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Comment by Slartie | Hacker News Reader

The iPad has failed as a general purpose computing device, sure. But it has succeeded (along with other tablet devices of similar form factor) as a basis for a large and growing number of single-purpose use cases in various industries:

- iPad POS are popular in smaller coffee shops and similar outlets

- iPad-based document viewing solutions are used by pilots to replace large bags with manuals for planes that they used to lug around

- iPads are used for meeting room management solutions, information displays for customers and similar purposes where one single application is to be run basically 24/7 on a device with low power and space requirements, but where certain aesthetic requirements to the app as well as the hardware have to be satisfied

Granted, iPads don't hold this space exclusively. But so don't iPhones or Macs hold their respective application spaces exclusively, even though they significantly catalyzed their genesis.

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The issue with each of these examples is that hardware advancements barely matter. $200 Android tablet with a simple enough design works just as well.

Apple doesn't want to participate in such markets. That's why they try to push creativity narrative, "what's a computer" and so on. iPad can only succeed as a premium enough product, and that requires software differentiation.

I get that, but after all it's not really Apple's choice what their buyers do with their devices. If they overwhelmingly decide the iPad is a nice base for this kind of application, Apple can either embrace that decision and cater to these customers (of which a good part are obviously ready to at least pay more than those $200 for the cheap Android tablet option, probably because of better update support as suggested by that other comment alongside this one) or try to make the device appealing to other target markets that they'd like to be in.

But when those other markets don't really take the bait, at some point it might be a good idea to accept that there is a market, but in a somewhat different place than originally anticipated.

iPad succeeds in these examples because it's a consistent environment with updates.

The problem with the cheap Android tablet is that unless the entire world standardises on a single model of tablet for these purposes you'd have all kinds of quirks around hardware, etc. Updates are also another issue even on premium-priced Android devices, so the cheap one is a lost cause.

Updates themselves are an assumption. I imagine a large percentage of cafe checkout and meeting room booking tablets are never updated once installed.

The distinction here is Appliance vs Computing Platform. And so far many tablets are seen as appliances, not computers.

If they're iPads, this is unlikely.

All one has to do is leave them connected to power and WiFi overnight.

It's more likely that the typical cafe checkout iPad is silently updated on a regular basis, after close of business, and the staff don't notice at all; since they're going to be password protected, they just punch in in the morning, as usual.

I doubt it's so much doing updates as it is about support. If they have a vendor app (like Square on a tablet to take payments) and that abandons older OS versions to lower technical debt or for security reasons then at least they can update.

On Android you'd sadly find the lack of kernel compatibility with the chipset means that ever happens.

Updates can be provided by the community in many cases. Buy cheap LineageOS-supported tablet, unlock the bootloader and put LineageOS on, you're done. (Then once pmOS gets good enough for your use case, your device will be software-supported for the entirety of its useful life, by a mainstream, desktop-like OS. You don't get anything like that on the iPad - the best you can do is reuse it as an additional screen for a Mac via Sidecar.)

The community is not an acceptable answer for a business deploying thousands of these. With an iPad you are guaranteed X years of updates. With the community, you may or may not get an update, it might have quirks and installing it might be non-trivial.

If you're deploying "thousands" of these devices, you can standardize on a single model and even get custom support. The iPad might still be a good choice then, but it's definitely not the only one.

Yeah but you have to think about it. I feel like for many businesses thought/effort/time — even only a little - is more valuable than money.

[edit] and you also need to have someone whose aware of those options to begin with which is less common outside prigramming enthusiasts imho. Because Apple has amazing marketing discovering an iPad solution is easy.

"No one ever got fired for buying iPads" is the new "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM".

> . $200 Android tablet with a simple enough design works just as well.

I mean, the normal (and I assume best selling) iPad is about 300, and will likely be supported for a lot longer than the Android one (my Air 2 is getting on for 6 years old).

Having serviced many kiosk-type iPad devices, expecting the operator to update is incredibly wishful thinking.

This reminds me time (2013) where I had to choice new Nexus 7 or Ipad Mini 2. They were close in the price, in my country and they were both new. In few years , Nexus stopped getting updated and support but that Ipad mini got even ios 12 and still works well. For me Apple hardware is consistent and reliable that it can work well even more than 5 years.

I don't think you can really say that the iPad has failed as a general computing device, and that it is propped up by the situations below. What do you think generates $20B in sales? That's a lot of tills flight aids.

I think the iPad has succeeded as a general purpose computation device for normal people who use computers for email / music / Facetime / photos etc.

Always seems like its the 'power users' who don't seem to understand the iPad when the average person can pick one up and do most things they want to do with one.

That is not what I would consider "general computing device", more like "media consumption device", and yes, it is fairly good at that.

I would require a device to be regularly used for content creation as well in order for it to qualify as "general computing device". But pretty much the only "content creation" that I see happening on iPads in normal peoples' households is writing emails. By that account, our smartphones are certainly more qualified for the "general computing device" tag, because those are regularly used to create photos and videos in addition to mails and instant messages.

If by computer programming or media creation (videos etc) then I would say what you want is a specialist computing device - most people do not use their computers to do this, nor need them to be able to.

With an iPad you can write all the emails you want, edit and share photos, create word docs and basic spreadsheets, which is enough for the vast majority of people. I agree that phones are also general purpose computers, most people can get away with just having a phone now.

Maybe we dont agree on ‘general’ as a term, I mean what most people need or want, I think you maybe mean can do lots of different things?

Yeah, that must be it. I mean "versatile", which is a feature not everyone needs, not even a majority, but a large enough proportion of the market as to be relevant (especially since the remaining share of the market depends on those that need this versatility, because without content creators - a prime group requiring versatile computing devices - there's no content for those that don't need this versatility because they mostly consume).

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