Issue #77: Going iPad mini only this holiday season 🎅🥂

Hi!

I’m doing a little experiment this holiday season. You see, I’ve left my iPad Pros and their Magic Keyboards at home, and decided to just bring my iPad mini to the cabin. I’m going to call it a cabin, but it’s really a small house, there’s a sauna, Wi-Fi, and everything. This is where we go on holidays, and when we want to get out of Stockholm.

Anyway, I left my professional iPads behind. I did this for two reasons:

1. I want to know how far I can get on just the smallest iPad in Apple’s lineup.
2. This holiday season, I’m going to try not to work so much, with no agency work planned at all.

Granted, you can get everything done on any iPad, as I’ve talked about before. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy, especially if you’re used to that beautiful 12.9” screen from the M1 iPad Pro.

⭐️ Related: The iPad mini review.

So, what do I want to do with my iPad mini the coming couple of weeks? Well, it’s mostly consumption, but I do have some things I want to write. Let’s dive in.

Writing

A lot of my work, and my interests, revolve around writing. When I say that I’ve planned not to work so much, that pertains to client work. Some client work is writing, sure, but most of the words banged out end up in a manuscript for a book. I recently wrapped a manuscript, as you probably know, and having focused on client work since then, I feel it’s time to get started on the next one proper.

I won’t be writing this on the iPad mini onscreen keyboard, obviously. That’s where my little cheat comes in because I’ve got a full setup in the cabin as well, with a BenQ 27” monitor, a Keychron K2 and Magic Trackpad 2. It’s plug and play, and everything’s as it always is, iPad mini or iPad Pro, right?

Well, no, it really isn’t. Blowing up the iPad mini screen on a 27” 4K screen looks downright awful. Since iPadOS only mirrors the screen, scaling it up to whatever size and resolution you’ve got (with the horrible black borders on the side), you’ll get a less than appealing result with the small iPad mini. It’s not as bad with the 12.9” iPad Pro because the iPad’s screen is larger, with better resolution (size being everything in this aspect), and that means it works on an external monitor of this size. But the iPad mini? Nope, can’t stand looking at that mirrored in 27” 4K. If you’d want an iPad mini setup with a monitor, go with something smaller, maybe one of those portable USB-C monitors. Then you could mount it properly as well, for better ergonomics.

But I digress. The monitor is out, which I expected, but had to try.

🖥 Related: Should I get a monitor for my iPad?

My partner likes to remind me that I’ve got too many gadgets and accessories lying around, and she’s absolutely right. In this case, that’s a good thing because I’ve put this Satechi stand to good use. It’s small, looks good, has some height to it, albeit not remotely enough for a good setup. Luckily, it being a sturdy yet compact thing with a soft rubber base, it’s easy to just put it on top of something else, like a stack of books for example. Lo and behold, when adding the Keychron K2 keyboard and the Magic Trackpad 2, I’ve got a really nice writing setup. Some will perhaps think that the iPad mini and its smaller screen, with smaller text sizes, would be an issue, but I don’t mind it, since I write in Markdown using Ulysses. I might not pick it for editing, blowing up Pages with the track changes feature, and notes everywhere, isn’t ideal without screen real-estate, but for banging out words, this is more than fine for me.

🎒 Related: The portable iPad mini writing kit.

✍🏻 Related: I take a lot of notes, and wrote about that previously.

Leisure

Wow, that’s a bland heading, right there. What’s leisure, anyway? On an iPad, it could be just about anything, don’t you think?

For me, I can boil this down to three things. I’m either reading (in some capacity), communicating, or playing something.

Reading can be in one of those read it later apps, previously discussed. I’m back to Pocket again, after a stint in Matter, as I wrote in a post recently, but we’ll see where I end up in the end. That’s for long-form posts and articles that I stumble upon via RSS, social media, or elsewhere. Books are either physical (rarely), or Kindle editions. I used to do my Kindle reading on actual Kindle devices (an older Oasis, and the most recent Paperwhite), but I haven’t touched those since I got the iPad mini. I bet that’ll change when the weather changes, and I want to read in the sun, but for now, it’s the Kindle app on the iPad mini. Finally, there are graphic novels, which usually find their way into the Comixology app. I miss the 12.9” screen here, that’s more akin to the intended format, thus not involving any zooming and scrolling. The iPad mini works for comics, but it’s not ideal, there’s no way about it.

Communicating is everything from doom-scrolling Twitter, to Telegram groups, Signal, and iMessage. I even do the occasional FaceTime video chat, although until recently most of the people I’d do those things with would be on computers or Android devices. With the new sharing links via the browser, that might change, we’ll see. It’s pretty straightforward, anyway.

Playing games on the iPad mini is downright great. I love it for this, it’s the perfect size for almost every game. Touch controls in games are good these days, so I rarely miss having a controller. That’s not to say that I don’t use one, I’ve got an Xbox controller, which is the best choice, if you recall last week’s letter. Sticking the iPad mini on the Satechi stand, and playing a game with the controller, makes for a cute little gaming station.

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I’m looking forward to taking it easy this holiday season. It’s been a hectic couple of months, so I need the rest.

As for this newsletter, you’ll get a short missive on Sunday, wrapping up the week, as usual. The Wednesday letter will return early in 2021, on January 12th. Until then, feel free to hit me up on Twitter.

I hope you’ll be able to enjoy the coming weeks and the end of the year, wherever you are. Until next time, take care.

— Thord D. Hedengren ⚡