Today I got a new iPad Mini to replace the old one, which had suffered a few drops and had a lot of tape holding it together. The new one arrived a few minutes ago; the poor bastard delivering it had to submit a couple of photos via an app on his phone… which couldn’t get any reception on my front porch. He tried running out on the sidewalk and waving the phone at the sky, to no avail. Ultimately I had him hand me the phone so I could type in the password for my own internet. Which I had to do twice because I botched it the first time.
Then I got to experience the current iThing data transfer process. It’s pretty crazy now; the new device setup routine starts pinging all the other iThings nearby via Bluetooth, and then it starts displaying this crazy moving dot pattern that you have to scan with the camera of the device you’re transferring from. The new one downloaded an operating system update, and went from “preparing for transfer” with a little pinwheel for a few minutes, to a new screen showing up on both Minis with a half-filled progress bar promising to be done in about nine minutes.
It’s funny that you mention getting a new iPad Mini — I sold my Mini 4 this week, ending 12 years of iPad ownership. (OG iPad 2010-12, 3rd-gen w/Retina 2012-17, Mini 4 2017-22.) The brutal reality is that I can do 99% of the stuff I did on the Mini 4 with my refurbished 2020 iPhone SE which is pocketable and has 4G, and the extra cash will be handy. And yes, I did the iThing data transfer process when I got the iPhone, it’s pretty good apart from Apple’s elastic concept of ‘time remaining’.