly tight... but why are we spending two days trying to figure out how to load a bunch of PDF files on a premium device and open them easily with the app that we want? LOL

This isn't a ***** fest, I would really love an Apple Dev to explain why things are this way. Not that "It's just how they have always done it"... We are painfully aware of that reality.

There must be a reason, and I would love to understand it. It isn't to make it simpler to use, because as you can see, what is a single, one-time drag and drop affair on other platforms, involves multiple apps and steps that have to be repeated each time here. That's not noob friendly... If my building and tinkering with PC's and devices for 30 years has me scratching my head and researching some task this simple, there is no way my mom is gonna figure this out on her own, you know?

I shouldn't have to sign up for a class at the local Apple store to learn how to load and access standard documents. Although I will say that it is cool that Apple offers that... but at the same time, the fact that they HAVE to offer their customers these courses, says that something is off in the usability department...

This is all academic at this point, I will keep the iPad and the Windows tablet... But I would love to know how they arrived at where they are, and why they fight changes that would benefit that customers and most likely regain some of their lost marketshare... They don't have to stop being Apple, we are talking about relatively simple changes to the OS that would have a significant impact to the end users...

Thoughts?

 

[SquireSCA]

Quick question... Which is the best app to just create a generic folder or central storage place, that I can just push whatever docs I want to the iPad from my PC, wireless if possible rather than iTunes...

My goal is to just have one app to use to go to "My Files"... if I have to tell it each time what app to use to actually open it, I can live with that.

What I don't want is to have apps scattered about, and I have to know ahead of time which app I have to open to even find the thing...

Does that make sense?

 

[sparksd]

Quick question... Which is the best app to just create a generic folder or central storage place, that I can just push whatever docs I want to the iPad from my PC, wireless if possible rather than iTunes...

My goal is to just have one app to use to go to "My Files"... if I have to tell it each time what app to use to actually open it, I can live with that.

What I don't want is to have apps scattered about, and I have to know ahead of time which app I have to open to even find the thing...

Does that make sense?

Here's the rub - you can do that with an app like FileBrowser but when you select a file and open it in another app like iBooks, it appears that the file is exported to that app, thus creating another copy of it. At least that seems what is occurring and what I'm trying to determine. There may not really be a "central storage" concept within iOS. I think I need to get a developer's book on it to really figure it out but I really want to get a working understanding of how this fundamentally works.

 

[SquireSCA]

Here's the rub - you can do that with an app like FileBrowser but when you select a file and open it in another app like iBooks, it appears that the file is exported to that app, thus creating another copy of it. At least that seems what is occurring and what I'm trying to determine. There may not really be a "central storage" concept within iOS. I think I need to get a developer's book on it to really figure it out but I really want to get a working understanding of how this fundamentally works.

Here is an idea... Now that you are retired, research and create an app to do exactly what we are talking about, and I bet that people would buy it.

What we are looking to do isn't revolutionary... A couple billion people do it on other platforms every day. People would pay $5-$10 for a nice single app to do what we are talking about, in a simple and intuitive manner.

The only fly in the ointment is whether or not Apple and iTunes will let you. I said before, I think that they intentionally keep the iPad in the tablet arena through software restrictions(I say restrictions rather than limitations, because this is an intentional decision to keep certain functions out of the OS), instead of the "computer in a tablet form factor" arena, for the main purpose of preventing it from cannibalizing MacBook sales...

Thoughts?

 

[SquireSCA]

I see this in other product lines.

Take motorcycles... Triumph's best selling streetbike is a 1050cc triple cylinder naked sportbike called the "Speed Triple". It is an awesome bike, I had one. Lots of torque, about 122hp at the rear wheel, etc...

Now, they have a 675cc bike, called the Street Triple. Same sorta bike, think "little brother" to the other one.

Now, that smaller bike uses the 675cc motor from their Daytona race bike. Doesn't make anywhere near the same torque as the larger displacement bike, but the peak HP isn't all that much lower.... about 112hp or so at the wheel. The difference though, is that the little brother is lighter... a LOT lighter... So the HP to weight ratio is almost the same as the larger bike, but because it is lighter, it handles better and is actually a quicker bike overall...

So when they took that motor out of the Daytona and put it into the Street Triple that my fiance rides, they neutered it to only make about 95hp at the rear wheel.

Their reasoning was that they couldn't have a "smaller" bike, that was $4k cheaper, out perform their flagship best seller, for fear of having the little bike sell more and thus reduce revenue. They wanted to create a segment for each bike, so that some people would buy one, and others would buy the other, rather than have everyone just get the cheaper model because it was just as capable... Make sense?

I strongly suspect that Apple is doing the same thing here... If the iPad could do everything that the MacBook air does, but you can get it cheaper, why would you need a MacBook Air? Get the iPad Air 2, add a nice keyboard and save yourself hundreds of $$, not just on the device, but also the apps for the iPad are quite a bit cheaper than the apps on the MacBook.

That's my thought, anyway...

 

[sparksd]

Here is an idea... Now that you are retired, research and create an app to do exactly what we are talking about, and I bet that people would buy it.

What we are looking to do isn't revolutionary... A couple billion people do it on other platforms every day. People would pay $5-$10 for a nice single app to do what we are talking about, in a simple and intuitive manner.

The only fly in the ointment is whether or not Apple and iTunes will let you. I said before, I think that they intentionally keep the iPad in the tablet arena through software restrictions(I say restrictions rather than limitations, because this is an intentional decision to keep certain functions out of the OS), instead of the "computer in a tablet form factor" arena, for the main purpose of preventing it from cannibalizing MacBook sales...

Thoughts?

I probably couldn't code ny way out of a paper bag these days - I spent the last 15 years working as a Mission Systems Architect. I'd need to tell my team to make it And I'm not sure how feasible it would be without jailbreaking the tablet.

 

[sparksd]

Another twist to this - not all apps are set up to use iCloud. In this particular case, iBooks apparently cannot access iCloud and Acrobat is set up to use Adobe's own cloud implementation. In short, it does not look like PDF files can be iCloud-based. I was able to import a PDF file from iCloud using FileBrowser and from there select both Acrobat and iBooks to open it with. The PDF file then shows up in the libraries of both iBooks and Acrobat. But the question still remains - how many physical copies of this file now reside on the iPad? 3, one for each app that it now shows up in?

Got an answer to this over in the Apple Support Community - there would be 3 copies of the file on the iPad in the scenario I presented (what I expected).

 

[SquireSCA]

Got an answer to this over in the Apple Support Community - there would be 3 copies of the file on the iPad in the scenario I presented (what I expected).

Doh! That is just crazy.

There HAS to be a reason why they do things this way, but I am stumped. It makes no sense. Why would every app that opens up a stupid Doc need its own copy of it, taking up space?

iOS really needs a revamp. When you sell devices with limited storage, making multiple copies of everything is just silly. Someone dropped the ball there... Form over function...

 

[sparksd]

Doh! That is just crazy.

There HAS to be a reason why they do things this way, but I am stumped. It makes no sense. Why would every app that opens up a stupid Doc need its own copy of it, taking up space?

iOS really needs a revamp. When you sell devices with limited storage, making multiple copies of everything is just silly. Someone dropped the ball there... Form over function...

Here's a link to some Apple developer info on this sandbox approach:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Security/Conceptual/AppSandboxDesignGuide/AboutAppSandbox/AboutAppSandbox.html

 

[SquireSCA]

Here's a link to some Apple developer info on this sandbox approach:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Security/Conceptual/AppSandboxDesignGuide/AboutAppSandbox/AboutAppSandbox.html

Interesting. But personally, its too much. Yeah, there might be slightly more security there, but when security gets to a point that using the device becomes cumbersome, then it defeats the purpose...

It's like when I worked at ADP... All about security... Internally in sales, we had like 11 different system we had to log in to... None of them could have the same password, they all had to get new passwords every 30 days, and none of them could be recycled... Sounds crazy secure, right?

Nope. Because they made it so cumbersome that the only way you could remember all of them was to jot them down on a post-it and put it on your monitor or in the drawer, thus defeating the purpose of heightened security by making it so cumbersome that most people did the LAST thing that you are supposed to do. LOL

 

[sparksd]

Download an app like Goodreader where you can save files locally on the device.

Thanks for the pointer. I just got around to purchasing and using this app and I'm finding it very useful for moving files around the iPad, the cloud (iCloud, Google Drive, & DropBox), and my locally-networked devices (PCs, NAS). Having gotten a better idea of the iOS sandbox file mgmt scheme from this thread, I can more efficiently manage files on my iPad. It is definitely different from Android and other systems but it's one I can adjust to.

 

[Greek Geek]

You might also look at this:

Thanks Bigeric23 for showing me the File Manager app. I've been looking for something like that for a while now, as I deliberately bought my iPhone with the maximum amount of memory so that I could store things locally instead of having to redownload things every time from the cloud whenever I'm in places without internet. However, I have since not found a reliable way to be able to do that, so hopefully this app solves the problem. Do you happen to know if it will allow me to view files form my PC, or whether it will only recognize Mac files? (I know that sometimes the NTFS file system that Windows uses is not always intercompatible with the FAT32 FileSystem that everybody else uses, unless that functionality has been deliberately programmed into the software to recognize them). So your insight here would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

 

[Greek Geek]

Short answer? Evernote. I subscribe to the premium edition ($45/yeupfront or $5/month) gets you practically unlimited uploads and killer native OCR (optical character recognition) within the app. You can just scan directly to EN from anywhere and let the application figure out the OCR on the back end. Their mobile app is excellent as well with wonderful mobile document scanning/camera capture. Example - I go out to eat on a business lunch. Get receipt, scan to EN via phone app and camera. Throw away receipt afterwards or give back to waitress. It converts to pdf within the app, you can tag with "business expense" or whatever else you need and then I put in my "porter consulting" notebook. You can also attach to expense reports later as a PDF if needed, etc. If I want to see how many times I ate at "on the border" then I can search on that exact term within evernote and it will show just those notes with that exact string (amazingly accurate too).

Long answer: I do keep Dropbox as well although only the 2GB free account (plus some referral bonuses for a total of 8GB total). If Evernote is a virtual "file cabinet" accessible from anywhere then I'll call dropbox my "virtual junk drawer" to throw music, video, pics into. Pluses include utter simplicity of use (although they've made it a little more complicated lately and scalable to enterprise level). Although you can get extremely sophisticated with dropbox and do wonderful things with it, I use it at this point as above.

Hope that helps? Pardon the rambling

WOW!! Thankyou Volsfan for your great insight on this app, and especially for going into detail in describing the receipt scanning method you use for converting them into searchable PDFs. -That's really useful. Over here in Greece where I live, the Tax office are real sticklers for receipt keeping, and it gets kinda messy to have lots of bits of paper lying around. (I also sincerely pity the poor guy who would eventually have to sift through them all in order to try and make sense of them), so I think I'm going to start using your method from now on! PDFs are so much more useful, and paperless is definitely the way to go.