Rob Huff (he/him)I have been living and working productively with a 2 iPad setup for the last few years - a 13-inch iPad Pro from 2024 and a 7th generation iPad mini. But this week I gifted the iPad mini to my step-daughter and I am already struggling to adjust to using the 13-inch iPad Pro for everything. Now I wait to decide whether to opt for a revised iPad mini later this year, or to consider the super-expensive folding iPhone.
The thing is, the iPad mini is the perfect size for an iPad. If it had more pro features so I could connect it to an external monitor while working, I wouldn’t need the bigger iPad at all. The iPad mini is the perfect travel computer, conference computer, note-taking computer, reading device. I will have to see if a folding iPhone could possibly do all those things well enough to just take that direction.
I should add, if I didn’t need to connect to a second screen to do my work, I would already be all-in with just the iPad mini. It is that good as a do-everything device.
The bigger 13-inch iPad Pro is just the best option for the kind of professional work I do. And yes, I also have an aging MacBook Pro to do the handful of things that don’t work as well on an iPad. That machine is likely to be replaced by a Mac mini or studio machine in the future, because the MacBook form isn’t as useful.
Greg Lloyd@robertphuff
Yes! I wonder about a powerful iPad Mini getting its own Magic Keyboard for laptop typing and docked charging — and use of an external monitor.
The MK is great with my MacBook Air M3 - but an iPad Mini M4 with a single Thunderbolt cable connecting a MK to an external display…