Boom. It’s all change. 

The iPad Pro was neatly packaged up yesterday and returned to Apple along with the accessories and instead, I now have an iPad Mini 4. 
In the end it was a simple decision to make whether I kept the iPad Pro, and it boiled down to the fact that the iPad Pro was just too large and heavy for my armchair browsing and gaming. The iPad Pro is a marvellous piece of kit but more at home on a table than anywhere else. 

But why the Mini 4 instead of the Air 2. I have an iPad Air which work provide so I am familiar with the benefits of the processor and screen canvas. The Mini 4 appealed to me as even with a Smart Cover and smart case attached, it is very light and slim. 

In fact I am on my sofa typing this on the Mini 4 in portrait mode using the split keyboard layout with two thumbs and my typing speed is just fine. 

Setting up the iPad I decided to restore from an iCloud backup but at first this was not possible. The iPad had to have a software update to iOS 9.1. Then I had to hard reset and start the setup process again. Setting up a new iPad even using an iCloud backup is quite a lengthy and complex process. No wonder they have in store setup counters. After the iCloud backup had done the first part of the restore it reboots once. And that was as far as I got for 4 hours. I hadn’t waited to restore fully but Apple staff did mention it might go into a reboot loop and if this happened I would need to put the iPad into recovery mode and connect to iTunes and reinstall the firmware. So it just works !!

So 4 hours later I figured the apple logo was going to go away. So I did a warm reset and fortunately the iCloud restore continued. All my apps and  games downloaded and then it was time to add my photos and music. I then entered all my user names and passwords across all my apps. This caused another issue. Several apps (about 30%) refused to load and quit straight away. This was only resolved by deleting and reinstalling it.  Since then I have discovered that when playing a game for the first time, it is telling me my cloud (iCloud) backup file is corrupt. The recommended course is to delete it and lose all my game play and start again.

I am not alone with iCloud issues. When I got my iPhone 6S Plus I had terrible issues uploading photos and music to iCloud. I put part of these issues down to my slow internet upload speed. However, I am aware of several people with quite severe iCloud issues. I do wonder if Apple has suffered some huge failure of the iCloud, maybe a hack attack and is desperately on the quiet trying to repair or fix it. All I can definitely state, it most certainly does not work properly for me. I am tempted to reinstall every app over time, just to make sure everything works in the longer term.

Next I was confused why text messages were not arriving on my iPad from my iPhone. A quick google and back into settings, messages, text forwarding and hit the toggle on button. I don’t understand why Apple hide this setting and don’t ask if text forwarding is required during the initial setup. 

I have connected my Bluetooth Plantronics Backbeat Pro headphones to the Mini 4 and they sound divine with the iPad. 

When the first Mini arrived I had one but the difference from the original iPad Mini to the retina Mini 4 is huge. Text is really crisp and typing in portrait mode using the on screen keyboard is so easy, even whilst relaxing on the sofa. 

Anyway, I’m much happier with this size of iPad. I prefer it over the Air size.