Hey iPad Enthusiasts,

In this issue of iPad Stories, we sit down with iPad power user Michael Sliwinski.

As is tradition in our iPad Stories section of website. This article is Free for everyone!

We recently had the pleasure of having Michael on the podcast in Episode 13, for a jam packed interview of over 2 hours, so I recommend listening to that if you haven’t already.

This article compliments the podcast episode nicely, by expanding on some of the questions asked in the interview, as well as providing rich pictures, links, references and our after show takes-aways from Michael’s answers.

There is so much to explore here, so grab a cup of tea or coffee and enjoy.

Interview With Michael Swlilinski

Starting Off

“I’m passionate about productivity and remote-working lifestyle. I believe work is not a place to go, it’s a thing we do.”

I love this quote, could you describe how you came to be so passionate about the remote working lifestyle.

It was when I was still in college back in 2001 and I moved to study from Poland to Germany with my first laptop. I realized I could be productive from anywhere, just having a well configured laptop and a good connection to the Internet. A year later I moved to Spain for Erasmus student exchange program and then I started dreaming of one day running a company from anywhere with just my laptop. I made a decision then to write my final thesis at the University about working remotely – or – teleworking – as it was called then. My thesis’ title was: EVE – Extremely Virtual Enterprise.

It is incredible to think that Michael carried the vision he wrote about in his thesis all the way through into his company today, not many people can say that they realized a dream they had in college.

What was it that led you to the iPad?

I bought my first iPad right at the launch of the device back in 2010 because we were about to launch an iPad app for Nozbe – one of the first productivity apps for the iPad in the world and I wanted to test it well. What struck me was the elegance of the device and the ability to “touch” the apps – to be using my finger for much more than just tapping on a few apps like on the iPhone. The canvas of 10″ screen was gorgeous. I have this iPad in my home office to this day and it still works BTW.

What do you use your iPad for?

The whole idea was to use the iPad as my main device and going #iPadOnly came about in 2012 when I bought the iPad 3 Retina with cellular connection. I realized then that I could be online all the time and instead of web pages, many of things I was doing was getting dedicated apps instead. I remember we went on a trip with my wife to the USA West Coast for two weeks which was part time holiday part time work-cation and I decided to just take my iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard (Zagg) instead of my MacBook Air. After two weeks just working from the iPad I was sold.

Like Michael it was the 3rd Gen Retina Cellular iPad that was the iPad that got me hooked as well. The screen, snappiness, battery life, thinness and cellular connection, for me, were all unrivaled compared to my Acer Laptop at the time, and I never looked back.

What’s your current iPad setup now?

It’s iPad Pro M4 13″ with 1TB of storage and cellular connection. I have unlimited data on that connection so I’m online all the time and I chose the 1TB model so I can download stuff on the iPad easily and have 16GB of RAM. I write using Apple’s Magic Keyboard most of the time.

I run my productivity company – Nozbe – totally on my iPad. I write for my blog, michael.team, all on the iPad using apps like iA Writer and a series of very advanced iOS Shortcuts.

As I mentioned in the podcast episode with Michael, owners of the 1T M4 iPad Pro are in such a great position now, because Apple put 12g of ram in their latest M5 iPad Pro base model, means that they plan to support it for at least the next three years with FULL feature functionality. That means the 1T version of the M4 iPad Pro’s which come with 16g of ram, will be supported at the same level for at least that amount of time and lets not forget, that M4 chip in the iPad Pro is seriously fast! See below comparrison.

What peripherals and accessories do you use?

Here are just some of Michael’s favorite accessories, we couldn’t cover all of them, because trust me, he has ALLOT!

The most important one is the USB-C hub/adapter called Hyperdrive which I use a lot. I can connect more devices and external monitors with it. I also use my very ancient Thunderbolt Display as an additional screen for my iPad when I need it, I even have a dedicated “iPad corner” in my home office:

On that note Michael has a very pro-looking home office space, check it out below, we chat more about it further on in the interview.

I have an M4 Mac Mini as my “office computer” when I need additional canvas. Again, the Mac Mini is my “additional” computer. I work on the iPad and have the Mac on the side as a “back office” computer for some Mac-specific tasks, backups, etc.

Michael uses the 32” Asus ProArt 6K display (PA32QCV) and wow, this is a nice monitor. It’s no wonder it’s got such great reviews.

Michael also uses the KUXIU X33 Pro MAX iPad stand, which; can rotate 360 degrees, is magnetic for ease of detachment and has pass through charging. It is easily one of the nicest iPad stands available on the market.

Few stands offer pass through charging, which is why this stand is particularly interesting. The built quality is also excellent and the different viewing angles including the ability to view your iPad in portrait mode is the icing on the cake. Portrait mode is much nicer than landscape for reading and typing letters, so if you do a lot of that type of work, you will love the portrait orientation on a stand.

You are the CEO and founder of Nozbe, could you tell us a bit about Nozbe?

It’s a productivity app I needed to get things done. I built it mainly for myself back in 2007 when I read the book by David Allen “GTD – Getting Things Done”. I wanted to simplify his system and make it digital and be able to access my tasks and projects from anywhere. Over the years it has evolved into a suite of apps for all the platforms with tasks and projects syncing between them. As my company grew I realized the real challenge is not getting things done on your own, but getting stuff done with others so now the collaboration features are key to Nozbe. Again, there are many apps that help you be productive with others, but Nozbe is the easiest to use among all of them, as simplicity is key to how I work… and I realized that when you want to work with others, your tool better be as simple to use as possible so that others want to use it with you.

If you haven’t looked into the GTD methodology I highly recommend you do so, it has helped me a lot and honestly I couldn’t imagine running my life without it now.

What inspired you to develop the App Nozbe?

I’m a very disorganized person by nature. I needed something to ground me, to have turn to as my “system”. Before Nozbe I was a very good consultant for my clients so I started getting more of them and then things started to fall through the cracks. I needed a way to get organized. David Allen’s GTD system was very nice, but very paper-based and quite complexed. I decided to simplify it and bring it to the digital age.

Importantly the app also looks like a space I would be happy to work in all day, and with the limited use I have had with the app, I can already tell it has tons of powerful functionality.

I must just say, as iPad power users, Mike and I have developed a keen eye for spotting apps that are designed for real productivity on the iPad. We both can confidently say that this is an iPad users dream app, and you can see it has been made by someone who is actually an iPad-first user, and that makes the world of difference.

How does Nozbe differ from a task manager?

I always repeat that Nozbe is not a task manager, but a task “doer”. It’s better at helping you GET things done than manage them, because the key is to DO what you need to do. Many productivity apps these days add features focused on task and project management. We are relentless about focused views, helping you quickly decide what to do and how to act. Additionally, all tasks in Nozbe have comments so you can comment on your own tasks and the moment you start sharing your tasks with others, you can comment back with others.

This basically replaces email in most teams that embrace Nozbe. Instead of sending emails to each other in a team, you create a task for yourself or someone and comment on just that task to iron out the details. Nozbe replaces internal email and chat within a team and makes all work much more focused. And this goes back to the iPad – which is a very focused device. And in the current, very distracted world, more focused is all we need to work better, don’t we?

The one thing I keep hearing from so many people, is how intrusive and overwhelming email is becoming. I hear from colleagues and industry professionals all the time, that keeping up with incoming email in this day and age is a real problem. It is a big productivity killer and I am genuinely interested in exploring how Nozbe could integrate into our company to reduce the email load.

What is the one benefit that comes to mind, that your customers consistently see by using Nozbe?

Better communication and the resulting calmness. When you know where the projects are and tasks are and you all communicate in these tasks with comments, you don’t have to be checking email, slack, whatsapp… and other places. You know where the action is and you have all the information you need to get your stuff done. In Nozbe you don’t just comment with text, you can add checklists, attachments, videos, YouTube links… to make sure you or people you work with have all the details.

Now I’m on vacation and I’ll be back at work next week. On my first day back, as the CEO, I’m not gonna have ANY meeting. No status meetings at all. I don’t need to. I’ll just review our team’s projects in Nozbe, catch up on tasks and comments to these tasks and after one day I’ll know exactly where we are and what’s going on in the company. I don’t need to disturb anyone to know what’s up. And Nozbe gives me that super power.

I love the fact that Nozbe strips out the frictional resistance of unnecessary communication. Nozbe enables you to fully understand where you and your team is up to, as well as the next steps required, all in one space. I must say this approach to getting work done is very appealing, you might see me trying Nozbe out soon with our company.

Do you code yourself?

I coded the first version of Nozbe back in the day and was developing it in the first year after the launch but quickly realized I’m not the best programmer in the world and I needed to hire someone smarter than me to do it. That’s how I recruited Tom, our current CTO, who’s been with me all these years and is still here in charge of our software. Currently I code only for fun on my blog and sometimes I comment on my programmers’ code in GitHub but they don’t let me code in Nozbe anymore. However to be able to code on the iPad I’ve been using a great app called Textastic, I use Working Copy for GitHub and iA Writer for writing texts and documentation. I also use apps like Runestone text editor, Jayson JSON editor, Inspect to check web sites and other apps to help me code on the iPad and it’s lots of fun.

You co-authored a book with a gentleman called Augusto Pinaud, Titled  #iPadOnly, what led you to write it?

This book is pretty outdated now, we both realized we’re both crazy enough to use the iPad as our main computers and after I wrote the “iPad as my main computer” series on my blog, I invited Augusto to contribute and we wrote the book! It’s available to read for free at https://ipadonly.com

If you would like to purchase a copy of this book you can here on Amazon.

How was the writing and publishing process on iPad?

Back in the day it wasn’t that easy as the Scrivener app wasn’t available for the iPad. Now it makes the whole process easier. Other than that, writing in iA Writer has been a bliss all these years and this app is my most used app on the iPad (right after Nozbe). I write everything in iA Writer. It’s so good, so elegant, so focused.

From Blank Page to Book—Your Way

“Scrivener unites everything you need to write, research and arrange long documents in a single, powerful app. At its heart is a simple ring-binder metaphor that allows you to gather your material and flick between different parts of your manuscript, notes and references with ease. Break your text into manageable sections of any size and leave Scrivener to stitch them together. Integrated outlining tools let you plan everything first or restructure later. And as your project grows, you’ll find that Scrivener grows with it” – Scrivener Developer

I personally haven’t tested the Scrivener app, but I have heard many times from people all over that it is excellent.

I believe you also have a Podcast, what is it called & about?

My main podcast is the “No Office” podcast which I run with my right-hand-woman Magda. We talk about working from home and managing a remote team as well as general productivity topics. you can find it at https://NoOffice.fm

I’m also a co-host of Polish tech podcast, called “Nadgryzieni” where we discuss tech topics in Polish, my mother tongue. It’s one of the most popular tech podcasts in Poland.

Lately as I’ve been testing Gemini Notebook, I re-launched “The Podcast” which you can find at https://thepodcast.fm where previously I was discussing productivity and tech with my friend Radek, but currently as we no longer record, I just ask Gemini Notebook to generate a podcast from my best essays from my blog – michael.team – and I must say these AI-generated conversations about my essays are very well done and help digest what I’m writing about even better.

I was very impressed with how well this AI podcast worked, it’s actually kind of addictive, you just want to keep listening because you know it’s not real people but the content is based on real life work written by Michael, AND the AI co-hosts sound so real!

We see your office also works as a very professional-looking studio, for Audio and Video, what gear do you use to record your podcast? 

In short I use the ElGato Prompter attached to the SONY ZV-E10 camera and Shure MV7 microphone.

The whole setup is described in detail at: https://michael.team/studio/

What App do you use to record and edit your Podcast?

The No Office podcast is recorded using the Streamlabs web app and later I use the excellent Ferrite app for the iPad to put it together. I really like that I can also connect a Shure microphone with USB-C to the iPad and record audio from it now.

Do you do your video editing on iPad? If so was App do you use?

I do all of my video editing (both for personal and company use) on my iPad using the excellent Luma Fusion app. I love it and I’ve been using it for years. I don’t want to edit videos on anything else. Just Luma Fusion app on the iPad. Recently I recorded a school theater performance of my daughter using several cameras and audio interface and I put it all together using Luma Fusion on the iPad. Amazing.

I use Lumafusion as well and I have to say I find it to be my favorite video editor. It combines enough of the pro features you want while still giving you great intuitive controls. But also because it is owned by a private company, Lumafusion often gets features long before the mainstream video editors.

Do you use any creative apps, like those found in Apple’s Creator Studio and if so, what do you use them for?

I used to use Keynote a lot. Now I have a Shortcut that generates presentations from me. Follow my blog to find out when it’ll be launched publicly. I also sometimes use Pages for some “official” document creation if I cannot use iA Writer for the purpose. I also use Numbers as my default spreadsheet. I like how it works on the iPad. I’ve moved from Evernote to Apple Notes and it’s good enough for me. I share several Notes folders with my wife and it’s pretty solid. Freeform is a great app to just draw stuff on infinite canvas. I use it a lot when I’m studying for school with my daughters.

In our company Mike and I find Keynote to be hands down the best presentation app available. We use it to present to our customers and distributors. The animations, customization, user interface and functionality is honesty unrivaled.

You have a good size team, do any of your Team Members use iPad’s, if so what work tasks do they do on them?

I’m the main iPad user on the team, but our main designer, Hubert, also uses iPad a lot and our QA engineer Kamil as well, so sometimes we exchange ideas how we can improve our iPad productivity.

Team communication is critical, particularly in Remote teams, what Apps do you use to communicate with your Team?

As I mentioned, our main communication channel is Nozbe. We communicate in tasks in Nozbe and recently we stopped using Slack as much as we introduced “Messages” feature in Nozbe. We joke in our 15-person team that “we use Nozbe to build Nozbe”. Other apps we use a lot is Zoom. We have dedicated Zoom rooms for each meeting. We believe meetings should be “regular, optional and well prepared”. This means we very rarely have ad-hoc meetings as we appreciate each others’ focused time. We have regular weekly meetings which are scheduled at the same time each week and happen in the same Zoom rooms each week. Zoom is a great app for video conferencing although I don’t like that it’s recently been trying to be too much of an “office app”. We use it primarily for video meetings. We discuss features of Nozbe in Nozbe tasks, but we discuss code in GitHub pull requests.

We have found Zoom to be the most feature rich video conferencing app for iPad. Most of our clients use Microsoft Teams which works well but, it is missing the more advanced functionality that Zoom offers. Zoom also has the best interface we find.

What would you say is something a remote team can do to build upon relationships and develop company culture.

We’ve been remote all these almost 20 years. Before it was cool. People kept saying that you couldn’t build relationship in a remote team and it’s simply not true. When you communicate a lot in a focused way like we do – with comments to tasks in Nozbe and regular video meetings (with video turned on!) in Zoom and additional messages in Slack or “Messages” in Nozbe, you can develop an amazing company culture. Additionally we meet for a week every year – we call them “Nozbe reunions” and from Monday to Friday we hang out with each other to develop even deeper relationships. Our next team reunion is in October. You can learn all about them at: https://michael.team/reunion

One of the myths about remote working is that you can’t build company culture, it is something I have heard many times in the past, and it is simply not true. Our company is an example that you can in fact build good company culture with remote teams, and so is Michael’s company Nozbe. Michael has some great advice about building company culture and how to effectively host successful company reunions. Check out the link above it’s a good resource.

Now that we are coming to the end of iPadOS 26, how have you found it?

I still don’t like it. Lots of bugs that haven’t been fixed. The Liquid Glass situation is still a mess. I like the new iPad multitasking features and the improved Stage Manager which I use all the time, but I wish iPadOS was more polished. I still haven’t switched to the beta of iPadOS27 because Shortcuts over there work really slowly and I depend on them for work.

Do you have a favorite Shortcut you use for work? If so what is it?

Don’t get me started on the Shortcuts. It’s because of the Shortcuts that I can be so productive on the iPad. I have published many of my Shortcuts at: https://michael.team/shortcuts/ and there are many more unpublished yet. I journal daily with my Journal Shortcut. Currently I released version 4 and I’m right now testing version 5 which I’ll release this Fall. I have built my own custom Clipboard manager in Shortcuts which I call ClipCut and I’ve been using it for the last year and can’t live without it. Also coming to my readers in a few weeks. I create presentations using a dedicated Shortcut that converts my writing to a very nice-looking minimalist slides. It’s been inspired by iA Presenter app and I call my Shortcut “Keynoter”. My Shortcut is simpler and tailored to my needs. I also build lots of smaller Shortcuts to get smaller things done so just keep subscribed to my blog and you’ll find them there 🙂

Again, the Shortcuts app itself on the iPad is very wonky and after a while it needs to be reset to work good again… I wish Apple would polish it more and optimize its performance. Still, the Shortcuts I can build on the iPad are amazing and automate lots of tedious tasks for me and I can’t imagine working without them.

Michael has some fantastic shortcuts which I am certainly going to be diving into soon. I might even do a write up on some of our favorite picks from his archive because wow, he has some great ones!

What features would you like Apple to bring to the iPadOS soon?

Background work. That is something iPad is beginning to have but many apps still don’t support it. So you could ask an app to generate something for you and in the meantime switch to a different app and let the previous one work in the background to finish the task. The early support of it is there but still… not as powerful as on the Mac. Better Files support – the Files app is still very limited and very often gets in the way instead of helping me manage files. Other than that I’d like all these glitches that iOS26 has to go away. These have been with us all these years and I wish someone at Apple would get on with it and fix them. Sometimes I feel like I’m working on the iPad as my main computer in spite of Apple’s efforts to make it worse for me 🙂 Still, the joy of using the iPad outweighs its limits. I just prefer to use the iPad over anything else.

Are there any lesser known Apps that make a difference in any of your workflows?

Apart from the apps I mentioned above, I’d like to give a shout out to Reeder Classic – my RSS reader which I still use to subscribe to blogs and YouTube channels. Finally the WhatsApp app is great on the iPad, which I use all the time.

Linea Sketch is still my favorite app to draw with Apple Pencil Pro. In my team we use 1Password to share passwords to services we use. I use profiles in Safari to distinguish when I’m logged in to websites as myself or as a part of my Nozbe team. To plan my trips I use dedicated apps like Booking, Expedia or Skyscanner. Of course I use all the video apps to watch like Netflix, HBO, Prime Video, Disney+ and others. The cool thing is you can easily download shows and movies to the iPad and watch them later on the plane and the iPad Pro’s OLED screen is amazing for watching stuff.

I also use mind-mapping software called MindNode when I want to brainstorm an idea.

When decorating my house or brainstorming some home office ideas, I’ve been using the Home Design 3D app for years. You can see the evolution of my home office at https://michael.team/office/ over the years from way back in 2008.

I too like Home Design 3D, it is easy to use and full of great functionality that you need to properly build out your home, office, etc. I actually used it not too long ago to design our apartment we bought a few years back and now live in.

What advice would you give to someone considering buying an iPad to use as their main work computer?

Don’t try to make your iPad a Mac. Start with what you want to accomplish and find the best apps for it. When you find a great web app, check if there’s a dedicated iPad app for it. I prefer using apps than web apps for doing things. Get an iPad with cellular connection. At no additional cost I got a second eSIM to my current cellular plan and now I have an iPad that’s connected to the Internet all the time. Yes, the cellular upgrade is expensive, but your iPad will last you many many years so it pays off. To give you an idea, my previous M1 iPad Pro from 2021 is still being used by my daughter and she also benefits from unlimited Internet there. BTW, I have three daughters and they are all #iPadOnly. Thanks to the Microsoft Office apps, they can log in to their school Microsoft accounts and use the Microsoft apps on their iPads and don’t need laptops. I guess the daughters are following dad’s footsteps. 🙂

That was a super interview with Michael, he is for sure an incredible iPad power user and that’s why he is our new iPad Stories section.

If you would like to listen to our Podcast interview with Michael, you can find that here in Episode 13.

If you would like full unlimited access to our site as well as our special monthly iPad enthusiasts Newsletter, then consider subscribing, its now only $2.99!

You can discover more about Michael, his business, podcasts, book, blog and his seriously impressive productivity App “Nozbe”, in the links below. 

The Nozbe App:

https://apps.apple.com/za/app/nozbe/id1457232572

Nozbe Website

Nozbe – best project management and collaboration tool

The #iPad Only Book 

#iPadOnly – the first real post-PC book – how to use only your iPad to work, play and everything in between – #iPadOnly – the first real post-PC book – How to use only your iPad to work, play and everything in between

Michael’s Blog

Michael Sliwinski | Michael Sliwinski

No Office Podcast

No Office

Nadgryzieni – (Polish Tech Podcast)

That‘s all for now.

Chat soon.

Matt