From iPad Pro to Basic iPad, why and how?

Over the years, I’ve owned many iPads—starting with the iPad 4 Cellular, followed by the iPad Pro 9.7, Pro 11, Mini 5, Mini 6, Air with the M1 chip, as well as the iPad 9 and iPad 10. Last year, drawn by Apple’s claims about enhanced intelligence and performance, I decided to purchase the iPad Air with the M1 processor. However, I noticed no meaningful improvement in performance compared to the iPad 9 or 10. There was nothing I could do on the M1 Air that I couldn’t already do on the cheaper models, and frankly, I regret the purchase. If I had the chance, I would sell the Air and get the iPad Mini 7 instead.

As a blind user, I see little to no advantage in owning an M-series iPad. There are no improved voices, no real use of Apple’s so-called intelligence, and the overall experience remains the same across devices. Currently, I use the iPad 9 for my kids, the iPad 10 for my wife, and I still have the M1 Air, but there’s virtually no noticeable difference among them. The core problem lies in iPadOS itself—it’s limited and holds back the hardware, especially when Apple refuses to meaningfully distinguish it from iOS.

My advice to anyone considering an iPad: don’t buy the M-series unless you truly need that extra processing power for specific tasks. For everyday use like reading and writing on the go, a basic iPad is more than enough—and far more cost-effective.

I had an iPad 2 and 3rd generation back in my sighted days, used to love the platform particularly for gaming, and do recognize that it also had a huge user experience potential in other domains like music production, where applications like Alchemy Synth made it really shine in my opinion, and the iOS version of Garage Band was also quite good but never really liked its skeuomorphic design. The upgrade to a retina display on the third-generation iPad was also introduced at the right time for me, because one of the things I also used my iPad for was reading documentation in iBooks, usually in PDF form, where smaller fonts would push the standard definition screen of the iPad 2 over its limits and ruin the immersive experience by reminding me that in the end it's all just a bunch of square pixels. After the iPad Air, however, I think that Apple began to lose their way with the platform.

These days, as a totally blind user with a 9th generation iPad that I value more for being my late mother's main entertainment consumption device than for the functionality itself, I find the iPad to not be a very useful device. The screen doesn't really matter to me at all, and its size actually makes navigation a lot worse in my opinion as I find it easy to lose referential awareness, plus I find that the screen-reader user experience is significantly degraded by the multi-column design language of the large screen idiom not working well with flick gesture navigation. The on-screen keyboard is also way too big to type with one hand while holding the device with the other, which might be a usability problem for sighted people as well but at least they don't need to use the edges of the device for referential awareness.

Apple's push to make the iPad a walled garden desktop computer has also, in my opinion, resulted in a system that's actually subpar at everything it does, and the design of the entire lineup seems to be profit-driven rather than purpose-driven. In this regard I kinda wish Apple would return to the category simplicity of the early Jobs era, when they had the iProduct category like the iBook and iMac targeting casual users and the PowerProduct category like the PowerBook and PowerMac targeting professional users, and all the products had a clear purpose. Apple has been losing its mojo for quite some time, and unlike most people, I actually think that this loss of focus can be traced all the way back to Jobs himself, who had already lost a lot of his visionary gift when he passed.

My recommendation to blind people thinking of getting an iPad is to get an iPhone instead. You're not losing out on almost anything for choosing an iPhone, you can still pair it with a Mac Magic Keyboard to it if for some reason you wish to experience a desktop iPad, and most third-party applications are iPhone-first or iPhone-only.

I have the ipad mini a17, but recently decided to sell it as for me the iPad just doesn't give me that much different experience from the phone. I pretty much now just Bluetooth my phone to a keyboard and do what I would have done on the iPad on it! Yes sometimes its nice having that secondary device, but I found myself really just not needing it. Probably feel different if the ipad didn't have some of the limitations the phone has for example if it could play multiple sources of audio or allow me to use be my eyes take a picture while listening to music but sadly it's the same limitations as my phone. The only one nice thing the iPad gives you is the effect that you can do split screen on 2 apps but I have a feeling that's probably coming to the iPhone with their improvements I'm hearing about in iOS 19.

I don't understand why Apple is putting a desktop/laptop class M processor in iPads, particularly when they're so locked down. I doubt anyone will ever take full advantage of that processor, and it'll become a paperweight when Apple decides to stop supporting it, just like every other iPad due to a locked bootloader. Maybe iPadOS 19 will improve the situation, but I highly doubt it. The only advantage I can think of for a blind person using an iPad is having more room to type Braille and enter commands on the screen.