Long story short, I just ordered the new iPad mini with the OLED screen and the nano-texture glass. Which, let's admit, is probably too much money to spend on an iPad.
To make it happen, I'm getting rid of my 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which I've had for, I don't know, five years. I also tried a Supernote E Ink notepad. I'm selling both and getting the mini.
When the iPad was my computer
I was one of those people who, back in the bad old days of the MacBook Pro, tried to convert my entire computing life to the iPad. I had fewer hats to wear at work then. My iPad was mostly a writing device, plus some church administration. Having a 12.9-inch screen was nice. Having a touchscreen was nice. The Magic Keyboard, or whatever Bluetooth keyboard I had hooked up to it, was good for writing.
But it always felt constrained, like too much butter spread over too little bread. Anytime you wanted to go outside the bounds of what the iPad allowed, it got really hard. And this was 2018, 2019, so even multitasking or anything complicated in Safari counted as outside the bounds. You had to go use your spouse's MacBook or something like that, or VNC into a desktop machine.
So the iPad got relegated to content consumption. It was a great place to read RSS and read-it-later services. It was also the default thing to preach from. And I always wanted the big screen for sheet music, lead sheets, and chord charts when I lead worship.
But these days that means I only use my 12.9-inch iPad Pro on Sundays. The rest of the week it sits in my bag or on our family's communal charging spot. I find it so absurdly huge that if I want to read articles or scroll social media, I default to the phone in my pocket. I'm not going to go get the 12.9-inch screen. It's too big.
Stephen Hackett has called this iPad guilt. I've got this beautiful screen on a pretty powerful tablet, and I only use it to look at chord chart PDFs and my notes when I preach.
I did get an iPad mini a generation or two ago. It very quickly became my son's iPad mini, and I was back to the big one.
The new mini goes back to a size I think I'll actually be tempted to pick up. The screen is 8.5 inches, which is appreciably larger than my iPhone, so it'll feel luxurious by comparison. But it's not so absurdly huge that I'll be loath to grab it for browsing.
I'd written all of this before I went back and re-read Hackett's post, which is titled "The New mini Has Absolved Me of iPad Guilt." So apparently I'm making the same point he made, just five years later.
I did try a Supernote. I like analog, pen-and-paper experiences and I like the physical act of taking notes. I think it's less distracting than having a laptop or an iPad with a keyboard in front of your face while you're meeting with people. A flat, notebook-like device, even an E Ink one, is a more focused experience.
But then I'm stuck with a bunch of notes on a device, and they aren't in my Obsidian vault where all my notes live. They're not easily transferable. Yes, there are systems for getting notes off these things and into other places, but they're finicky and brittle and break easily. So if I want to take notes by hand, I'd rather rely on something like Apple Notes or GoodNotes, which can live on my computer, where it's much easier to get the notes out and make them usable.
I think the mini will be a perfect preaching device, better than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. It won't feel nearly as unwieldy to carry around on a stage.
Worship leading is the part I'm nervous about. I mostly lead from chord charts, though sometimes lead sheets, and I only lead worship once every three or four weeks. But I'm not sure that's worth having a whole separate 12.9-inch device just for that.
And maybe the smaller screen will encourage me to get better at memorization, and to be more present on the stage, instead of staring at the music on a 12.9-inch screen the whole time. That could be rationalization. I don't know.
It comes next week. Right now I'm excited to make the switch, and I'll check back in later.
