«Why don’t you ever look beneath the surface, young man! I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn’t mean I don’t read and can’t think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open. Deety, this is proof that Zebbie has never been in my bed: the books downstairs are display; the stuff I read is stacked in my bedroom.»
«The Number of the Beast» by Robert A. Heinlein
When it comes to reading (and watching videos) in bed, I recently switched from an old iPad 3 to an iPad Pro (10.5 inch). Using a monitor arm to hold the iPad, I really love lying on my back and reading pages (or watching videos) that float above you in the darkness. Esp. when using a remote to turn the pages, not only because it saves raising your arm above your head, but also because the iPad is likely to vibrate a little if you touch it, which is annoying (yeah, first world problems 😉 ). And the monitor arm worked really well — for an iPad 3.
However, the holder is specifically designed for an iPad 3. As I did not find a working solution to adapt it to an iPad Pro (10.5 inch), I ordered a new monitor arm with a more flexible holder. Unfortunately, the arm was shorter than expected. However, I was mostly interested in the iPad holder itself. While the mechanism to attach the holder itself was not compatible with the existing monitor arm, a connecting joint was:
Or for a close up view:
Yeah. It seems to work very well (even though the holder is made from cheap plastic).
So, yeah, hands-free bedtime reading and watching videos. 🙂
(Actually, the main reason was that I wanted to use Scrivener for writing in bed. Could also work well, however, the iPad 3 was too slow for Scrivener — or heck, even typing with a Bluetooth Keyboard. I’ll see how that turns out.)
Update: Well, that was a great decision — the iPad Pro screen is much, much more clearer and I think much faster than the old iPad 3 screen. Works much better for reading and watching videos. (I did watch «The Big Sleep» before going to sleep yesterday, and no, I didn’t think it would be a movie to fall asleep too, nor would I think — to quote «nicht lustig» [no funny] comics, that «Silence of the Lambs» is a movie about meditating sheep. But the screen works great.)