I’m coming into possession of an iPad Mini 6th generation via a work emolument. I haven’t had anything Apple since a 2008ish iPod and the family Macintosh LC before that. My phones and tablets have been Android and my PCs have been Windows. My wife has been a big Apple supporter, though.
I plan on using the Mini to read ebooks and other pdfs, and to stream stuff when in wifi and Bluetooth range. I’ll keep using my Pixel as a smartphone.
What tricks should I know that an iPad can do? What are some must-have apps (games, productivity, the aforementioned streaming and reading)? Is it possible to emulate anything Android and use my existing Android apps from the Google Store or Amazon App store? Is it possible to use/share any apps from my wife’s Apple library? Would anything in my Steam library be playable on an iPad?
OneDrive is a good way to store PDFs for easy access across the iPad and Windows/Android. The iPad version has a decent built-in PDF display capability.
Your wife can add you to her “family” on her Apple ID and you can use all of her apps for free, and also share any any iCloud features she’s subscribed to such as extra storage or Apple TV.
No crossover on licensing apps between Google/Amazon and iOS, alas.
If you use Xbox Game Pass, the iPad does a decent job streaming stuff from xCloud.
Google Drive is also a good way to share files to your iPad, and you can put Google Photos on there, too. The Apple Books app is a decent PDF reader. I use it a lot to browse game manuals, since I tend to play older games that actually have manuals…
It used to be that there were a lot of mobile games that were only available on Apple and not Android, but I think that gap has closed considerably. The main Apple-specific thing that I use my iPad for is FaceTime, since it is the only Apple device I have.
I find Apple Books to be pretty terrible at manuals, for board games anyway, because they are so image heavy. It doesn’ cope well with scrolling through pages quickly. I use YAC Reader instead.
