Getting an A12 Bionic for $400 seems like a pretty remarkable deal to me. Is there a catch?
No USB C
New iPad Air and iPad Mini
201–210 of 395 posts
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#202I'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…
> I use the iPad Pro at my full-time job as a Software Engineer at Microsoft.
This surprises me. I'm not an engineer, but the main pain point for me with the iPad Pro is the crappy UX of Google Drive. Is there a huge difference between the Google suite and the MS suite on the iPad? I'm legit looking for a PC laptop right now because I need something to work on emails and Drive-type work, at the coffeeshop, and my MacBook Pro is not enjoyable to type on.
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#203I'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 used my iPad Mini quite a lot for browsing and reading, but since I got a dedicated eReader it's mostly been collecting dust.
I think if I had a bigger iPad it might find some use, but I can't really justify the cost for the minimal benefit over simply using my laptop instead (even as someone with a decent income).
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#204It is so weird that the iPad Air and iPad mini only support the old Apple Pencil. The iPad mini was my favorite incarnation of the iPad line when it came out, and I was considering getting one again, but I have no interest in needing two different kinds of iPad pencil. Apple keeps creating and extending these arbitrary transition periods. The old Apple Pencil should be in the past. Instead we have an entire other gen…
Keeping the lightning port is what really jumped out at me. Now some iPads are going to have USB C and others are going to have lightning, all under the same umbrella product of the iPad. What is even worse (!) is that the iPhones and iPads still ship with a USB A to lightning cable, meaning even users inside the Apple ecosystem need a USB C/thunderbolt dongle with usb A ports to connect their iPhones/iPads to their…
Apple users love dongles though.
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edit: inlining the comment here instead since this turned into a conversation These products just feel like “component pipeline optimization” instead of working backwards from customer needs. There should be 3 iPads, all with the same form factor, same connectors (can’t believe I even have to specify this): small medium large, and they should be called iPad mini, iPad, and iPad Pro. The iPad should serve the vast maj…
I welcome your take! And thanks for adding it here so people can contrast them. One thing I think it’s important to remember is that Apple today isn’t the same small, quirky company it was in 2007 when the iPhone came out. It’s now one of the largest companies on the planet with a global customer base of over a billion people in hundreds of countries. They need to run a different strategy and they need to have more p…
I certainly agree that a larger company requires different decisions, but I think that they fail to even state their case correctly. Perhaps they have a reached a size where a hyper-simplified product line would be leaving an unacceptable amount of money on the table as they successfully saturate their normal customer base. Even in that world, it doesn't mean that the product line has to be so fundamentally confusing and lacking in narrative. These same products could be pitched similar to how I said in my comment: tell me why I want these aside from their price differentiation. Don't make me feel that I'm fundamentally choosing an iPad over an iPad Pro because the better chip doesn't fit in my budget. An iPad comparison matrix shouldn't be necessary with proper story telling: https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/. That page is right out of the Dell playbook of comparing 17 different monitors that have obscure and highly technical differences.
But, going back to the stories affecting the product design, I feel that increasingly Apple products rely on incidental and manufactured differentiation vs. essential differentiation. I can tell that they have refrained from putting the better chip into a certain model (since that better chip fits into an iPhone just fine), instead of the very nature of that model of course not allowing that sort of chip. I know this is harder, but fundamentally what I'm saying is "take the low end seriously". Like I mentioned in my other comment, if the "iPad mini" was more like an "iPad Active", and perhaps was more resistant to wear and tear (could survive being dropped if you're skateboarding for example), then all of a sudden the model takes on a personality. It is less powered, but more rugged, there is a tradeoff that feels earned. Instead, the tradeoff feels entirely driven by budget windows.
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#206Earlier 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.
The 1st generation iPad was woefully lacking RAM (256MB) even though the iPhone 4 that came out 3 months later with the same SOC had 512Mb. That led to the iPad being unusable with iOS 5 that came out 2 years later and unsupported after that. The iPhone of the same generation was supported through iOS 7. The 3rd generation iPad was heavy, slow, and had horrible battery life and was discontinued six months later as th…
> So what are tablet users going to leave the iPad for? All of the great Android tablets available?
Yeah, this is the sad thing about the current situation. The Apple lineup is a mess, but everyone's "competitive" devices are even messier.
I have only Android phones, but my tablet is an ipad.
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#207It is so weird that the iPad Air and iPad mini only support the old Apple Pencil. The iPad mini was my favorite incarnation of the iPad line when it came out, and I was considering getting one again, but I have no interest in needing two different kinds of iPad pencil. Apple keeps creating and extending these arbitrary transition periods. The old Apple Pencil should be in the past. Instead we have an entire other gen…
These products just feel like “component pipeline optimization” instead of working backwards from customer needs. There should be 3 iPads, all with the same form factor, same connectors (can’t believe I even have to specify this): small medium large, and they should be called iPad mini, iPad, and iPad Pro. The iPad should serve the vast majority of the market. The pro should really feel like it’s for Pros. The mini s…
they should use the same words for all their devices. they need to decide between Mini and Air or make one of those the "regular."
Macbook, iPad, and iPhone: Mini, Air, Plus? Air, nothing, Pro? Why is it a Macbook Pro and an iPhone Plus and then a Max? They need one word and one world only for big and powerful, not 3.
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#208Can you run Linux on these machines?
If not, does anybody here have experience running Linux on a tablet?
It could make a nice experience to have a tablet instead of a laptop, so you can put the tablet a bit higher and use it with an external bluetooth keyboard. I think that would work, right?
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#209I'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…
Are you sure the most common computer isnt a business desktop? What percent of people with office jobs, who are not in IT, sit at a desk all day?
Personal computing is probably phone first, work computing I would guess is still desktop, followed by laptop.
Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini
#210I'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 got my first iPad a year ago, suspecting I wouldn't use it for anything (and I'm nowhere close to 50). Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. It's now my primary device for: - Reading and annotating books and papers in PDF format (academic research has never been easier, I use a stylus too) - Mounting to a tripod and recording video (e.g. professional presentations, with a lapel mic connected -- again, screen s…
Similar story here. I won my first iPad in a office raffle. I was going to sell it since I figured I'd never use it, but my kids screamed bloody murder so I kept it and I found that I used it all the time, especially for reading documents and news.