I haven't been able to use my iPad Pro 11 (2018) nearly as much as I've wanted these past few months, largely because I'm chewing through a ton of videos and graphics every week during this virus. But last week, I was able to dust off the 'ol iPad and get back to writing. It was a refreshing escape from the endless deluge of videos every week. Could I do videos and graphics on my iPad? Sure. But right now where there are deadlines almost every day, the Mac is more familiar for me and I have established workflows there.

But my iPad has become my writing and research machine, my entertainment device, and my everything else device. It's where I go when I want to check out a website or read an article. It's where I go to watch tutorials on YouTube on how to do something complex in Final Cut Pro.

The apps in the dock are used every day, and most of them at the same time in Split Screen, so we'll focus there, as most other apps are self-explanatory.

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iPad Home Screen, May 2020. Click for larger.

Starting from the dock separator and moving left, I have Drafts. I've recently had a Drafts renaissance - I've replaced several other apps with Drafts and I've found a few new ways to use the app.

Ever since Drafts added Taskpaper support, the ability to handle To-Do lists in plain text on the app has been very valuable. That's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and I love Things, but it lets me customize it exactly how I want my task list to look.

Working left, the next app is Ulysses. This app had a big update last week adding mouse support (Magic Trackpad on the iPad is wonderful, by the way) and also something I've needed - external folder support. They've had it for a long time but it didn't work correctly, but now this has changed the game. Being able to store my Library in Markdown text files in Dropbox but also use Ulysses' great writing environment is wonderful.

I've been using the Brave browser almost exclusively for a month now, and I'm happy with the results. I wish that iOS would enable default browsers, email apps, etc. so I could use it more effectively, but alas, it will have to suffice for now. Brave is good at what it needs to do and the interface doesn't get in the way.

My Bible translation of choice for the last 15 years has been the Engish Standard Version, and I've found that the ESV Bible app is very good. It's pretty vanilla but it accomplishes what you want - looking up and reading Bible passages and then copying them into your lesson. It also supports Split Screen.

Fantastical is the best calendar app in the Apple ecosystem, period. It's got a great design, quick sync, and I'm happy to pay a couple of bucks a month to support great devs like those at Flexibits.

Spark is my email app of choice because, well, there's not anything better in my opinion. And that's a low bar. I'm not blown away with Spark, and I guess I shouldn't be. It's a solid app with less bugs that a year or two ago. It's nicer than the stock email app. It has a good dark mode and now allows (with an update last week) for changing fonts and font sizes.

WeatherUp is my favorite weather app, and it's because it's a radar-first weather app. I like seeing the rain coming, and so WeatherUp does that beautifully. They have a great selection of weather icons and app icons too.

Still on Tweetbot. I've tried using the stock Twitter app several times and have wanted to throw my phone in a lake. Tweetbot is just so simple without all the cruft of the stock Twitter app.

1Password - self-explanatory password manager. The best there is. They've also waived their free trial period for the app during Covid-19. Go get it.

Spotify is now my music service of choice. I rage-quit Music after it failed to play half the songs on my playlists for like the tenth time because I didn't have a perfect connection. That's really the only problem I had with it. It was just very unreliable for me on an LTE connection. Your milage may vary, and Spotify seems a lot better at this. Songs seem to play a lot faster. Spotify also seems like music discovery is easier and that it just "knows" me better. Is that weird?

Overcast - also self-explanatory. If you listen to podcasts at all, go get it.

My last two icons on the far left of my dock are shortcuts - Dictate to Drafts and AirPods Connect. One touch and I'm dictating into Drafts, using my voice to transcribe to text. The AirPods Connect shortcut is extremely handy - one tap and it connects my AirPods without having to fumble around with Settings. This is especially nice if you switch between devices frequently as well.

[Note: if you download either of the linked Shortcuts here, you will need to change a few things to make them work on your devices, namely changing the Airpods name in the Airpods Connect Shortcut.]

I won't talk about any of my apps outside my dock other than Reeder - which is a fantastic RSS client, and Apollo - which is a really great Reddit client. Other than that, I tend to use the Fantastical widget on the left side, alone with the Shortcuts widget to quickly do some tasks with one tap.

I really enjoy the iPad. I would like to be able to use it for professional-level video one day, but I don't see that anytime soon. But as far as everything else, the iPad is more than capable and I'm continuing to learn new ways of using it.

Let's just face it: email stinks. But Spark by Readdle hopes to make you like your email again. 

Ever since Apple opened up iOS a few years ago to include third-party email clients, there have been no shortage of good and sometimes great email apps. Mailbox was pretty great and promised to help you blaze through your email. Dispatch offered nerd and customization options and hoped to triage your email. Entirely new email services like Google Inbox took a slightly different approach to email - categorizing by type and offering a super-simplified interface. Other email clients such as Cloudmagic offered to help you manage many email accounts easily while offering an outstanding UI. 

Spark by Readdle offers all that, and more. 

This is not Readdle's first rodeo into productivity on iOS, not by a long shot. Readdle is one of the first (if not the first) with productivity apps for iOS. They were making productivity apps for iOS before it was even called iOS. They have an impressive catalog of apps that help you manage notes, documents and calendars. In fact, if you follow me you'll know that Calendars 5 has been my default calendar app of choice for over a year now on iOS. 

So when Merlin Mann began talking about "an impressive email app by Readdle" in some of his recent podcasts, I immediately contacted Readdle PR to see if I could get a sneak peek. And to my pleasant surprise, they obliged. 

I've only had a few extra days with Spark, now publicly available as of this morning, but it is a truly great iOS email app. Here's some reasons why. 

Swipe to delete, snooze, and pin for quick email triage. If you do email of any kind, you probably get a lot of stuff you don't want and just a few things a day that you do. Spark doesn't vary much from other clients like Cloudmagic, Inbox, or Mailbox in that it lets you swipe quickly to get through your email in a flash. Other mail clients offer this, sure, but Spark has implemented lessons learned from other apps very well. 

Most important stuff at the top. New emails, emails you've deemed important by pinning them stay at the top until you move them. Read emails automatically go to another section once you've tapped out of them. 

Multiple inbox support is wonderful. Managing multiple email accounts, even getting them to display inline in your inbox is no problem for Spark. Adding new accounts is easy, and you can set individual settings and notifications for each account. 

Nicely formatted message threads. Hate getting those emails back and forth from the same person and seeing all that nasty formatting? Me too. That's a thing of the past with Spark. The app is very innovative by cleaning up all the junk and letting you see your message thread in a nicely formatted way. 

Game-changing searching. I'm a big Gmail archiver, and I want to be able to get info from an email anytime I want. Spark's search is really great. But here's the kicker - it's not just search, it's smart search, based on your natural language. For instance, if I wanted to find all the attachments from grayer.com email addresses, that's what I would type - "all emails with attachments from grayer.com emails" - and Spark finds it. This is incredible to me and a game-changer. I'm always needing to find what I need but don't know exactly where to find it, so this natural language and fuzzy search is fantastic. 

These are just a few of the reasons why Spark by Readdle will be my default email app for the forseeable future. This was, by no means, a comprehensive review - for that, you need to hit up Federico Viticci's review at MacStories - but I hope I've given you enough to just go try this free email app on the iPhone. It's a fantastic 1.0 product, and with Readdle's track record, it will only get better and better.