When I’m eating alone or waiting for guests in a posh restaurant, it’s like a hard back novel, discrete whilst being read without being visually a computer. It sets you free in a science fiction, living in the future kind of way. It’s like having a note book and pencil that I can have with me at any time, without a bag or any other incumbrance and yet it’s a fully functioning, always on the grid computer. It fits in my suit jacket pocket, it fits in my jeans back pocket. When I’m at my desk, I still prefer to use the iPad Pro but when I’m on the move the mini is in a different league. I would have preferred if apple had re-engineered the case to the new industrial design and allowed me to use pencil 2 but I don’t really care because I have my mini back and it’s super power, the thing that beats all - is it’s size. In it’s five designation, with pencil support and a fast A12 chip, it can do everything I do on my Pro - albeit with last years pencil and slightly thicker bezels. Like an old friend you thought you’d never see again. I pretended that I was content but I wasn’t truly free. My daily driver evolved through 3 or 4 iPad Pros to become the new 11 inch which, with it’s square edges and it’s thin bezels, was kind of cool.
Its battery started to wain, losing charge within a day despite no real use.
I even once, a couple of years ago, emailed Tim Cook with a plea to bring back the beloved device. Used when I need to finish some work while my wife slept. Over time the mini started being left at home and eventually became my ‘night time’ device. I spent a lot of money on man bags and messenger bags to allow me to carry the bigger Pro around London Town. This meant that the pro became my default choice.
I prefer to take notes in handwriting in meetings, I find it puts the other participants more at ease. The pencil was and is a very big deal for me at work. My connection to the mini 4 did not end abruptly, it faded slowly as the device became relegated by the iPad Pro’s. Big enough to multitask and have Fantastical in split screen with my email, with Things floating over as the third app being pulled from the right. The mini was the device that was just big enough to make the cut. Although the plus sized iPhone helped push my old iPad mini towards redundancy, it never effectively replaced it. Which set of dates was the email asking me to check? By the time I have navigated to calendar, I have forgotten. Flicking between screens to sequentially access apps always feels like a hack and a hassle. I have always immediately gone with the biggest iPhone I could get but they are never quite big enough. But, if I am on my phone, sooner rather than later, I decide to leave things incomplete until I’m back at my desktop computer (or iPad). When I start triaging email, reviewing diary requests, calendar planning, working through my to do’s in Things3, if I’m on my iPad - I get to inbox zero. I know that for many folks that designation goes to their phone but for me, the phone has never been big enough to get everything done on it. My cellular, retina, iPad mini 4 was the best portable computer I’d ever owned. I bought the first one on the day it came out and it became my default device at the time. A comparison between the iPad mini 5 and the iPad pro.
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