another year, another ipad
File this one under āforgive me father, for I have sinnedā.
Just over a week ago, I had some time to kill in Leeds before I was due to get a train to the airport to fly to Dublin. Iād packed light, needing to abide by Ryanairās restrictions on what they constitute a carry-on if you go for their bargain tickets, carrying a few rolled up t-shirts, spare underwear, and my iPad Pro 10.5. Iād been flirting with the idea of downsizing back to a Mini; but I was in two minds due to the price, and the fact that itās pretty apparent that the latest gen Mini (6th gen) hasnāt been updated in over two years. You can probably guess that Iām typing this up on my new iPad Mini 6th Gen.
After going to Little Tokyo for a Teriyaki Bento Box and an Asahi, I sauntered over to the Apple Store.
The Apple Store experience
The Apple Store experience is what you make of it. I spent quite a bit of time playing with a couple of iPad Minis on display in the store. I brought up Safari and went through the process of looking at what I could theoretically get to trade-in my (then current) iPad Pro, and started looking at the finance plans available. After about 30 minutes of watching other customers being served and purchasing various devices, a really friendly salesman called Jeremy approached me and said, after consulting his diary, that they had some time free to look at putting a purchase through; lucky me.
Knowing what I had in mind, I let him know I had an iPad Pro in my bag, I wanted to trade it in, and I wanted to do the one-year finance plan, which currently has a below Bank of England base interest rate. Jeremy carefully inspected my iPad, asking me to unlock it, turn off Find My, and opened up a full screen about:blank page in Safari to check for scratches or screen bleed. After gushing about the condition of my device, he gladly offered me Ā£95 and passed his store iPhone to me to complete the finance application.
Jeremy almost seemed nervous as I completed the application, I imagine he sees quite a few customers saunter in asking for finance only to be rejected at the final hurdle. What Jeremy lacked in confidence he made up for in his ability to wax-lyrical about Apple. While the underwriter gods made their decision we discussed my path-to-migrate to the new device, talking about how we were unsure if I could do a clean restore from a device on the latest beta of iOS 17.3 (it was flawless), we discussed our first Apple devices, and he even gave me an insight into how pre-order sales were going for the Vision Pro, which had just gone live that morning. After seeing my iPhone light up like a Christmas tree with loan information, Jeremy whisked me away to the āsetup barā at the back of the store. Out of instinct, he moved his hands towards the top of the Miniās box to break the plastic sealāonly to be stopped by a second-thought, before he turned around and handed me the box, āIāll let you enjoy thisā. Jeremy knew me. I made sure to name him in the customer experience survey, what a guy.
The colleague at the setup bar knew best to leave me alone, it seemed. Jeremy had warned them that āthis is Tom, heās going to try migrating with a device on iOS 17.3 developer betaā. Jeremy did pop back to check on me, told me it was nice to meet me (and this seemed genuine), and we had a brief chat about how I surely knew that the Mini was due a refresh, but there likely wasnāt going to be anything other than a chip bump (M1, M2?) and the A15 in this was plenty fast. Weāll see if that comes back to bite me.
RIP Kindle?
Iāve had this device just over a week now, and itās already serving as my primary computer. My screentime on the iPhone has dropped dramatically, and Iāve been able to read a book quite comfortably. The iPad Pro felt absolutely massive in comparison to this lilā runner, and I donāt seem to be bought into the usual riff of āwell itās already the same size as your phone so why would you bother?ā.
I promise this blog isnāt just something I remember whenever I dust off a new or old Apple device.