In this article, i’ll answer the age-old question of whether an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil can really replace a MacBook Pro or equivalent laptop for college studies.
Because I’m a fan of upfront conclusions, I’ll tell you my answer right now: your iPad probably can’t replace your laptop for college.
I can see why you’d want to. I can see why it’s a romanticized notion—an iPad replacing a laptop. But unfortunately, we’re not yet at the point where an iPad can feasibly replace a laptop for college studies.
Below, I’ll elaborate on this point a little further and explain exactly why I don’t think an iPad can truly replace a MacBook for college.
I’ll start by explaining why you might think an iPad could replace your laptop for college studies, and the few cases where it’s good to have an iPad instead of a laptop. But then, I’m going to spend the bulk of the article discussing various use cases that I found when I tried this out for myself—cases where an iPad can sort of do what a laptop can, but it’s just such a pain.
And I think that’s the story of this whole debate: you maybe sort of can replace your laptop with your iPad, but it would be such an annoyance for a lot of things that it’s probably not worth doing.
Why Might You Want to Replace Your Laptop with an iPad?
I can see why you’d want to do that. Maybe you’ve seen how students take notes on the iPad Pro, and you were inspired to suddenly start handwriting all your notes. That’s absolutely fantastic.
Maybe you’ve realized that, oh, I kind of want a MacBook Pro, and those start at about £1,500 these days. That’s a lot of money. Or maybe you’ve decided that if you do have to type up essays or whatever in class, you can just get the Apple keyboard attachment for the iPad, and then you can type up whatever you want.
If you’re just using your computer to browse YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook, that works perfectly fine on an iPad. So, if you’re just doing those things—writing a few assignments, making notes in class, and watching multimedia—it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it, that you’d want to replace your laptop with an iPad?
But unfortunately, I don’t think that’s quite the full story. Now, I’m going to discuss various instances where you’d be glad to have a laptop instead of an iPad for your college studies.
General Efficiency
Firstly, let’s talk about general efficiency in using a device. An iPad, a MacBook, or any kind of device—these are all just tools for your own creativity and tasks. If you’re a student, you probably have to write an essay or do some kind of assignment. In my opinion, the device that gets that done the fastest is the device you should have. As a student, especially at university where there’s so much going on, you don’t want to spend a lot of time doing work. You want to spend that time doing more interesting things instead.
If we’re talking about general efficiency, the iPad is not a very efficient device. The touch navigation is cool, but it’s objectively slower than navigating using a keyboard on a MacBook. For example, if you want to open a web address on an iPad, you’d have to swipe up from the bottom to get the dock, click on Safari, click on the address bar, and then type in the URL. But with a MacBook, if you’re using it to its full potential with tools like Spotlight and Alfred, whatever you’re thinking can be done faster on a MacBook than on an iPad.
I genuinely tried replacing my MacBook with an iPad for standard student tasks for a few days. While it was possible, I found myself getting frustrated with how slow the process was. I’m very used to quickly executing tasks as soon as I think of them. With a fast typing speed and tools like Alfred or Spotlight, you can do that. But with an iPad, you’re encumbered by the software and the general touch interface. That’s why I find using an iPad for long periods of time a bit annoying.
Writing Essays with References
Secondly, let’s talk about writing essays—especially long assignments that require references. Finding good reference software and integrating it within a word processor on the iPad is a lot more of a pain than on a MacBook or Windows laptop. On a MacBook or Windows laptop, you’ve got tools like EndNote and Mendeley. I use Mendeley personally, and it just works nicely. There’s a Microsoft Word plugin, and you sort out your references easily. Everyone knows how to use Mendeley—it’s a standard tool. If you pass the document on to friends who also use Mendeley and Microsoft Word, they can add references seamlessly.
There’ve been quite a few occasions in my time in med school where I’ve collaborated with friends on different papers, and it’s been so useful for all of us to have Microsoft Word with the Mendeley plugin so that our references didn’t get screwed up. This would just be a lot more of a pain on an iPad compared to a MacBook Pro. So, if you’re writing any sort of essay with references, you’ll be glad in the long run that you have a laptop instead of just an iPad.
Printing Documents
Thirdly, what if you want to print something? And yeah, I know it’s 2024—who prints anything these days? But even someone like me, who’s gone completely paperless and glorifies the fact that I’ve gone paperless, still has to print stuff very occasionally. There are things like travel expense forms when claiming money back from the university for traveling to my medical school placement. Or occasionally, you have to print something and hand-sign it for some very odd reason.
Printing from an iPad is possible, but again, it’s a bit of a hassle. You can always email it to a friend and ask them to print it, or use HP AirPrint or Apple AirPrint, but who has an AirPrint-enabled printer these days where it actually works and connects to Wi-Fi? With a laptop, if your printer is acting up, all you have to do is plug the USB cable into the laptop, and you’ll reliably be able to print something out. So again, if you need to print stuff, having a MacBook makes it a bit more pleasant than struggling with the iPad’s interface.
Creating Presentations
What about presentations? Depending on what sort of degree you’re pursuing, or what sort of school you’re at, chances are you’ll have to create a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation at some point. While it is possible to create these on an iPad, it’s just a bit more of a hassle than doing it on a MacBook. It’s so much faster on a laptop. We’re all used to the laptop interface; we know where the buttons are, how things work. And if we hand it off to someone, they’ll know how it works.
Doing it on an iPad is possible, but it takes more time. Whenever I’ve had to make a presentation on the go, I’ve started on my iPad using Keynote.
Once I was running a teaching session for students in the year below, and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to be one of those people who just uses my iPad to make this presentation. I’ll connect it to the projector and navigate with my iPad.” After about five minutes of struggling with Keynote, I gave up and decided to go home, get my MacBook, and do it properly. It was quicker, more efficient, and ultimately, I was more productive because I had a laptop instead of just an iPad.
Working with Spreadsheets
Finally, let’s talk about spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are again a bit of a pain to navigate with an iPad. I use Google Sheets for lots of things. Although I can sort of use Google Sheets on an iPad, it’s the same story: it’s more of a hassle. It’s much easier to just go on my MacBook, log into Google Sheets, and do things faster.
Let’s say I need to put in a formula, use conditional formatting, or drag down formulas across cells. You can do all that on an iPad, but again, it’s more cumbersome.
Final Thoughts
Having said all that, I still absolutely love my iPad Pro. I use it every single day. I use it at work for my to-do list, for drafting blog articles, and for taking notes. But essentially, for the most part, I’m using my iPad as a glorified piece of paper. And a glorified piece of paper is not the only device you want to have. If you’re really in the position of choosing between an iPad and a laptop, you should definitely go for the laptop.
Those are just my two cents. I hope you found this article useful.