… or rather, once you go Apple, you never go back.
In July I traded in my primary mobile setup, a 2018 iPad Pro. I received an Apple gift card and it’s been sitting in my account. I figured I had a Linux laptop that I could lug around; the ThinkPad T460s is quite nice and running Linux is not an issue on the setup. Except there’s quirks in Linux. And you have to do things to keep it working. And when you go to a public hotspot you spend 15 minutes going through a song and dance trying to get the Linux laptop connected to the public hotspot. And none of the applications really fit into an ecosystem, they’re all doing their own thing.
It’s all manageable and I still have the Thinkpad T460s for tinkering, but in reality, I found myself using my Mac Mini in the office more than anything, and I missed having a mobile solution when we’re traveling.
Luckily, I hadn’t traded in my Apple Pencil or Magic Keyboard I had purchased for my previous iPad Pro, so after some discussions with the accounting department, I picked up my 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro at the local Apple store.
When did Apple start showcasing two large security guards at the front entrance of their stores?
The display is gorgeous; this model has the Liquid Retina XDR and it is easily the best display I’ve seen in an Apple device. The performance is markedly faster than what I was experiencing with my 2018 iPad Pro. And in less than 20 minutes from unboxing, I was up and running, courtesy of my iCloud backup taken before I traded the old iPad Pro in for a gift card.
I am happy to be using this again. I’m looking forward to the improvements coming with iPadOS16, and now that I have an iPad with an M1 processor, I can take advantage of all the goodies in the next update, like Stage Manager, which brings Mac like multitasking to the iPad.
