iPad 9.7‑inch
apple.com
apple.com
Which phone is "the android"? My mom doesn't think she has an android phone, she thinks she has an LG and that Android is a different thing. People buy a low end Android phone and hate the entire ecosystem because the phone performs like crap. I have a friend who thinks the Galaxy S7 would be a crappy upgrade because they already have a "Galaxy Core Prime".
When there was just the iPhone, it was really easy. It was expensive compared to other options, but you knew it was the best iPhone, and the one with a higher number was better than one with a lower number. Yet an LG G5 is better than a Samsung Galaxy S6, they are somehow both "Android", and Marshmallow is better than Jelly Bean.
Now the iPhone isn't that bad, but it's not simple anymore. iPhone 7, iPhone 7Plus, iPhone 7S, iPhone 7S Plus, iPhone SE. Which is better?
Looking back, there were always non-descriptive names, and inconsistencies.
I'd argue that not knowing what 'Android' is actually demonstrates the technology has reached its goal of being universal. It's implicit instead of explicit. People buy it without needing to know what it is. Why would most consumers care about the name of an operating system? It's unimportant. It's not like I remember the exact model of my TV or car, the important thing is that I can watch one and drive the other.
Bigger numbers are still better. "Plus" means the big screen. S is off year version, incremental upgrade on the previous number. Agreed SE is the odd one out, but don't think it's too hard for consumers to figure out "its the cheap one".
Because new iPhone models are introduced only once a year to great global fanfare, I bet a lot of consumers actually know the meaning of the version conventions very well.
Agreed on iPad and Mac versions, though, those are a mess.
It's always a version number (ex., 7), the following version they add an 'S' (ex., 7S), then the following version they will increase the version number (ex., 8). "Plus" means bigger, and you can regognize it because it's bigger, "SE" means lower-end, you can recognize it because it costs a lot less.
I currently own a Huawei Y6II, which I read is a clone of the P9. No idea what it means, what the following version will be called, or what the previous version was called.
Now, don't Apple Executives know this already? I guess they do, but what Tim Cook has done so far has been stabilizing the company and increasing the profit (by building various versions of the same product and targeting a broader range of people).
This came at a cost though: making the organization more and more bureaucratic leads to more efficiency, but less creativity and innovation. I think Apple's strategy has changed but in a few years, they're going to need a fresh air in the company or they'll get Nokia-ed.
The pixel is advertised everywhere as a Google phone. Who makes it doesn't really come up in their product communication much.
And the 'flagship' label is literally in the title of the Pixel products on Amazon. And on the website it's called "Pixel, phone by Google".
> People buy a low end Android phone and hate the entire ecosystem because the phone performs like crap.
This seems like an antiquated view of Android. I don't think people see Apple as having a monopoly on luxury/quality devices anymore. And considering the heavy OS modifications made by different companies and the entire UX experience of dealing with a company (customer service, website, accessories, etc), I don't really see why it matters if your mom thinks she has a "Samsung" or an "LG". There's more to Android phones than the base OS.
> Every purchase contributes to the Global Fund to support HIV/AIDS programs and help deliver an AIDS-free generation.
I see, when looking at http://www.apple.com/iphone/ on my phone that the product line is arrayed at the top, with the 7 labeled as "New".
As much as I like simplicity, if you look around there are tons of cases like this around us, and that's not because these companies are idiots who don't understand simplicity but it's because their products have reached saturation point where making it simple won't get more users. They need to expand horizontally by building variations that appeal to a wider audience.
Sure it's kind of annoying, and you and I may not understand the benefits of the 9.7 inch iPad, but I am sure there are many people who understand exactly the benefits of 9.7 inch iPad vs iPad pro and will rush to buy them.
They have money now, but do they have the resources? Apple's software quality has arguably taken a nosedive, and they've started missing deadlines even for hardware.
Assuming a kind time traveler gave 1997 Apple a few billion US$; could Apple simply have bought its way out of its problems?
There was the old Apple II and new Apple II. Seeing as they went past 6 revisions of Apple II there was considerable churn.
There was never much of a 1st party peripheral market. Like we see with iWatch. That nearly exclusively 3rd party.
But there are a couple structural issues with this model that have made it hard to sustain.
The first is that it can represent money left on the table.... a sort of quantization error induced by the product line. Maybe there are worthwhile markets that don't spring for the professional line, but still want something more than the basic consumer line. This creates something of a temptation to try to address those markets.
The second structural issue is that the four quadrant model is based on saying no to ideas that might come from good people (or at least people entrenched in the corporate bureaucracy). Maybe doing this a few times is easy, but the more creative your organization, the more often you'll have ideas that will be difficult to fit into whatever product line strategy you've put together.
- iPad Pro - iPad - iPad Mini
This seems ideal.
If you are a "Pro" you surely don't mind spending a few minutes looking up the differences of the "Pro" model to see if it's something you need.
If you are not a "Pro" your choices are now, Do I want the regular one or the mini one?
Previously non-pros were faced with the conceptually bizarre choice of *Do I want the air one or the mini one?" which sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person.
Like... "Air" and "Mini"... what a weird choice. They both sound like super-portable models. OK. But... super-portable compared to... what, exactly? There were no "regular" models, only "variants." What were they varying from?
So it may be that different times call for different strategies. Perhaps the lesson is that you should focus intensely in the beginning and ship varieties once the product has reached a certain level of maturity?
I'm not in a place to say, but sometimes I wonder if we could go back in time and replay "Apple with Steve Jobs" while believing Steve Jobs to dead how often we would say, "Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his grave."
The three iPad lines are all fundamentally the same device with differing screen sizes.
They had about 4 different Macbook variants. Plus some older Macbook Pro models with HDD. Others with non-retina screens.
A few years ago, it was pretty simple: you bought the Macbook Pro for serious work, Macbook Air for portability.
Now it's just confusing. Like Dell or Lenovo.
Options is a of mix connectivity & size:
iPad Pro (12.9") - 3 Colours x 5 Options (15)
iPad Pro (9.7") - 4 Colours x 6 Options (24)
iPad - 3 Colours x 4 Options (12)
iPad 4 Mini - 3 Colours x 2 Options (6)
That's 57 variants, clearly designed by a bean counter judging by the deliberate storage choices (i.e. no 64gb options across the whole line). 32GB seems totally pointless to me unless you are only using it for email & web browsing. Why is the mini 4 - a device that wouldn't appear to appeal to "power users" only available in 128gb? Why would anyone purchase a 12.9" iPad Pro with 32GB of storage?
The iPad line is all over the place - I had re-write the above as I got confused by what base options are available. What's even more baffling is that they all come with regular USB cables which means I can't plug any of them into my new Macbook Pro.
Apple was still selling the MacBook back then so it was never just two models. And they were still selling the non Retina MBP for a while as well.
Same choices too - Macbook/Macbook Air/Macbook Pro
Hardest part for most buyers was determining what the spec differences would mean for them and if the price difference was worth it. Same issue now
Even when he was still alive they had different-sized iPods, iPads, and more.
Computers have always come in different sizes: 13", 15", and 17". What is the difference between a 13" and a 15"? Does it make it harder to buy? Perhaps, but you wouldn't kill the 15" just so people don't get confused.
The difference between the 9.7" iPad and the 9.7" iPad pro is not intuitive, at least to me. If it is not obvious how different products serve different needs, then you aren't actually expanding the market your product appeals to, you are just confusing customers.
Usually it's not that easy, and tech releases are shockingly hard to understand, and in my opinion most of the ambiguities are pure laziness. Since the topic at hand is Apple, let's pick out some examples from their small'ish product line:
* There's no way to know, without doing extra research, that the iPhone 'S' suffix means "better." 'S' could easily mean "small." The 'C' suffix is even more ambiguous.
* The iPhone SE is probably the most ambiguously named product they've released in years. Now it's even worse, because once you know that the SE stands for "Special Edition," releases like the iPhone 7 (RED) Special Edition make it even harder to understand where the SE fits in.
* Apple still sells MacBook Airs, except they made the MacBook do what the Air used to do and they've all but discontinued Airs.
* They're advertising the iPad 9.7", which is just the newest version of the iPad, except they already have an iPad Pro 9.7", so if you search for 9.7" on Google or look around Apple's store you mostly see mostly results for the Pro 9.7". In fact on the buy iPad 9.7" page doesn't even say 9.7" anywhere except when referencing the Pro.
Of course Apple isn't the only tech company that does this; they just used to be one of the better ones, and now they're slowly giving up that advantage. The more technical a company thinks its userbase is, the lazier it gets with naming. Computer components, for example, have names that are so useless you basically have to infer their positioning by their MSRP. (Spec sheets are only marginally helpful; your only real option is to search for benchmarks.) This is not a good thing; everyone benefits from clearer naming conventions. Many companies just don't think it's important, for some reason.
Dunno if there are other fogeys like me who remember the days going back to the Imagewriters, Stylewriters and Laserwriters -- those were fantastic printers in the pre-USB era where third party printer pickings were quite slim for Apple users.
In the late 80s, you could even get a third party scanner in the shape ink cartridge called a Thunderscan for the Imagewriter.
There are now 3 iPads: the iPad, the iPad Pro, and the iPad Mini. The differences are as clear as they ever have been for Mac lines.
I love Apple. Read my other posts defending the iPad as a productivity device on this discussion, and defending the cleanness if the iPhone lineup, but the current iPad lineup is all over the place.
Their market cap is over $700 Billion.
They were never going to continue their growth by offering one phone, one tablet, and one laptop, regardless of what the purists think.
Remember when Google was nothing but search?
Google has nothing to do with Apple. Why even talk about Google as a relevant example of anything regarding consumer hardware production? they aren't.
I've got about 6 tablets and never use any of them anyway. I hate the user experience. I see no case where I'd rather have a tablet than my phone or my 6 year old Macbook Air.
There are now just four options: big Pro, little Pro, iPad, and mini.
With the larger iPads do some people get smaller space, even though larger display probably means more resources/larger resolution media will need to be stored on the device.
Spitballing but it's quite a few options.
I think the limited product line is an artifact of the time and place Jobs and Apple were in the early 2000s. They had endless Mac models and a underwhelming value proposition. Cutting that down to a single colorful little Mac and a single pro product and their laptop equivalents made sense. Introducing the mobile revolution one simple product at a time also made sense.
Now they need to continue to make sales, so adding more products to address more niche markets is the only way forward. They've probably exhausted their "one size fits all" market at this point. Apple can't accept no or negative growth, so more niche products it is.
Spent a few minutes looking at the site to try to find out, then lost interest.
The rationale being that Apple is not in a position to do the R in R&D and instead will focus just on the D to survive.
In turn he starts slashing the D that won't yield results, while focusing on the ones that will.
And being that he was now single handled in charge the most he can focus on is being in the center of four quadrants, hence putting everything on the table into just four buckets:
1. Consumer 2. Professionals 3. Hardware 4. Software
1 being the thing that Steve gets. 2 being the thing that Steve wants. 3 being what Apple does best and 4 being what adds value.
Now everything Apple does runs off this premise.
The premise worked well enough to pump out the iBook, iMac, iPhone, to then the MacBook and MacBook Pro, to the Mac Pro, Mac mini.
Then he died.
In his place he passed the legacy to an operator. Because the operator's goal is two folds: keep improving things and keep making things efficient.
Tim Cook delivered on the latter and he's working on the former.
The clones being the ones that can take the baton and run with it.
It'll be here soon enough. The next generation is starting to take shape. And there will be leaders that take the stage to lead each quadrant.
PS: Square aped this strategy, that's why Jack Corsey was a favorite of Steve's. Square sells you the hardware at cost and gives the software away free, they scale by latching on to the hack of reselling you points on a merchant account.
By my count, Jobs shepherded the following hit products (I'm giving the Apple ][ to Woz):
- Macintosh (1984)
- iPod (2001)
- iPhone (2007)
- iPad (2010)
I think you're exaggerating how often Apple rolled out new product lines under Jobs. You could even argue that the iPod and iPhone overshadow the other two substantially in terms of cultural impact.
> Their only option now is to start creating variations of existing product lines to keep them "fresh".
Isn't this kind of what you'd expect out of a business? Refreshing and supporting their existing product lines while occasionally trying to establish new ones? The iPhone is looking more and more like a once-in-a-lifetime home run product (Ben Thompson has done a lot of good writing on this), the likes of which Apple (or anybody else, for that matter) may never be able to top. This isn't to say that Apple doesn't miss having a visionary like Jobs at the helm or that their product lineup doesn't have glaring flaws. I just think the massive success of the iPhone set expectations way too high.
Pro should be: - wifi+LTE - more storage - pen and/or cover keyboard included - faster CPU - multiscreen capability (connect to mouse and monitor with "desktop" interface) for truly replacing my desktop
Regular iPad should be wifi only, and not come with a pen.
Honestly, I wish they'd instead make all the iPads "pencil" compatible.
He also said that a mistake they made with Macs was having a price umbrella that let others come in cheaper.
iPad is cheaper and doesn't support the pencil - good enough for most people - and the iPad Pro is more expensive and supports the stylus and has a faster processor.
Most people understand more expensive = better.
On a side note. I hate Apple stopped selling the 3rd Gen AppleTV for $59. It was "good enough" for people who mostly wanted AirPlay functionality and to stream videos using the included app. Now they have nothing that competes in the ChromeCast/Roku stick price range.
I think you mean, "It makes it harder to decide to buy." A hugely important distinction and the point of having few models. (limiting decision points/places to 2nd think do I really need a new ipad)
Back then it was ok to leave bunch of customers to others, as Apple still managed to find quite nice growth by for example entering to new device categories. For couple of years this has not been the case. Apple has been forced to find the growth by selling more of same to the customer base that is not growing so rapidly.
I think the large number of models is simply a result of their attempt to maximize the money pouring with the current set of inventions they have at hand.
It's pretty confusing if you don't catch the causally mentioned "Pro" bit at the very end, after they've gone through a segment on the "feature" that the "iPad" can do. I just hope it'll net them a lot of returned iPads from rightfully frustrated customers.
Unless you're talking about apps specifically requiring Pencil?
* Apple Pencil
* Faster CPU, more memory, more display
* UHD color gamut display (and automatic white balance adjustment)
* Better cameras
I think there are other differences, but those are the big ticket ones.
The ability to add the keyboard and the pencil illustrates the distinction Apple is trying to make between the Pro and the vanilla 9.7 -- creation vs. consumption.
After all these years, they are still persistently trying to position the iPad as a creation tool. Maybe it will work.
To your second point, I completely agree. Regardless of the need to focus, causing confusion to consumers doesn't seem the right thing to do.
Maybe, but on the other hand there is a lot of similarity between Apple v. Microsoft/PC-cloned on desktop and Apple v. Google/Android-devices on mobile.
And one similarity would seem to be that Apple is in no position to win on breadth and choice, but they may be in a position to win (at least, create a solid, profitable I market where they have little effective competition) by identifying key niches, and narrowly tailoring offerings to them.
In fact, I'd argue that their path in tablets and smartphones has been pretty similar as in PCs; they developed the market ahead of everyone else with fisrly narrow offerings, a competing platform emerged where the core software was separate from hardware manufacturers offering more choice, and drew them into trying to compete on the kind of choice offered by the competition.
A member of my family was hustled into buying an iPad "Pro" from a sales rep who convinced them it can do everything and more, yet they can't perform simple file management and related email tasks on it, so they still use a Windows PC that cost 1/2 the price of the $800 iPad Pro.
Moral of story: Do not destroy the initial momentum and the sense of denting the world. "To be a part of revolutionary change" is an important feeling to keep in tech industry.
--- Edits:
Wish I could impress upon them about the urgency to kill all models except the iPad Air (9"). Anything else will only kill/subdue the category and lead the focus away from the initial promise that the tablets held -- i.e. disrupt education.
- iPad Pro 12.9"
- iPad Pro 9.7"
- iPad 9.7"
- iPad Mini 4 8" (edit: thanks pdpi/trymas)
It really should just be iPad (9.7) or iPad Pro (12.9) should it not? Now the customer has to decide between two 9.7 models with not so obvious differences between the two? And now there are two (edit: three) different iPad pages on the sales website you have to go through.
This changes the immediate conversation visiting the site for the first time between why I should get the iPad... to what's the difference and available options AND why should I get an iPad?
The Macbook vs Macbook Pro distinction was more obvious because it was basically casual/school vs work. But I don't really see tablets having that work vs casual dichotomy. It's more high-end vs affordable. Which from a mental categorization perspective doesn't fit neatly into the current product line.
The Lumia lineup started out okay with a flagship device (920) and mid to high range device (820) a mid-range device (620) and a low end device (520) and a nice photographer device (1020). Things started getting really blurry with things like 925, 930, 635, 730 (can't remember them all) and suddenly a lower number device actually had better spec or almost similar to a higher number device, or the specs were so close together that it looked really confusing. Not to mention people begging for certain models to be upgraded and it never happening meant angry customers.
To me, it looks like Apple is slowly making the same mistake albeit a lot slower. You would have thought they were paying attention and wouldn't go down this route.
- It's as thick as the iPad Air 1 (and thus thicker than the Air 2/9.7" Pro).
- No laminated display (and no AR coating, True Tone, or wide color).
- Air 2 quality camera.
- The iPad mini 4 is now only available in 128GB, at $399.
- The chamfers look matte, like the iPhone SE.
Also, no Pencil support or smart connector.
Does anyone know is there is a hardware reason that the normal iPad can't use the Pencil or is purely a software thing to make people buy the more expensive iPad Pro.
Good modern touch screens, like the iPhone/iPad/Macbook trackpad are capacitive touch screens. An array of sensors emit a changing electric field which is affected by the dielectric constant of nearby materials, and fingers have a different dielectric constant from air. Capacitive sensors cannot detect pressure (although you can fake it a little).
Good modern digital pens, like the Wacom or Pencil, use radio waves. An array of antennas emits radio waves which are picked up by an antenna in the stylus. A microcontroller in the stylus computes the position and angle of the stylus, reads the pressure from another sensor in the stylus tip, and transmits the data back to the tablet over radio.
So you can see that they really are completely different technologies.
You can make a capacitive stylus, and those exist, you can even buy them at the store. However I've never seen a capacitive stylus that can detect pressure or angle at all, and capacitive sensors can't tell the difference between a stylus and your hand, so you can forget about resting your hand on the screen when you draw. The main reason I'd use a capacitive stylus is because I want to use an iPhone or iPad while I'm wearing gloves.
the website shows pencil support:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/
Edit: My apologies, I thought we were discussing the 9.7 Pro.
Perhaps they've just updated the page?
If you scroll down to "Compatible with Apple Pencil" you'll see that only the first two columns have the checkmark.
But I got it in a different time. There weren't many tablets available at the time and a retina screen was critical for small text. As I've looked around recently, it's become very hard to justify getting a new iPad over something like the surface.
How do people justify the purchase in 2017? Seriously asking as I am looking to replace my iPad with something in the next few weeks.
Why would I stray away from a product that has not let me down for so long? Is the surface kickstand and pen input worth:
- having to learn a new OS - not having facetime - not having imessage (90% of my friends and family are on iOS devices) - risking time lost due to malware, bloatware, blue screen, etc
Sure there are tablets out there that are thinner, faster, cheaper and have more features. I just don't care! I rather pay $200-300 more for a device that I will use almost every day for the next 1000-1500 days. Once iPads, iPhones, iMacs start wasting my time with random problems then I will shop around. Until then there is absolutely nothing that would make me switch brands.
iMessage sees very little usage outside of the US, where OP may not be based.
that you know of
MS claims 4h battery life at best, which I did find was true... after you dig deep into legacy control panels that look like it's still 1995. Out of the box the Pro 4 loves to wake up in your bag, look for wifi, then stay awake for a while doing absolutely nothing but burning through power, and you maybe get like 1h of actual use when you get to wherever you were going. I'm currently using a Wacom Mobile Studio^1, which also gets 4h. I'm constantly AWARE of and WORRIED ABOUT the thing's power levels in a way I'm not on the iPads. (Or the Mac Air for that matter.)
Apple lists like 9-10h for all current iPad models.
I may have my experience colored by mostly running a couple of desktop apps on my Win10 tablets, but I really find that Windows is not a very good tablet OS. Even in "tablet mode", which I keep it in pretty much all the time. It's just clunky and weird and maybe some of that's because this is the first Windows machine I've ever owned in my life, I dunno.
In general I don't think I'd recommend getting a Win10 tablet to replace an iPad. Get one if you have a Windows app you want to run, if you just wanna read stuff then buy a new iPad and don't worry about finding new apps to do the same stuff.
1: heavy, expensive, no kickstand, doesn't fit in most 13" bags. But it's stylus talks to Adobe Illustrator and that's my medium of choice.
The cheapest iPad is less than half the price of the cheapest surface, and if you only need the iPad features then the surface is really expensive.
edit: Seems you can still get the old Surface 3, which only costs a bit more than an iPad.
I've also used ipads extensively and can say that windows devices are not ipad replacements or vice versa. An ipad can't do what a windows tablet can, but the reverse is equally true. Windows doesn't have the rich touch-friendly app ecosystem of iOS. I use both types of devices for the things they're good at, but neither can replace the other.
Every once in a while when you reboot, you'll have to wait for Windows to install its updates. Sleep/hibernate are more finicky than an iPad, which sips so little power in idle that it never has to hibernate. Desktop mode is absolutely terrible to use with fingers. Tablet mode has missing functionality so you'll have to switch to desktop mode periodically. Battery life is worse, even though Windows makes use of hibernate. There's bugs that plague the Surface line that don't get addressed for a long time. I had to manually disable wake from sleep using keyboard/mouse on my SP1 otherwise it would stay in a powered mode and never properly hibernate. A normal user can't do that.
Lack of apps is a real thing. There's no official YouTube app. You can use the desktop site, but every time you try to pull up the controls, the player interprets it as a touch and plays/pauses the video. On the Netflix app, if you try to drag the slider, there's no feedback from the slider so you can't see if you've actually dragged it or not until you let go. Makes for some very imprecise scrubbing.
I could go on and on, but an iPad is simply better for media consumption if you don't need a specific Windows tool.
Well the iPad starts at $329 and the Surface starts at $799... The Surface only makes sense if you want a large pro device
(1) phones have gotten a lot better (and optionally bigger);
(2) laptops have gotten a lot more portable.
If I had kids, I could easily justify a family iPad. But I don't, so the device just feels like an expensive, mostly redundant luxury item.
Another thing worth mentioning is that we now live in a world where a company like Nintendo is making a serious gaming-oriented tablet with proper controls. This is something I've been wanting Apple to embrace for years, and they never did. If the Switch takes off (and it seems like there's a good chance of that), it makes a lot more sense for me to invest in that than an iPad.
The iPad has a lot of great emulations of older synths and exciting new apps that aren't available anywhere else. Some big names have also made apps, like Korg, Propellerheads, and Native Instruments. Check out iPolysix, iProphet, Animoog, DM1, Auria, E.L.S.A., Beatsurfing, Impaktor, BIAS Amp, Audiobus, Swoopster, Sparkle, Galileo, Thumbjam, Steel Guitar, Arpeggionome, Orphion, Xynthesizr, Glitchbreaks, Loopy, and Gadget.
But, I've moved to a Nexus 10 for movie watching, for the screen and because it is so much easier to copy a freaking file to it! I need to copy movies ripped from DVD often, or the occasional download. Apple goes out of their way to prevent that, and why I can't really recommend purchasing another. A shame really, talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Hardly... drag ripped movie into iTunes, sync movie to iPad, done. Or just give up on DVDs and buy/stream digital movies :-)
I do stream with Netflix, works fine on Android. Many of the files are from torrents as well, DVD is not the issue in itself.
There is no advantage for iPad for a movie-watching tablet, and why I switched for that use case.
Personally, I use Plex running on a headless Linux box instead.
For example a few days ago I wanted to copy a pdf of my resume to my phone and had to install an app to do it. Not acceptable.
If you want to use your device for taking notes, proofreading documents, writing in margins of PDFs, doodling, illustration, etc., then the “pro” iPad models are lovely.
It's very hard for me to justify a new iPad. I really feel apple could've gone with the OS X on an iPad approach and really taken the whole market. Instead they are slowly adding iOS to Mac OS.
Edit:
This only applies to the 4th generation iPad and up. Apparently the frosted glass look was never enabled for the third gen iPad.
Functionally it's still fine, I just fear the day when it will be put out to pasture by Apple in spite of my TLC and enjoyment.
I've never felt compelled to visit one of the nearby shops on Harry Hines by the Korean Community to jailbreak an Apple device, but I think in this case I'll be tempted.
It didn't become slower. You just added a lot more stuff for it to do.
I do miss the simplicity for watching videos on flights, though.
I have had an iPad Pro 9.7" for half a year, and had also used the 12.9" for a month. My experience and impressions so far:
• Perfect for using in bed, or outdoors when you don't need the power of a laptop/desktop OS. A phone is too small, cannot have a physical keyboard, and even the thinnest+lightest laptop is too bulky in comparison.
• The Apple Pencil beats every other stylus out there in just about everything. [1]
• With the Smart Keyboard, split-view multitasking, iCloud Drive, desktop-quality games, and many iPad-exclusive apps like Procreate [2], the iPad and iOS easily fulfills 50% of my computing needs, and I'm sure it can do 90% of what most people need to do on a desktop or laptop. The iCloud Drive file picker is really bad for a large number of files though, but it should hopefully improve in iOS 11.
• Nothing beats reading books on an iPad. The E Ink display on a Kindle may be better on the eyes for text, but the ability to multitask and listen to my music or watch a video while reading a book puts the iPad ahead.
• I can use the iPad as a secondary display and even a drawing tablet for native macOS/Windows apps with [3] and [4].
• The wide color screen is amazing and True Tone makes it easier on the eyes over long periods of usage.
• Thanks to the true multitouch and split-view you can actually control two apps at once, unlike on a desktop OS where there's only mouse pointer and single-window focus (even in Windows on a touchscreen, the last time I check you couldn't put a finger on different apps and interact with their controls at the same time. Has this changed in the latest Windows 10 update?)
• The 12.9" was great to use indoors but awkward in public, and doesn't have a wide color screen or a good camera yet. Especially gorgeous games like Samorost 3 [5] were even more amazing on the bigger screen.
I'm happy with the performance, but I'll be getting the next iPad Pro this year if it has a sleeker form, like significantly reduced bezels.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMA25CqKcn8
As for desktop-quality games I mean stuff like FTL, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, XCOM, Inner World, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island (sadly no longer available), Banner Saga, Machinarium and many other faithful ports, some of which are actually more convenient to play on a tablet. Even among all the microtransaction-plagued crap there are a few mobile-only games with quality or depth comparable to desktop titles.
And for the love of god, if they do this please have some USB-A ports...
See how easy this is?
(BTW, I recommend Readdle Documents for reading PDF because of its unbelievable speed, which matters a lot when your documents are 1200 pages long)
It is very much a consumption device, though -- the most I "create" with it are short emails and blog post drafts.
I have tmuxinator, tasker, tasker ssh, automagic, web alert xp, csploit, hackers keyboard, (linode,aws,google) service mgmt apps, openconnect, ms rdp, hackers keyboard, AIDA ide, pagerduty, and so much more
I regularly manage linux/windows systems from anywhere on my tablet.
I approve code changes and make code changes
My tasker and automagic tasks are around server alerts, and issues, and automatically connect to servers with issues by grabbing hostname from pagerduty alert with automagic, logging in and running checks or if its a known server its calling about.
back to the batcave!
Just last year though I got an iPad Pro 9.7 with the Pencil. That's been pretty game-changing for me as far as making these devices actually useful. Now it's like a journal/lab-book, with extra features, that I carry with me everywhere and make extensive notes in. It doesn't replace my laptop, it replaces my written notes.
I still use the laptop extensively for my work that involves programming. However a lot of my work involves sketching diagrams and solving problems, work that I used to do on paper but now can do digitally.
But an old iPad 3 is my go to device for planes. Video, games, reading (because I don't want to carry a Kindle in addition to a tablet.) I actually got one of the cheap Kindle Fires to checkout for travel but I ended up going back to the iPad because I like it better.
The iPad has a lot of great emulations of older synths and exciting new apps that aren't available anywhere else. Some big names have also made apps, like Korg, Propellerheads, and Native Instruments. Check out iPolysix, iProphet, Animoog, DM1, Auria, E.L.S.A., Beatsurfing, Impaktor, BIAS Amp, Audiobus, Swoopster, Sparkle, Galileo, Thumbjam, Steel Guitar, Arpeggionome, Orphion, Xynthesizr, Glitchbreaks, Loopy, and Gadget.
As I've gotten further away from R&D and into business development and then a management-like role, most of my time is consumed reading and writing emails, using our internal messaging platform, and going to meetings.
The iPad keyboard works fine for writing short emails, it's much lighter to lug around between meetings than my laptop, and I feel less awkward using it in the back of an Uber to read/write emails when going to said meetings than I do my laptop.
# Was
iPad Mini 2 (7.9)
iPad Mini 4 (7.9)
iPad Air 2 (9.7)
iPad Pro (9.7)
iPad Pro (12.9)
MacBook Air (13)
MacBook (12)
MacBook Pro (13)
MacBook Pro (15)
# Becomes
iPad (9.7)
iPad Pro (10.5)
iPad Pro (12.9)
MacBook (12)
MacBook Pro (13)
MacBook Pro (15)
This sums up Apple's problems better than anything I've seen.
When it was iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5S you knew where on the product timeline your phone was. Now it's iPad Air, Air 2, 9.7 Pro, 9.7, 12.9 Pro, mini 4. It's all over the place.
(What's new here, apparently: they dropped the price by $70 and bumped the processor.)
Also, the iPad 2 I got rid of like 4 years ago was horribly slow and pretty much useless at that point.
I bought mine in 2012, still using it daily.
Reading books on a low-res display sounds terrible. Why not just buy a Kindle if you read a lot?
I'm a little tempted, now, by the iPad Pro and the Pencil. It sure would be more comfortable and convenient to retouch photos that way than with a mouse or a trackpad in Photoshop. But I can hardly justify dropping most of a grand just for that, and the other use cases I no longer have - especially with a 13" rMBP in my satchel, there's really not enough point.
That Pencil sure is nice, though.
Although Sid Meier's Starships is sucking away a bit of my time lately.
Between Guided Access and Restrictions, I can hand an iPad to my two year old and not have to worry. Plus then throw on high quality children's apps (most of which are educational) and YouTube Kids, and you have a wonderful platform for children.
Parents could do much worse than to hand their kids an iPad. Certainly can be more engaging than throwing them in front of a TV for the same period (not that either TV or an iPad is a substitute for one on one play time, but sometimes adults need a break too).
It's become a small but important part of my digital life, My ISP rolled out city wide WiFi so I can use it comfortably at the coffee stall in the market, it's great for research, reading, PDF's, screen is large enough to be useable and the battery life is great.
It's the only Apple product I've ever owned.
I don't like working on laptops and mobile devices , I am more than happy working on an iMac with a gorgeous 27 monitor , a real keyboard , mouse and Wacom.
I'm a firm believer in the value of gaming and learning... it's a priority.
That aside, as an adult I'm still using my iPad every day.
Given my line of work and hobbies, the iPads are very appreciated tools.
For the average soccer mom or Joe Sixpack, not so much. At best they'd surf the web and social media on them.
But at $329 it's a lot more attractive.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/21/apple-iphone-se-in-32gb...
Now granted it is still a huge profit margin, and if it was just a standard feature they could likely do it for under $20 across the line, but there's likely more money in acting like it is a premium thing.
Apple only charging $130 extra seems almost too cheap.
Even more surprised it doesn't have laminated display, possible reason why it's thinker and heavier than the 9.7" Pro.
apple is trying to expand their market share in the tablet space even more
If the choice is storage space and LTE, I go with what I need or want. If any of this seems confusing, I recommend stopping by an Apple Store, they can clarify features and benefits.
At my personal level, we have not updated our iPads and iPods for a number of years. Don't plan to.
I still have a 4S. I have disliked everything Apple has done since then and so did not upgrade. The device is getting slow over time. This, by itself, is enough to bother me. It used to work fine. Software updates have made it sluggish. This is wrong. I know I will have to upgrade at one point yet I am not looking forward to upgrading to another iPhone. Apple probably has one shot at convincing people like me with iPhone 8. Hint: I am sick and tired of "thinner". I could not care less. "Thinner" ceased to be a benefit a very long time ago. They need to solve real problems. Beyond that, you can only say "beautiful" so many times before it becomes a joke. Beautiful, beyond a basic aesthetic, isn't a solution to any real problem. At least none I have.
Past that, we have pulled our last app from the app store. Actually, Apple required an upgrade and I decided not to invest the time and money to do it. Why? Because the app store is useless unless you get lucky, throw money at it or both.
App discoverability is impossible. The other thing that is also impossible is to create relationships with your users. Business is about relationships and this walled garden prevents you from creating such relationships. In a way I equate this to groups on Facebook. FB has made it so that you have to pay to reach an audience you worked hard to create. You can have a million person group and only reach a couple thousand or less people per post. If you want to reach more you have to pay. In other words, you don't "own" your audience the same way you would through an opt-in email list.
And so, it is goodbye to the App store, it isn't worth our time, money and effort.
All of the above leads me to conclude that the Apple era is in jeopardy if they can't come up with enough of a pivot to provide value and get people exited again.
Thinner? Please.
Resolution? C'mon.
Faster? OK, but to browse Facebook (which is what most people do with them) the prior phones were good enough.
Larger? OK, sure.
Battery life? I've never had a problem with this.
Games? OK, sure, we have more CPU power so a greater segment of our society can waste their lives clicking things on a screen. If you don't have kids you won't have the experience of attending family events and parties where a bunch of kids are completely removed from the social gathering while they have their faces in those screens. Believe me when I tell you it's a terrible thing. We were making educational apps for kids. At least we tried.
Storage? Meh
Photos? The resolution arms race is a joke. Anyone who knows anything about imaging knows increasing sensor resolution isn't enough to actually capture higher resolution images.
Look, most people use these things for photos, SMS, email, GPS and Facebook. Web browsing is a painful experience, even on an iPad. I have serious doubts --based on our analytics from various businesses-- that people are using phones to shop online. When we run AdWords campaigns we EXCLUDE mobile devices because we have proven to ourselves that they don't convert at all. Desktops do.
I had great SMS and email going back to Blackberry devices. They also had rudimentary web browsing (not good).
A stand-alone GPS or an in-vehicle nav system has always been better than using an iPhone. They are impossible to operate while driving. It's almost like the integrated printer + scanner + fax machines where none of the three are any good.
Smart phones were hot many years ago. People were grabbing-up apps and filling their screens with icons. Go as anyone just how many apps they use and how many new apps they look for on a monthly basis. Most people I know haven't installed a new app in years.
The interesting Jedi trick Apple benefited from for many years was the mindless frenzy to constantly upgrade for no good reason. I know people who have burned thousands of dollars in upgrades and ended-up with nothing to really show for it.
There are those who need to chase after shiny things and those who do not.
What's interesting here is that on the computer side of the world nobody would think twice about using a four to six year old computer. Up until very recently my main workstation on my desk was a 2009 machine running Windows Vista 64 bit. Three monitors, lots of memory, half a dozen drives. Ran Solidworks and other engineering software just fine. We upgraded to newer hardware and software because some software vendors started to drop Vista support. Other than that, no issues whatsoever.
Why is it that one can't expect a $600 phone to last six or more years? Apple has ruined a previously perfectly good iPhone 4S thought every-more-taxing updates that deliver virtually no additional benefits. In other words, they are breaking their older devices through updates in order to force people to upgrade.
As far as our educational apps for kids. There was and there isn't anything whatsoever wrong with them. Not a thing. In fact, our analytics show that kids are still using the apps every day all over the world. Imagine if Microsoft invalidated apps this way, people would go insane. How is it that this is OK on iPhones? Not sure I see it.
Why do we have to be forced to upgrade apps when users are happy and there are no problems at all? And, what's the benefit of upgrading anyway? The work to upgrade a dozen apps is non-trivial. In exchange you get no improvement in visibility or discoverability. We are back to the same place: You have to burn more cash than the other guy to become visible. Worst yet, depending on the niche you get to burn $3.00 to make $2.95. The motivation to devote time, money and effort to upgrade evaporates very quickly when that happens. It stops being a business and it becomes a liability.
But, wait, I forgot, all corporations are evil except for Apple.
> App Store is so bad is because it's filled with abandonware apps
No, the App Store is bad because the App Store is bad. It has been a disaster for years. It only serves Apple. The most fundamental issue is that of ownership. If you think you own your users and actually have a "business" in the App Store just wait until Apple decides to remove your apps from the App Store. An App Store business can be a flash in the pan and you have no way of knowing if you are going to wake up next Monday and still have a business. That has nothing whatsoever to do with abandonware.
I wonder if this bump is already the usual spring revamp or if something else will come in April
But the dearth of offerings in high-quality laptops under 13.3" is astonishing. While I personally prefer the 10.1" form factor, I think that Apple is onto something with pushing a 12" 'daily driver' model for people who want a power/portability compromise between a Chromebook and a 13-15" workhorse.
So if Apple came out with something like that which had more than a single port, I'd probably jump on board with it. If they don't, I think that Chromebooks may take the market within a few years. Right now you need to do a bit of tinkering to turn them into fully-fledged computers, but Google's been adding some really cool features, both official and unofficial.
I was highly hoping for a 12" revamp so I could finally get one. The first model was nice but didn't convince me just yet, but what they put into the recent MacBook pros like the new keyboard and tb3 put my hopes high for a 12" that could make me pull the trigger.
- Looks great in marketing/ads
- Want to read? Naaah too uncomfortable to hold
- Want to work? Naaah working on a touch-device is no fun
- Want to play? Naaah got a gaming-console for that
- Want some music? Naaah got my iPhone
- Everything else: iPhone
This product fits perfectly in my budget and what I wanted. I still wish that the cellular one wasn't $100 more though.
(If I could get an iPad with pencil support for $329 or even $429, that might be a different story. Looks like I'll wait another year.)
But yes, official support for development on the device would be very welcome and given the examples above is completely doable.
Or because programmers would take well to having to program on the iPad?
Or because programmers are not a rounding error when talking about "everyone"?
You can also use web IDEs like Code Envy / Eclipse Che.
I own Raskell and Pythonista and they are quite good.
But it is frustrating that Apple started removing fundamental features in a random fashion, even from flagship products with no intimation of them. Retina Macbook Pro does not have a glass screen. Users did not realize that until the staingate issue cropped up. It feels even blowing air on the screen will pull off coating. In this iPad, they conveniently removed the lamination.
I cannot even imagine Apple doing that back in the day. Imagine a version of iPhone, let's call it 4E, which does not have 3G.
It feels like I have to do a spec comparison about everything before deciding which Apple product to buy. Because there is no knowing what they silently removed.
I took a (1 generation older) rMBP to the Apple Store a few months back to get a keyboard replaced. I had a stuck pixel or two (I'd dropped it about 30-40 times) and the guy at the store told me there was a screen coating issue (he pointed to the black side of the screen) and said I could get a free screen replacement if I wanted it. Is that "Staingate"?
Poke your screen lightly and poke screen of any other macbook. You'll see by distortion on the screen that you directly poked the LCD.
"iPad Mini 4" is the most confusing title in the lineup currently, but I expect them to eschew its version number as well at some point.
I prefer the "Mid YYYY" style of versioning Apple uses on other products.
Was there an event?
Sadly I see the current MBP as something I will not be buying and will more than likely move back to a high end windows laptop.
It's the best laptop I've ever used by a long shot.
These the Dell stuff of course, but for example on Lenovo you would need to go with P50 or T470p. The latter is just a refresh of an old model and lacks for example USB-C and also the PCIe NVMe is only 2x. Kind of acceptable for now, but not so future proof. Also the displays are not really on par with Apple. To get a nice display you would go for X1, but there you are stuck with dual core and 16GB. Then we you start looking at the laptops in detail, you find out things like thermal throttling under load, displays getting dimmer and CPUs slower when running on battery etc. There's much more to the laptops than just the CPU and max memory capacity. Also lets not forget that Lenovo announced the new lineup already last year and still they are not shipping all the promised features. That's like over 3 months between promise and delivery.
I switched, and it's incredible. I have 64GB of ram and a xenon processor. It's incredible. It's not as sleep as the mac, but I spend so much less time waiting.
I never have to think about "should I close down this VM/android emulator" etc. I have more RAM then I had hard drive space on my laptop in 2010.
Apple, do better than this. This is not how you answer critics, and the market, who are starting to question your products relevance.
[1] Although older iPad models have been available for this price or lower from places like Apple Refurb or Groupon for years now.
The oddity is why is it as thick as the previous generation and where did the laminated screen go? Is that no longer needed or cost cutting?
> "It's lit."