Ten months ago, I bought my first iPad. It’s the Air 4 model with 256GB of memory. Below are the things I mainly use it for.
Music
I am a musician (at home) and I wanted to have something when I travel or just to goof around. If you know about the band Dream Theater, you know that Jordan Rudess uses GeoShred app which he developed (well he hired the developers..).
I bought GeoShred as soon as I got my iPad and couldn’t be more satisfied. The only thing is that I don’t use it that much.
I also have Garage Band, BeatMaker 3, Darkglass Suite, and Gap Click loaded. BeatMaker I use the least, Darkglass Suite I use for a bass pedal from Darkglass (ADAM), and Gap Click is a great metronome app.
I have Focusrite sound card, and I can connect it to iPad and record my bass as well. And if I want, I have the same option with Darkglass ADAM, since it can work like sound card, plus it has a compressor, fuzz, cab sim, aux in, headphones out, and works with USB C on both ends, so I can use charging cable for that easily.
Seems I’m kinda covered to travel without instrument and just iPad and I can play some music and record that if necessary.
Fitness
You can’t run with iPad to track your data, but you can use apps like Zwift and Down Dog which are really great for cycling and yoga.
Reading
Books, blogs, using browser, I casually read a lot of things on iPad instead of computer.
Consuming media
When I travel I download movies and series on iPad, so I have something to watch. Also courses for bass and similar are fun to watch on iPad.
Drawing/sketching/writing down on digital paper
I bought Apple Pen to use with an app like GoodNotes to jot down things, and recently I started writing down musical notation as well, so it serves that purpose well.
Travel
Everything I wrote before serves me well when traveling. iPad is smaller than laptop, I don’t need to write much anyway, so it’s easy to do everything on iPad. The battery is also amazing, I can get around 10 hours from it easily.
Only thing I want for travel is better connection to TVs (using TVs full screen) in order to play media on it from iPad. That should be “fixed” soon, although I’m not sure if it will work on my iPad Air 4.
External monitor
For work, I use Macbook Pro, and when there aren’t any available monitors at the office I’m covered with iPad for some smaller apps at least like Slack, or put a meeting app on that screen while I can continue to work on the Macbook.
Note that I don’t consume social media on iPad, which I don’t have much of anyway. I don’t care that there isn’t a proper app for Instagram. I kinda like that iPad is distraction free for me. It doesn’t have too many things, I disabled all notifications and everything.
I wish to use it for software development
More specifically, software development while traveling, but Apple doesn’t want to have OS like macOS on iPad. I know there are a couple of ways to use it for development, but I don’t like them that much. I’ll try IntelliJ Projector at some point and see how it goes. Ofc I should buy a proper keyboard for it, but that won’t come from Apple because it’s not worth that much, especially because I won’t use it that much anyway.
I’m not tied to Apple ecosystem, I own a Samsung A52s, Samsung Galaxy Buds and Samsung Watch, and so far I don’t see a compelling reason to switch to Apple on that front. The camera, memory and battery on this phone are amazing. Galaxy Buds have great sound for what they’re worth, and I bought them 3 years ago. Watch is a bit overkill, I don’t use it for anything fitness related, more like a casual watch and a stopwatch. I could probably downgrade that watch to something analog maybe or digital, but I do need that stopwatch.
Anyway, again, I don’t see a reason to pay the premium for Apple phones. I’m not the one that shows off with “I have an iPhone”, even though I got nothing against them, it’s just not that worth it to me. And they still don’t come with Usb C. Once they switch to Usb C, I guess the most compelling reason to buy iPhone for me as a developer would be to make apps for Apple ecosystem, so I have one language for all platforms (phone, tablet and computer).
I’m quite happy with Mac Mini 2018 with 32GB of ram for home use, Macbook Pro 2020 for work (even though battery isn’t that great) and iPad for casual use and travel.
I didn’t get Android tablet only because apps from iPad aren’t available there, like GeoShred, and I’m not sure how good Android tablets are for connecting to external peripherals like sound cards.
For everything else like social media, I use my phone. I find the balance great, since I’m not using my phone that much for most of the content, and I’m distraction free on iPad, it has a screen that’s easy to read from and it’s great for travel, so I have the perfect combo.
Only thing I’m missing is some good dongle for it for headphones, Usb C for charging, another Usb C or Usb A for connecting peripherals and HDMI for connecting to monitor/TV.
Those are my use cases for using iPad. Got anything else I should try to use it for? Let me know 🙂