I have had my new iPad Air 4 for a few weeks now, and I like it. (Of course I like it). It is not a replacement for my Lenovo notebook computer (Windows), and so I do not have a little keyboard for it. The iPad holds my iTunes music collection, my photo albums, my Scrabble games and my newspapers & magazines from Pressreader. I did get the 2nd-generation Apple Pencil — to see what cool things I can do with it, more than anything else.
I’m still getting used to the harder edges that Apple has reintroduced to their iPhones and iPads of late. There is definitely no air in the Air (it feels heavy), and the edges hurt my fingers a little bit, after I have held it too long while I lie on my back in bed, watching Netflix. (I know. I should watch Netflix on the big TV screen downstairs, and not in bed).
I got the blue finish, which is really a bluish gray, and not really ‘Sky Blue’, as Apple calls it. The cover is Apple’s magnetic cover, the navy blue color. That thin light gray button on the corner has Touch ID integrated into it, and it is quick and reliable. (Psst. I want it for my iPhone, Apple! The face recognition function to unlock my iPhone Xs no longer works in public, now that we wear masks). The 2nd-gen. pencil now latches onto the iPad’s side, magnetically, to charge —a vast improvement from the 1st-gen. one that had to be stuck into the thunderbolt port at the bottom. (The Air 4 has a USB-C port and not a thunderbolt port).I’m not Vincent van Gogh, nor Andy Warhol, but it was fun to add some color to this self-portrait. I took the picture with the iPad’s camera inside the Notes app, and then embellished it with the Pencil.Here’s something else I’m trying with the pencil and its electronic ‘ink’: filling out the giant crossword puzzles from the Irish Daily Mail. It’s a very different experience than printing out the crossword on a large sheet of paper, and using a graphite pencil and eraser. Maybe I will get to like doing it on the iPad, and maybe not.
