With its new iPad Pro ad, Apple is offering us the thin end of the wedge | Alex Clark

Maybe it’s my age, but the company’s brash new vision of digital minimalism looks like a portal to a sad and lonely worldIt was my birthday last week, and being these days a quiet rural dweller with a sweet pea obsession rather than the inner-city Dorothy Parker wannabe of yesteryear, I welcomed my appropriately gentle gifts: flowers, plants, an original exhibition catalogue from decades ago, some scent promising to recreate beach walks. I counted among my blessings a recent eye test