I am thinking about replacing an old Android tablet with an iPad Mini, primarily for media consumption/light mobile gaming. I am not interested in fully converting to the Apple ecosystem, so what are some tips to getting an Apple device to coexist in a Microsoft and Android household?
I do have an AppleTV 4K that I pretty much only use for running Zwift (indoor cycling app) on my big screen TV if that helps at all.
Unclear what you’re concerned about. Your biggest issue would be that any apps you had acquired for Android would need to be replaced in iOS. This may be a cost issue, as you may need to re-purchase some apps, like games or game unlocks. Otherwise, you need to have an Apple account to use the iPad, but you presumably already have one for the AppleTV, so you could use that. Once put on WiFi the iPad will be able to manage itself for updates, and won’t need to interact with any other tablet or PC in your house. If you are used to running a browser on a desktop that syncs to your Android tablet, then that may be slightly complicated, depending on which browser you use. On iOS all browsers are basically Safari, but with maybe a different UI wrapped around the engine.
I switched from Android tablets to iPad last year, the old tablets from 2016 were simply too slow and security updates had all but dried up.
Using the same browser on the iPad, with the same account (E.g. Firefox with a Mozilla account, Brave with a Brave account or even Chrome with a Google account) means tabs and bookmarks can be synchronised - although I’ve stuck with Safari.
All the apps I used on Android were available on the iPad (and many more), so it was just download, sign-in and go. A couple needed to be purchased, just like they did on the Android platform, but I had taken that into account, when switching. I think I paid less than $20 for all the apps I needed that weren’t free - I could have switched to the built-in apps on the iPad (E.g. Apple Podcasts, instead of PocketCasts, but having the ability to sync between iPad and Samsung Galaxy S20+, at the time, was worth the small price).
In the meantime, I have dumped the Galaxy for an iPhone, but that was more of a privacy move, I’ve been de-Googling my Android devices, as far as I can, for a few years, but it is too much of a compromise, so I switch to an iPhone, which offers much more privacy from tracking, without having to disable so many services.
But, as I said, that was a personal choice, but the iPad/Galaxy combination worked just fine - even to having Signal messages synced between the Galaxy phone and my iPad.
Works fine, Google and MS services are all available for iOS and turn off all the Apple ones you don’t use - although I once had a US lawyer email some important documents by mistake to an Apple email address I never use, so worth checking it now and again.
However with backups and a few apps using iCloud, it doesn’t take much to exceed the free 5GB, so you might end up paying for the 79p/99c tier.
For my wife, I used her Outlook address as her Apple ID, instead of creating a new Apple address.
Yep, I use my Google address, but Apple still seems to create an icloud.com email address for you in the background?