One of the things I’m keen to do in 2016 is find better and more efficient ways of getting things done.
Automation has been a hot topic at work over the last year and many of our day-to-day tasks around the office, from ordering sandwiches to logging conflicts of interest, now have automation support. Automation brings several advantages beyond improving user experience. In addition to being faster and easier, tasks completed using an automated workflow are more consistent and often more accurate. Computers are better at repetitive tasks than humans, after all.
With the rise of the iPad Pro, it’s possible to get more and more done from an iPad and iOS devices in general, thanks to the larger screens and ‘proper’ multi-tasking with split screen. There are also powerful ‘build it yourself’ automation apps like Workflow and Launch Center Pro with easy to use interfaces and a host of ready-made flows to get you up and running quickly.
I’ve been a long-time user of Launch Centre Pro on iOS and Workflow has been installed since it came out. But only today did I begin to really dig into what was possible with Workflow. In just a few minutes, I had flows set up to send a text with my current location and my ETA, create a GIF from a Live Photo or burst photo and, most impressively, post my photo of the week to my blog, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter after resizing it and adding the relevant hashtags. This might sound like a trivial set of steps, given the integration between apps, however it was those same repetitive steps which put me off completing my photo-a-week project last time around in 2013.
Things are a lot different at the start of 2016 than they were just three short years ago. Back then, we were in the last days before the iOS 7 redesign. Although my home screen hasn’t changed a great deal in terms of content, the look and feel has changed considerably. iOS is a completely different beast than it once was. Multitasking in 2014 largely meant apps being allowed to continue to play music in the background or finish an upload before quitting.
This new era of automation gets rid of the excuse for me to not complete things like my photo-a-week project just because I’m not able to get to my desktop Mac. By building my workflows around iOS instead of Mac OS, I can complete my work anywhere, since I always have at least one iOS device to hand. It allows me to put my focus back where it should be: on being creative, learning and improving my skills, not on wrestling with half a dozen apps to get things where they need to be.
There’s a lot more to come from iOS and I believe now is the time for those of us who have been heavily invested in the Mac platform to figure out how we’re going to use iOS for the future. It’s definitely no longer correct to say that you can’t get real work done on iOS. At this point, the only thing holding us back is a willingness to dig in and give it a go.