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New iPad Air and iPad Mini

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Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#301

Post by jdgoesmarching »

drewg123 wrote: post #68

Why did they keep the lightning connector? The Pro uses a USB-C. I wonder why they stuck with lightning for these models? I'm an Android guy, fed up with the clunky experience on Android / Amazon tablets, and thinking of making the switch & getting an air, mainly for media consumption during business travel. The last thing I want is a unique-to-me charging adapter that I'm sure I'm going to leave in a hotel or on a p…

I would imagine enterprise (POS, conference rooms, etc) is a big use of the Mini and they appreciate not having to switch out entirely different connectors. We easily use about 200 for our meeting rooms and the decision to upgrade them if it ever comes will probably be made easier by having the same connector.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#302

Post by jen729w »

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 42. My first computer was a ZX Spectrum+ back in the 80s.

I bought the first iPad the day it came out because I’m a(n Apple) nerd. I loved it, because it was amazing. Then for a while I fell out of love with it, because I wasn’t sure what it was for.

Now I work from home and this thing (10.5” Pro, previous model) is like my pet dog. It follows me everywhere. It plays music via AirPlay, it plays podcasts from its speakers while I’m in the shower, I text on it, answer calls, do most of my casual internet, do most of my casual notes (Bear, with the Smart Keyboard), calendar ... everything.

I sometimes look at this device and really think that in many ways, here we are. The future. I have this impossibly slim, sturdy, beautiful tablet, whose battery life is extraordinary, which does everything I could possibly want. It’s a little bit Star Trek.

Now, for proper work, the MacBook Pro on the desk upstairs plugged in to the 27” monitor is the way to go. But I type this to you from my kitchen bench as I make my girl her morning coffee, and that’s just fantastic.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#303

Post by floatingatoll »

cjg wrote: post #82

Please change the headline to something more objective such as: ""New iPad Air and iPad minis announced"

Please consider using the Contact link in the HN footer when asking the site admins to make changes to an article title or link. While they very occasionally see comments, they’ve directly asked us to email them with such requests so they can be addressed.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#304

Post by jdgoesmarching »

neuronic wrote: post #196
wintorez wrote: post #103

I'm sad that Apple's focus has shifted away from macOS devices to iOS devices. We could have gotten MacBooks with touch-screen by now.

> We could have gotten MacBooks with touch-screen by now I had a touchscreen laptop before and to me it was just incredibly useless. I am quite happy that Macbooks do _not_ have a touchscreen. If I want that, I get an iPad Pro.

I always see this argument around here and Reddit. Even as a huge Apple fanboy I think it's stupid.

Touch is a great input method. Cursors are a great input method. Apple is the only computer company not offering a device with both.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#305

Post by asdff »

kkarakk wrote: post #12
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.

nothing beats an ipad for media consumption - best combination of grippability,speakers and screen bar none. literally no one else is close in the market. i stopped using anything but an ipad for media consumption/talking to family after i bought one

How is a laptop any worse? You gotta hold the tablet upright or prop it up with a flimsy case-stand whereas the laptop just sits upright and has all the features and more, unless you like to jab at the screen with your greasy thumb. Back in the day when laptops were 7lbs and lasted 2hr on charge with a sub 1080p screen and worse speakers than your phone, I could see it, but macbooks are 2lbs now and last 10hrs. No streaming service is going to give you video that's not compressed, wiping the benefits of that fancy screen, and apple wants the soul of your first born if you want enough local storage to store large video files.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#306

Post by 0x38B »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #273
hammeiam wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's worth getting over LiquidText's initial weirdness. I downloaded it and then didn't use it for half a year, but when I gave it a go with some PDFs I was reading, I was hooked.

Grabbing parts of a book out into the workspace is easy, and then you can quickly review your workspace of highlights and notes later for a refresher. Also, viewing two places in a single PDF is as easy as tapping and holding on two highlights in the workspace.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#307

Post by asdff »

gpmcadam wrote: post #33
cranky_coder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what else would you expect from a press release announcing a product release by a company? An engineering spec?

To be more specific, I'm talking about the headline on HackerNews.

Which reads "New iPad air and iPad mini"

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#308

Post by asdff »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #304
neuronic wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could have gotten MacBooks with touch-screen by now I had a touchscreen laptop before and to me it was just incredibly useless. I am quite happy that Macbooks do _not_ have a touchscreen. If I want that, I get an iPad Pro.

I always see this argument around here and Reddit. Even as a huge Apple fanboy I think it's stupid. Touch is a great input method. Cursors are a great input method. Apple is the only computer company not offering a device with both.

The reason why apple doesn't want it is because it would cannibalize iPad sales. The reason why I don't want it is because it would either jack up the price of the macbook, or result in other components being worse to keep the price point the same.

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#309

Post by floatingatoll »

wintorez wrote: post #103

I'm sad that Apple's focus has shifted away from macOS devices to iOS devices. We could have gotten MacBooks with touch-screen by now.

Your comment suggests that Apple would offer touchscreen MacBooks if they invested more focus onto macOS. Their comments disprove your hypothesis.

Apple has outright dismissed touchscreen MacBooks as inappropriate for their customers, as recently as mid-2018. This implies not only that they focused on macOS devices with respect to touchscreens, but then decided they were a bad idea, and further decided to share that with the press.

https://www.wired.com/story/wwdc-2018-federighi-ios-apps-on-...

Re: New iPad Air and iPad Mini

#310

Post by jxdxbx »

neves wrote: post #109

Now I'm an Android user with envy. It looks like that the Android ecosystem quit the development of tablets. I don't know of any that get near the features of iPads. Do you know any good Android Tablets?

Hardware-wise Samsung's OLED tablets are nice, especially for reading, but it's hard to justify spending a lot on one given the weak software.

I think that the Lenovo Tab 4 8 is a decent tablet, much better than the Amazon Fires both in terms of hardware, and also because it supports Google Play. But when you're spending only about $120 there are compromises: you notice the slowness when rendering webpages and scrolling, and the screen is pretty low PPI. On the plus side the Lenovo tablets have built-in FM radios, which is kind of neat.

For smallish tablets where blown-up phone apps (which is all you usually get) aren't so bad, Android is ok. Functional, even if iPads really do have much better apps across the board. Recent versions have made it much harder for apps to access USB OTG drives, which is sort of a bummer, as I used to have Wikipedia offline on a USB stick and now the app I used to access it can't.

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