iPad Mouse Trapped

After enjoying the iPad in desktop-mode, I tried to push it even further with Stage Manager on my external display. That was quite nice. But the road of mouse control was a dead end for two reasons: scrolling was painful and cursor control felt janky. Before I explain why, let me recap a bit.

Tablet to Desktop

I was loving my iPad as a tablet only for a few weeks. It was so enjoyable and capable, I wanted to add just a keyboard and a stand for long typing and called it desktop-mode. This worked surprisingly well, relying on the iPad’s native input model of multitouch and its Split View multitasking, which I really like. (I’ve not needed to use my MacBook Air save for one desktop-app that I don’t have on iPad, which is a temporary situation.)

Today I went further and tried iPad on an external display with a mouse and used Stage Manager for multi-window bonanza; I’ll call it desktop-pro mode. Stage Manager on a 24” display, with recent apps and on the left and an app-pair front and center, was kind of mind-bending — this is the iPad we’re talking about, typically “just a tablet.” While it would take me more time to get used to how it works, it already felt enabling.

Mouse Trapped

The problem, though, was my bluetooth Logitech Pebble M350 mouse. It works great on my MacBook Air, but on my iPad it’s inferior. First, using the mouse cursor directly on the iPad itself feels imprecise and seems to have some latency. But on the external display, it felt more precise and less laggy. Weird.

The deal-breaker for me was scrolling. With the mouse, there’s no inertial scrolling, and the scroll wheel either hardly moves one line at a time, or it jumps a page at a time it seems. Trying to carefully scroll at a speed in between was cumbersome and slow. I’d rather scroll on my MacBook’s trackpad or on the iPad display with my finger since both options work far better and feel great doing so. With the mouse, I felt lack of control. Also, I felt annoyed by the friction. Disappointing.

In my limited experience, this suggests to me that pushing the iPad beyond its native touch-first paradigm is folly. In contrast, the Mac is mouse-first. So I’m back to desktop-mode on iPad with just a keyboard — no mouse, no external display, no USB port hub, no Stage Manager.

Maybe using Apple’s Magic Mouse with its scroll-touch surface is the key to mousing on iPad. But it’s costly and still lacks USB-C in 2024. Strong “nope” from me.

Multitouch for the win

Tapping, swiping, and scrolling with my fingers works great; it feels like I’m in Minority Report, whisking around apps, nimble as can be. In the past this has felt fidgety or fumbly. But with practice, it has become natural and fluid. It also seems more efficient to directly interact with buttons and content. That said, it’s nice to be able to rely on a mouse or trackpad so that your finger(s) don’t obscure the display.

Keeping my desktop peripheral-minimal is ideal. Best of all, I can at any time just pick up my iPad from its stand and instantly engage tablet-mode; love it! So the desktop-mode I’m preferring is nothing more than my iPad on a stand with a bluetooth keyboard for long typing and keyboard shortcuts and multitouch for everything else.