Second Screen
I’ve been using an iPad Pro as my full-time computer for more than seven years. I’ve always had an Apple Pencil, but my use of it has been hampered by something that’s usually one of the iPad’s greatest strengths: the shape-shifting nature of the device.
I’m a writer, and so I’m almost always using a keyboard with my iPad when I’m working. There are exceptions to this, for example when I’m planning or brainstorming or designing or proofreading, but at least ninety-five percent of my time overall is spent with the iPad either on a stand on my desk, or in its keyboard case if I’m not in my office.
Most of the time, it’s just too awkward to reach up, grab the pencil from the very top of the device (I use it in landscape mode), then write on a screen that’s suspended at arm’s length from me and at neck height. It’s possible, but not for more than a quick scribble at a time. I’m almost forty-five years old, after all. It hurts.
For almost as long as I’ve used computers of any kind, I’ve wanted an auxiliary note-taking surface. The problem with technology is that there’s usually too much of it, not too little, and everything is more complex than it needs to be because it’s over-engineered. I bear some responsibility for that; I used to be an (over-)engineer myself.
I have an external monitor, but I never use it with the iPad. It’s strictly for my lunchtime Nintendo Switch sessions at this point. I do want a second screen, but I don’t want it floating beside my main one; I want it flat on my desk, as the iPad sometimes is.
Every year or so, I’d look at the iPad mini, and balk at the price and the need to manage yet another device. What I really wanted was an external screen the size of a paper notepad, to just run the Quick Notes portion of iPadOS, without the complexity of all the rest of it. But even that would be too much.
When I really think about it, the pen and paper model is absolutely sufficient for what I actually need beside my computer. I don’t need notes that become integrated into my actual work, nor do I need a fancy task-management system. My must-have features are very simple:
- The ability to write with a pen-like tool.
- Battery life I don’t have to worry about.
- Instant availability for writing.
The iPad Pro sort-of does the first of those things — if you install a screen protector that gives more friction than the device’s glass allows for. It definitely doesn’t do the other two, though the feature where you can tap on the locked screen with the Apple Pencil to open up the Notes app brings it close to the third point. Except that it’s still in a stand, at an awkward ergonomic position.
My critical use cases for an ancillary notepad are all disconnected ones. I want to jot down quick to-do lists just for today, which I’m happy to check off on the notepad itself. I want to write my morning pages — journal entries never to be revisited — to centre myself before the working day begins. I want to make temporary jottings if I’m on the phone, or to do a quick sketch so I can better understand something, then throw that sketch away. And if I really do want to incorporate those scratchings into my primary work, I am more than happy to do so manually and intentionally. It’s even beneficial to do so.
The only digital-era feature that would really enhance my life is being able to view my notes on my phone, in case I don’t have the notepad with me. I always have my phone, but I’m unlikely to take a notepad with me unless I’ve packed the whole iPad to go and work somewhere other than my office.
And, as a nice-to-have, it would be great if I could readily use the notepad for brain-dumping ideas that occur to me once I’m already in bed, without waking my wife by switching on a lamp, or having the glare of a backlit phone screen.
Given all that, I feel like a bit of a fool for ignoring the e-paper notepad market for as long as it’s been around. I should really have put the pieces together last year, when Amazon entered the market with the Kindle Scribe, a ten-inch e-paper tablet that’s like a big Kindle but with notebook features, using a Wacom-style EMR pen that never needs charged or paired. The device has a front-lit 300dpi screen, with automatic brightness and scheduled colour-temperature adjustment, to make the screen visually warmer during the hours of darkness.
Cut to today, where my wife has a multi-year unbroken reading streak on her beloved Kindle Oasis, has three paper notebooks on the go simultaneously (work, gardening, and a journal of notable things our son has said), and I was struck by the proverbial lightning bolt regarding an obvious potential for synergy on her birthday.
The Scribe does let you view its notebooks on any other device, via the ubiquitous Kindle app or indeed on Kindles proper. It does have forget-about-it multi-week battery life, and wakes in less than a second for writing. It’s front-lit e-paper, and easy to read regardless of the hour or the lighting, and it’s also currently at a price that’s wildly cheaper than any of the — substantially more complex and feature—laden — competing devices, almost none of which simultaneously provide iPad Pro-beating resolution and a front light.
There are lots of these devices now — from Onyx/Boox, SuperNote, Remarkable, and so on — but nobody has a ten-inch screen like this at remotely this price point. And yes, it’s Amazon, and the Amazon ecosystem, and you have to make your own decision about that. But looking at things more broadly, if you ever feel an itch, like there’s something suboptimal about your thinking setup, maybe it’s just that we got so focused on technology that we forgot how instantly usable and endlessly flexible paper is.
My wife’s approach was right, of course. I used to shake my head at the wealth of sophisticated machines available to her; a MacBook Pro, an iPad Pro, and an iPhone, but she’d always have a reporter’s notebook and a biro front and centre. The notebook served as a mostly-ephemeral bulwark, or at least a staging ground, for whatever she wanted to do. The closest I would get to her level of flow was when I removed the iPad from its stand but didn’t grab the keyboard case, and instead used the Pencil and a third-party friction-giving screen protector, in an app like Notability. I still do, and it’s great! But you can’t take spur-of-the-moment notes that way unless you already have the tablet in that mode.
I bought two of the Scribes, because I knew that one was a perfect gift for my wife, and I also knew that one would never be enough. I could tell that it ticked so many of the boxes on my own wishlist too. And my dear reader, since it arrived, I haven’t been without it. I also haven’t charged it since then either, and it only just dropped below 80% after four days. As for my wife, her Scribe has gone from couch to bed to kitchen to greenhouse to desk, and I’m pretty sure she’s started reading on it too. She’s used it even more than I have.
I readily admit that even at its current price (which I assume is for the Black Friday weeks), it’s still an expensive thing. An actual notepad would be two orders of magnitude cheaper. But I love technology, and I don’t want a pile of notebooks and pens. I want one notebook and one pen, and to never be afraid of sullying a beautiful, virginal piece of stationery with my unworthy marks. I also love new toys, and I’m too old to pretend otherwise or to apologise for it. I absolutely love this gadget.
In summary, I’ve learned something about myself. My absolute dream computer would be the computer I already have, but split into two parts, and both of them using a notional future type of e-paper with the kind of colour reproduction, saturation, and screen refresh rate we have on LCD screens right now. That’s a fantasy for the moment, but it’s a delicious one.
Coming back to today, my iPad Pro is a glorious thing as a tablet, and virtually perfect in that regard. It’s also a truly great computer for a writer — but I still want to scribble and note things down even when the iPad is being a computer instead of a tablet. I really need two surfaces. And an e-paper writing device is as perfect an ancillary notepad as an iPad Pro is a tablet computer. I can’t give any higher praise than that.
I feel like an idiot for not putting it all together sooner.