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New iPad Air, powered by M4

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Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#661

Post by veidr »

moolcool wrote: post #214

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.

You can thank short-sighted, busy, unprincipled-asshole parents (like me and my wife) for this.

Would I buy each of my 3 kids an iPad every 2-3 years[1] if they had this capability? Hell fuck no. I'd let them use my iPad, which I myself don't even use that much.

But as soon as my kids started texting weird shit to business contacts, or accidentally declining meeting invites because they were playing ROBLOX and the notification was annoying — there was no choice. They'd already experienced the iPad, and I'm too busy to do the super-dad job of weaning them off screens in favor of paper books. Plus, iPads are actually really cool for kids, in a lot of ways.

But the lack of multi-user on iPad is unforgivable user-betrayal. It feels a lot like the gas station charging $25 for a 2L bottle of water right after the earthquake.

Might not be illegal, but... fuck you. The iPad is a great product but it leaves me with a burning napalm hatred for Apple in my heart, just the same as when I try to cancel a US newspaper subscription. Fuck you.

[1]: because, while admirably durable, kids do just wear them out and break them

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#662

Post by estimator7292 »

nesky wrote: post #248
tomaskafka wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The flip side here is if I could use an iPad to replace the MacMini on my desk and connect to a monitor with the same support my Mac does I'd most likely have a top end iPad Pro as opposed to my mildly spec'd MacMini M2 and iPad Air M1. I'd literally spend MORE money on that 1 iPad than both existing iPad and Macs I have today.

Yes, but you see it's even more profitable if apple can convince you to buy both. They can't allow you to not buy both because that will make shareholders sad

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#663

Post by icedchai »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #569
Jeremy1026 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TVs are traditionally a shared experience. But even still, I have 2 TVs for every person in my household.

I’m 51 and I can’t remember ever going to a house with only one TV. Even my grandparents had multiple TVs and I definitely had one in my room since I was 4. A quick Google search says that 50% of households had more than one TV in 1980.

Same. I grew up in the 80's and we always had at least 2 TVs for a family of four. My sister and I both had small TVs in our bedroom once we were teens, so that was one TV per person at that point! To be fair, they were mostly used for video games...

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#664

Post by stasomatic »

kkylin wrote: post #34
spudlyo wrote: post #18

I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced. It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, whi…

I had an even older iPad I was happily using for similar use cases. Until one day a family member bricked it and I needed to factory reset. No big deal, I thought -- nothing important on it. Turns out it needed to phone home to do the factory reset, and since the server it wanted to talk to was no longer up (or perhaps the address changed?) I couldn't factory reset the iPad. If someone has a work-around I'd love to h…

There are “service providers” on EBay that I’ve used in the past to unlock iPads used by former unresponsive employees. Not sure about exact situation, in my case they defeated the iCloud lock. Was about a $100 a pop. All done remotely.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#665

Post by stasomatic »

MattGrommes wrote: post #334
upmind wrote: post #244

I owned a few iPads as a kid but as I get older I see less and less reason to buy one. It kinda sits in the middle of usefulness of a phone and laptop for me. Larger screen than phone yes, but can't run any of the applications I need from a laptop. If it had MacOS, I'd be much more inclined to buy it.

Mine is 98% for reading comics and 2% learning to draw on Procreate. Most everything else I find awkward to do on it.

My current gen Mini is my Reeder, HN, and Balatro machine. Balatro is intolerable on my 15 Max. $400 well spent and i dont care to share it anyone else.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#666

Post by nmcfarl »

lurking_swe wrote: post #476
moolcool wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the end user's problem whose fault it is.

I agree with you. and the end user can blame Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, etc for not delivering the best experience for their customers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Or they can blame Apple for delivering a developer experience to those companies that makes those companies not want to play ball.

Not that they likely will, as Apple owns the framing.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#667

Post by tristor »

tristor wrote: post #365

Let me know when I can buy an M5 Max Macbook Pro that can run local open weight LLMs. Until then, nothing else is particularly interesting, everything I already own gets the job done.

Apparently today: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-macb...

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#668

Post by mr_toad »

aljgz wrote: post #611

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.

It has some multitasking on the latest versions of iOS. You can drag a YouTube window up by the bottom right corner and open a Reddit window on another part or the screen if you truly need to be distracted from distraction by distraction.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#669

Post by lostapathy »

aljgz wrote: post #611

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.

You're complaining about things that were changed years ago.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#670

Post by plussed_reader »

moolcool wrote: post #214

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.

The profiles work fine in Apple Classroom mode. Just a question of SSD space for the active profile(s) and a cloud source that can be used to swap them around if the SSD saturates.
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