I’m taking delivery of a spanking new iPad Mini tomorrow, so am interested to see what my use-case for one is now I have a 15” MacBook Air.
My last iPad is a basic 7th gen that’s currently in a drawer with a borked screen. I tried to repair it. I did not repair it.
But even by the time it got broken, I’d already begun to wind down my active use of it. For a year I used it exclusively, one of those guys trying to make an iPad-only point, in the face of rising device prices and increasing obsolescence. And honestly, it was fine. I presented a radio show with it (with a 3rd gen iPad Mini connected via Bluetooth for controlling faders and such. It was really cool), managed to do work stuff, and generally got on well.
But the trouble with iPad is that to a great extent it can only be what Apple want it to be, and if what you want to do doesn’t fall neatly within that, then you’re going to have to jump through hoops. Hoops that don’t really exist on a Mac.
But fortune has smiled upon me, and so tomorrow I’m getting a brand new 6th gen iPad Mini. I don’t really know what I want or need it for, but it’ll be a nice addition to my stable of devices.
Aside from its size, the major difference between it and my last one is that my last one had a headphone port, which the Mini does not. This was an important part of my broadcasting setup, so there’s a part of me that wants to set all that up again to see if I can still make it work, or whether I can involve my small USB sound card. That will likely require having to buy an analogue XLR mic though, because as far as I’m aware, iPadOS can still only see one audio device at a time - one of my major annoyances with iPadOS.
So yeah, I’m in an interesting spot with it, in that I’m taking delivery of a device that I wasn’t expecting, and have no actual plans or need for. Will it organically fall into use, or will I find it to be something I forget I have?
