At Home with Tech

If you find yourself forced into an iPad upgrade, you’d better protect your investment with a cozy case. Especially if tiny hands will be using it…

I’m still trying to come to terms with Gray Thursday destroying Thanksgiving in America. I didn’t really understand what had happened until I tried buying a new iPad Air 2 early on Black Friday.

Target, which I discovered never closed after it opened up on Thanksgiving, had been sold out of the iPad I wanted for twelve hours. I wasn’t even close!
(What ever happened to giving Americans time to enjoy their Thanksgiving dinner?!)

I felt lucky with the runner-up deal that was still available at Best Buy. I came home a nearly defeated shopping warrior.
(It wasn’t pretty.)
But then again, I had a new iPad in hand….

Time to Retire iPad 1
If you’re wondering why all the effort… it’s because I’m still using an iPad 1. Yes, the world’s original tablet still has a heartbeat at the Lester house,
(believe it or not) but it was really time for a refresh.

Mostly, I needed to buy the new iPad because even though the old one is still functioning, nothing much living in it can survive anymore. Many of the apps we use have upgraded themselves, requiring newer iOS software, which the iPad wasn’t built to digest.

Things really got bad when our favorite Disney Junior app upgraded itself, and Disney spontaneously killed off the old one residing in our iPad.

My own “Junior” had a really hard time understanding why the app didn’t work anymore.
(I simply said it was broken, but that didn’t stop him from tapping on the icon every so often and sighing wistfully…)

So I took my licking as a tardy Black Friday shopper, but I’ve successfully upgraded the Lester household back into current iPad technology.

Protect Your iPad or Else
An iPad is a significant investment, one that you’ve got to protect. My four-year-old son has been really careful using our first iPad, but you’ve got to plan for a fall or two…

I picked up AppleCare separately, even though Best Buy pushed me hard to go with the Geek Squad protection plan.

Now, it was time to give the new iPad some additional cover…

There’s an entire cottage industry of iPad cases out there to choose between.
Of course, you can go with the premium Apple offering…
Apple’s Smart Case sells for a hefty $79.

Not that I wouldn’t drop another eighty bucks to protect my overall investment. However, when I checked out a Smart Case at an Apple Store, I wasn’t entirely impressed. It was fine… but since I wasn’t convinced it was that much better than the competition, I figured I should look around a bit more.

Believe me, the resulting exercise was yet another rabbit hole into too much choice. The options range from $10 to over $100 for covers that come with their own keyboards.

But I felt I only needed something relatively basic…
I found lots of good reviews for the iPad cases that Devicewear makes.

I checked out the ‘Ridge’ that goes for $45.
(Amazon has it for $27.)

It’s got a nice ‘vegan’ leather exterior and supports the automatic sleep/wake iPad function when you open and close the cover.
I decided this case from Devicewear was a no brainer…

Click.

(Any other suggestions out there?)

iPad Air 2 Ready for the Holidays
As I write this with the sun rising on a cold Sunday morning, my boy is still valiantly sticking with the old iPad as it struggles to stream Sesame Street off of its website.

As for me, I’m happily streaming a little holiday spirit knowing that soon, he will be at home with new ‘protected’ tech.