Tools, revisited.

It’s about tools, revisited. Poking through the archives, I stumbled upon an old post, about why I didn’t have an iPad¹.

Looking back, though ten years later?

I have an iPad. I have several. Honestly, the two most used are older, as in “not this year’s model.” Or even last year’s model, either.

I bought a new, first-gen 12-inch iPad², as they first arrived. To me, though, it was almost too big, and it wasn’t comfortable as a device I could curl up on the couch, and read a book. I did, as it does weigh less than most Neal³ Stephenson⁴ books⁵, but that’s not the point.

I sort of retired it when the iPad Pro went 10.5⁶, then 11. Got one of each. That older iPad Air, or Pro, or, I’m not even sure what its designation is, but one of them? I just hold onto as an accessory and back-up device. I use it for zoom calls⁷. The primary one I currently carry and use is an older iPad Pro? 11 inch? About the same form factor as that 10.5, and all of them are about the same form factor, with minor differences.

However, a few years ago, I started working in the kitchen during cold winter mornings, brewing coffee and writing in the early light. Kitchen felt warmer. Closer to coffee. Sitting down⁸. After toying with several arrangements, I settled on that old 12-inch iPad. Then, at the end of 2018, that was the last show I worked at when I used a laptop, moving, to just an iPad.

The working in kitchen led me to find the pure function of the 12-inch, which, older that it might be? Works just fine. Doesn’t have as much speed, and it lacks anything but Wifi connectivity, but then, hotels, and mostly, these days, the rock shop⁹? Works just fine. Works well-enough.

I had a small moment of technical frustration, one Sunday morning in San Antonio, as the older iPad’s WiFi wasn’t accessing the hotel ballroom signal. For a brief moment, panic flared across my face, but the quick answer was to use the phone as temporary hotspot, thereby granting access to the data securely stored elsewhere. Eventually, I plugged the correct password into the iPad’s connection, and we’re all good again.

The data, the birth data for the calculation of the charts themselves is stored “in the cloud,”¹⁰ and other than that, yeah, not much is kept onboard the iPads themselves. Just apps.

Tools, revisited.

Stopping to assess where I’m at, where I might be going, and what tools I use to get there?

I still recall, to this day, a line about how stopping to take stock is how we move forward. 2020 in short form?

• Pandemic.¹¹
• Mercury Retrograde.
• Venus Retrograde.
• Mercury Retrograde.
• Mars Retrograde.

Time to take stock. The newer iPad would be nice, but would it be able to serve as a both a workhorse for show-time, and companion for more pensive moments, which, up until now, has been the auspices of the smaller form-factor, the 11-inch?

Every time I look at the bigger iPads, I try to imagine curled up in bed, reading a book late into the night.

The real question, is just how much horsepower does a single person require?

1. Seen here. ↩
2. As noted, the then-new model. ↩
3. Reamde and… ↩
4. Like Snow Crash, and… ↩
5. Another fave, Seveneves. ↩
6. As noted, here, iPad 10.5. ↩
7. cf., astrofish.net/shop. ↩
8. Earlier notes about using a standing desk. ↩
9. See astrofish.net/travel for details and appearances, &c. ↩
10. There is no cloud, it’s just computer someplace else. ↩
11. Pandemic and panic. ↩