Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

"The iPad 2 is still in use today," IDC Senior Analyst Jitesh Ubrani tells TechCrunch. “The [original] iPad Minis and Air are all still in use today. They were being supported by Apple until very recently. People have been hanging onto these devices and they’re finding that they work just as well as they did when they were released"

It's simply true. I have a iPad 2 and iPad Air 2, and both run fine. The former still on iOS6, so it is fast. Most people who upgraded iPad 2/3 to iOS7+ regretted doing so, and replaced their device.

It's Apple's fault, if they want more sales they shouldn't fragment and confuse the customer with the whole iPad Air 2 not updating for years, than two iPad Pro models with higher price, and now the 9.7 model.

People want faster hardware and new features with every model, otherwise there is no reason to switch and replace an otherwise good working device. It's the same for smartphones, tabets, notebooks and PCs. Only that tablets are in-between phones and notebooks, and many people around the world just got their first access to internet and only own a smartphone. So no tablet and notebook sales from those.

If a brand stagnates, people start looking elsewhere for new more exciting devices. For example in China tier 1+2 cities the last 6 months there is a new trend, iPhone 7 was a big let down in their opinion, and so you see more and more high end Android phones - it happends very fast.

To manufacturers of phones/tablets/notebooks/desktop: produce new better models with new exiting features. Why is my 2010 notebook has the same spec as 2017 models, despite new ones that meet even the spec cost almost twice as much? Why is dual core in 2017 models still almost the only option? Where are the augmented reality camera features in smartphones and tablets?

I cannot agree with the quoted statement. Early Apple tablets do not work as well as when they were released. I bought an iPad 3. After each major iOS release it became slower. Now it runs iOS 9 and it is unbearably slow. I only ever use it to watch YouTube, and even this is an exercise in patience.

Because of the performance drop, I had bought an iPad mini 4. After half a year I sold it because I simply didn’t use it often. I cannot imagine spending $400 on a new iPad. I will keep using my iPad 3 until it breaks. And I will not buy a new iPad again. The OS and form factor is too limited to do any serious work on it. (I’m not going to buy a keyboard and stand for a tablet just to have a subpar laptop experience.)

As counterpoint, I used my first generation iPad until I broke the screen last year. (It withstood more than a few drops as the corners attested before finally succumbing.) Granted, my use case wasn't overly intensive: mostly just web browsing and video viewing (Netflix, HBO Now, iTunes). My primary gripes are with iTunes and video storage management, and while that was more acute with the limited storage of the first generation iPad, it hasn't changed with its 9.7" iPad Pro replacement. But that first generation iPad worked well for me, even with iOS 9.

> But that first generation iPad worked well for me, even with iOS 9.

The first-generation iPad did not support past iOS 5.1.1.

Thanks for the correction. I know I always upgraded the OS when prompted, which is why I (mistakenly) assumed it was running the latest version.

Can I asked something? Why are iPads popular? Genuine question. I will admit first that I also use an old iPad for watching YouTube, but that's because I run Linux on my surface pro 3, and YouTube sucks my battery dry faster than you can say sudo.

But, the iPad is still too heavy to hold for extended periods, falls over all the time on its rubbish case if I keep it on the uneven bed, and I find the surface kickstand does the job much better. Or just a normal laptop. Even for playing music when I cook, laptops somehow have less friction.

Don't use a case as those add to much weight.

I also upgraded to a newer iPad which is dramatically lighter. Around 1lb seems about the limit for comfortable use indefinitely. The new iPad is a little lighter than a hard back book, the iPad mini at 0.65 pounds is lighter than the average paperback.

PS: The 12" pro is 1.59 pounds which IMO is to heavy for sustained use.

Offline Netflix and Amazon Video only works on tablets. Useful for flights. Otherwise, I'm not really sure what an iPad is for...

Content consumption? I am reading this on my bed, on my iPad Pro.

I have an iPod mini my wife won, I use it in the restaurant kitchen for music, looking things up and stocktake.

You probably do on your laptops or phone what others do on the iPad. it's also worth nothing how much more portable the iPad mini is than the 9.7" form factor.

Just as a side note, we've never needed to upgrade the ipad air 2 nor any prior tablet from apple. We're of horror stories of devices slowing down or degrading with each iteration of ios so we've been lucky in not keeping them up to date.

On the other hand its actually been a negative impact in regards to wanting to buy a iphone. Knowing that if apple ever force a update or accidently swipe a notification away we could be looking at slower devices is a incentive not to buy their iphone products.

The hardware possibly matured to a point where future iOS releases don’t have a noticeable performance impact anymore. The iPad 3 and iPhone 4S became slower with each major update whereas the iPhone 5 is still perfectly okay to use. Apple’s recent ARM chips rival laptop CPUs. Apple would have to intentionally cripple iOS devices to make them feel sluggish.

(Nevertheless, since my trust in Apple has eroded, I can imagine the bean counters thinking of how to increase sales by deliberately degrading older hardware.)

I'm in the same boat not upgrading OS version, but it does limit your app choices significantly.

With the CIA ios exploits out in the wild now, how can you really be comfortable using such an insecure version?

If you're that worried you should just simply stop using the internet. People downloading the facebook or messenger app kind gives a clear message they don't care about their privacy or their data.

Great comment. What you are saying is spot on. I had a 2009 17" Toshiba satellite dual-core I upgraded ~1.5 years ago to another Toshiba Satelite 17" with a quad-core haswell chip. Now my mom is looking to upgrade her aging 2010 Gateway 17" dual-core machine but for Intel's latest lineup, most i7 laptop CPUs are only dual-core and only a slight clock speed bump above the i5 models. I guess they felt quad-core mobile CPUs consume too much power for laptops but still, since they were able to do it a couple years ago, why have we taken a step backward?

She also is a happy owner of a non-retina iPad mini which is still chugging along.

I think the move to fewer cores and lower clock speeds was to improve battery life. You can still buy laptops with quad core CPUs (even Xeons if you look round), but battery life is nowhere near as good as the new dual core i7s

You are conflating several issues that have little to do with the topic of what happened to tablet sales e.g. Apple's iPhone sales drop is China is only tangentially related to tablet sales drop worldwide (fwiw I agree your diagnosis about lack of fashionable iPhone upgrades, particularly a new design. the other significant factor is spiking iPhone prices in international market due to exchange rate).

Tablet sales and upgrade patterns can't be directly compared to smartphones. Consumers upgrade their smartphones often because in key markets those purchases are subsidized (the single biggest factor in the iPhone's success was switching from a full price sale system of the original model to the subsidized system for the iPhone 3G). Tablets are more comparable to laptops/desktops. However iPad has even dropped below the Mac. Why is that? So back to the techcrunch article:

> part of the slow down in sales can be chalked up to user disappointment in the devices’ limitation following the initial excitement around the space... growing size of smartphone displays has gone a ways toward cannibalizing tablet sales, as well, limiting the need for a much larger device when so many handsets are now within the six-inch range. On the high end of the spectrum, convertible touchscreen Windows 10 devices have eaten into tablet market share, while Chromebook sales have begun to dominate the education market that tablet makers once saw as a key use case... Amazon marks a rare bright spot on that end of the spectrum, due to its relatively unique ability to subsidize costs as it positions Fire tablets as, essentially, content delivery devices...

When the iPad launched in '10 the iPhone was 3.5" and the laptops were big and bulky. In the following years that space for tablet growth was squeezed by large Android phablets and Macbook Airs (the 11" launched in a few months after the original iPad). Still the iPad, was proclaimed as the future of computing by Apple. It should have reached upwards to dethrone laptops/netbooks. The tablet problems are simple:

1) multitasking/multiwindow is basic on tablets and the UX is just not good enough, especially considering the disadvantages when compared to laptops/desktops with bigger screens

2) data/file management and sharing for projects spanning multiple persons and tools. iOS in particular is woefully lacking in this regard

3) poor input system. This is arguably the most critical factor. As long as a hardware QWERTY keyboard remains the most efficient way to provide text input then the laptop form factor, and OSes designed for that form factor, will remain dominant for productivity. An iPad with a hardware keyboard but without a mouse/trackpad is a sick UX joke resulting in arm fatigue.

More than anything else, TABLETS NEED A REVOLUTIONARY SOFTWARE KEYBOARD or INPUT SYSTEM. That should be Apple's or a YC startup's first priority.

(NB: tablets offer voice input, some actually decent, but that's obviously a nonstarter as general input in a noisy classroom, library, coffee shop, open office plan unless perhaps Apple can make a stenomask[1] fashionable. A revolutionary touch software keyboard still seems the best bet imo)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenomask

Reply on news.ycombinator.com