Key Moments
My Favourite iPad Pro Apps (2020)
Ali AbdaalKey Moments
Ali Abdaal shares his top 35 iPad Pro apps across five categories: Create, Consume, Coordinate, Connect, and Cerebrate, focusing on productivity and creativity.
Key Insights
Drafts is essential for quick thought capture across all Apple devices.
Notion is a comprehensive tool for organizing life, from video ideas to workout tracking.
Evernote serves as long-term memory for archived notes and highlights, excelling in searchability.
Ulysses offers a pleasurable long-form writing experience, ideal for newsletters.
Notability is the preferred app for handwritten notes, especially for lectures and medical studies.
Instapaper and Kindle are key for reading articles and books, with highlights syncing to Evernote.
Fantastical's natural language processing simplifies calendar event creation.
Slack and Discord facilitate community and team communication.
Brilliant, Skillshare, and Anki are valuable resources for structured learning and knowledge acquisition.
Nebula, a creator-owned streaming platform, hosts exclusive in-depth content, accessible via a CuriosityStream subscription.
THE CREATE CATEGORY: Capturing Ideas and Crafting Content
The 'Create' category focuses on apps for writing and photo-related tasks. Drafts is highlighted for its rapid note-taking capabilities, allowing users to jot down thoughts instantly across any Apple device, serving as a superior alternative to the default Notes app. Notion is presented as an all-encompassing organizer for video ideas, workout logs, and personal projects, with deeper dives available on Nebula. Evernote is lauded for its long-term information storage and powerful search function, acting as a digital archive of highlights and writings since 2011. Ulysses is recommended for pleasurable long-form writing, especially for newsletters, utilizing a clean Markdown interface. Bear offers a versatile markdown writing experience for medium-form notes, though its functionality is largely covered by Drafts on Apple Watch. Notability stands out for its excellent Apple Pencil support, making it ideal for handwritten notes during lectures and annotating documents, surpassing competitors like GoodNotes for this purpose. Day One serves as a journaling app, used for personal reflections, collecting positive comments, and digitizing memorabilia. Lightroom is the go-to for photo editing, enhancing images for social media. Finally, Spock Post is employed for creating consistent and polished video thumbnails.
THE CONSUME CATEGORY: Reading, Listening, and Learning
In the 'Consume' category, apps facilitate the absorption of information. Instapaper is used to save articles for later reading, offering a clean reading interface and the ability to highlight text, which syncs to Evernote via Readwise. The Kindle app is valuable for taking notes alongside e-books, with highlights also syncing to Evernote. Spotify is preferred for music consumption, with curated playlists like 'Study With Me' being particularly popular for focus. Unread, an RSS feed reader, aggregates content from blogs, enabling users to stay updated on various sources efficiently, with articles linkable to Instapaper. CuriosityStream, a documentary platform, is mentioned as a sponsor and a rich source of educational content. YouTube is acknowledged as a familiar platform for video consumption. PDF Expert is recommended for reading structured PDFs, offering better navigation features than Notability for e-books and technical documents.
THE COORDINATE CATEGORY: Streamlining Productivity and Organization
The 'Coordinate' category encompasses utilities for managing daily tasks and workflows. Superhuman is an email client that, despite its cost, significantly speeds up email processing. Fantastical is praised for its natural language processing, making calendar event creation intuitive and quick. Todoist is used for managing to-do lists and reminders, focusing on time-sensitive tasks, while Notion handles larger project management. YouTube Studio is utilized by creators to manage comments, update video details, and oversee their channel. Other essential apps include Google Drive for cloud storage, Frame.io for video collaboration, Xero for business accounting, and Dashlane for secure password management, all contributing to a well-organized digital life.
THE CONNECT CATEGORY: Engaging with Communities and Teams
Under the 'Connect' category, apps facilitate communication and interaction. Slack is used for joining various communities and connecting with teams, including those related to blogs like Rod Reads and Forte Labs, as well as internal teams. Discord offers a platform for larger community engagement, with channels for homework help, discussions on books and tech, and general interaction. Tweetbot is the preferred Twitter client for its user experience. Apple Messages is highlighted for its seamless syncing across devices, underpinning the convenience of the Apple ecosystem. These apps enable efficient communication whether for professional collaboration, community building, or staying connected with friends and colleagues.
THE CELEBRATE CATEGORY: Enhancing Learning and Knowledge Acquisition
The 'Cerebrate' category, dedicated to studying and learning, features several powerful tools. Brilliant is an online course platform offering knowledge injections through daily challenges. Skillshare provides a wide range of online classes, including Abdaal's own course on video editing. Anki is a crucial flashcard app used extensively for medical studies and exam preparation. Tabs HD helps musicians find and transpose chords for songs, facilitating practice on instruments. Notion is revisited for its application in studying, organizing notes, active recall questions, and essays within topics, featuring a toggle function for information management. Many of these in-depth app discussions are available on Abdaal's exclusive content series on Nebula, accessible through a CuriosityStream subscription.
NEBULA AND CURIOSITYSTREAM: Exclusive Content and Documentary Hubs
A significant portion of the video emphasizes Nebula, a streaming platform created by independent content creators, and its partnership with CuriosityStream. Nebula offers exclusive, in-depth content like Abdaal's 'Workflow' series, which delves into niche app functionalities and workflows that don't fit YouTube's format. CuriosityStream, a documentary streaming service, provides free access to Nebula for its subscribers, creating a symbiotic relationship that supports creators. This dual platform offers a vast library of documentaries and unique, creator-driven content, with the 'Working Titles' series being a notable example of its value. Subscribing to CuriosityStream is presented as a cost-effective way to access both high-quality documentaries and exclusive creator content.
Mentioned in This Episode
●Software & Apps
●Organizations
●Books
●People Referenced
Common Questions
Ali categorizes his apps into five groups: Create, Consume, Coordinate, Connect, and Cerebrate. These categories cover apps for content creation, media consumption, productivity, communication, and learning.
Topics
Mentioned in this video
A streaming platform created by a team of creators, designed for experimenting with content beyond the YouTube algorithm.
The preferred music streaming app, appreciated for its user experience and extensive playlist features, including instrumental study music.
An online course platform offering daily challenges and knowledge injections, which also sponsors many of the speaker's videos.
A premium email client ($30/month) that significantly speeds up email workflow, making email management more efficient.
The current to-do list app used for managing time-sensitive tasks and reminders, chosen for its cross-platform availability.
A platform for online classes where the speaker also has their own course on video editing.
Mentioned as a note-taking app the speaker plans to try out.
A note-taking and writing app that bridges the gap between Drafts and Ulysses, offering markdown support and publishing options.
A note-taking app that the speaker tested against Notability, ultimately finding Notability to be superior for their handwriting needs.
The primary application used for photo editing, transforming standard photos into more appealing images for social media.
An app for reading PDFs, noted for its ability to automatically detect and navigate the structure of documents.
An app for quick note capture across multiple Apple devices, acting as a more feature-rich alternative to Apple Notes.
A versatile productivity and organization app used for managing video ideas, workout tracking, project management, and studying.
A documentary streaming subscription platform that offers free access to Nebula with a membership or free trial.
A long-standing note-taking app considered a comprehensive tool for long-term memory storage, archives, and searchability of past notes.
The preferred app for handwritten notes due to its strong Apple Pencil support, ideal for lectures and annotating documents.
Recommended as the best journaling app for Apple devices, used for personal journaling, collecting positive comments, and storing memorabilia.
An app used for creating video thumbnails with a flexible interface for adjusting elements and background.
A service for saving articles to read later, offering a clean reading experience and the ability to sync highlights to Evernote via Readwise.
An RSS feed reader app used to keep up with blogs, consolidating content into one place for efficient reading.
The chosen calendar app, praised for its natural language processing which simplifies event creation.
An app used by creators to manage their YouTube channel, including replying to comments and updating video details.
The accounting software used by the speaker for their business.
A primary communication tool with participation in various groups related to entrepreneurship, productivity, and creator communities.
The Twitter client application used by the speaker.
A flashcard app used for learning subjects like drugs and anatomy, particularly for medical exams.
A service that syncs highlights from reading apps like Instapaper and Kindle to Evernote, enhancing note-taking workflows.
Mentioned as a tool for setting up and managing RSS feeds.
A video collaboration platform used for working with an editor, allowing comments on specific timestamps within video projects.
The chosen password manager application.
The default messaging app, appreciated for its cross-device syncing capabilities within the Apple ecosystem.
Video editing software taught in the speaker's course on Skillshare.
An app that provides chords for songs, allowing users to play and sing along, with features like transposition.
A previous to-do list app used by the speaker before switching to Todoist.
The central cloud storage service where the speaker stores their entire digital life.
A platform where the speaker has set up a server for community interaction, discussions, and user support.
A writing app exclusively for iPad and Mac, praised for providing a pleasurable long-form writing experience using markdown.
A journal article from this publication was mentioned as an example of content found via RSS feeds.
Mentioned as a recipient for submissions, implying a professional or academic context for tasks managed in Todoist.
Used as an example of a structured PDF that benefits from PDF Expert's navigation features.
Mentioned in relation to a habits course, in the context of making email processing more pleasant.
Mentioned as an example artist for whom chords can be found in the Tabs HD app.
A friend of the speaker, a cardiologist who created a 'Working Titles' segment on Nebula about TV show title sequences.
More from Ali Abdaal
View all 158 summaries
18 minBrutally Honest Truth On How To Get Rich
25 minIf I Started A Business in 2026, I'd Do This
26 minSuccess Is Hard Until You Build Systems Like This
21 minThe mindset slowly destroying your life
Found this useful? Build your knowledge library
Get AI-powered summaries of any YouTube video, podcast, or article in seconds. Save them to your personal pods and access them anytime.
Try Summify free