Ultimate Lower for iPad highlights iPadOS limitations

iPad has been round for 13 years, but it surely wasn’t till 2015 that Apple started to push it as a pc substitute with the launch of the primary iPad Professional. Even now with iPads working on the identical highly effective chips as Macs, software program continues to be a problem. This week, Apple lastly launched Ultimate Lower Professional and Logic Professional for the iPad – two extremely anticipated apps for professionals. Whereas this can be a step in the correct path, these apps spotlight the constraints of iPadOS.

When Apple introduced Ultimate Lower Professional for iPad, many customers had been excited in regards to the prospects of getting such an app on a pill. In spite of everything, Ultimate Lower is an expert software program utilized by creators and even Hollywood producers. Having it on the iPad could be a recreation changer. I not too long ago began vlogging as a private interest, and I edit my movies with Ultimate Lower Professional on the Mac.

iPad has a number of good third-party choices in relation to video editors, reminiscent of LumaFusion. Nonetheless, I believed that an Apple app would benefit from the system at a stage that others merely can’t (partially as a result of Apple restricts what third-party apps can do on iOS). However properly, that doesn’t appear to be the case with Ultimate Lower Professional.

I attempted utilizing Ultimate Lower for the iPad, however…

I wasn’t anticipating the iPad model to have all of the options out there on the Mac in model 1.0. Nonetheless, the constraints transcend what I used to be anticipating. And a few of these limitations are as a result of how iPadOS works.

With Ultimate Lower on the Mac, professionals can edit movies saved on an exterior SSD with out having to repeat them to the pc. That is extraordinarily vital if you work with an enormous quantity of high-resolution movies that might replenish your pc’s inside storage shortly. On the iPad, you’re pressured to repeat the video information to the interior storage, then import them into Ultimate Lower.

Positive, there are iPads with 2TB of storage, however the base Professional mannequin nonetheless solely has 128GB. Having the choice to edit movies from exterior storage could be nice for these with the bottom mannequin.

And in contrast to the Mac model that permits you to merely drag and drop media information from a folder to the timeline, the iPad model has a very poor implementation of drag-and-drop – a characteristic that was added to the iPad with iOS 11. You possibly can solely drag information to the media selector, and solely then add these clips to your video.

Apple has put a number of effort into making the Ultimate Lower interface touch-friendly. In spite of everything, we’re speaking about an iPad. However iPads additionally work with a keyboard and mouse, and utilizing Ultimate Lower on the iPad with the Magic Keyboard has been horrible.

The dearth of keyboard shortcuts

Navigating by way of the timeline with the mouse is not so good as on the Mac, however there’s one thing that has been actually bothering me, and that’s the lack of keyboard shortcuts. Apple has carried out some fundamental keyboard shortcuts within the iPad model, like urgent the spacebar to play/pause and shortcuts to trim or add a clip to the timeline.

There aren’t any keyboard shortcuts to show Snapping on or off, allow or disable a clip on the timeline, add markers, or export a video. One shortcut I exploit quite a bit on the Mac is Command + C to repeat all of the presets from one clip, then I choose all the opposite clips and press Command + Shift + V to use the identical presets to all of them.

This merely doesn’t exist within the iPad model. As a substitute, it’s essential to faucet buttons on the display screen to stick pressets into each single clip. It’s merely not possible for an expert enhancing an extended video to work like this. However the worst half is, there’s no option to customise or add new keyboard shortcuts like within the Mac model as a result of iPadOS has no assist for that.

Good luck with multitasking

Maybe one of many primary limitations of iPadOS in comparison with macOS is multitasking. Whereas on Mac you’ll be able to open as many home windows as you need concurrently and change between them freely, iPadOS is designed so that you can work with one app at a time. iPadOS 16 launched Stage Supervisor, which is a bizarre implementation of home windows on iPad. However how does Ultimate Lower for iPad work together with Stage Supervisor?

Effectively, fairly unhealthy I have to say. You possibly can’t resize Ultimate Lower or cut up the display screen with one other app, which is considerably comprehensible for the reason that largest iPad out there as we speak has a 12.9-inch display screen. However to my shock, you’ll be able to’t even change home windows when exporting a venture on the iPad, in any other case Ultimate Lower will merely cancel the export.

So if you happen to’re engaged on a giant venture, it’s essential to depart your iPad there with Ultimate Lower open and never use it for anything till the export is full. That’s as a result of iPadOS, even working on M1/M2 iPads with 8GB or 16GB of RAM, nonetheless suspends apps within the background.

And if you wish to use an exterior show along with your iPad to have extra space for Ultimate Lower, this gained’t work. Because the app doesn’t assist multitasking, it gained’t run fullscreen on an exterior show, both.

Wrap up

The Ultimate Lower group has actually achieved an excellent job in making a video editor for the iPad. However even with all this effort, not a single developer is ready to beat the constraints of iPadOS. And this finally ends up ruining the expertise for a lot of skilled customers.

I hoped to have the ability to use my iPad to make fast edits to my tasks when my Mac will not be round, however there’s no option to synchronize tasks between the 2 gadgets. The one choice is to begin a venture on the iPad and end it on the Mac. The other doesn’t work. And with all these limitations, I’ve merely given up utilizing Ultimate Lower on the iPad.

I’m positive a number of first-time video makers could have a good time utilizing Ultimate Lower on the iPad. However for these skilled customers, having a Mac continues to be the best way to go. Hopefully, iPadOS 17 will put an finish to a few of these limitations.