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That's how I see it. In the last quarter Apple sold twice as many iPads as Macs, so twice as many people thought an iPad does what they need to get done. It also has twice the installed base (300m) of the Mac. App sales are a multi-billion dollar industry that’s growing and key players like Microsoft, Adobe and IBM think the iPad is a strategic platform they have to be on.

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.

Twice the installed base of Mac OS makes a lot of sense to me. My wife and I both have an iPad but only one laptop which we share but almost never use. If that is representative of everyone that owns a Mac then you end up with about double the installed base.

Seems more likely to me that a lot of Windows users own an iPad but not a Mac.

Another thing to bear in mind, since many people are talking about how convenient iPads are for older parents (I too gave my parents an iPad Air a year or two ago - they get a lot more use out of it now than the MacBook I gave them about 8 years ago...): their definition of "unbearably slow" and our definition are really markedly different!

> their definition of "unbearably slow" and our definition are really markedly different!

Sure. I mean, even my definition changed every year if I have to go backwards.

I'm not sure I'm the age of your parents, but even as an over-50 tech nerd, I am quite happy with my iPad 1. I use it as a reader, an alarm clock, and a terminal emulator on a daily basis. The battery still keeps its charge and it is one of the most solid pieces of tech that I have ever purchased.

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.

If anyone wonders why you would keep such an old computer as an Apple II, that should be an immediate failure of your class :)

What app are you using for the terminal editor?

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 :)

I use the original Prompt from Panic and the Apple bluetooth keyboard. I also have the charging stand which keeps the iPad in portrait mode. I would have preferred landscape for emacs, etc., but it is certainly usable.

I've the 2012 mbp retina and the 2014 ipad air 2 and neither actually needs a replacement, they do everything they did when they came out and still support all the use cases without their outdated performances being in the way, including video editing on the mbp (gf's a vlogger)

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 2008 MBP and everything runs great on it, except web browsers, which is sort of funny, tragic, and annoying all at once.

It's not because of web browsers, it's because web applications of 2017 are much more advanced (and resource-consuming) than web applications of 2008.

uMatrix[0] is a fantastic way to get more performance out of old computers.

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.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

The web apps of 2017 may be more advanced, but I don't see value added through that complexity.

Maybe the value is on the developer side of the equation. More layers of abstraction might enable faster development cycles or more advanced features at the cost of resource consumption.

I have an original iPad 2, and it still works (mostly) fine. The browser likes to crash on the weather.com map. But, outside of that, and few other choice crashes, it works fine. Youtube app works perfect, and I use some iOS synths like Animoog and PPG Wave without any issues.

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.

My mom has an iPad 2, and I made the mistake of installing iOS 7 or 8, or whichever is the latest version. Made it almost unbearable slow.

Really frustrating that newer versions of iOS inevitably run more slowly on aging hardware, Apple incessantly prompts you to update, and there's no way to roll back.

Sure, I miss security fixes if I don't update, but at the point when Apple stops supporting the hardware, what's the difference?

I just upgraded our family iPad 3 this week... because it finally died after FIVE years constant use (and abuse from two young kids, and it was fine for the games they play all this time).

Got a refurb 9.7" Pro... so nice.

The school district issued ipads are holding together and are nearing refresh cycle. Repeat scheduled sales will happen soon unless there's more of a push to chromebooks. The durability of ipads surprise me given the reputation of phones being weak and easily destroyed.

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.

Is there a push for Chromebooks? Makes more sense than an iPad to me.

I put our family iPads in indestructible cases. The one for the Pro arrived just the other day, and sadly it turns the beautiful design into this massive brick. Oh well, need to protect them from the kids <cough> and wife </cough>.

I've gotten a lot of life out of an iPad 2, still works fine for checking traffic, text sites, and Garage Band. Have acquired a Mini for when it eventually sunsets - though down the street there are rows of small shops that will unlock and/or modify any number of devices for a reasonable fee. Yay!

"There's no mystery: the iPad IS a computer, and its update cycle reflects it."

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.

Can you point to an android tablet that gets updates 7 years after it's introduction?

I've been buying my kids Android tablets for $80 every few years. The iPad was close to $700 when I bought it. I can update Android with an open distribution for a long time after the device is out of warranty but I can't install a browser because Apple decided my hardware couldn't handle IOS 6.

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.

No, but you could buy a fairly high end Android tablet every 2 years and the TCO over 7 years would still be comparable to the iPad, which I think is the point the GP was making.

Because iPads are generally limited to basic computing tasks, I think the lifecycle is even longer than a typical laptop. My iPad Air from 2013 still feels brand new to me. Still looks great and I'm sure will still be getting used in another 4 years.

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.

I upgraded my first iPad because of weight not speed. As long as the battery keeps up I can probably keep this one 3 times as long. My Mother got three of various sizes, but is probably going to stick with just one or two sizes long term.

Assuming many people get a new one fairly soon based on form factor Apple and others may have been confusing side grades for upgrade.

I think we'll see smartphones plateau a little bit soon as well — once you hit a certain processing speed and saturation... it's hard to justify constant updates. The average web/device user really only needs so much to browse the web, email, and use apps.

You say this as if an unexpectedly slow update cycle can be a retroactive justification of the product. If Apple weren't expecting users to update iPads so infrequently, then it will be an issue for them.

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.

I believe camillomiller is very much not looking at the issue from Apple's business perspective. I think camillomiller is trying to explain why sales are slow, but without using the narrative that tablets, as a market, are a miss. And I agree. I use my iPad every day. I bought one in 2012, upgraded in 2015, but I don't see a need to upgrade yet. My parents bought two in 2010, use them every day, and didn't upgrade until 2016. Whether or not tablets meet businesses sales expectations I can't speak on. But, anecdotally, I feel tablets are something people like using, and are here to stay.

I am just saying the current slower update cycle is considered slow because the expectations have been tuned to an unexpectedly fast growth.

Yeah very possible

> then Apple's product line is cannibalising itself, which would also be an issue.

It would be like if they created a product category that made another product category obsolete. Like, say, the iPhone and the iPod.

Oh yeah totally. Or iPads and iPhones for that matter, imo.

>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.

Cannibalisation refers to competition within your own product-line causing a reduction in revenue.

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.

Agreed. I have an original iPad from 2010. It's running iOS 5.1.1 and is not compatible with many current apps, but still does what I need it to do: web browsing, email, and Netflix.

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.

the other side of the coin is a lot of people just stopped using the thing. I haven't touched a tablet is a long time, my phone screen is big enough for most things.

> I'm surprised nobody mentioned that it could simply still be a normalization phase.

Yeah - that graph just looks like the derivative of a completely standard sigmoid curve.