In 2007 I switched from my bulky self assembled Windows PC to Apple laptop. Since then I’ve never looked back. One of my motivations was to make home / indy movies with more mobility, speed, ease of use and stability, MacBook Pro with OS X and iMovie delivered all of it. I considered myself as lucky owner, carried my computer everywhere I go, gaining more hours I could work on my art. Anytime I needed to make a video clip I did it with pleasure and speed in any place. Sitting in front of giant noisy Windows PC doing any kind of work or play felt like a thing from ancient past. MacBook Pro was my only computer despite many my friends and colleagues owning desktop and notebook at the same time. I didn’t like the idea to manage two computers, why own Windows PC Desktop and cheap notebook (I can not afford iMac and MacBook) when you can have pertfect MacBook Pro? Moreover, ‘17 LED display was ahead of any display I saw at universities, friends houses and work places, the same I can say about keyboard and trackpad was my favorite input device.

Although it wasn’t that perfect, my camera was too bulky to carry it around and it doesn’t supported HD. I sold it after I noticed that iPod Touch is doing much better job in terms of video HD picture quality, battery life and mobility. Other problems I couldn’t fix that easy. I often was forgetting about my external hard drive which I was using to import videos from my camera using FireWire cable. Even though, I upgraded my RAM 2-3 times, newest versions of iMovie didn’t worked as smooth as iMovie 6. Often in summer my computer was getting too hot (and noisy) to hold it on my lap. When I wanted to share my movie with family and friends I had to come over, plug in my equipment to their TV or to show it from my laptop, I also was using YouTube which worked great with my friends, however my parents often couldn’t use Google’s video service on their own. They needed to remember a private link and continuesly asked me to send it again. I also not a fan of annoying commercials picked by a soulless robot.

Now I want iPad to be my main computer. Recently I bought 13’ MacBook Pro with Retina display, the only thing I do with it is programming, I prefer my iPad Air 2 for everything else, montage included. It wasn’t instant transition. I own iPad from point when the first generation was released and only after iOS 8 release I started switching process. Using iMovie on iOS felt weird for my first 2-3 movies, more I use it, more gestures I discovered, my fingers and workflow adjusted and I discovered that’s everything is not not only different but also more intuitive and right. It felt weird only because my past expirience with hot keys and precise mouse pointer, you don’t needed this skils when working on iPad.

I am continue to shoot videos on my iPad and my wife’s iPhone 5S. When I feel like making a movie, I making it within an one hour, right on my iPad, with solid picture stabilization and slo-mo, time-lapse effects I never dreamed to have with consumer equipment. I don’t need laptop with wires, instead using AirDrop to transfer all videos from my wife’s iPhone in a matter of seconds. I don’t using any external hard drive, all my videos are stored in iCloud Photo Library. After finishing I am uploading them to shared Photo Stream so my family can watch them anywhere without distractions, they are notified right from Photos app so I don’t have to call them and tell them to watch my videos. I also using Vimeo as a backup. https://vimeo.com/borisy/videos

I would like to see improvements on sharing audio tracks from apps to iMovie or Music app, third party apps already have lots of solutions, for example AudioCopy https://appsto.re/us/BOs3Q.i is one of them. With iOS 8 share extension it allows to share content between music creation apps. It would be great to create my own music for my own movies or using audio tracks with propper license AKA podsafe music without need to use laptop.

Life’s much better now.