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New iPad Air and iPad Mini

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Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#151

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

You probably overstated your case by saying that only people over 50 are interested in them (though my parents have one each), but the number of people in their 30s saying they have one on this thread is interesting for sure.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#152
post #88

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

I think you may be biased by your career. I work in IT too and I don't have a tablet either, but most people not in our field that I know rarely use a laptop (even less a desktop) anymore. Some don't even own one. They do all their computing on tablets and phones. There's a lot of market for kids too. Our 4yo has an ipad mini and our 12yo has an ipad pro. By the way, the 12yo loves to draw and the ipad pro + apple pe…

Software dev here, use my new iPad Pro in work all the time.

I originally bought one for home use, so I would stop using my laptop to watch Netflix/YouTube/Prime and then get distracted by work (too easy to flick over to an IDE or GitHub when an idea would pop into my head when at home).

The iPad works really well for this but I now find myself using it in work too for almost the same reason. Rather than bringing my laptop to meetings and then getting distracted (same as watching Netflix at home) I now just bring the iPad to take notes or look up stats/analytics online(most of the platforms we use have pretty good iPad UI support).

It's been great at properly focusing on meetings, now if I have an idea on a problem I just write it in a note and get on with the meeting rather than finding myself jumping to VS code and trying to work.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#153
post #26

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

I'm 26 and the iPad Air and iPad mini do not appeal to me but I own an iPad Pro and I am enamored with it. I use the iPad Pro at my full-time job as a Software Engineer at Microsoft. I get a lot of mileage by taking notes on it in OneNote and preparing/reading documents from the other Office apps. I also use the iPad to listen to music with Spotify (my headphones have trouble connecting to my work PC). Outside of the…

As a Surface Pro user it tickles me that Microsoft people are using iPads for the stuff the Surface was designed to excel at (no pun intended).

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#154

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

What do you use to read books on? For me, the iPad, for either Kindle books or general PDFs, was a game-changer for me.

I also use it for watching lots of movies or TV shows.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. We use Ipads for pleasure. It's more pleasant to browse the net on the couch than sitting at a computer.

It's more pleasant to stand a laptop on my lap on the couch than to keep gripping a tablet. And almost all the tablet cases are terrible floppy messes ( especially Apple's with their weak magnets and poor angle choices) This is the main reason I don't "get" tablets. They're just more uncomfortable to use for me. You have to keep holding onto it and you get gorilla arm vs using a trackpad.

Agreed. I have tried using a tablet on the sofa but I just find it a poor experience. If I need to write something I either need a case with a shitty keyboard which basically makes it a crappy laptop in form factor or I have to lose half the content to the on-screen keyboard.

I currently use a MacBook (the 12" model) and it is close to perfect for casual sofa browsing. It has a decent enough keyboard, a perfect trackpad, good screen and while not a huge deal I still prefer macOS over iOS. Even when I use macOS in full screen model so it acts a lot like iOS I still find just having a mouse cursor much nicer to work with over a touch screen. I think this is mostly down to how awful the new oleophobic coating is on the new iPad's (Pro included). I can't stand seeing all those finger print smudges over the screen. Drives me up the wall!

I guess I am just too used to a laptop form factor and can't get past my own mental blocks?

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#156

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

I had iPads 1 trough 3, and they were awesome comic-reading devices. Then amazon bought Comixology and buying comics became too much of a hassle and I stop using my iPad altogether.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#157
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting to feel like Ballmer era Microsoft. Unforced errors like this seem to be occurring more and more often. Seemingly minor pragmatic issues that will prevent many users from upgrading or leaving the ecosystem altogether, that could easily be avoided.

Actually for old timers it feels like the old Apple, just before Jobs came back.

i.e. the unprofitable and future-less Apple

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#158
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useless old man here. I keep wondering when Apple is going to simply drop their traditional laptop and desktop business in favor of things like this. It's not a great leap of imagination to think of a desktop version of an iPad ala a Chromeboxesque approach.

With the 12-inch Macbook and 13" Macbook Air already clogging up the portfolio, I can see them dropping the MBP 13 and keeping just a single large MBP 15 model for the professional market. iOS is nowhere near good enough for Apple to consider scaling back their x86 line too much further. Hardware wise the iPad Pro is really nice, but it doesn't even have mouse support! Android has had that since 2011 at least, but it…

iOS doesn't have mouse support because Apple doesn't want it to, not because it's "not good enough".

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#159

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

I'm pretty much double 24... my usual work machine is a big Ubuntu box I built, with 2 big monitors. I'm stuck working on my MacBookAir for some time and it just sucks. Not because the MacBook sucks, but it just sucks working on a single small monitor, and the machine itself is slower at everything. Working on any laptop is just a big step down from a real machine for me. I can't even imagine working on an iPad, thou…

>I have no idea what the appeal is, there's none at all for me, but there must be a decent sized market out there. It's interesting to read the other comments and see what the appeal is for them

Here's what the appeal is for me:

1) A device I can use at the bed/crapper comfortably -- to read, check email, browse, etc.

2) I'm a hobby artist (from the Amiga days) and I love the digital painting apps and Apple pencil.

3) It's my main reading device. I have tons of physical books (several thousands), but its now cheaper and more convenient to read PDFs, ePub, etc books. I use Apple's Books and the iOS Kindle app.

4) Photography. It's great for sharing with friends nearby, casual edits on the road, having your portfolio in an easy to show, glorious screen.

5) Music apps. If somebody does guitar, piano, or electronic music, there are tons of apps, from amp modellers to complete DAWs, and tons of "VSTs" (AUs in our case).

6) Great for note-taking, drawing diagrams and so on.

7) Handy to watch a video in something less to carry around than a laptop and bigger screen than a phone.

8) Not bad for games too if you're not an AAA gamer.

9) For writing articles, book, etc, it's also good -- non distracting, lots of great editors (even Scrivener), and so on.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#160

I'm 24 years old, work in software. Neither I nor any of my friends uses a tablet for work or pleasure. I guess I know a couple of people who have Surface Pro's, but that's about it. I'm wondering if the appeal of these begins when you get older? Seems like a lot of the market for these is people who are 50+, but I'd like to know if any people under 25 are interested in them.

Talk to a designer of any kind. They’re hooked on iPad.

All the designers at our company have personal iPads that they use for various things including illustration, taking notes, sketching concepts, wire framing, etc.

I’m not a designer but I’m a hobbyist photographer and I love using my iPad for editing photos in Lightroom, reading, consuming media, etc. I can’t wait until Adobe fills out their creative suite on iPad. They announced that a fully featured Photoshop will come to iPad in 2019 - we’ll see.

I wrote this comment on an iPad, in fact. I do use the keyboard cover though so don’t get the impression that I wrote this on the on-screen software keyboard. That’d be tough.

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