I wrote very recently about my final crossover from MacBook to iPad. I’ll be honest and tell you that I have stolen a few moments on my former love (the new top-end 13″ MacBook Pro beast with Touch Bar) and, although those moments were fleeting, they were special.

Then I returned to the 11” iPad Pro and all was forgotten. I quickly progressed to the big daddy 12,9” iPad Pro with keyboard and pencil and haven’t so much as opened my MacBook Pro for 14 days. Yup, I’ve been clean for two weeks now, and I see that as long enough to cover any eventualities which might cause a retreat from the iPad back to the beast.

The iPad Pro grunt is key, as I jump between 15+ open high-workload apps every day. From Mail, Safari / Chrome (20+ windows open at all times), Word and Excel, to WhatsApp, Slack, Skype, ForeFlight aviation app, Showmax, and DStv Now (game changer), any lesser tablet would grind to a halt, and I think that is what was holding me off before the jump.

The iPad was always a fun entertainment device for me before. Useful at best for maybe five different apps, but not a serious contender for high-intensity multi-tasking. That’s what I assume they’re referring to when they talk about the A12X Bionic chip it’s packing under the hood. Big Cheeser Bob from Butler’s saw what I was doing with the 11” and completely knocked the wind out of my sails when he heeded my advice, but went for the full 12,9” screen. I’m surprised he didn’t ask for my blessing before superseding me, based on my very advice. But I’m so glad he pushed me over the edge.

Before we move on, take a look at this stunner, with a real-life magazine for a frame of reference:

We already covered Poppy and Cara’s bohemian retreat, but you knew that.

The difference in basic Minority Report-style hands-on functionality, combined with split-screen capabilities played out on the big screen (rather than the 11”), is significant. Obvious series and movie big-screen viewing benefits aside, there’s a lot to be said for it solving the “fill out this PDF and email back” global crisis we are suffering.

Let me explain. Emails with PDFs attached and a request to fill it out and email back are today’s remote road rage. I used to collapse in a heap before spending the rest of the day planning how best to attend to the challenge. Where is the printer, anyway? Sure, you can sign a PDF on your iPhone with pre-saved signatures, but filling out multiple field, plain-PDF forms on a smartphone is next to impossible.

So who would have thought that something that used to bring one close to death, would be something one yearns for. Such is the joy at filling out PDFs on screen, with the Apple Pencil, whilst still in the actual email. You open the PDF directly in an email, fill it out by hand with the Apple Pencil in 12,9” full-screen glory, and click done. It asks if you want to reply or reply-all to the email with the now-completed attachment and, with the tap of your finger, that little exercise is done and dusted.

I get that the aforementioned lifestyle comes at a price, but beyond all I’ve mentioned above, I need to make clear that the time has finally come to justify a less-expensive 64GB tablet. I have always panicked at the thought of running out of space and have protected myself with big space – never less than 512GB or 256GB at a push. This has been necessary in the past when it comes to my “heavy-use”, but cloud-based solutions have come leaps and bounds as I’ve upgraded over the years. That said, I’m surprised and pleased to tell you that I’ve only used up a mere 40GB of this latest iPad Pro 12,9”, which I am now using as my primary machine. and that is not expected to change much for the next couple years.

Absolutely everything I need is in ‘the cloud’. I use Xero for accounting, Dropbox for all files (spreadsheets, docs, important PDFs, scans etc.), Cloudbase for accommodation bookings, Zapier for automation and have Photos set to only store a low res version of all photos (synched with iPhone), with the HD version in the cloud – and it takes a second for the HD version to download when you click it.

With hi-speed WiFi being so prevalent, and fast mobile data packages being so cheap, you can stream any movies or live TV (DStv Now) without consideration. The only time you might need to use up some of that 64GB storage, is to download media before a flight or visit to the Amazon jungle.

The final frontier was Photoshop and that became a distant memory as I found two apps that fulfil the only things I used Photoshop for – enhancing / cropping images, reducing image file sizes, and adding text to images.

It should be noted that Digicape does offer payment plans and, if I were more budget-restrained, I wouldn’t think twice at getting the 64GB 12,9” iPad Pro (with cellphone data functionality to really boss it).

You can also trade in your older Apple goodies at Digicape, and score money off your new purchases.

Get the special Apple keyboard cover and the Apple Pencil and you’ll be invincible.

See you at the beach or Cafe du Cap.