"What's a computer?"

Apple caused a lot of consternation amongst the tech world's equivalent of the chattering classes (On a good day, I include myself in that group.) with the question asked at the end of this ad. For many, the question was one that challenged the preconceived notion of the form factor: Could something without a fixed and attached keyboard and a lot of I/O options really be a computer?

Some probably typed this on their lovingly crafted mechanical keyboards while their laptop was docked in clamshell mode, not giving it a second thought.

For others, the question was one of specs: Could anything with so little RAM or storage or CPU/GPU power really be a computer?

They probably didn't stop to consider that their cellphone's specs are superior to what NASA used to travel to the moon and that Voyager has less computational power than their car's key fob.

For still others, it’s about the software capabilities. Can anything that is incapable of running intensive desktop computing software really be considered a computer?

They probably didn't stop to ask if the real computer they used three to five years before could comfortably run the latest version of the program they are using as a benchmark.

I'm not making these observations to poke fun of the nameless, faceless strawmen I have set up to point at derisively. Rather, I think their objections are critical for understanding what I am beginning to explore in response to that ad's question.

“What’s a computer?”

The ad’s answer, according to the graphics that appear on the screen, includes an iPad Pro running iOS 11 — a device and operating system those of us living the iPadOS lifestyle might consider limited in the same way my strawmen might attribute to our iPads.

But the point of the ad, along with ads like “Homework” —an ad that haunts me because it highlights what I fear are my own pedagogical shortcomings, is that the computer must serve a purpose if it’s going to be real.

I suspect many consumers generally “get it” — whether they are buying an iPad, a Mac, or a Windows machine. It's about what the device can (or can't) do for them and what they're comfortable with.

The iPad Mini I am writing this on right now is, for my immediate need, more powerful than the most impressively tricked out Mac Pro because the Mac Pro doesn't support Scribble or the Apple Pencil. And while there's no question that the new M4 iPad Pro outperforms my Mini, the Mini's form factor still delights me more than it would.

So what's a computer? It's a tool — a tool that can only be measured by its utility to the user and not an abstract set of specs and form factors.

My preference for the Mini comes with clear trade offs. The smaller size that, for reasons I cannot explain, I prefer can feel cramped at times and is less forgiving when dealing with online meetings. And I will need to post this via my iPad Pro because Squarespace doesn’t trust the Mini with hyperlinks. But I get more worthwhile (Your opinion may differ.) writing done on it with my Apple Pencil than I do on my iPad Pro with its excellent Magic Keyboard. And I have noticed I actively dislike the thought of using a traditional computer of any manufacture.

The girl in the ad's question is one every user looking at a new device should ask. What, for them, is a computer? And how open are they to change?

More on the Problem of “Pro”

I was watching another tech YouTube video on computer and/or iPad peripherals the other day (I can stop any time I want.). In the video, the presenter was describing a 7-in-One usb-c dongle that had all the ports he and any other pro users might need.

• I'm not sure why this video struck me more forcefully than any of the others I've watched, but his focus on the utility provided by the SD-card and micro SD-card slots leapt out as two facts immediately presented themselves:

• I can't remember the last time I used as SD-Card. Yes, I can appreciate how important they are for podcasters and YouTubers and have considered them as an external storage option, but I have never found a need to use them.*

I have needed the VGA connection on my Satechi Munliport Adapter twice in the past year while presenting at universities in Europe and the US. The VGA connection, in fact, was the “Pro” feature that made me go with this model rather than some of the more streamlined ones.

I have written before on how “Pro” means different things to different people. What strikes me as remarkable is how often we confuse general purpose devices for tailored machines and knock them for providing peripherals that serve our specific needs — as if peripherals (now often connected via dongles) were signs of a device's limitations rather than their adaptability.

* Yes, I know: Having published that, I will need to use one at some point in the coming days.

The Let Loose Event and the iPad Mini

Along with all of the other iPad true believers, I watched the "Let Loose“ event today. Even before it started, I didn’t expect to be the main target for this release cycle. After all, my current iPad Mini and iPad Pro more than serve my needs. And of the two, the Mini is the device my wants and desires are focused on.

This isn't to say I didn't watch with interest. There was a lot of spoken and unspoken news released today -- some of which has me thinking that an iPad Mini “Pro” may not be as impossible as I once believed.

But first the rundown of what I think is rather than what I think may yet be.

The iPad Pro

For those wondering why Tim Cook billed today as the biggest announcement for iPad since its introduction, let me offer this observation: The iPad Pro is now a device that you know you need or you know you want in the same way you know you want or need a MacBook Pro. It has pulled away from the iPad Air in that it has targeted uses and users.

Does this mean non-artists (artists being broadly defined), non-"creatives", and non-gamers should stay away? Of course not. If it makes you happy and have the money to buy into “the ultimate iPad experience”, knock yourself out. Have fun and don't let the cynics get to you when they feel the urge to say you don’t need all that power and that the apps don’t take full advantage of the power that’s there.

Smile and enjoy the ride.

The iPad Air

The iPad Air has now become a reasonable laptop replacement for most users. Keep in mind that if you were watching “Let Loose”, you are not likely to be one of these users. You are probably a tech aficionado of some sort or someone whose livelihood is defined by the specs of the machine in front of you.

The Air is a solid general use machine that does most of what general users need while offering the flexibility offered by an Apple Pencil. And it's a lovely device for them. It's the easy choice of the iPad range.

The iPad

This is the device for those who are highly price sensitive and/or just want a full size tablet and aren't looking for a full laptop replacement — perhaps because they don't need something like a laptop. It’s a good option for what it is and a fantastic option for those who know that they don’t want it to be what it isn’t.

The iPad Mini

First things first: I believe that this is the device for those who are (like me) aficionados of the form factor or for those who need ultra-portability -- people like doctors and nurses making rounds in a hospital and the pilots who so often appear in Mini ads.

But I promised my thoughts for the future of the Mini.

Now, I am under no illusions that Apple is listening or actively considering my wants and needs. I also concede that my thoughts are being driven by what I want and not by what is practical or possible. After all, I don't have sales numbers so I don't know how much of an outlier I am in terms of desired use cases. I'm also not an engineer so can't know if my guesses are actually logical rather than just things that have the appearance of logic.

That disclaimer offered, one of Apple's points of pride was how thin the new Pros are. They are thin and more powerful. Somehow, the thermals issue was addressed with the M4 and the way the iPads Pro were engineered. The presentation nodded to some of the materials they employed.

That makes me think that thermal constraints might not be as great a restriction for a future Mini as I had thought (although distance to the battery could still be an issue). But I do wonder: If an M4 can be made to fit in a .21 inch (5.3 mm) 11 inch case, could one be fit into the .25 inch (6.3 mm) chassis of the current iPad Mini? And if not the M4, how capable would an A-series equivalent be?

What makes me hopeful that such things are being at least considered is that the iPad Mini is more Apple Pencil-centric than any other iPad. I can't help but think (want) an iPad Mini Pro or Air (or both) that supports the Pencil Pro.

Why Haven’t I Stopped Carrying My iPad Pro?

The question isn't a rhetorical one. I am really trying to figure this out.

As I have written in my earlier posts, the iPad Mini has been serving me exceptionally well. I have been able to successfully transition most of what I do to this device seamlessly. The issues with the screen in my classroom turned out to be a glitch. When I get to the office, I can plug in a mouse, connect to a keyboard, and use a monitor for work tasks that demand more screen real estate.

And as I said in a prior post, I am enjoying Scribble, which parses my printing and cursive well enough that I suspect the occasional misinterpretation is no more frequent than the typos that creep in when I am using a keyboard.

So why am I carrying my iPad Pro with me as if it were the technological equivalent of carrying an umbrella to insure that it won’t rain?

The longer this experiment continues, the more I suspect it is a strange kind of iPad Pro FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

I have used the 11-inch iPad Pro for many years and, as is the case of many users like me, have come to appreciate its design and its power and the quality of the Magic Keyboard. But the more I think about it, the more I begin to accept that the design and power are there for other users. Even with the games I play, by and large, I am more likely to be pushing battery capacity than processing capacity.

So beyond adding an insufficient amount of extra weight to make any real difference when closing my exercise rings, why do I still carry it?

As I have said elsewhere, making the switch from the Pro to the Mini comfortably would require getting some additional peripherals (And who doesn't like looking into accessories?).

But that doesn't ring true as the real reason.

That's why I keep coming back to the FOMO.

It interests me.

It interests me because I suspect that the FOMO isn't being driven by Apple. I would love to lay the blame on Apple or reviewers making the devices too irresistible. But while there is a kernel of truth there, the truth lies in the context rather than the cause.

A side effect of watching YouTubers and listening to podcasters whose opinions you have come to respect is that their concerns become a lens through which you view the devices they discuss — whether they are formally reviewing them or discussing their capabilities in passing. As a result, part of my opinions of these devices are driven by how well they perform tasks that are mission critical for videographers but not the kind of thing I am likely to do.

But (and here's the FOMO) they are things I might want to do someday. (After all, how can I claim to be a power user if I'm not using all the tools and apps that they are?) What if, for example, my minor forrays into podcasting morphed into an internationally acclaimed YouTube channel?

As if that kind of thing happened overnight and as if I didn't work at a university with a Communications program that would immediately adopt the theoretical internationally acclaimed YouTuber....

These aspirational feelings aren't entirely absurd. I don't use many Shortcuts and the ones I do use are very simple. But the handful I do use were inspired by listening to Frederico Viticci’s adventures with them.

Ultimately, the FOMO is, at its heart, absurd. It is as absurd as the knowledge that I will be packing the iPad Pro into my bag tomorrow.

But it will still be in my bag and the FOMO will keep it there for a little while longer.

Apple's Scary Fast Event and the iPad Mini

No, I am not hallucinating like some overly exuberant large language model. I know that 30 October 2023 was all about the M3 chip and the new Macs with some bonus attention to the iPhone 15 Pro, which was used to film the event. (An impressive one more thing-esque flex at the end.)

The iPad line wasn't mentioned or shown in the product shots — product shots that made room for the iPhone and Apple TV. While I did not do a frame by frame study, I'm pretty sure the Mini (and the rest of the iPad line) wasn't even seen.

So why bring this up?

A number of commentators have focused on Apple’s messaging associated with the M3 chips, which focused on users who still are using intel-based Macs and/or MI Macs — a much more reasonable group to try to get to upgrade than the M2 Mac owners who have bought in the last year.

The part of the messaging I want to focus on is where Apple talked about the kind of pros Apple expects to invest in machines using the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max — including not only the jobs (researchers v. programmers v. Video editors) but the kinds of software packages.

These guidelines may help those who wonder where they best fit in the M3 line up. Doubtless, this will help individuals and companies who want the best bang for their buck without defaulting to buying the most expensive machine they can.

Where this connects to my experiment with the iPad Mini begins is my absence from the list of target users for these computers. Neither Apple nor I think I need one of these machines.

That is not only good to know, it is potentially liberating.

There is a certain amount of professional pride (or ego) and desire for geek street cred that drives people like me to want to be associated with the pro computers. To begin, I am a full professor. I am in the top tier of 'pro’ in my profession — even thought most Professors of English are not pushing a Mac’s computing power.

And the kind of professional pride is not what Apple is trying to signal with the marketing title ‘Pro’. That title is a legacy of a time when all power users could and would gravitate to the same machine(s).

If I (and others) don't tie myself to the device with Pro in the title, that frees me up to consider devices like the iPad Mini. Considering the iPad Mini is making me rethink the implications of my input device(s).

It can let us all (Dare I say?) think different about our devices and how to make them better suit our needs rather than aligning with some predetermined paradigm that aligns best with what is easiest for a marketing department to package.

Incidentally, I hope you are going to be good enough to forget that I said all this if Apple releases a Mini Pro (one that permits Stage Manager’s dual screen set up).

I hope Apple continues this trend with its other devices. I would be very interested to hear the extended list of job classes that correspond with the devices they sell. There is bound to be overlap, of course. The iPad Air and the MacBook Air leap to mind here. I suspect their user profiles would primarily differ only in whether the user could better leverage iPadOS or MacOS.

Users will know if they need to take a step up to the "next level” of the benchmarked tiers of the chips and devices — whether it is due to a real need or a pride-based desire for the more expensive machine. But giving them these guidelines is a great step on Apple's part.

Confused by the Confusion (or, What iPad Should I Buy?)

With the release of the newest version of the Apple Pencil, I have begun to see a number of pundits and journalists talk about how confusing the iPad line has become. It is tempting to respond to this with a condescending claim about their own condescension towards "average" consumers — even if it would be wrong to do so.

Those poor, benighted non-techies really can't handle anything beyond the good/better/best progression ninety percent of the time so Apple needs to get rid of those extra models in the lineup, they might say.

Well, I might respond with equal condescension, you just don't get the iPad because your frame of reference is bound to the fourfold division of the Mac promulgated by Steve Jobs when he returned from NEXT, with desktop/ laptop on one axis and consumer/pro on the other — a model that doesn't fit the iPad. (Even though the model kind of does fit...)

Other than providing the smug satisfaction that comes along with any good strawman logical fallacy, this does no one any good. The pundits and reviewers claiming confusion and citing the clarity that adding a larger iPad Air would bring are expressing a real problem that they face every time a friend or family member asks what device they should buy.

It's one thing to offer the wrong advice to a reader or viewer you will never meet. It's another to get to hear the griping every holiday dinner and suffer through the implication that you are bad at your job.

It is equally true that the new Apple Pencil appears to be hinting that there is some kind of change coming. Whether it is a hardware redesign (Does USB-C signal a move away from magnetic charging to make space for a repositioned FaceTime camera?) or a shift in design philosophy (We need a good/better/best progression for the Apple Pencil.) remains to be seen.

That said, the decision tree as to which iPad to buy is simple.

1. Is price the most important thing for you? If yes, get the basic iPad. If not, go to question two.

2. Are you a videographer or professional (or similarly serious) photographer? If yes, get the Pro. If not, go to question 3.

3. Are you looking for maximum portability? Get the Mini.

4. If not, get the Air.

Yes, at each of these steps, there are other questions but those answers come easily. How much memory should I get? How much are you using? What about the screen size? Those who need a big screen or just love the Mini know who they are already.

Those are questions that can be walked through simply enough and most consumers can figure those out.

That said, I want to go back to that two-by-two grid for a second, because it is hiding in the iPad lineup. If you look at those four questions, and don't get distracted by form factor, you can set up the grid -- based on most likely place of use -- with laptop replacement/desktop replacement on one axis and consumer/ professional on the other. The consumer laptop is the Mini. The consumer desktop is the Air ( living in its Magic Keyboard case). The pro laptop is the 11 inch Pro and its desktop counterpart is the 12.9 inch.

The more peripherals you add (e.g., keyboards, track pads, and external monitors), the clearer the alignment becomes.

If Apple were to add a larger iPad Air to the lineup, the grid gets simpler and the Mini becomes more of a specialty item, much as the base iPad is targeted at the education market. Like the Pro, you will know if you need it — either because it speaks to you or because you want a un companion for your Mac.

I am not going to argue iPads and Macs have become interchangeable. They aren't and each comes with strengths and limitations. What I will argue is that there is more consistency and less confusion than may meet the eye for the average consumer than we techies might initially think.

Dreaming of an iPad Mini Pro

Is this thing still on?

It has been quite a while since I posted here. My lack of posts has not been due to an ending of the iPad Experiment. It has continued and become my normal.

In some ways, this normalcy could be seen as the mark of the end of part one of the experiment.

Part Two began with the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Much of the world was asked to rethink and re-examine their relationship with technology. What was once considered perfectly adequate (e.g., the cameras that came with their laptops and desktops ) shifted into entirely inadequate almost overnight.

The iPad fared relatively well. It was not perfect by anyone's stretch of the imagination but when you were overhearing the struggles of a teacher trying to adjust their teaching to fit within the confines of a Chromebook chosen a few years before based on its price rather than its performance, it looked great in

Now, however, the iPad line exists alongside devices that were redesigned with the lessons learned from the pandemic. And some of the limitation-based strengths of the iPad have begun to feel like weaknesses.

One of the things that enabled me to navigate the non-stop meetings of the pandemic (I was serving as an interim dean at the time.) was having access to an iPad Mini. This allowed me to have Zoom running on my iPad Pro's screen while I took notes or referenced documents on the smaller screen.

The need to do this was due to a strength of the iPad -- that it is primarily a unitasking environment. It demands a kind of focus that laptops and desktops seem to actively discourage in their users.

I have been thinking about that a lot of late.

One reason I have been thinking about this is driven by conversations in the tech media -- especially in some of the blogs and podcasts of some of the iPad's greatest champions. Wether it is the time in the wilderness that Federico Viticci felt compelled to take following his struggles with Stage Manager or Jason Snell's realization that the new M-series Macs were his better choice for one device travel, users have started to critically examine the iPad and ask the kind of questions of it that were asked of laptops during the pandemic.

These questions all boil down to a very fair, very simple question: Is living with the collection of pain points that come with this device a good trade off for me?

For tech journalists who increasingly must engage in audio and video production, it is easy to see why the answer might be no. That there are not the kind of advanced tools (hardware and software) that they need to do their job is an understandable dealbreaker. And if, in their frustration, they sometimes state their case in a way that conflates the very specific issues they face with a larger problem with the platform, who can blame them? The issues, after all, do clearly highlight the kind of limitations their readers and listeners should know about.

That said, there are more people in the world who take notes than there are who make podcasts. And the fact that I am writing this post (at least its initial draft) on my iPad Mini in Apple Notes using an Apple Pencil via the Scribble feature tells me that there are stories about the iPad line that are still not being told.

One of them requires us to reexamine our attachment to keyboards.

The other reason I have been thinking about the limits that the iPad has been bumping into has to do with my own list of "but why doesn't Apple just... " thoughts. These are exactly the same kind of things I was referring to above. For tech journalists, the question is why can't Apple allow the M-series iPads to do more with recording multiple audio streams.

My need/want probably involves asking Apple to break some of the laws of physics.

I want an iPad Mini Pro.

Specifically, I want an iPad Mini that can drive an external monitor using Stage Manager, as it functions in The iPadOS 17 betas.*

I want the iPad Mini to be my primary device — one that makes it easier to switch from a keyboard mindset to one that places the Apple Pencil in my hand and think more about what I am writing and, perhaps, makes me consider dictation more often.

This is especially true for those times when I know that giving myself the time to think about the words going down on the digital page is an improvement over the false efficiency of typing.

While I don't know if this could be done, I do know there would be a host of trade offs. The Mini would have to be plugged in while it drove the monitor because the battery would be insufficient for all day usage. The weird rotational issues that crop up with Zoom when being projected to an external monitor would be less ideally solved by keeping that app on the smaller screen. There is even less room to move the camera to a landscape edge (although iPadOS 17 may solve that via external camera support).

And I would need a long list of potentially expensive peripherals to really make such a set-up work.

*Given the battery size of the Mini, this would almost certainly require it to be plugged in. Yes, the battery could be made a little bigger but that path towards a solution eventually leads you to using an iPad Air or Pro, defeating the purpose of the Mini.