Next new iPad?

[Jonj1611]

I have one of the first gen pencils, its rolling around under my bed somewhere. Hardly used it. Hopefully you will have a better use scenario for it. I thought I would use one but just couldn't find anything I needed it for

[Saracen999]

Will do, but I wouldn't hold your breath. At the moment, the options seem to be full price, full price or full price.

[Jonj1611]

I find Apple deals are the hardest to shop for. As in new items as Apple fix the pricing so its difficult to find anything much different from what they are selling for

[Saracen999]

There was a deal magic Kb. £70 off. God news. Sadly, only in black and I wanted white. Oh well.

[Saracen999]

let me know if you find a good deal on the pencil. I am weighing up getting one too.

ygpm.

[Saracen999]

Well, after an infuriatingly long wait (thanks, Costco), iPad is due to be delivered tomorrow and I finally get to find out what all tge hype is about .... and if it's justified.

This is gonna be fun (I hope).

Now, gotta order the pen.

[[GSV]Trig]

If you were not technical and not of the 'geek' subculture then its easy to be impressed, you can, quite literally these days, with the aid of apps, run a business from an iPad.
They are amazing things.


That said, YMMV as the saying goes, it really does depend on what you use it for and how 'techy' you are, which, given its you, well, its probably more likely to annoy you as to how engrained all of the accounts and cloud things are and where your data is going more than anything else

[Saracen999]

If you were not technical and not of the 'geek' subculture then its easy to be impressed, you can, quite literally these days, with the aid of apps, run a business from an iPad.
They are amazing things.


That said, YMMV as the saying goes, it really does depend on what you use it for and how 'techy' you are, which, given its you, well, its probably more likely to annoy you as to how engrained all of the accounts and cloud things are and where your data is going more than anything else

Yeah, I hear you, Trig. It's likely to be primariy a media consumption device, with playing with media creation tools as secondary, but I do kinda mean 'playing with'. It's going to be a 'try this', 'experiment with that', and see what I get on with, tool.

What I won't be doing with it is anything that involves very much of anything fnancial, personal, etc. That, will be staying right where it currently is, nicely locked down on a Windows machine. And yeah, I get the irony of "locked down" and "Windows machine" in the same sentence.

However, it is pretty carefully de-MS'd, and de-clouded.

The iPad is also partly about finding out at least some of what I've been dodging in the Apple ecosystem, in recent decades. Up to a point. That point stops well short of iPhone. Not going there.

But integrating Plex, SONOS speakers and the iPad, oh yeah, going there all right.

Which brings me back to media consumption. A large part of my motivation, without which I probably wouldn't be doing this at all, is upgrading my 'leisure' room speakers to Sonos ERA 100's, and sticking a SONOS Beam on the lounge LG OLED. Then, I definitely want to get at my ripped CD, LP etc collection, on my NAS, onto the ERA 100s. Not being familiar with either SONOS or Apple, that's been a bit of a faff, but possibly PlexAmp. Also, either Plex or Emby for my growing digitised collection of ripped DVDs, be they TV shows or films. Currently, Emby is far more comprehensively set up but, both Plax and Emby are running, and accessible on laptops, lounge TV etc. I just need to pick which to settle on. Both have advantages.

So all told, it's a bit of a mixed bag of things I will end up doing with it, but media consumption (mainly of my own stuff) is central, and 'sensitive' data doesnt really feature in my plans at all. That, and 'cos I want one.

[AGTDenton]

Having used a friends one recently, it will not disappoint!
I could never justify one due to price and lack of a use case, but there wasn't an aspect I was not impressed with.


I'd highly recommend getting some sort of protective case for it

[[GSV]Trig]

Given how much of the 'additional' features the Pro has over the Air, if I made the same call again, I would have gone for the Air with more storage I think, I certainly wouldn't have gotten the pencil though, I had one with my Mini5, and used it for about 10 minutes.

As for case, absofrikkingluetly...

I don't get these Apple Fanbois that would rather show off and damage their iDevice than cover it, my watch would have taken a battering at work loading flight cases onto skids in the middle of the desert if it wasn't for the cover I have on it, I drop my phone at least once a month, but don't whince or panic as it falls towards the floor, exactly the same with the iPad..

I got this case as a temp measure while I decided which folio/keyboard I wanted, and I'm still rocking it now, has a pen recess as well..
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B097RZYDZQ
Also have a screen cover, although I admit I got that after I put a tiny scratch on the edge of the screen when I wiped it with a dust cloth, while I was in Saudi, the dust, was sand, which doesn't mix well with glass...
Luckily its so small the screen cover renders it invisible..

[Jonj1611]

I have the Air, I really don't think it does anything much different to any other model. Agree with the pencil, as I said previously mine is rolling around under something somewhere.

Case though is a must, if you saw the state of my case you would know why!

[Saracen999]

The Magic Keyboard, when not in the open position, acts as a case, though. My brother swears by Zugu cases, though for Air, not Pro. Not cheap, but apparently extremely good. However for me, the MKB gives the protection, gives the magnetic stand so the Zugu would seem to be largely superfluous.

That said, iPad newb here so I might reconsider that when I get actual hands on (iPad Pro arrived earlier today, but still sealed in box right now).

Currently, I'm trying to work out how to get AppleID without a mobile phone number. Or not one I use, at least. Think I've sorted that. Until I'm sure, I'm not opening the box in case I end up throwing in the towel and taking the whole damn lot back - still shrink-wrapped.

Not sure if it's this thread or another one, but my choice of Pro over (M1) Air was for a couple of reasons. First, price. The 1TB iPad Pro 5th Gen (i.e. M1, not newer M2) is just under £1000. More than the M1 Air, yes, but not by a huge amount, and given the likely audio and video projects, the 1TB could be very useful.

Had it been at M2 prices (like £1900-ish, not £999 for the M1 Pro) then sure, I'd have gone M1 Air. But the chance to get the 12.9" Pro, WITH the XDR screen, AND get the extra storage for a pretty modest difference over the Air, sold it to me. M2? Nope. But the M1 *at that price* ... oh hell, yeah.

Pen? That's for Procreate, and also for Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher. Long-term PC-based Affinity user here, and the V2 Universal licence I already have, includes the iPad versions of those, and I feel for drawing, and editing, the pen is a huge boon. I sure found the MS one on the Surface Pro very much better for those functions (Photo editing, and especially drawing/illustration). For general-purpose productibity type use though, no probably not. For me, though, the pen is a large part of why I'm getting the iPad in the first place.

[Saracen999]

Oh, and case-wise .... another issue is (IMHO) the users usage profile. Mine will rarely, if ever, go out of the house. This is a lap while in bed or on couch, or on stand in home-office, machine. It's not getting lugged on trains, planes, to or from work etc. It will not receive usage needing much physical protection.

[[GSV]Trig]

AppleID without a phone number, can you sign up using an existing email address via the website still, rather than doing it from an 'i'Device, that used to work but havent done it in a while...

[Saracen999]

AppleID without a phone number, can you sign up using an existing email address via the website still, rather than doing it from an 'i'Device, that used to work but havent done it in a while...

As I understand it, yes you can sign up from the website (appleid.apple.com and click Create an Apple ID) rather than from an Apple device.

BUT .... part of that is to provide a phone number, which will be used to "verify" that ID.

HOWEVER .... when it asks for the verification code, you can select something like "Didn't get verification code" and it will allow the creation of an AppleID to be completed. That is to say, you have to provide some number, but it can be fake, any old number.

BUT .... from what I can tell, that is a TEMPORARY workaround.

How long is "temporary?" I don't know. What might consequences be? Also, don't know.

What I do know is that I spent over an hour on the "chat" to Apple support this morning, where a very helpful rep tried their very best (or at least, appeared to) to find me a way to "verify" the account using something other than a phone number, because (I told them) I do not have a mobile phone. Of course I do BUT, it is STRICTLY only given to very close friends, and family. No way am I giving it to Apple, et.al.

So, if I use the above workaround, my suspicion is that sooner or later, one way or another, it's gonna bite me in the ass. There's naff-all point in spending this kind of money on fancy Apple gear if I then find barriers to using services I want to use, or to buying Apps, etc. What those may be, at this point, I don't know, not least because, as I said before, Apple noob here.

My current thinking is this.

I have an old unused Android smartphone, one a friend gave me several years ago when I first gave in and considered buying a devil's device (smartphone). So, I have dug it out, charged it, powered it up and it still works fine. So, acquire a Vodafone almost-zero charge PAYG SIM, stick it in that, register and get the SIM working and use that for Apple's bleeping AppleID 2FA.

THEN, turn phone off and ONLY power it up when I need Apple 2FA for some purpose.

As long as I keep that SIM active by some brief use 2 or 3 times a year, it'll remain valid and, should I ever need it, available for Apple to send a code to.

And that is my short-term plan. The daft thing is that a 6-digit code *by text message* is a horribly insecure way of sending 2FA. Close, IMHO, to worse than useless *because* it's not that hard to defeat and, if someone does, is going to work against me.

Therefore, longer term .... apparently Apple support the use of 'proper' 2FA, including Yubikeys. I have and use Yubikeys. So, once I get my feet under the iPad and AppleID desk and have some clue what I'm doing, I'll enable Yubikey authentication for my ID.

All told, I'm not happy. I'm NOT giving Apple my actual, real mobile phone number. Hell will freeze over first. And I don't believe, for a nano-second, that Apple (and, yes, Google and MS, etc) suddenly wanting all our phoe numbers is about OUR security. Oh, hell no. About identifying us, nailing our identity down and then tracking everything they can, yes, but our security? Not a snowball's prayer in hell.

Which is why, currently, the iPad and accessories are still sealed in original shrink-wrapping, while I decide whether to bother with all this drivel, or just to send the whole damn kit and caboodle back, for a refund. Right now, it's on a knife-edge and wouldn't take much to push me over that edge, and to do exactly that.

[Jonj1611]

The number is only used for the code they send you. For that purpose I have a PAYG sim in an old school phone like one of these : https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9494174

No GPS, no fancy features, no apps and a battery that lasts forever, just sits in the draw and I turn it on when I am expecting a code.