iPad

Lori wants a simple smartphone for her mother that visits limited sites online and just make phone calls. Is there one that has loudspeakers, voice recognition, big buttons and a big screen? Leo suggests giving her an iPad for the websites, so she can see it. Then you can get a flip phone from Jitterbug that can handle the phone calls. A smartphone will be too small for her to use. You can also give her an LTE iPad that can make calls as well. 

Cameron recently bought an iPad, per Leo's instructions. He says it's really fast and "snappy." Leo says that's because Apple can fine-tune the ARM processor for great performance, and that's why they are moving away from Intel in the coming years.

Ed wants to know if he can connect his iPad or iPhone to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Leo says he can get a lightning to HDMI adapter, and a lightning to digital AV adapter. He can then connect them that way, but the screen aspect ratio won't really fit the screen. But its an interesting idea. Samsung actually played with the idea with their Samsung DEX. 

Kathleen had an iPad and wants to know if she can use Dragon for dictation. Leo says that while Dragon is one of the best apps out there, Apple has come up with their own speech to text engine. And it's quite good. Can she then print it? Leo says you turn on Siri Dictation and it will turn it into text into Notes. It'll only do a paragraph at a time though. Then, you can edit and print it out. Most printers are wireless these days and you can connect wirelessly and select print from the share icon.

Jim's mother in law has an iPad and they use it to Facetime to her with auto answering. But they've been having trouble connecting lately. It connects intermittently. One new feature of Find My iPhone/iPad is you can see the battery life. Leo suspects that it may be off the wifi network, and as such, your Facetime account wouldn't see it. But it also has LTE. If you can get a nurse to turn off the iPad and then turn it back on, that will reset all the network settings. You need to do that from time to time. Also, check that it has the latest updates.

With schools closing and kids staying home, Lucas wants to have a way to set screen time on computers and iPad. Leo says that you can do that. What iPad should he get that supports pencil and keyboard? Leo says that the least expensive iPad doesn't support the Apple Pencil and keyboard. But there will be new iPad Pros coming really soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. But Apple has closed all stores due to the Coronavirus outbreak, but you can buy them online. But supplies may be limited due to shortages in manufacturing. Pencil 1 is better because it offers more pressure sensitivity.