621–630 of 693 posts
My iPad wins by a large margin the lowest bang for bucks of any competing device I ever purchased A locked down device with no multitasking, even the browser download is interrupted if I switch away. The true embodiment of paternalism, it protects you from all the scam in the world, except the noble ones who are willing to pay the 30% share.
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Tim Cook's fear of people not buying a full set of Apple devices for each person is the driving force behind not just the lack of multiuser support, but also the overall nerfing of iPadOS. For the past 5+ years it's been, "This will be the year of real work on the iPad," but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.
I don't understand how a trillion dollar company can't at this point say "you know what, I think we're good on the profit front, let's convert some of that into improving UX"
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Why is it getting expensive when using the phone as a hotspot, but not when using the iPad or MacBook directly with cellular data?
I think some (most?) carriers in the US charge for hotspot traffic separately from direct access from the phone (by looking at packet's TTL, it's lower by 1)
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Thank you for making me feel old. The first iPad came out when I was doing my PhD. When I was a kid, Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the web.
Haaa! I also paused reading at “as a kid.” I bought the 1st Gen iPad for my daughter while I was in the States for work (2010). Not a phone, big enough, and can be Internet-connected with a SIM. Lots of Games, and later my feeling of having bought something amazing was that my daughter learnt to speak brilliant English with Peppa Pig, way before her formal school started. Palo Alto Stanford Shopping (USA) › FedEx to…
Well that's interesting having seen so many of your posts on this site, hullo quasi-neighbour! (I'm originally from Tripura!)
The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. It'd be a nice thing to have on your coffee table, where anyone in the household can pick it up and be logged into all of their stuff. Windows XP had this feature. Chromebooks have this feature. It's inexcusable that such an expensive gadget can only have one user.
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I don't understand how a trillion dollar company can't at this point say "you know what, I think we're good on the profit front, let's convert some of that into improving UX"
Its not in their DNA, the don't get that large by making that kind of decisions.
Well maybe that kind of company would've been aggressive about always being competitive, yeah? Instead of whatever Tim Cook is doing...
The iPad would go from a never-buy to a buy-right-away for me, if they added user profiles. It'd be a nice thing to have on your coffee table, where anyone in the household can pick it up and be logged into all of their stuff. Windows XP had this feature. Chromebooks have this feature. It's inexcusable that such an expensive gadget can only have one user.
Tim Cook's fear of people not buying a full set of Apple devices for each person is the driving force behind not just the lack of multiuser support, but also the overall nerfing of iPadOS. For the past 5+ years it's been, "This will be the year of real work on the iPad," but they keep circling around it, trying not to make iPads accidentally powerful enough for someone to skip buying a MacBook.
Kinda ironic for a company when it was Jobs who said"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will"...
I have an ageing iPad, but the crap software really makes me reconsider ever wanting to spend so much money for a shiny toy.
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Why is it getting expensive when using the phone as a hotspot, but not when using the iPad or MacBook directly with cellular data?
I think some (most?) carriers in the US charge for hotspot traffic separately from direct access from the phone (by looking at packet's TTL, it's lower by 1)
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But the iPad is not a console … it doesn’t even do Steam. All that horsepower to play … a couple of forever titles and that’s it. I have the M1 iPad Air and it has never used that processor to its fullest. I think iPad is just an odd device for most people
mobile gaming is much bigger than HN would believe. A lot of people do in fact, play more than a couple forever titles. I know multiple weebs that want more powerful ipads to play mobage.
Just Gaming in general made something like $200 BILLION in revenue in 2025. Movies made ... $33B globally.
And of that $200B, mobile games were over half.
If the average HN'er would just think of the money they spend on their hobbies (or don't it usually doesn't end well =P) and now apply that to mobile games. They're a hobby or a way to relax for millions and millions of people.
They pay for the "predatory IAPs" because they consider the $10 spent a good investment on the fun they're having in the game they play.
There's a specific group of people who just have the mindset of "never pay real money for anything in a game" - I'm one of them. But even I have to admit that I'm in the minority.
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You’re forgetting just how convenient a tablet is and how little average people care about the latest and greatest triple-A games.
I've found a tablet convenient in 3 situations: Watching video, reading ebooks or displaying sheet music. (And a single tablet is rarely very good for more than 2 of these at a time.) Otherwise it's either too cumbersome or the I/O is too useless.
And even on an iPad you can put a video running in the corner while you browse HN or Lobste.rs.