{"id":28965,"date":"2018-12-30T15:55:58","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T07:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=28965"},"modified":"2019-01-03T14:08:14","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T06:08:14","slug":"ipad-pro-11-2018-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/12\/30\/ipad-pro-11-2018-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"iPad Pro 11 (2018) – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

One thing I\u2019ve come to realize about the blog posts I write here is that the first versions of the posts that go up are often littered with errors. Almost all the time too, the errors are a result of edits I make after a sentence: and for some reason, I keep neglecting to check that a sentence continues correctly after making a change in an earlier part of that sentence. Yep – the edits I make in a blog post creates even more errors downstream haha! A case in point are the recent retrospection posts<\/a> on our Taiwan trip. The number of revisions that WordPress reports for the second part of that retrospection currently stands at 17!<\/p>\n

A lot of times, I only discover the errors when I\u2019m reading them on mobile devices, especially on the iPad Mini 4 I\u2019ve had for almost 27 months now. I absolutely love the small form factor of the iPad Mini, but the small 7.9\u201d display makes it really hard to make all but the simplest edits to blog posts. And for the last couple of months too, the iPad Mini has also shown its age. It\u2019s battery life has noticeably gotten worse, it heats up really quickly when running even simple 3D applications, and most seriously, the touch screen seems to have lost a degree of sensitivity – and typically requiring several attempts for the display to register touch input.<\/p>\n

That basically got me to seriously look into replacing my iPad Mini. Apple did not have a ready updated version of its smallest tablet (though I just read of rumors that Apple is indeed planning an updated version and might announce it in the first quarter of 2019), so the only options I had were the Android tablets – especially Xiaomi\u2019s Mi Pad 4<\/a> and also the Huawei M5 8.4<\/a>. Neither of these tablets are locally distributed though, which meant that it\u2019d need to be an imported device from the usual places like Lazada or Qoo10. More significantly, while I dislike iPhones and Apple Watches and would rather not use them especially when there are far better smartphones and smartwatches from the Android eco-system for my typical use cases, their iPads are a different matter. Android tablets pretty much suck, and have practically little resale value too. Apple\u2019s iPads really do reign supreme in tablet space.<\/p>\n

The iPads routinely are expensive, and the new and late 2018 versions are now commanding even more eye-watering prices than ever, even when compared to their already pricey 2017 iterations. Their two 2018\u2019s iPad Pro models though have a couple more tricks up their sleeves that the Apple loyalists would say justify their prices: we finally get even thinner bezels, USB-C charging, and performance hardware that can tear through anything you can toss at these tablets today. The accessories have also been redesigned, with a more functional pen that charges wirelessly, and also an updated slim folio\u00a0keyboard.<\/p>\n

All these can be had easily, just so long as you\u2019re prepared to pay the Apple Tax, and they\u2019re not asking for peanuts for their very new and nice toys. The iPad Pro 11 LTE 64GB model costs SGD1,419! I thought really hard about this one, including creating the usual spreadsheet comparisons to see if picking up a new iPad Pro alongside a new mobile broadband contract would soften the $$ damage in any significant way. One of the Singtel mobile broadband packages probably came closest to it by bundling a good amount of 4G data, and also offering so-so subsidies if you buy the iPad Pro 11 with them. Only thing was that I finally didn\u2019t need that much data – my tablet mobile broadband basically sits at just around 1GB to 1.5GB per month – and Singtel\u2019s earliest delivery window would be around the end of the first week of January.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Unboxing the iPad Pro 11 @ Apple Orchard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The outcome of that several days of price comparisons, including also checking up on used units on Carousell, was this: I decided on the iPad Pro 11 LTE 64GB, on educational discount, without bundling it with an existing mobile broadband plan. The order was made on Sunday morning at around 8:30AM, and Apple – they sure are also lighting quick when it comes to order confirmation – took just 30 minutes to receive, confirm, and ready the order for pick-up at their central Orchard store. And by 10:30AM, the device was in my hands and I was busily configuring it away. And I’d seriously thought that the Huawei Watch GT<\/a> was going to be my last major purchase of 2018!<\/p>\n

And oh yes; this post is written on the iPad Pro 11 with the slim folio keyboard. Continued in a later post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing I\u2019ve come to realize about the blog posts I write here is that the first versions of the posts that go up are often littered with errors. Almost all the time too, the errors are a result of<\/p>\n

Read More iPad Pro 11 (2018) – Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[651],"class_list":["post-28965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-toys-technology","tag-apple","wpcat-16-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blog-ipad-pro11-orchard-store.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}