My trusty iPad Pro of 5 years has finally been seeing its end of life. I’ve used it for everything, from working and gaming, to music production and a trusty comic book reader. Well, after a half-decade of rough use, the cracks in the screen and unresponsive touch have made me realize that it wasn’t going to be with me for much longer. So (with a nice tax return check), I decided to bite the bullet and preemptively look for a replacement iPad Pro.
And man… with the new Magic Keyboard and accessories, the new iPad would’ve run me close to $1600. While that sat heavy in my heart, especially for something I really didn’t ‘need’, I decided to jump on the Apple Refurbished website to see if I could cut that price down. Lo and behold, looking at the prices, I was seeing that the price of actual MacBooks was about the same, if not cheaper than the iPad I wanted. I came across a 2024 M3 MacBook Air in black that was around $1000 with all the bells and whistles I was trying to replicate in an iPad. So… I just bought the MacBook Air instead.
The ONLY caveat to not having an iPad is that my favorite comic reader app, Panels, is not available for macOS. It doesn’t seem like a big thing, but 90% of my time on the iPad was in that app. YACreader is pretty good, but it doesn’t have the polish of Panels. I’m still exploring ways to run it on a Mac though. But excluding that, this MacBook Air is the perfect little machine for me and my digital lifestyle.
