iPad Air vs. Mac

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I remember attending the 2010 keynote where Steve Jobs introduced the iPad.

Sitting on a couch, Jobs insisted that the iPad wasn’t just as good as a desktop computer for some tasks, it was better.

This pitch resonated strongly with me, and it’s true that in some situations — maybe even many situations — the iPad is better than a regular computer. Take a lot of media consumption, for example, from watching Netflix to reading websites. And some apps, like iMovie, are way better on mobile.

But for working on?

I’ve tried many, many times to use an iPad as a primary work machine.

It offers a ton of advantages, from great battery life to easy portability.

But oftentimes, it comes up short. Sometimes it’s due to things that aren’t really the fault of the iPad — like some online tools’ incompatibility with mobile browsers.

But other times, it’s a shortcoming of the iPad itself, like not being able to properly run microphone recordings in the background when recording a podcast.

Like any good Cult member, I blame myself. I haven’t properly trained myself to route around the iPad’s shortcomings, or I’ve pathetically failed to find the particular app that would enable my workflow.

And I’ve mostly given up — which is why I bought a cheap M2 MacBook Air last Black Friday and use my (much pricier) 13-inch iPad Pro for little more than doomscrolling.

Reviewing the new M3 iPad Air this week, my colleague D. Griffin Jones encountered this familiar dilemma. Since he’s a longtime Mac nerd, the iPad Air is actually his first iPad. And, like most of us, he wondered if he could use the tablet as his main machine.

A lot of things have changed since I tried to use an iPad for work — including many work-oriented tweaks like Stage Manager, great new Apple Pencils, and much-improved handwriting recognition.

Griffin gave working on an iPad a great college try — you can tell from reading his review — but can the new iPad Air finally do it all? 

Also in today’s newsletter:

• While Griffin was reviewing the iPad Air, he was also reviewing the new M4 MacBook Air — and he loved the M4’s power inside a beautifully designed package.

• This is an interesting report. Back in 2013, Apple had to reconfigure a lot of its design and manufacturing to enable the iPhone 6 Plus, its first foray into big-screen phones. Sounds like something similar is happening with the upcoming iPhone 17 Air.

• I like a lot of JBL’s midpriced audio gear, which is now getting new AI smarts to make your music sound better. I’m skeptical about how big an impact this will have on tinny-sounding Bluetooth speakers — it’ll be interesting to see the first reviews.

• The best price/performance deal in all of computing is even better with this $70 off deal on the M4 Mac mini.

• I saw this double-decker charging mat on the socials this morning while doomscrolling and thought it was a joke. No, apparently, it’s not.

• “Don’t miss it,” says Cult of Mac writer David Snow in his review of Apple TV+’s new crime drama, Dope Thief.

• Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

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Results from last Friday’s poll: Are you clutching your pearls about Apple's AI rollout?

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