As mentioned here before by Bill, Alfons Schmid's Notebooks app on IOS has release v8.1 today which add a wonderful new feature to "view two documents side by side" Select a document to appear in the right pane and then press and hold the name of another document and it will open in the left pane. Makes note taking very easy. The left hand document can be hoisted occupy the whole window and then shrunk back to the left side of the screen. With a right or left swipe in the left pane, all the documents in the folder containing the left-side document can be browsed.

AFAICT the two panels cannot be adjusted in size, but that doesn't bother me due to the hoisting feature mentioned above.

Like everything Mr. Schmid builds, this feature is beautiful, easy to use, and easy on the eyes.

Yup, it's true, the beloved Alfons has just preempted Apple and brought out a two-pane feature for Notebooks!

It's very neat – the centre column is just a couple of pixels wide, so optimises the space for viewing notes, rather than messing about with unwanted/unnecessary controls.

And it already appears to be very stable, and is certainly very easy to use.

Thanks for drawing it to my attention, Paul. I'm ridiculously busy at the moment, so it was a very nice surprise.

Owners of less-than-state-of-the-art iPads like moi might be comforted to know that they can emulate the iPad Air 2/iPad Pro's ability to split the screen in good ole' Notebooks. Okay, so you already knew that. But what not everybody knows is that Notebooks opens embedded documents (attachments) in its own screen - and also in split-screen view. This is very convenient if you're working on multiple documents (and not just Notebooks's own notes).

And there's more: Notebooks also opens websites in its own screen, and also in split-screen mode. So if you tap on a link in a Notebooks note, it will open a viewer in the same screen, so you can work on a note and browse significant websites at the same time. Plus, of course, you can use the side-screen thingy (screen slide, or whatever it's called) to create a third note-taking or reference-consulting window!

This makes Notebooks a must-have app for those of us who haven't yet got a really good excuse to rush out and buy an iPad Pro...

Although I confess, okay, I've been bad, and couldn't resist temptation when I saw a 2014 HP Pavilion x2 ex-display model on sale at a ridiculously low price. Yes, I acquired it. It's not in top shape (very scuffed, especially that ridiculous folding textile stand), but it's actually a very nice little machine with very good battery life. I shall use it as a platform for testing Windows 10 in both desktop and tablet modes. I remain extremely doubtful about the praticality of this concept, but don't worry, I'm taking the difficult decisions so others don't have to, and will earnestly impart the results of my play... [koff] research to you once I have built up some experience with my new little pal... [hem] useful research tool.

Bill

Bill, I'm shocked. I was hoping you'd be the early adopter who would tell the rest of us the good and the bad?

I notice that the iPad Pro in it's most tricked-out configuration is about 10-15% higher in cost than a real computer -- the Surface Pro 4 in it's least tricked-out config. The iPP is going to be a difficult sell, I think.


MadaboutDana wrote

those of us who haven’t yet got a really good excuse to rush out and buy an iPad Pro…

Hm. You know what? I'm not so sure. Here I am, typing away on a "real" computer (my new HP Pavilion x2), and I have to say, I think the guys at Microsoft were smoking something seriously hallucinogenic when they came up with the idea of combining a desktop interface with a mobile interface.

It's total chaos! Especially, and this is the weird bit, if you're using something like a Surface (like the x2, for example, which comes with a very nice keyboard as well as the whole tablet thing). Okay, I'm running Windows 8.1 at the moment. Now funnily enough, I'm running Win8.1 on a couple of Lenovo Q180s, which I use as microservers, and I like it very much! But only in its desktop configuration. On them, I've set it up with a replacement Start menu, so I never actually have to see the mobile front end at all. And Win8.1 is great - fast, resource-efficient, with the most amazing storage facility that enables you to mix and match a multitude of hard disks without having to worry whether they're all the same - effectively a kind of super-flexible RAID array. All built-in!

But combine the desktop with a tablet, and it all goes to pot. However, it's early days, and I'm just downloading Windows 10 at the moment, in the hope that it will return something resembling sanity to the chaos.

But going back to the iPad Pro: first hands-on experiences are suggesting it's a very different kettle of fish to previous iPads, and could be capable of replacing a desktop machine for certain groups of users. One thing that has impressed me in Win8.1's 'Modern' interface is the excellent split-screen facility. That works extremely well - much better than Apple's, in fact. It's just that it has to work alongside so many weird decisions (like, how the hell do you exit from mobile/Modern apps? Answer: you don't. There's isn't actually a simple, fool-proof way to do so. When your machine only has 2GB of RAM, this is not good).

Ah, Microsoft. What happened? I fear you were suffering from the introversion that afflicts all very large corporates sooner or later: an assumption - conviction, even - that the inner culture of Microsoft is fundamentally relevant to the outside world. This is, of course, nonsense: no large corporate has anything resembling a culture that matches the "outside world", which is why you get very large and totally toxic companies like Monsanto. And believe me, I know whereof I speak: many of our clients are large corporates, and sometimes we just have to sit back and marvel at the mystical processes they take for granted, but have no relevance to anything else. But I'm wittering. I'll report back once Win10 has installed...

MadaboutDana wrote:

Ah, Microsoft. What happened? I fear you were suffering from the
introversion that afflicts all very large corporates sooner or later: an
assumption - conviction, even - that the inner culture of Microsoft is
fundamentally relevant to the outside world. This is, of course,
nonsense: no large corporate has anything resembling a culture that
matches the "outside world", which is why you get very large and totally
toxic companies like Monsanto. And believe me, I know whereof I speak:
many of our clients are large corporates, and sometimes we just have to
sit back and marvel at the mystical processes they take for granted, but
have no relevance to anything else. But I'm wittering. I'll report back
once Win10 has installed...

In the UK, I've heard it called "the Brigade of Guards Syndrome" (which, to be fair, in the right context can have pluses such as focus, single-mindedness and team-bonding). I believe the Ancient Greeks also had a word for it which has transferred itself into modern English - "hubris" - and which in Greek tragedy usually led to "nemesis", an unavoidable cause of downfall. Political as well as commercial history is littered with examples.

Hubris indeed. Although in this post-Classical world, we'll have to find some other, more Anglo-Saxon noun for it.

Well now. Windows 10 is a vast improvement, at least on initial inspection.

But ironically, I now can't find out how to split the screen between two apps! The swipe-from-left apps bar has disappeared, or rather, been replaced by a more conventional list of running apps. How annoying. Still, it's probably quite easy once you know how (sigh!).

But the rest - especially ease of access to settings - is hugely improved. In particular, Microsoft now appear to have taken a look at other OSes (including mobile ones) and realised that hey, there are a whole bunch of really good ideas in there.

And they've also included an "optimised for tablet" mode, which is gratifying. And the drivers have also hugely improved - very easy to connect up Bluetooth keyboard, HP printer and so on. WiFi is also better (much!) than Win8.1, which had a nasty way of suddenly deciding it couldn't connect to the Internet after all.

Actually, I'm quite impressed! The only thing that puts me off is the fact that I'm sending a steady stream of data back to Microsoft. The privacy settings allow you to reduce this to "Basic" (the other two choices are "Enhanced" and "Full"), but there's no actual "None/Off" option! Still, you gotta laugh, eh?

Still a dearth of good outliners on Windows, however, although WritePlus is quite a nice Markdown editor. Oh, which reminds me, maybe Workflowy...?

Cheers,
Bill

Okay, biggest difference in Windows tablets/2-in-1s? The battery life.

The working battery life is great. The little x2 can last all day on one charge – at least 9 hours. BUT, and it's a big but, it keeps sucking battery juice even when it's asleep! Not just a little, an awful lot. After a day and a half, it's comprehensively dead. And that's with all power settings optimised, in "Flight" mode etc. etc.

So there's no way you can use your Windows tablet like an iPad. Or even like an Android tablet. Actually, it reminds me strongly of the early netbooks (I still have an Asus 7-series sitting around somewhere), which suffered from exactly the same syndrome, although they were even worse, in that they lost battery charge even when switched right off.

Fortunately the x2 boots up much faster than earlier Windows machines - in around 20 seconds, which is okay. But it's made me rethink the practicality of these Windows devices. In fact, I'm starting to dribble over the thought of an iPad Pro...