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New iPad Air and iPad Mini

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Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#271

Post by chipotle_coyote »

everyone wrote: post #191
baobrain wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd love to see some data on how much of Apples profits come directly from selling dongles. Their hardware nowadays is probably designed to facilitate a certain amount of dongle sales. They will mark-up the sale price of an intel cpu by 3 or 4 100%, but the markup on the dongles is even greater, 800 or 1000% it seems to be comparing the prices to similar cables.

I keep seeing accusations that Apple has a nefarious plan to make money through dongles, but if that were the case, wouldn't they have more proprietary connectors rather than less? The only dongle I have for my iPad Pro is one that allows HDMI output, and it's from Anker. And while I do have a USB-C to USB-A dongle from Apple for my MacBook Pro, in practice I rarely used it; I just used cables with the right connectors on both ends (e.g., USB-C to Mini USB), and none of those cables were from Apple except the USB-C to USB-C cable that came with it.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#272

Post by Wowfunhappy »

komali2 wrote: post #264
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surface pro line has had USB C for a long time, and at the higher end is about as powerful as you can get in 2019 in a machine that size. I hate Windows too but you're not going to see a macOS device like this for obvious reasons (well, Apple can do anything, but I wouldn't count on it). If you don't mind running Linux natively, most Surface models do reasonably well there.

Does it have USB C? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-pro-6/8zcnc665slq5... 1 x full-size USB 3.0 3.5 mm headphone jack Mini DisplayPort 1 x Surface Connect port Surface Type Cover port6 MicroSDXC card reader Compatible with Surface Dial* Doesn't seem to...

Hmm, it looks like I got the pro and non-pro lines confused. Thank you for correcting me.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#273

Post by chipotle_coyote »

hammeiam wrote: post #255
crazygringo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you use for pdf annotation and citation management? I really like hosting my own data with zotero+webdav, but there basically is no interface. On the flip side, Mendeley has a ton of features, and works+looks great, but hosting is paid.

Depending on what you want for PDF Annotation, Readdle's PDF Expert (as close to full-fledged Acrobat as you're likely to get on the iPad) or the intriguingly weird LiquidText are good options.

https://pdfexpert.com/ios https://www.liquidtext.net

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#274

Post by ehsankia »

askafriend wrote: post #178
tolmasky wrote: post #30

It 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…

This is a supply chain optimization and also the reason they can keep the costs low for these products. Cost is important here and the whole reason this product line exists. It’s a mirror of their iPhone strategy where they sell last years model for cheaper. They’re using old components and designs where they think it makes sense, but are being uncompromising about the compute power (e.g. A12 Bionic, AR capabilities)…

Can they not support both, while shipping the old one to still do supply chain optimization?

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#275

Post by mediaman »

hiteho wrote: post #16
jackfrodo wrote: post #3

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 know a few private charter pilots who are massively excited this morning. The iPad Mini is the only iOS device that is big enough to use at arms length, small enough to fit in a cramped cockpit, and approved by the FAA. They use a handful of apps during flight for planning, weather, approach data and whatnot. There has been a lot of fear among the local pilot community that the Mini would be discontinued. While the…

Yes, the use of iPads has had a huge impact on aviation. Fancy built-in devices that cost $25k-80k to implement in the cockpit can be replicated on an iPad, and the mini is the best fit. A lot of pilots were really bummed when it appeared that Apple had given up on the mini.

Of course, it can't be used as a primary instrument since it's not certified, but it's amazing paired with ForeFlight so you can see synthetic visualized terrain (you're stuck in clouds, and want to see where the ground is), you can see where other planes are in the airspace, their altitude and direction via ADSB-in, you can do flight planning on it and easily pull approach plates or pull up airport diagrams, it allows you to see the terrain profile of a planned trip much more easily than referencing the charts, and it can serve as a backup to your primary instruments if you have an electrical or vacuum failure in the plane.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#276

Post by gervase »

sascha_sl wrote: post #259
amluto wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have this backwards. Apple’s shoddy (but slim!) cable construction notwithstanding, the Lightning male metal bit is quite strong. The parts that wear out are the springy parts in the female connector. USB-C puts the springy parts in the male connector. (Lightning also seems prone to arcing or overheating damage to the power pins. Source: visual inspection of my many failed Apple and third-party Lightning cables.)

Yes, I've had every lightning cable, apple or not, show darkened and eventually dying 4th pins. It's infuriating. You essentially have to unplug the USB-A side first to prevent it from happening. Strange enough I've not seen this happen to a lot of other people.

This happens to me constantly. I was going through 3-5 cables per year before I switched to inductive charging.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#277

Post by imandride »

jackfrodo wrote: post #3

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 since I purchased a Surface Book, my iPad has been gathering dust. The convenience of having both available in one package has been great.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#278

Post by bonestamp2 »

tolmasky wrote: post #30

It 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…

This seems like a clear signal that the next iPhone will continue to have a lightning port. They were so fast to go all-in with USB-C on the macbook line because it meant they could make the computer thinner/lighter. But the lightning port already gives them that on the iOS line. It's now obvious that they don't care about standardizing as much as they claimed to back when they introduced the 2016 macbook pro.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#279

Post by currymj »

hammeiam wrote: post #255
crazygringo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you use for pdf annotation and citation management? I really like hosting my own data with zotero+webdav, but there basically is no interface. On the flip side, Mendeley has a ton of features, and works+looks great, but hosting is paid.

if you’re using Zotero check out Papership which is a pretty good iPad client. I haven’t run into a missing feature yet.

Also would recommend, if you want paid hosting, pay for a Zotero account with extra storage (run an academic group at George Mason University, aka the good guys). Don’t give money to Mendeley which is owned by Elsevier (definitely the bad guys).

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#280

Post by blackbrokkoli »

mrfusion wrote: post #235

Can you do any good 3d design with the pencil? Cad, sketchup, 3dfusion, blender?

I would be surprised.

The "clicking" device is not really the bottleneck in 3D design. Some people prefer normal computer mouses (high DPI), a 3D mouse (maps to 3D more directly) or touch (intuitive) but whatever.

The crucial part is key presses, all 3D software I've ever encountered can only be used in a efficient manner with intense shortcut using. On an iPad, that's hard, u either sacrifice a lot of screen space for non-physical keys, or use and external keyboard, at which point a laptop/desktop is better; especially with the second key element of smooth 3D editing in mind: GPU and CPU.

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