The iPad Mystery
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
My mom's iPad is my old short-lived iPad 3. She gets Pinterest, she browses the web, she does her email, we Facetime. My dad borrows it from time to time to buy a rare book online or to look for some obscure Prog Rock band from the '70. He is the typical proudly tech-illiterate son of the fifties, but well, he actually loves to use his iPad 1 as a YouTube Radio when he's painting.
She has a laptop at home, but it's strictly connected to work related task. I.e. spreadsheets. And that's it. Her laptop and her iPad are perfectly complementary devices she is not really thinking about changing until they will break or become unbearably slow.
There's no mystery: the iPad IS a computer, and its update cycle reflects it.
The early sales growth of the iPad was unsustainable. If it had flattened at 11m a quarter the installed base would now be about 800m devices, more than half that of all laptops and desktop PCs combined. Is anything much less than that to be considered failure?
I believe what happened is that, leveraging the already mature iOS platform, the iPad was already close to being fully realised as a product in the first few years. Customers and developers recognized that value and bought into the platform heavily very quickly, but so quickly that it wasn’t sustainable. Since then platform improvements have been incremental, but it’s still selling extremely well. ASP, margins, customer satisfaction and App sales are all very healthy. This is a strong product that owns it’s market.
Sure. I mean, even my definition changed every year if I have to go backwards.
Students always come into my office and wonder why I don't have "a good computer" or why "everything is so old" (which admittedly the Apple //e is), but if the only software you need to run is a terminal and a browser, then upgrading your hardware becomes a lot less critical.
I just recently pulled out my old iPad 1 and charged it. I was marveling at how well-designed it is, and how much I miss the simpler OS that runs on it. It's since been supplanted by my iPhone, MacBook and Surface, but I'd love to have a good reason to use it again :)
we're also stretching out their lifespan because today's equivalent offer arguably the same or worse overall experience at a higher price point, so there's that as well.
I have a low-end laptop that I use for travel - a ThinkPad x131e running OpenSuSE. uMatrix makes the difference between a machine that's unusable for web browsing and one that's actually fast.
However, it is kind of a pain to figure out what pieces need to be allowed for a site to work and what are superfluous. Once you get it nailed down though, you can just press the lock icon to make it remember your selections.
And, the battery still lasts for a long time. If I don't touch it for a few days, it's charge is where I left it. Pretty amazing. No reason to upgrade this thing.
Sure, I miss security fixes if I don't update, but at the point when Apple stops supporting the hardware, what's the difference?
Got a refurb 9.7" Pro... so nice.
The school district also requires their ipads be used in indestructible cases, which helps with reliability and also eliminates conspicuous consumption, which is a major driver of phone sales. If every kid at school has a uniform identical ipad case then a replacement does not indicate high status, so there's no motivation to replace often.
For me, the upgrade cycle is longer than for a laptop. I still do most of my reading on an iPad 1 (from 2010). When I replace it (soon), it won't be with another Apple product since I'm a bit miffed that I can't upgrade it and the web browser crashes with certain valid HTML. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the hardware and the battery life is still amazing.
My plan is to either get a Kindle or a cheapish Android tablet and will definitely go for something lighter.
I have an Apple PowerBook G3 Wallstreet that still runs and even has reasonable battery life. I'm not using it because it's simply too slow but I can still load a modern Linux on it. This is how hardware should become obsolete.
Edit: By comparison, the iMac I bought at the same time as the iPad Air is starting to feel sluggish and outdated, particularly as it is not a 5K version so switching between a retina iPad and a retina MacBook and a retina iMac feels jarring when using the iMac.
Assuming many people get a new one fairly soon based on form factor Apple and others may have been confusing side grades for upgrade.
Also it can't be considered both "a computer" and considered to be in a maturing lifecycle phase if tablet sales are down while laptop sales are increasing. If you consider the iPad a computer, then Apple's product line is cannibalising itself, which would also be an issue.
Say what? You know Apple doesn't sell just one computer, right? They don't have any product called the Apple Computer. They have several different laptops, several different desktops, several different AIOs, and if you consider an iPad to be a computer, several different tablets. No one is saying the Macbook Air is cannibalizing sales of the Macbook Pro, or that the Mac Mini is cannibalizing sales of the 27" iMac. They might be computers, sure, but different computers are built for different use cases. There's a world of product differentiation between those offerings.
E.g. with simple figures: Apple spend 1 billion producing iPads from start to finish, and selling them produces 10b in income. They then introduce Macbooks which cost 5b to produce and result in 10b in income. If the introduction of lower margin Macbooks causes a 25% drop in sales of higher margin iPads, then the profitability of their product line has been reduced due to inter-product competition.
It's generally not a good thing and represents a waste of resources.
It would be like if they created a product category that made another product category obsolete. Like, say, the iPhone and the iPod.
I might replace it this year with the 9.7" model announced in March, but I have a good laptop and no particular need to replace the iPad. Not yet.
Yeah - that graph just looks like the derivative of a completely standard sigmoid curve.
I look around me in the room I'm in currently and I see a massive collection of much-loved, very respected, well-used hardware: synthesisers. But I'm typing this message on a machine (MacBook) that is inevitably going to end up being replaced by something else, just because after a few years its not going to be as much use as it once could have been. This has happened already - with many a MacBook/tiBook, my iPad1/iPad2 collection, and so on.
But yet, the musical instruments still remain, even 30 years after their release, and even long after official support has ended. I chalk this up to completeness: musical instrument manufacturers know that a musical instrument that needs repair/maintenance/upgrades on a regular basis, isn't a musical instrument. (Its more of a toy.)
I wonder what could happen that would bridge this gap between these two worlds - on the one hand, effectively 'finished' products that are always very reliable and still work the way they were intended, decades on - versus on the other hand, 'unstable' products that will, basically, still work on a fundamental level 10 years from now, as long as I'm willing to do the work myself to keep them running.
I wish the computer manufacturers treated their products more like refined, finished, musical instruments than half-finished/never-finished sort-of tools whose functionality is never, really, set in stone for the ages.
Go back and buy a computer from the 80s, and it's about as useful now as it was then. Buy one from the 90s, and that's still true for tasks that can be done entirely on that computer, but not so much for getting online.
Your iPad 1 is about as useful as it ever was when it comes to doing things that only involve the iPad. It's just that most things it could do want to talk to other computers, and those other computers haven't stayed static.
Find a computer that doesn't need to talk to the world, and you'll find a computer that can stay relevant for a long time. Every 20-year-old car on the road has 20-year-old computers in it still going strong, for example. But if you want a computer to both stay useful and derive its usefulness from the world, then you need the world to stop changing, and that won't happen.
It makes sense that you'd have to upgrade hardware to use new software...
- CPU clock rate has leveled off, mobile processors have been 2-4 threads for a while now and focus more on power efficiency
- 600MB/sec SSDs are kind of 'fast enough' with regards to app loading and boot times
- retina displays are as good as anyone can see
- the GPU is fast enough to draw a moderately 3D GUI
- battery life is longer than an 8 hour work day
- these days the power adapter is heavier than an ultralight
I think computers are starting to last longer and longer before going obsolete on a practical level. What we're seeing now is more like planned obsolescence, where new designs and form factors are getting introduced but the computer is more or less the same.
There are also some classic designs that last multiple years with minor refreshes much like a calculator: MacBook Air, XPS13, some thinkpads, the 10" and 7" iPad
Don't worry, Electron apps are working hard on saving us from 60 Hz.
Two months ago, there was a text editor benchmark on the front page, wherein Atom and VS Code were multiple magnitudes behind all the other editors, leading to this conversation:
Commenter: "Can anyone speak to the difference the underlying hardware makes with Atom or Code? Presumably a top-end desktop processor (~4GHz) and latest-generation NVME storage would offer really good performance, but perhaps not."
Me: "A year ago, people made fun about how programs will get proportionally slower once all the developers have switched to SSDs. Now we're already talking about having to upgrade to NVMe disks for a decent code editing experience."
I understand that abstraction comes with a cost. You tend to lose a little bit of control of exactly what your code does, and there will likely be more cycles used (sometimes trivial, other times not so much) to accomplish the same task. It's one thing to push the boundaries of existing hardware for the sake of productivity. It's another to say, "Yeah using Electron apps for text editing is fine. Just make sure you can bankroll bleeding edge computer builds, and you won't see any performance degradation."
How does that seem like a sane line of reasoning to anyone?
I see something similar in the hobby hardware space. Everyone using microcontrollers (and some really powerful ones) for tasks like homemade smart lights. It's way overkill, but it gets the job done and done quickly. And as a hobbyist it's great because it's infinitely reusable. But that doesn't make it the right thing to use for a shipping product.
EDIT: Ok, to expand on this. Running a small number (< 5) of Electron-based applications on my MBP with 16GB of memory feels like running the same number of instances of Eclipse circa 2005 on my shitty, cheap HP laptop. Nothing else can run alongside them because they're so memory/CPU hungry. But here's the thing, computers have gotten better since 2005. What's the rationale for such poor performance with these apps? my computer has 8x the memory today (maybe more) than that one had. The clock is up by 2-3x. Cores increased by 4x.
There's no excuse for this in final, deliverable products.
There is an excuse for it if you aren't willing to pay for faster software. Cheap is more important than fast for most software products.
Since CPUs and soon GPUs will level out, then at least crypto and video will be pushed into hardware blocks meant to encode/decode them. Churn in functionality requiring hardware assist will probably keep us buying some new hardware at least once and probably twice a decade.
Something that is downright crazy given how long NTSC and PAL stayed in use.
But then i live in Norway, where we are in the process of shutting down FM broadcasts in favor of DAB. Except that DAB has already been superseded by DAB+, and if you go a DAB radio early on you will have to toss that one and get a new one.
How many more computers will we probably buy before mixed-reality jumps the chasm and goes mainstream? I don't think it's more than 2.
We're currently in the modern equivalent of the mid-90s DOS plateau, where an experience that's actually quite mediocre has become the default user expectation.
Getting past this requires an order of magnitude increase in processor power. Given what's happening in hardware that seems unlikely any time soon.
It's more likely tablets will gradually catch up and merge with desktops - but there won't be any dramatic change in the UX offered by either. That needs speed and UI technologies that are at least a generation away.
The new UX will come from voice, AI, and robotics, which will make computing more physically interactive, and less tied to the glass typewriter/document library model.
Given the gargantuan data/compression requirements of light-fields (Lytro's cameras capture >300GB/sec of lightfield data!!!), plus rendering, persistent SLAM, etc, we'll need the power of a GTX1080Ti or better, but able to run flat out using only 1-3Watts of power instead of ~250W.
The good news is this is what the global smartphone manufacturing ecosystem is working towards, with a relatively short device life-cycle to finance the huge effort that will be required to get there. But mid to late 2020s will be all about mixed reality. I am convinced that it will be so incredibly compelling, that any 2D screen, no matter the size, resolution, dynamic range, or refresh rate, will be like command line compared to GUI today.
When we really want to get things done with a computer, we keep coming back to the keyboard and the CLI.
Even high end math/design/engineering packages have a CLI in them.
At the same time, there are ways that you can program a computer that do not rely on pure text input. We've already seen things like Scratch, GameMaker, and Unreal Engine's blueprint system explode in popularity. When the tools are built, people will use them, and they can supplant the previous paradigm.
I think there are advantages VR/MR can have for simple text input, too. I would love to have a virtual work environment where my files live in "physical" locations, where I can visit them as if they were sheets of paper or trinkets, arranging files or bits of code in front of me into graphs I can walk around and draw on like a whiteboard.
Imagine if computers cost $10000 and I got a core2duo machine years ago. I would be very reluctant to get it originally because of the cost and because I know there would be faster systems on the market in a few years. Engineering devices to have a limited lifetime has supported innovation by helping companies make money and by making things affordable so that normal people can buy the latest gadgets.
I know this has been bad for the environment and for those of us who would like things to last forever (I'm one). But, we can't discount the fact that a lot of tech innovation today is due to this very reason.
The main problem is that computers improve much more quickly than musical instruments, or cars, or whatever. I have computers that are nearly 40 years old that work just as well today as the day they were made, the only problem is these old computers don't run the modern apps we want. They don't have music players, or web browsers, or even convenient Internet access.
The computer didn't get worse, the world just moved on. Likewise, your old Core2Duo machine from ten years ago is just as good today, except it was made for an era when Windows fit inside of 256mb of RAM, and javascript was only used to make your cursor a weird color.
Computers don't get slower, we just ask them to do more things.
Now that the Moore's curve has started to flatten, I would not be nearly as opposed to a 30 year machine (especially a repairable one) today as I would have been even 5 years ago.
New processors and RAM are not making the previous generation processors obsolete anymore, which leads me to believe that a 30 year computer is now something which could be realistically considered.
I buy from the local college surplus when they life-cycle their desktops. For what I do at home (browsing, email, youtube, ssh for work) they are more than adequate.
So despite my plan to replace components constantly, I haven't actually had to do it. This has made me realize how little practical value constant upgrades to these components now provides.
I like to play with 8-bit machines, BBC Micro, C=64, Atari 800 and the like, all 30+ years old, the only repair they need is when a capacitor dries out and thats easy to do with the manual and a soldering iron. The constant upgrade cycle of so-called modern machines is clearly, totally artificial.
The hours I spent trying to learn basic with no book and no internet on that thing. Just typing random things into that blue console trying to figure out what secrets it held.
I have used my early-2009 octo-core Mac Pro for 8 years now and I am about to do a set of upgrades to it[1] that I believe will make it useful with no caveats or sacrifices for at least another four years.
I can't believe this is the case - I would never have imagined that that 2009 computer purchase would last 12+ years.
Also, I used my original 13" MBA for almost 7 years before the speakers stopped working. 2GB of RAM was getting a little cramped for my style of 20-tabs-open web browsing, but it wasn't unusable ...
Finally, I have, powered on in my office (and used regularly) an SGI Octane2 which is quite a bit older than all of the above and is a wonderful, wonderful computer - one of the best ever made.
[1] Max out the ram, PCIe based bootable SSD, USB3 card.
This is like comparing sound cards to graphics cards. Good quality sound cards will pretty much last forever because we've reached the peak of human hearing and the latency can't get any lower, (I've had the same sound card for production for over 10 years). GPUs however have loads of scope for improvement and so new ones are constantly coming out all the time, making old ones obselete.
With General Purpose Computers, there is a ongoing Jevon's paradox. As hardware improves, software is changed or introduce that gobble up said improvements and then some.
Thus software outpaces hardware to a massive degree.
We can see this in how as time march forward, what used to be done using dedicated chips are done using a GPC and software that emulates the dedicated chips.
Well, hang on now! That may be true of electronic instruments, but if you buy a piano and don't have it regularly tuned and maintained, that's how you end up with a honky-tonky toy piano. :)
My Lenovo T61 is almost 10 years old and I still use it daily. I hope it will last another 3-5 years.
Stagnation is the only thing that will stop it.
A high quality Moog synthesizer has a barrage of technical capabilities and is engineered and manufactured to the highest standards and tightest tolerances. The same can be said for a Macbook Pro.
The difference between them is that we expect the Macbook Pro to evolve over time. We expect it to connect to an ever-evolving network of other computers, where new threats and opportunities arise every day.
If you take that Macbook Pro and never connect it to the internet, I suspect you'd still have a wonderfully working machine in 10-20 years. If an issue comes up it would almost certainly be the SSD - which, since it's soldered in, can't be replaced.
Take my favorite Macbook though, the 2010 Pro - with its user-replaceable RAM, disk drive, and available optical drive. If I take care of it there's no reason I won't be able to get it to boot in 10-20 years.
I imagine video game consoles and other forms of electronics, at least up until recently probably were build as you say.
Computers, not so much.
Source: Also collecting synthesizers. :)
(This isn't on the same axis as fixability, but capitalism is usually able to deliver many variants and niche products, so fixable, expandable computers should exist at some price point, while Chromebooks/appliances you don't really ~own~ still have a thick piece of the market.
They also have a very long service life. That's probably a big reason why the growth rate doesn't compare well to the iPhone. The upgrade cycle is like 5-6 years, not 1-2.
I've thought a lot about Steve Jobs' "cars vs trucks" analogy.[1] Personally I don't use the iPad much anymore, owing to the narrowing of the gap between my bigger phone and slimmer, all-flash Macbook. But although I work in tech I don't see my Mac as just a "truck". I prefer it for web browsing, email, writing, etc., all "car-like" things. If you had a car and a truck in the garage you probably wouldn't pick the truck to drive the kids to school.. but that's what I do with my Mac, metaphorically speaking.
So I would expand the analogy slightly. If iPads are cars and desktop computers are trucks, then Macbooks are the SUVs. Still a very appealing choice for regular non-industrial users who just want a bit more capability.
[1] http://allthingsd.com/20130109/steve-jobs-was-right-tablets-...
These things have survived three kids, I don't think we've had any other thing they've used live this long. Pretty darn impressive.
It's working well. I love the lightness (with the Apple keyboard case it's a fair bit lighter than an MPB), the quasi-infinite battery (though some apps like Slack and, weirdly, Notes, can, without announcing it, suddenly go into battery draining mode... I'd love a more battery-friendly replacement), and the freedom of not needing wifi in most countries that I'm likely to travel too (thanks to the UK network "Three"'s "Feel At Home" feature that allows me to continue using my phone and iPad data as if I was in the UK). It feels really liberating.
Worth adding a disclaimer: I no longer do much or any programming. Most of the "value adding" work I do consists of talking to people, preparing the odd document and sending emails.
The thing that then really pissed me off was that iOS9 changed all of the keybindings so my bluetooth iPad keyboard with it's function keys all of a sudden became almost-useless. I still don't know how to switch the input language. Something with space? If I click the switch-language-key it just opens Spotlight.
Now I just degraded it to my media tablet that Airplays stuff to my TV, write scripts and documents and just organize my day-to-day. Though I wouldn't absolutely care if I wouldn't have it anymore. It's a 'extra' that makes certain things slightly more convenient but by no means do I think of it as a necessary tool.
I'm going to buy the next 12" MBP to replace it but I do hope for a better blend between iPad and Mac. If I could program on that thing more reliably I would.
(Just curious to know what swayed you to the iPad rather than the lightest Mac.)
If you can't do them on an iPad then you simply can not consider it a "work machine", in the general sense. You can do those on a 15 year old laptop with ease.
If it's something you can do on a 15 year old machine, which is otherwise nearly unusable (last week I turned on my 2001 Titanium Powerbook G4 for the first time in years; it could see my WiFi network, but not connect), then maybe that's not a very useful definition for "work machine".
That being said, I actually can do everything from my iPhone with the magic of Citrix.
Main use:
* YouTube
* More casual or turn based games like Ticket to Ride, Space Hulk, Candy Crush, Pinball Arcade, etc.
* Light web browsing when looking for things together
* Light creative application (both Snapchat-y things and Adobe suite)
* Remote maintenance through RDP when on holidays. Having limitations on what I can do helps preventing doing more than I should but it's enough to not bring a laptop.
I would replace it immediately if it was broken or stolen. Probably I would buy a bigger one instead. I'm still tempted to buy a new one but since I already have one and I still need to invest in:
* A MacBook for my wife
* Probably the iPhone 8 if it has new features I need to develop for
* I still don't have the Apple Watch
* Or an Apple TV
* Or even a decent 4K OLED TV to hook it up to
....so it probably won't happen until it breaks.
And I guess most people are in that boat. Apple makes them too damn good for their own good.
Right now i am making due with a cheap Windows tablet i bought because of curiosity, and it seems to get the job done for the most part.
Actually i am eyeing another Windows tablet, because it offers a keyboard and a couple of USB ports in a 8" package. And the lack of such ports is what i feel has held back tablets as being nothing more than big PMPs with a net connection so far.
Yeah sure, there is OTG. But that means tying up the one micro-USB port on the device. And I know there are supposed to be some standard for charging docks related to OTG, but i have yet to find one that actually works.
I think Apple's best strategy is to work hard to have the best integrated, iPhone, iPad, macOS, iTV, iWatch. Apple loyalist will keep the revenue stream healthy.
I feel like I have gone over to the dark side here: I have quit my FSF paid membership, shelved my Linux laptops, and have a much less complicated work-flow and entertainment experience with my macOS, iPad Pro, and iPhone. I feel like I have greatly simplified my life at the expense of free software, etc. ideals.
I feel Jobs saw the value in real computers even if a bit more locked down than self built they were still real computers. Compared to Cook who doesn't seem to understand or even like computers and thinks the future is in devices.
I just don't see why Apple can't accept that iPads might be great for kids, people who purely use machines for consumption and my parents but iPads are worthless to some of us who need to actually use the full potential of computers.
Whilst I often wish I could install the local development environment of my choice onto my Pro, having seen the crap that grinds all my dad's computers to a halt (he's one of those that sees something and just installs it) the "sandbox the shit out of everything" approach really makes sense to me.
It's more than just sandboxes. Android grinds to a halt just easily when you install crappy apps.
For example, I used a German classifieds app called Shpock for some time. After I uninstalled it, I noticed that I got around 50% more mileage out of my phone's battery.
As far as I've heard, stuff like this is not as prevalent on iOS because Apple enforces stuff like background scheduling more strictly than Android does. It's not just the sandboxing, it's the behavior of the interfaces that the sandbox offers.
Android seems to be taking a page out of iOS's book with the introduction of Android O and its restrictions to background services.
Never again. It's not even a question of the software being that of a glorified phone.
Even using a 3rd party code editor with its software 'coding keyboard' it was an exercise in inefficiency and anti-ergonomics. So by the time you've added a Bluetooth keyboard, you've effectively got yourself a ramshackle laptop that isn't quite as useful as an actual laptop.
It's not a laptop, because it's missing crucial laptop features (ability to do work on it). And it's not a phone because it's missing crucial phone features (portability and calls).
So when mine broke, I just didn't feel it was worth replacing. I've lost no value from not having an iPad, because everything it did could also be done on something else I own.
- Integration between apps is still not there. There's some good code editors out there with syntax highlighting and project based but none support git. There's some good git clients but there is no workable path between them and your coding environment without intermediaries like Dropbox etc, and none that share the concept of a project. You are at the mercy of the developers to support everything you need or to integrate with another (possibly third party) app. On MacOS there is always the lowest common denominator, the terminal which can glue any workflow together.
- The combination of iPad Pro and keyboard is bigger and thicker than a 13" MBP. Which would I rather take then...
This (exposing your internal file-system as a mount point) is available to all apps, since iOS 10 - it's just only Working Copy and Textastic that seem to support it.
The iPad is so very much lacking in all of these terms, and the Mac is not, to me it's no wonder why the iPad sales numbers are going down while the Mac sales numbers are going up.
Because there are platforms like Chromebook and Windows 10S which also do not satisfy your criteria but many would consider to be a computer as well.
Would you like to group all your files that belong to a certain project (photos, texts, presentations etc) together in one thing, like a folder? The iPad currently cannot do that. After that change, somebody could do a patch that would. And then Apple would see that there is a demand and do a proper version of that.
Would you like to use the great Apple Photos app, but also have all your files on dropbox/google drive? Well if you do that currently, you need to have your photos twice, and work with two different apps. With my suggested changes, one could create a patch app that just stores all your documents on the service of your choice.
Would you like to use the Google or Amazon Alexa voice assistants when you long press the home button? Currently you can't, but in my future you could. Any you would be surprised how much better they often are. That would create more competition, and would motivate Apple to up their Siri game.
Would you like to have a SNES emulator? A bittorrent client? A bitcoin client? A podcast client that can do flattr? All of these things are constantly shut down by Apple. You are not allowed to have these. With my suggested changes, you can have these.
Would you like to have something like Maya? Current iOS rules prevent any app from implementing their own windowing GUI, with the reason being that in this way, apps cannot become their own platform, which would be problem for Apple because then another party would become a platform owner. Well many professional apps like Maya are their own platform.
The list goes on an on. You do not have to be a programmer to suffer from the limits Apple currently imposes on iOS.
And it's not arbitrary at all. It just returns to the same state computing was in for 30 years until iOS arrived.
Also, watch your words. "More than a little ridiculous" is not an objective rational statement, it's just pure ad hominem.
Not at all. He said (paraphrasing) "this claim is ridicuolous", not "you are ridiculous".
And in case, we're doing a meta discussion on rhetorical semantics now, which is besides the point - because you can't argue away that saying "this claim is more than a little ridiculous" is just plain bad form.
My laptop I may want to upgrade to improve computing power and phone form factors continue to improve. Both of those things sort of affect the iPad but not nearly to the same degree. I carry my phone around in my pocket, if it's a tiny bit lighter it makes a huge difference. I mostly use my iPad at home, it's great for the things I use it for and there's no upgrade I can imagine that would significantly increase its utility.
So what about the other 10+ podcast apps out there?
For mobile gaming, this made me first get a Nintendo 3DS, and now a Switch. Not only is the hardware optimized for gaming, they still have a healthy market with full-priced pay-once games.
I also have and enjoy the MFi GameVice for my iPad Mini 4. It works quite well.
And I use the Zagg Tough Book case with my iPad Mini 4 to essentially turn it into an iPad Mini ToughBook, which fits into the hip pockets of the 'business BDUs' I normally wear.
Since the iOS 9 update my iPad 2 is a miserable piece of trash: everything is sluggish beyond saving, and the rendering has been butchered on those low dpi devices (the old iOS designs looked crisper).
EDIT: Fix iOS version, whichever one ditched skeumorphism.
I'd expect a $600 device to last a bit longer than that, and I'm sure the biggest IT firm in the world could easily create custom builds for their older devices: optimise font-rendering, properly convert assets to low-res versions, and disable (or degrade) the animations and transparency. If the internal OS architecture is sensible, these 3 adaptations shouldn't be that much work and shouldn't cause any bugs.
I wouldn’t want to code or a write book with it, and the software is in some ways more limited than I would prefer, but the hardware (display, stylus) are great and it’s a lovely tool for proofreading/annotating PDF files (or other material), making doodles, writing mathematical notes, sketching out user interface designs, drawing technical diagrams, planning carpentry projects, and so on (I know others also use it for drawing comics, making visual art, & cetera).
Basically it’s a great tool any time you want a computer (unlimited pages, many drawing tools in one, easy to import/share content, undo support, layers and versions, ..) with pen input rather than mouse/keyboard. The latency and precision of the stylus are as good or better than other graphics tablets, the screen is gorgeous, and the price is competitive as a drawing tablet.
I’d recommend one to anyone who can afford it, and does any kind of critical reading, design work (e.g. great for flow-charts), or work in a visual medium. It doesn’t replace a laptop, but it’s a great complement.
I seriously think the upgrade cycle for these devices is just much much longer than most people think it is
My mini2 has been used solidly for 2 years, I'm only looking to upgrade because the ipad2 the kids use has taken a beating and needs replaced.
I also found the tablet versions of MS Windows to be kludgy and uninspiring with some weird corner cases, but I’m not enough of an expert with it to really offer a fair review.
When I’m reviewing/proofreading someone’s paper, doodling mathematical notes, making a flow chart, sketching a user interface design, or drawing an illustration, I don’t want a “real computer”. I want one app at a time, and I want the UI chrome to get the hell out of the way.
YMMV.
Personally, I want a real computer for the things you mention for a simple reason: managing files on iOS is hell. The single-app model and app-specific content silos would be a poor fit for my workflow, where files come and go.
I know this all too well because I got a Surface 4 and it was really great except for the part where my main use for it was "run Adobe Illustrator in smaller spaces than a laptop and a drawing tablet require" and Illustrator drops the first half second or so of every line I draw with the pencil tool.
I now have a Wacom Mobile Studio which is pretty good when it's not failing to connect to the pen/touch drivers after waking from sleep, which happens just often enough to be annoying. It's got enough other problems that I would replace it with an OSX-capable IPad in a heartbeat.
- The iPad is getting cornered between large smartphones, which cover many mobile needs and the very portable laptops.
- Software. There are very few iPad-specific apps, which are really great productivity-wise. Software development was ruled out by the App Store conditions and still is difficult. The builtin applications didn't really grow over the years. Last time I tried, photos still didn't support hierarchical folders. This worked well in my first year of usage, but after 5 years it became unusable.
- Data transfer. For anything relating to productivity, the individual sandboxing of apps just gets into the way of working productively. Also getting data in and out of the iPad is not seamless.
- Software again :). The "desktop" just showing a grid of icons was nice for the iPhone, but the life tiles of Metro looked more useful on a phone already. A larger device like an iPad needs this or any other "real" desktop. I am not talking about "MacOS on the tablet" though. It needs a tablet-optimized desktop, but not a phone OS either. Multitasking needs to be improved. And why is it, that external bluetooth keyboards are still not fully supported with all special keys, e.g. for ssh clients? Why can't I browse photos on a SD-Card without importing them?
- Connectivity. Have courage, Apple, add USB-C. Have a real HDMI out, and if there were an HDMI-input dongle, it would be an instant buy for me. Duet is nice, but having the option to use the iPad as a real second screen would be great. A mode for the iPad pro where it would be an extension screen for a MacOS computer with full pen support would probably sell a lot (and hurt Wacom)
iOS 10 does support it, but it's kind of hidden (you have to long-press on the add album button to get an action sheet to add a folder) and I don't think it supports re-arranging anything (gotta do that on a Mac and sync it)
I only tested on an iPhone, since I made the unfortunate decision of buying a 16 GB iPad, so if I turn on iCloud Photos it effectively stops working because it fills up its internal storage (despite being "optimized").
I'm surprised something works on the iPhone but not the iPad. Are you syncing via USB or iCloud?
This is of course just an anecdote, but I am in no way surprised that smartphones are outselling their bigger siblings.
Meanwhile the iPad is basically a toy.
What's surprising to me is that anyone is surprised by these numbers.
None of that applies to buying a new tablet.
I'm finally considering a new laptop for the 30% CPU boost and WiFi 802.11ac improvements over my 2012 model.
If my iPad is a toy because it is mainly used for browsing reddit and watching youtube, then my laptop and my phone are also just toys.
Most iPads sold I'd guess are just wifi models.
Of course, getting the metal can open in an airport, especially on the "secure" side where you'll have been relieved of any personal toolkit you might ordinarily carry, is a separate consideration - but in a real pinch, a house or car key will probably do, because all you really need to manage is to pry out the top bulkhead with the terminals. If you can do that, you can get the batteries out, twist them off their solder tabs, and use them.
Another potential issue is that NiMH cells seem to run at a somewhat lower voltage than alkalines do throughout the discharge curve. I'm not sure whether that would pose an issue for a device like this; while it probably sips power, it might have a large voltage drop, which could conceivably result in shorter operating time from a cell that runs at a lower voltage to begin with. Still, I'd say it's certainly worth a try.
(Edit: forgot link.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/LUITON-Ni-MH-batteries-rechargeable-O...
1. It's too good for some (most?) use-cases. 2. It's not even close to good enough for other use-cases.
If all you're doing is consuming content on an iPad, the replacement cycle is absurdly long. The only reason I upgraded from an iPad 3 (the first retina version) is that I bought my dad an iPad air for Christmas one year, and the next year, I bought him a new iPhone. He stopped using the iPad when he got a large form-factor phone. So I took the iPad air. The 3 is still pretty functional.
But I can't really do anything with it. It's probably the world's most perfect porn delivery device, but you know, I can't write any meaningful code on it on a day-to-day basis that wouldn't be a huge compromise.
I know that there are some people who have successfully transitioned to iPad as a primary machine. But I'm just not there yet. Yeah, I wanted the hell out of one when they first came out.
Now, I'm glad to have one, but the one from a few years ago is good enough. Why buy a new one?
My iPad is relegated to being either an eBook reader or a Spotify player for my bluetooth speaker. Can't really be bothered to use it for anything else, the iPhone 7 plus is more than enough for most other tasks. Also can't see it becoming relevant for any sort of serious creative work with applications like Lightroom, Photoshop, Movie editors etc, those are all super shortcut driven once you become a power user and have to crunch through a ton of work.
The whole 'problem' with tablet sales is not that they are not useful or convenient, but that current models are actually so useful and convenient there is no reason to upgrade. I would only consider this a 'problem' if you are trying to sell tablets, from a user perspective it's actually a good thing.
The fact that tablets cannot comfortably do many things a laptop or PC can has been obvious to me from day one, they are complementary devices where the tablet is primarily a more convenient/more comfortable device for many things, but not suited at all for others. Convertible/hybrid laptops may seem to follow naturally, to unify all use cases in a single device, but personally I'm not sold on this idea. I'd guess the demographic who really wants a full PC-like experience typically doesn't mind having separate devices that are best at a subset of tasks, instead of one device that's merely 'ok' at all of them. At least I know I don't mind...
So what is the actual demographics here?
You'd at least need to have more money left then most of the above mentioned demographics. You'll also need to be prepared or willing to use an apple system. It's very likely that you already have at least one other Apple device that you already use to "consume content online". Which brings us back to the question that appears often here:
Why do you need another one?
I watch Al Jazeera news, listen to music and do my monthly stocktake on it. Occasionally I'll send an email etc.
It suits my needs as I don't have room for a laptop(I can stiff the iPad on the shelf when I get busy and still hear my music), I can do basic Excell input(I designed the sheets on a PC though).
In my mind it's a support tool, not a primary tool.
I do agree tablets are great support tools. For watching videos, music, and email (reading) they are great.
Typing on the pad is a major pain in the arse honestly, partially because it is an older unit, and every update requirea more processing power to do the basics.
My normal goto response is, unless you have a passion for fine dining, go do something that makes money, and just host dinner parties.
Realistically though, two things. A) knife skills, learn them, though google, YouTube and practice. They will be your best asset. It will take years. There is no shortcut to experience here, but there are shortcuts to mediocrity.
B) there is nothing wrong with not remembering everything. Read up on every style of cooking and each technique, so if you are rushed you will know the basics, but there is too much to remember - don't be afraid to google how to search a specific thing. Eg roasting times for different types of meat. I looked it up tonight, I don't roast that often, so I don't remember the general times for each type of meat, there is nothing wrong with double checking your memory haha.
(Bonus?) C) once you get to my level)executive chef), don't be afraid to learn or listen, I have learnt more in the past 12 months than I would have thought possible, due to meeting chef's with an amazingly different outlook on things.
Edit:
Mobile apps? Not really, there isn't a stack overflow for chef's, or any major resource center, just Google. (I am working on this with another chef :-p)
I do have a passion for fine dining but I'm not sure if I would be able to handle the pressures of working in a professional kitchen. I do think it would be a more rewarding profession compared to programming in a corporate environment which has become a chore.
I think I may go with your advice of developing my skills as a hobby!
I should have phrased my last question better- I was wondering if as an Executive Chef and technology enthusiast you can think of ways a mobile app (or technology in general) could aid a team of chefs in a professional kitchen? (developing something like that would be a pretty amazing experience).
The issue with anything for chef's is the kitchen is hot, wet with lots of oils and liquids going around. Most devices don't last too long haha.
For non service related items, there are quite a few for execs to help control costs and work flow, it's a fairly well supplied area to be frank.
In the kitchen, something like an Amazon Echo may work?
(My mom uses an iPad as well for similar purposes.)
I for one love the idea of a durable product with a long usable life span. But Apple investors might disagree.
iPads are pretty long-term devices. I bought the iPad Pro 12.9" for my girlfriend March 2016 and she said "I don't want another until this one breaks up, it works perfect for me".
Does it occur to these journalists that the sales decline is not coming only from the fact that the tablets are niche devices, BUT ALSO from the fact that Apple's tablets in particular are relatively long-lasting?
I bought a Nexus 7 in lieu of the iPad in 2015. The Nexus 7 is only 2 years old, but it chugs along fine as well. My only complaint is that the standby battery life on the Nexus is abysmal. It's not an age thing - it's always been bad.
There is no need to be on the upgrade wagon for tablets like with phones. This isn't quite the case anymore, but 2 years on the same phone used to be a very long time in terms of hardware/software breakthroughs. A 2010 version of a smartphone was usually markedly different from a 2012 version of a smartphone. Once the 2nd generation of tablets was released (to fix the missteps of the 1st generation), then there was little incentive to upgrade.
While things like Bluetooth 5.0 -- which allows you to be connected to more than one device -- are important and improve quality of life for people with a lot of tech (which inevitably will be all of us in a few decades), CPU/GPU performance and the need for more RAM have ground to a halt. I've seen people game on an iPhone SE and being happy about it, too. Wi-Fi can't honestly be developed much further from now; nobody's phone needs even 50MB/s, let alone the insane projections for 5G speeds. 2560x1440 smartphone displays are meaningless; very few people can spot the difference between that and a 1920x1080 screen in a 5.5" factor; even fewer need that difference. The list goes on.
Add to that the previous point of both of us -- that the iPads are long-lasting -- and I only see such articles as the OP as meaningless clickbaits that don't inform anyone in any meaningful way.
People don't buy tablets like they're a cheap new pair of seasonal shoes. They buy them for long-term value.
* who paid for your MBP?
In many cases, your employer did. After the MBP is written off and after the phone contract renews, you get a new one. Not so for the iPad.
Also, iPads serve mostly three purposes:
* feed a bluetooth speaker
* watch movies in bed
* lookup recipes in the kitchen
It does this very well, and you don't need a new one every two years.
Check mail, social media (Facebook etc), read books and browse in bed relaxed, etc.
And those are just the main uses for everybody. There are tons of niche uses so that most people, if they have any kind of hobbies/interests outside of web/movies, end up having one or two.
I'd be interested to know how much of the iPhone upgrade market is replacements for smashed/water damaged phones.
Without a proper ipad holder, watching movies in bed with iPad is painfully, your arms get tired quickly after opening.
Now your arm won't get tired, because it's no longer fighting gravity, and while you will drop the iPad when you fall asleep, it won't hit your face unless you're a lot more nearsighted than my -3.5 diopters. (That's a lot - ~20/120 in old money.) It'll also land face down if you hold it with a slight tilt toward you, which helps prevent the screen light from interfering with sleep any more than it already will because you're watching it in bed.
I'll add another one: lean your back against the wall sitting upright, pull your knees towards you so they form an inverted V and prop the iPad up against your legs. Slightly awkward but workable.
Maybe an Air is light enough to prop more up against your knees. My 4th gen certainly isn't!
(Not movies but the occasional book.)
Speaking of which, I'm kind of blown away Apple hasn't tried to take all their touch expertise from the iPad and add it to MacBooks in some fashion.
At any rate, Apple has already been using their touch expertise on MacBooks. Their touchpads are highly regarded, and they recently added Touch Bars to the new MBPs.
Strong agree — lack of robust development environment for DEEP apps is holding iPad back.
Yes, iPhone has plenty of apps. Session times on an iPhone are short and it's enough to have just app-ified websites like Facebook app, Instagram, Snapchat, banking apps. Even transformative truly native apps like Uber do not require much development on the mobile platform side (the real work is in the network).
On an iPad your sessions are much longer and there's room for more expensive apps you spend more time with. Truly great games, for example. Art, media creation, notes, documents of all sorts, but most of all things that we can't conceive because they're only possible on an iPad. But there's a void here. Free to play dominates gaming, and the result is a lot of crap, with even the gems tarnished by need to drive in app purchases. The "pro" apps are too few and far between.
Why? Well, insufficient developer buy-in due to the crappy landscape. You have an app store with weak discovery driven by a combination of whims of a small team of editors and easily gamed, lowest-common-denominator popularity charts. You have uncertainty in the development landscape due to Apple fickleness (store rejections, opaque and changing rules, etc). You have weak cloud tooling from Apple so simply saving state becomes a unique snowflake challenge for each dev.
The iPad needs a killer app. The fact that most people can replace one with a knock-off Netflix/YouTube machine is damning. It should be good at more than that. It should be brilliant.
I have never used another stylus that comes within 100 yards of the Pencil. I got the iPad Pro 9.7" heading into my last year of grad school. What a difference reading and annotating with a Pencil than with my Mini just a year and a half earlier or even my laptop. I loathe reading anything that I need to annotate or really understand anywhere else besides my iPad (and that includes paper).
The Pencil swung me from "meh, nice to have" to "I will replace this immediately if it dies." I am using a 2011 MacBook Pro that I cannot justify upgrading and will probably not replace if it dies. But the iPad with a Pencil is something I can't imagine not having now.
It's not just the sales of these are going down, the usage on web traffic tracker has also peaked in early 2015, and is going down since, meaning not only people are not buying them, they are leaving them in drawers and forgetting about them.
https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/3/29/apple-is-pushing...
Diagram is about 2/3 down the page.
The only thing that I could desire is if Apple would revive iOS 6 and allow downgrading. It's awesome OS, much better than following releases for iPad 3. But, I guess, it won't happen.
The current Mac ecosystem will not tolerate a rent seeking appstore acting as middlemen between app or content producers and the end users where as the vision of taxing the content producers are a reality on iOS. Or to put it differently the per user profit will trend to be lower for MacOS then iOS so if apple is going to follow though with their philosophy of only maintaining a few products in order to be able fuss over every detail, then it makes perfect sense to double down on iPads and sideline the MacOS lines as something that will one day be merged with iOS.
The mystery part is in explaining that Apple dont nesserily want a dominant marketshare if they have to compete on cost to get it and is totally willing to shed profitable product lines if they feel it distract mangement from the long term strategy. Weather or not thats a smart philosophy is a good question but it's pretty much at the core of how job's managed to turn two bankrupt companies into one of the biggest success stories of the post dotCOM age.
Instead they have hardly made a dent. Even in schools, the tablets used by Amplify in Chicago schools were a notable failure. The market seems to be mostly discretionary use at home. I have a tablet with a touch sensor that's dying and there isn't a compelling new product I would buy. Strange.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is unflaggingly digging away at realizing a consistent, compatible implementation of Windows everywhere and polishing a touch-able Windows so that you don't run into tiny touch targets and other pitfalls. I had predicted touch-first platforms would run away with the market before Microsoft could grind off the jagged edges of a touchable Windows.
> But only idiots never change their minds.
> It’s now September 2015: All hail the 12.9” iPad Pro…with a keyboard and stylus (pardon, a Pencil).
Why do people love to trot out that Steve Jobs quote and then completely misinterpret it? The context of that quote was a device that requires a stylus. Steve was not dissing the concept of styluses in general.
The Apple Pencil is something rather different -- it's an entirely optional add-on for artists/designers who want to use the device as a drawing tablet.
Sure the browser on the iPad Mini couldn't handle too many tabs at once, and some apps started looking like they took a bit longer to load, but overall the iPad Mini was still doing everything I needed it to do: play Netflix, board game apps, music, browse the internet, and still felt pretty much as fast as the day I got it.
Which I can't say the same about Android devices. Those tend to feel like slugs over time.
The use case is very different from phones. Obsolescence is very different. I am still using my palm III XE (very rarely) for the single application that motivated buying it 18 years ago.
The CPU/GPU power is there, but iOS is too restrictive.
Thing is, iPads are powerful, even though Apple tried their very best to cripple most of them by software updates.
The vicious circle is, that people who are not power users (demanding the latest features) are the ones less likely to update the software.
So here we are, with a ton of iPads working flawlessly with their stock firmware.
I mean, even I still own a first gen, just for kicks (and synths, synthstation49).
There are other plausible theories:
1. When the iPad was introduced, the average smartphone screen size was between 3 and 3.5". I couldn't find statistics for 2016, but I would guess that the average is just north of 5". Large phones have considerably more screen estate than they had in 2010, so a lot of things that were done on tablets in 2010 can now be done conveniently on a phone.
2. There was initially a lot of enthusiasm for the iPad and other tablets, but over time people realized that iPads are mostly limited to media consumption. The form factor is not convenient for serious work.
In the end it's probably a mix of all of these: people wait longer before upgrading tablets; phablets have cannibalised tablets; most of the initial tablet hype/optimism has died out.
https://medium.com/@somospostpc/a-comprehensive-look-at-smar...
Every parent I know (including myself) has 1 or 2 of these for entertaining children on long trips or rainy days.
I replaced it with the new cheap iPad. It has twice the memory, twice the screen resolution and 20 times faster CPU, and costs less.
My interpretation is that for people that love the device, LOVE it. For people that thought it was going to be a laptop replacement and wanted to try it, decided it wasn't.
For everyone else, it just became that device that sits uncharged on the coffee table or bookshelf now.
That may be a reason why mac OS X has become so unstable in the past couple of years. My system crashes once a week with random slowdowns once a day. I also feel that Apple is completely out of touch with what people actually want on a mac and that would explain it too.
A smartphone is pretty much essential in the modern world. Even those from poorer backgrounds, will save their money to buy a smartphone. An iPhone is a similar price to other top end devices and arguably better value since it lasts longer (updates/resell value).
A Laptop is essential to learn or to work, it's a solid way, established tool for work.
A tablet/iPad is mostly seen as thing to watch movies on, check social media and play games. All of which you can do on your phone. Apple is going to have a hard job convincing people that the iPad can replace a laptop - I don't think people see it that way.
If every iPad came with a free keyboard cover, they much have some chance, because people would give it a go and see if it works for them. But right now in the UK a iPad pro + keyboard is more than twice the cost of an iPad 9.7 (to which you can't add a keyboard later - for some reason).
Could it be that this is the reason for the decline in tablet sales?
The main reasons smartphone renewal rates are better has to do with the personal nature of it: I may want the latest style to display status or, I need a replacement for a broken/stolen one. In many cases the phone is also the only computing device I ever need.
iPads, like laptops and desktops sit a home/office, doesn't work as well as a status symbol and is much less likely to get stolen/broken.
I have one that works perfectly, but YouTube doesn't work anymore and I'd love to install Linux or something on it but I couldn't find anything out there.
Horse puckey. Last quearter Apple sold 8.9m iPads and only 4.1m Macs. That means in the last 3 months twice as many people decided an iPad was the right device for them and did the things they wanted to do better, than thought that of the Mac. The iPad also has around double the installed base of the Mac. Ok, iPads are cheaper and I'm sure that's a factor, but still. How does dramatically better ongoing device sales of the iPad square with this iPad has failed, Mac rules narrative? It just flat out doesn't.
The question then becomes, what are these devices being used for? Yes of course the iPad is an excellent device for reading ebooks, watching video, casual browsing, emails, social media, etc. Is that all they’re used for? Well no, iOS has a thriving App Store and developing apps for the iPad is a multi-billion dollar industry. Leading players such as Adobe, Microsoft and IBM regard it as a key strategic platform they have to be on. There are also thriving niches such as music production and visual arts where the iPad has moved well beyond just casual or toy status. The decline in device sales don’t appear to be threatening that as App sales continue to rise, so the sales decline seems to be on the ‘consumption device’ side of the sales category.
We have not transitioned to a world in which more people buy Macs because they are more useful. We're in one where instead of 3x as many people thinking the iPad is the right device for them, now only 2x as many people think that. But if this was a collapse in the iPad value proposition we'd be seeing a reduction in ASP, margins and customer satisfaction. Actually these are as high as ever.
Let's look at the expectation though. Suppose iPad sales had stayed flat at their peak of 11m a quarter? By now the installed base would be 800m devices, more than half the installed base of all laptop and desktop PCs. Is that the definition of success? Anything less is failure? I would contend that current sales of the iPad are very healthy, they just don't compare well to the completely unsustainable, unprecedented success of it's early years.
So that’s the positive case. Even so the iPad faces some major challenges to achieving it’s full potential. I completely agree with the posts here pointing out it’s weaknesses. I use Pythonista heavily and the lack of convenient Github integration is a major pain point. iCloud is a lot better than it used to be, but still a very long way from where it needs to go. Many small software studios are struggling to make money out of Apps. But this narrative of a failed product that nobody needs anymore is simply not supported by the facts.
The iPad is nowhere near killing off the desktop or Laptop, sales of both of which by the way are also down industry wide. I can’t see a future in my lifetime when I won’t want to own a desktop or laptop. Equally though you’re going to have to take my iPad out of my cold dead hands. It’s actually pretty much found it’s niche and is here to stay.
But neither the iPhone nor the iPad require a stylus. The iPad offers it as an option. But I also would like to be able to take notes on an iPhone plus sized device with a stylus, I don't see that as a contradiction.