Does anyone here use an iPad Air? Do you like it? Pros v. cons? Good for travel?
Thanks guys!
ETA: I have an old Kindle Fire or some such thing. Don't like it. iPad Air would be superior to that, right? I hope...
iPad Air?
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Jersey Girl
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iPad Air?
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We only get stronger when we are lifting something that is heavier than what we are used to. ~ KF
Slava Ukraini!
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Kishkumen
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Re: iPad Air?
The iPad Air is great. Much better than an older Kindle Fire. I highly recommend the newer iPads. My iPad Pro is fantastic. I use it every day.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
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Physics Guy
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Re: iPad Air?
I've also been using an iPad Pro for a while and like it. I don't have much other tablet experience to compare to it, though.
The Face ID feature is nice, though sometimes it gets finicky and refuses to recognize me because my hair is different or something. It's handy when I'm using the iPad to follow an online recipe. If it goes to sleep because I was stirring something for a while, I still have to touch it to wake it back up, but then I can unlock it just by looking at it even though my fingers are too wet for Touch ID to work on my phone. Most of the time, anyway.
What I really use way more than I expected is handwriting notes with the Apple Pencil. Much of my work is pen-and-paper calculations, solving equations and stuff, and for years I used to litter the house with pages and pages of cryptic symbols. Once I had finally straightened something out I would transcribe it into a nice hardbound notebook with a fountain pen. For the past ten years or more, though, I've used Wacom tablets attached to computers instead. Same handwritten equations, but the production process was upgraded in a way that was a lot like the change from typewriters to word processors in the 1980s. I was happy with that computer-plus-Wacom system and didn't plan on replacing it with the iPad, but the Pencil just worked so nicely that I quickly found myself doing most of my calculations with it. It's not perfect, either; sometimes the tapping the pencil to switch from writing to erasing takes a couple of taps. That can be super annoying, but it wouldn't be so annoying if the thing didn't mostly work so perfectly that I take it for granted.
I have one of those magnetic clip-on covers for the iPad that doubles as a keyboard and stand, to make the iPad into a laptop. It works well enough that I take it on trips and leave the actual laptop at home, unless I'm planning on doing some serious number-crunching.
Another nice feature that works better than I was expecting is using the iPad as an extra screen for a Mac. It's not a huge second screen, but it works pretty painlessly and has high resolution, so it's a useful expansion of screen real estate, especially for the laptop.
The Face ID feature is nice, though sometimes it gets finicky and refuses to recognize me because my hair is different or something. It's handy when I'm using the iPad to follow an online recipe. If it goes to sleep because I was stirring something for a while, I still have to touch it to wake it back up, but then I can unlock it just by looking at it even though my fingers are too wet for Touch ID to work on my phone. Most of the time, anyway.
What I really use way more than I expected is handwriting notes with the Apple Pencil. Much of my work is pen-and-paper calculations, solving equations and stuff, and for years I used to litter the house with pages and pages of cryptic symbols. Once I had finally straightened something out I would transcribe it into a nice hardbound notebook with a fountain pen. For the past ten years or more, though, I've used Wacom tablets attached to computers instead. Same handwritten equations, but the production process was upgraded in a way that was a lot like the change from typewriters to word processors in the 1980s. I was happy with that computer-plus-Wacom system and didn't plan on replacing it with the iPad, but the Pencil just worked so nicely that I quickly found myself doing most of my calculations with it. It's not perfect, either; sometimes the tapping the pencil to switch from writing to erasing takes a couple of taps. That can be super annoying, but it wouldn't be so annoying if the thing didn't mostly work so perfectly that I take it for granted.
I have one of those magnetic clip-on covers for the iPad that doubles as a keyboard and stand, to make the iPad into a laptop. It works well enough that I take it on trips and leave the actual laptop at home, unless I'm planning on doing some serious number-crunching.
Another nice feature that works better than I was expecting is using the iPad as an extra screen for a Mac. It's not a huge second screen, but it works pretty painlessly and has high resolution, so it's a useful expansion of screen real estate, especially for the laptop.
I was a teenager before it was cool.