iPad-less

After nearly twelve years, my iPad journey has come to an end — I sold my old refurbished iPad Mini 4 a few weeks ago.

It’s not that I no longer love the iPad, far from it, each of the three models I’ve owned have served me well and I’ve appreciated them during their time in my possession.

Instead, it was the realisation that I no longer had a need for the extra device alongside my 2020 iPhone SE and 2017 iMac 27-inch, and that I could sell it for cash to spend on other things that I do need in the near future.

I’m not ruling out getting another iPad in the future, but it would need to be for a good reason, and would have to earn its place. Right now, that reason hasn’t arrived, though. Back in 2010 it was the ability to read magazines that persuaded me to buy the original iPad, but those days are long gone. It hasn’t helped that Apple have chopped and changed features around over the years, meaning that I’m wary of committing to their ecosystem.

I’d go as far as suggesting that Apple themselves aren’t that sure what the iPad is supposed to be nowadays, with many differing models of varying vintage and capabilities, a symptom of the piecemeal way that they’ve attended to the iPad range.

In the meantime, my iPhone handles 99% of the tasks that my iPad could do, and does them with considerably more zip thanks to its more modern internals. Plus, it’s pocketable and is one less thing to keep charged. And my iMac is my preferred system for writing and working, with no bottlenecks or arbitrary limitations, something that I suspect the iPad will never match.