This is Technology Bytes, episode 64, for May 26th, 2024.

Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.

My name is Joel, enjoy, and here we go.

Well I talked about this a couple weeks ago and indicated that if I could pull it off I would do this one thing, and so my wife let me do it and I now am the owner of the new iPad Pro with the M4 chip.

And so I thought I’d talk about that a little bit, I’m not going to talk about the accessories this week, I’ll probably cover that next week, but I thought I’d just cover a couple things.

What I purchased, why I made the choices that I did, what was the purchase process like, how about the setup, and then some just initial thoughts about the device after using it for about a week.

So first off, what did I purchase?

Well I purchased the 256 gigabyte Wi-Fi only 13 inch iPad Pro.

I was going from an M1 12.9 inch iPad Pro, and so that’s a good upgrade.

It was the same memory, I watched to see how much I used, and had plenty of space, and so that seemed like the right choice for the money, because these are quite expensive.

If I had unlimited funds I probably would have purchased the 1 terabyte, so let me tell you a little bit about why that would be.

So the M4 is a beast of a processor, and when you get the top of the line, well, 1 terabyte or 2 terabytes of storage space, you get the top of the line M4 chip.

It has the most CPU cores, the most GPU cores, the most neural processing.

So basically it’s chip binning they call it, so you make a chip, and not all of them are going to perform at the top, but it doesn’t mean they’re bad.

And so Apple has chosen for the 256 gigabyte and the 500 gigabyte options of the iPad Pro to put a little bit lesser of an M4 in the device.

So initially I thought, well, I’m a nerd, and even if I don’t need the power it’d be nice to know I had the top, and so I really thought about doing the 1 terabyte, but price is an option.

I mean, it’s a consideration.

I don’t have all the funds that I would like to have all the time, and so I chose at this point to go with the 256.

It’s plenty of space, I use iCloud Drive a lot, can offload things, I don’t carry my full iPhoto library on my iPad, but all the pictures that I need would be available fairly quickly.

The Wi-Fi mode is easy enough because I have a phone, I can tether if I need internet access and I’m not in a Wi-Fi location, but 95 plus probably percent of the time, if I’m on my iPad I’m in a Wi-Fi environment, and when I’m not on a Wi-Fi environment, most of the time I’m driving so I can’t use my iPad anyway.

So those are the reasons that I made the choices that I did.

The M4 is still super overpowered for what I do, and I’ll talk about that a little bit in the next few minutes, but while it is the least expensive of the modes, it is a very nice iPad and I’ll talk about those things here now.

So because I’m an Apple nerd, when I decide to purchase something I don’t need to ask a lot of questions.

I’ve listened to many podcasts, I’ve read reviews, I’ve watched reviews, all kinds of things, so when I go to an Apple store I just really hope they have what I’m after.

So the Space Gray is what I wanted, the 256 gigabyte, it’s a very common iPad Pro I think because they keep the low-end ones probably in a greater supply than those that are quite a bit more expensive, so I wasn’t too concerned about that.

And so the purchase process was quite simple.

You walk in, although on the day that I purchased the Apple store I went to, it’s a smaller one here in Arizona, but it was quite busy.

And usually there’s somebody, one worker, who doesn’t help anybody, who just stands in the middle of the store with an iPad and you kind of know that, oh that’s the person I need to go to get my name on a list or whatever, but after standing around for a few moments I decided I didn’t really want to wait, I knew what I wanted, it seemed like they had it, and so I finally found a store employee who was walking between helping and thought maybe just time for a quick question, I said, who do I go to to try to get help?

So they pointed me to the right person and when I walk up to him he’s like, do you know what you want?

Yep, I know what I want, and so I told him, this is what I want, these are the accessories that I want, and he said, okay, someone will be bringing those out shortly.

And so it was fairly simple in that process.

So a funny little side note, as I was standing at the table of iPads, the new iPad Airs, the new iPad Pros, a couple came in and started asking the gentleman that I was working with from the, you know, the employee of the store, you know, what the difference was between the iPad Airs, the iPad Pros, the different sizes, things like that, trying to figure out what they might want to get, and then all of a sudden Eric, who is the employee’s name, you know, got a little busy, either someone brought him my stuff or, anyway, a number of things occur, it was a busy night at the store, so I started answering the couple’s questions about the iPads because that’s what I do, I’m a nerd, it’s fun to do that, and so they asked me these questions, asked me those questions, what do you get, and I said, I’m not always the best example because I always buy towards the top and not necessarily that I need it, but that seems to fit what I want best, and so a few more questions here, a few more questions there, and they said, I hope you get a cut because you just sold an iPad for the store and for Apple, so that was kind of fun, and I said, yeah, I don’t mind helping, I said, I don’t think I’ll go so far as to give you my number so you can call if you have questions once you buy your device, but I’m happy to help while I’m in the store.

So a couple things on the first impression, so, oh, sorry, I jumped ahead, let me talk about the setup first, so, kind of interesting because I turned the device on, it wants to look for another device to update it from, so in this case it makes sense, had my other iPad there, it took a while for it to find my other iPad and for it to finally pop up and say, hey, do you want to set your new iPad up like this one, and for me to say yes, and then I started the process and then it says, hey, you need to do a software update, and I knew that was going to happen from having read things, but it was kind of interesting where it happened, so I did the software update, it didn’t take all that long to do, but then when it finished, it went right back to the hello screen and then it started looking for my old iPad again, so it was like I had started all over and anew, but still, it took longer to find my iPad than I thought it would, even the second time, but once it found it, transition happened, it says, how do you want to do this, you want to go from device to device or just download it over Wi-Fi, and I most often choose download it over Wi-Fi, even though that can take longer, but most often I’m not in that big a hurry when I set it up and the basics are usable while it’s downloading the balance of the apps that I have.

So now let’s talk about initial impressions, well, pulling it out of the box, it looks like an iPad, and nothing super different, it’s the same size, I think, and it’s got even though they call it a 13, I don’t know that it’s any bigger than the current iPad Pro, and then when it comes on, the screen is really, really nice, and you know, I didn’t do a lot of side-by-side comparison, but you can tell that the screen is different, and so that was really nice, and then because I have the same iPad version, the iPad Pro, in a folio case, I held them next to each other, and I read an article the other day that said, you know, the thinness of the new iPad, no one’s going to notice unless they have a pair of calipers, and that is absolutely untrue, you can tell from the very beginning that the device you’re holding is significantly thinner, even if by measurements it isn’t, than the previous iPad Pro, and when I had it in the case, and I showed it to my wife, she’s like, yeah, I can pick out the new one for sure, it’s the skinny one, right, and I said, yep, it’s the skinny one, as far as the weight difference, not 100% sure, but it is a quarter pound, I think, lighter, and that is kind of significant when it only weighs one and a quarter pounds, so going from one and a half to one and a quarter, you know, that’s a sixth, I think, one, two, three, four, five, six, yeah, a sixth lighter, that seems quite a bit, and so I really liked it, I got a, well, I’ll talk about the accessories next week, so we’ll skip that for the moment, so I bought it on a Monday evening, and so used it for the balance of the week at work, and I use it constantly at work, so if I’m at my desk, I’m generally using my iMac and my MacBook Air in universal control mode, this week I set up my iPad, new iPad to use in that mode, just because it’s new, and thought it would be fun to do that, but it works much the same, you know, I was trying to decide as I went through the different ways that I use it, the apps that I use, most of the day is spent in Safari, because that is our company’s app development platform, well, it’s not Safari, it’s the web, and they develop for Chrome, but I use Safari, and it works, so speed, those kind of things, not a bunch different, but I think just in the overall use, it seemed just a little bit snappier, maybe, or maybe it’s because I wanted it to be, but either way, did not disappoint, and was very nice, and then battery life, I had read a couple things about the battery being much better, battery life being better, although Apple touts it with the same exact numbers as the iPad Pro I had, which is 10 hours of use in a certain environment, whatever it is, but I thought the battery was very good, the power of the M4 is nice, although I’m not sure I used it to its full extent at all yet, tried a couple different apps that I thought might use a little more of its power, but because it’s not a normal thing for me, it’s really hard to say, but overall, super happy with my purchase, I was able to give my other iPad Pro to my daughter for her to use at her job, and she’s not sure if she likes it or wants it, but she’s going to try it for a little bit, gave her all the accessories that I ended up repurchasing because new iPad, new accessories, because they don’t always work together with the old one, but very happy with it, the form factor is really nice, the thinness is super nice, no one at work has asked me about it because it looks just like the one I used the day before, but overall, I am impressed and super satisfied with my purchase.

So that is all I have for today’s episode, if you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merigfamily.com, that’s M-E-A-R-I-G family.com, and the bytes is B-Y-T-E-S, trying to be clever there.

I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes Microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.