It Would be an iPad Pro

It’s warm enough on this Easter Sunday that I’m sitting out back at the fire pit for a little bit. Just finished cleaning up a line of bushes that are too wild to be called shrubs, but too organized to be part of the woods. I’ve learned to trim this little patch before it gets overly green, much less of my blood is sacrificed to the thorns and prickers that way.

I don’t write a whole lot about tech stuff, sum total of one post so far, but I’m going to today.

There’s a fairly steady drumbeat about iPad Pro’s being poor choices for just about everything. I disagree with that 100%. I’m pretty confident that I use my iPad Pro more than any other device. If I could only keep one piece of tech gear, it would be my iPad Pro.

(Just as a point of order, it’s an M2 12.9 inch iPad Pro, 5G, 256gigs)

Right now is a perfect use case example. My WiFi doesn’t reach the fire pit area. Not that we have a palatial estate; the house is basically a glorified cabin or bungalow. As a result, the best place for the modem and router is in the basement. From here, the WiFi covers inside the house and the porch fine. Fire pit, not so much.

Sure, I could grab my MacBook and use my phones hotspot. Why? My iPad has cellular. Word works just fine, the 12.9 in screen is just right for my lap sitting in an Adirondack chair. The Magic Keyboard (which is IMHO essential, and spendy) feels close enough to the MacBook keyboard, maybe better at some times. I don’t need more than what the IPad offers at this moment.

Here’s, in no particular order, the reasons my iPad Pro is my most used piece of tech.

– It has a 5G radio / modem installed. Instant on, instant connectivity pretty much anywhere. If your phone works, your 5G iPad will work.

– It’s the perfect blend of an iPhone and a MacBook. Does it do either role perfectly? No, nor should it be expected to. It can do enough of both to be highly usable.

– It’s the perfect mobile size. The screen is usable for for probably 99% of stuff you’d want to do away from a full blown workstation. It excels in text based applications. The keyboard doesn’t have everything a workstation keyboard does, but typing / text input feels no different.

– IpadOS. It’s light enough that it’s not bogged down or laggy. Like ever. Strong enough to run really feature rich apps. To me it’s the most intuitive of the OS’s is use on a daily basis. Dare I say it….it just works.

– The screen is excellent.

– Seamless integration with the Apple infrastructure.

I lead a fairly mobile life. These days, I drive a white work van, and it’s not uncommon at all to have 1500 mile weeks. Portable instant on 5G for the win. Kate and I also do a decent amount of moving around for to support our….hobbies, yeah, that’s it. I don’t need to do heavy video or audio processing in my van or hotel room. By in large, for me, today, the MacBook stays home.

Prior to Covid, I traveled the world for work. In the 12 months ending in March 2020 I was in: Korea, Taiwan (twice), Thailand, Iceland, Singapore, Canada (three times; twice to Inuvik) Wales, Norway / Svalbard, New Zealand, and Antarctica; 15,000 mile weeks weren’t uncommon at all. There was Washington State, California multiple times, and Alaska in there as well. A Surface Pro (work required Windows) and an IPad Pro went everywhere with me. Keeping travel at that volume organized is light years better on an iPad than a phone.

It’s not perfect for everyone or every task. I can’t figure out why some people seem to expect it to be. If you need an M3 Max with a ton of ram and terabytes of storage, and MacOS, a MacBook Pro is the move to make. I have no need for that horsepower all day every day (well, ever TBH), nor do most people. From what I’ve seen, people want something that’s reliable, secure, is straightforward to use, and can get done what they need to get done. Something that they can let the 5 year old in their life use and not have to explain it to them.

I don’t expect to use my IPad to do a monthly clean up of iCloud Drive or One Drive. It’s fine for moving a file or two around on the fly tho.

I’d love to see Apple come out with a dual boot iPad Pro that can run MacOs. I bet a buck I’d stay with IpadOS most of the time tho. Making hay about what iPadOS doesn’t have or do well or lamenting that it’s not a full-blown desktop OS is missing the point of the device and it’s OS. It’s a Swiss Army knife, not a chefs knife, or razor blade, or corkscrew. When cooking, I’ll use the chefs knife…….and use my iPad to maybe play a podcast, or refer to the recipe, or watch the TikTok video about the dish.

Is it the “Pro” moniker that makes people itch? It’s marketing for the most part I think. That said, I do think, much like Air Pods Pro, there’s enough of a difference from the base model to merit an added title. For me, this difference lies chiefly in the size and quality of the screen. IPad Pro just sounds catchier than iPad Upgraded.

I’m not sure what I’ll do when the M3 iPad Pro’s finally get announced. It will probably come down to what the “upgraded” Magic Keyboard is like. Well, shit, who am I kidding, I’m probably going to get one. I can see Kate using this M2 and retiring the 2nd gen A10 iPad Pro she’s using. If she doesn’t want to swap (her call) I’ll find something to do with it. I don’t think this is going to be traded in.

From start to finish, including posting it, this post is 100% done on my iPad Pro.

Thanks for reading!! Please be kind to yourself, and everyone.

Sam & Kate