Bad Apple or Bad Arkel?

At First Glance, Arkel "Map Cover" Looks Delightfully Obsolete

For quite a while now, I’ve had an Arkel “Large” Handlebar bag. Similarly, for quite a while, I’ve had an Apple iPad. Specifically, it’s an iPad2. A couple of days ago, it occurred to me that the somewhat obsolescent iPad might fit into the otherwise obsolescent map container on the Arkel bag. Well, as you can see from the photos, the two simply will NOT go together. An iPad Mini would fit into the Arkel, but even the newer iPad Air is just too big. I guess that if I want a bike-mounted navigation module, I’d have to stick with an iPad Mini size. Not that I really have felt a burning need for something of that sort. For music, even a “phablet” phone is plenty small enough to fit inside the waterproof container.

My first inclination was to debit Apple as making their iPad just a bit too big. BAD Apple. However, further investigation revealed that the iPad is smaller than a standard piece of letter paper. What’s more, even letter paper is a little too wide to fit into the Arkel map container without folding.

Perhaps the oddball size of the Arkel container is a Canadian thing.* Their metric fetish might mean they avoid standard size letter paper. Perhaps Apple should have made sure their iPad fit inside an Arkel Handlebar Bag transparent holder. Either way, I’m now in discussions with my favorite daughters about an iPad2 versus iPad Mini swap that’d be more handy for carriage to the nearby library than for any GPS navigation use. Still a bike with an integrated GPS seems oddly attractive…

Nope, a Full-Size iPad is Won't Fit in "Landscape" Orientation - Though it is Close Enough that Somebody Could Have Adapted

Nope, A Full-Size iPad Won't Fit in "Portrait" Orientation

*Yesterday, at our Jaguar Club concours d'elegance, I said to one of our Canadian entrants, "Can you tell me something about Canada?" When he answered affirmatively, soon he assured me that Canadians used the same size letter paper as we Southern Imperialists and not some frenchified size or even a UK size. It is good to hear the the Canadians DO follow sanity beyond how they spell "tire" (NOT tyre). Informed that Arkel is based in Quebec, he allowed that all bets might be off since THOSE people could be assumed to do all manner of odd things.