A Final Word About Traveling with an iPad mini

You're probably all wondering how the experiment turned out.
What experiment? (Okay, perhaps just a few of you are wondering.) The experiment of traveling for a month in Europe with only an iPad mini and an iPhone.
It worked remarkably well, so much so that this editor is finding himself still using the iPad for tasks that don't require a full-fledged computer, even when that computer is sitting nearby on the desk. Sometimes we have to take an extra moment to figure out just how to do something on the iPad that has become second nature on the computer. It's a fun exercise, and sometimes it requires a little exploration and innovation. As the saying goes about necessity... Admittedly, on occasion a new and unusual task for the iPad is a challenge to find a solution for—owing most of the time to this editor's lack of frequent experience using one of these devices—but it's pretty much always possible.
This is really a testament to Apple's iOS. It is very simple and easy to use, yet highly functional—and it receives more functionality with every annual update. Not always leaps and bounds, but it inches its way toward being a platform that one can get anything done on. For many, it is already that.
We met a retired couple in an airport for whom their iPad is their only device, and it does everything they need. Yes, our needs are at times more complex, but astonishingly not as often as we might have thought.
Until the full Adobe Creative Suite is available for iOS, small devices can't do everything for us, such as lay out a magazine article. Desktop and laptop computers will probably always be required for the kind of sophisticated publications work the monastery engages in. And to process photos properly for blog slideshows while on the road we would likely need an iPad with more memory and a specialized app. There probably is such an app—still to be researched.
[caption id="attachment_17577" align="alignnone" width="951"] The rig: Still at use on the desktop at home, it seems[/caption]