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Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

ipadwatcher.com

41–50 of 113 posts

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#41
post #6

What's interesting is that they have only sold 1.5M books, or 1.5 books per device. Amazon Kindle should be safe.

It's worth noting that those are books DOWNLOADED, not sold.

In addition to all the freely available titles in the Book store, everyone who downloads iBooks is also prompted to download a free Winnie the Pooh title. I expect virtually nobody selects "No" for this.

I would be very interested to know how many titles that have actually sold. I expect it's a fraction of 1.5 million.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#42
post #6

What's interesting is that they have only sold 1.5M books, or 1.5 books per device. Amazon Kindle should be safe.

They're not even comparable as e-readers--backlit iPad is not easy on the eyes. The kindle has room to improve on usability but it's far more practical.

They're not even comparable as e-readers

Everything is comparable once you own one or the other. The risk to the Kindle is not that people shopping for e-readers will choose the iPad over it for that purpose, but that people who buy iPads for any number of other reasons will be less likely to buy dedicated e-readers.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For students, the eye strain might be worth it just to get a decent PDF reader. The eInk readers available are universally horrible at rendering PDFs.

The iPhone’s PDF viewer is pretty crappy, though. It’s pretty much the only thing on the iPhone that feels unbearably slow. I don’t know how much the iPad improves that but at least on the iPhone reading (long, i.e. ten or more pages) PDFs is no joy.

I have experienced the same frustration on my iPhone 3G. I can vouch that the speed is greatly improved on the iPad. The PDF viewer is now actually pleasant. (It's amazing what a little clock speed will do.)

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#44
post #26
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joking aside, the "magic mouse" is my favorite piece of apple hardware so far. It's just awesome. Best 70 bucks I have given to apple.

I would have agreed with you, but now I'm back to the mighty mouse. Two reasons... 1. bluetooth latency issues with older MBP 2. the scrolling is too sensitive to the touch. have you tried Google maps? it's unusable.

I agree about Google maps, but that is Google's defect to fix. I doubt they will.

The flatness doesn't bother me. I hold it in my fingers, thumb,ring,pinky on the edges, two fingers for driving.

The mighty mouse always annoyed me for the randomly sensitive side squeeze clicker. Of the various units I had some required a great effort to click and some would click if you looked at them sternly. I just disabled the functions for that clicker. Oh, and don't get me started on the eventual failure of the little top balls. Nothing quite so irritating as a top ball that will scroll down but not up.

Unfortunately I have to buy a new keyboard. They moved the control key and I can't keep my brain straight so I have to make my keyboards match.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#45
post #26
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joking aside, the "magic mouse" is my favorite piece of apple hardware so far. It's just awesome. Best 70 bucks I have given to apple.

I would have agreed with you, but now I'm back to the mighty mouse. Two reasons... 1. bluetooth latency issues with older MBP 2. the scrolling is too sensitive to the touch. have you tried Google maps? it's unusable.

2. the scrolling is too sensitive to the touch. have you tried Google maps? it's unusable.

I think that's a Safari bug. It's sending pixel-resolution scroll events to web pages (like Google Maps) instead of line-resolution scroll events.

Firefox gets it right, surprisingly.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#46
post #29
post #6

What's interesting is that they have only sold 1.5M books, or 1.5 books per device. Amazon Kindle should be safe.

I have a Kindle and an iPad. The iPad isn't a reader. iPad doesn't work worth a damn in the sun (the finger smudges show up, and the screen washes out), and even in the dark it's just not as nice as reading from paper or kindle. I've found a bunch of use cases where the iPad excels, but there's little to no overlap with the Kindle.

> I've found a bunch of use cases where the iPad excels

What are those ?

edit: why would a genuine question out of curiosity be modded down? I'm really weirded out by that. The ipad is a reasonably new form factor and new form factors bring new use cases, and I'd like to know what those are.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#47
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever tried to actually read on an iPad you would understand why. The glossy screen means you can't read in natural light, and the backlit screen causes eye strain. For long stretches of reading, iPad can't replace books the same way the Kindle can. Although I'm personally not surprised that books aren't that popular on iPad, but I was curious if people would overcome the above deficiencies with the form factor…

Having read more than two thousand screens (pages?) on an iPad in iBooks so far I don't think there is a major issue. It is highly unlikely that I would replace the iPad with a Kindle. My camera is a lot better than my iPhone as a camera, but the best camera you have is the one you have with you. In the iPad I can carry enough of what I need with me without having to carry multiple devices. I have not bought any book…

I think it depends a lot of where you are reading. I'm sure the iPad would work fine for my commute on the subway. I'm sure I'd rather have a Kindle on the beach. (though I probably wouldn't bring either to the beach since they are going to get stolen or damaged)

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#48
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever tried to actually read on an iPad you would understand why. The glossy screen means you can't read in natural light, and the backlit screen causes eye strain. For long stretches of reading, iPad can't replace books the same way the Kindle can. Although I'm personally not surprised that books aren't that popular on iPad, but I was curious if people would overcome the above deficiencies with the form factor…

Having read more than two thousand screens (pages?) on an iPad in iBooks so far I don't think there is a major issue. It is highly unlikely that I would replace the iPad with a Kindle. My camera is a lot better than my iPhone as a camera, but the best camera you have is the one you have with you. In the iPad I can carry enough of what I need with me without having to carry multiple devices. I have not bought any book…

> In the iPad I can carry enough of what I need with me without having to carry multiple devices.

You'd still need to bring a phone though, as it can not do voice calls.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#49
post #6

What's interesting is that they have only sold 1.5M books, or 1.5 books per device. Amazon Kindle should be safe.

I like reading books, but I don't have a Kindle and I haven't purchased any books on my iPad.

imo you're making a mistake in looking at the "average" number across all iPad owners. Many of these people will probably never buy a Kindle anyway.

Before you use any "average" numbers to make conclusions about the iPad, you should be looking at the average number of books purchased on an iPad within a more narrow segment of the market - e.g. among iPad owners who have bought more than 3 e-books on any device.

Re: Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days

#50
post #12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ergonomic mouse.

Joking aside, the "magic mouse" is my favorite piece of apple hardware so far. It's just awesome. Best 70 bucks I have given to apple.

Really? I absolutely hate it :( It doesn't slide well at all on any surface I've tried, so it's so uncomfortable to use. And to make matters worse, it detects right vs left clicks quite poorly. Apple makes fantastic hardware, but in my opinion they have never once made a good mouse (and I've used every single mouse they've ever released).

And not an actual knock against the magic mouse as this is not its intended purpose, but: worst gaming mouse of all time :)

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