I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
Even for those early days, it went from new to obsolete extremely fast.
That said, it's a 10-year-old machine. I don't have any desktop or laptop computers left that are good for anything other than e-mail, either.
Compare to Android, where I can still run many modern apps on old hardware with Android 2.3, or at least could at the time my iPad was almost completely obsoleted and I sold it off.
Its like if you were forced to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista on your 512MB laptop - which could handle Windows XP just fine but couldn't handle Vista, even though yes Vista came with many new features.
Instead consider that a 10 year old laptop in 2010 would be basically useless and massively heavy, or a 10 year old desktop in eg 2007.
The difference with desktop operating systems are that applications almost always work for many, many releases. This does not seem to be the case with iOS.
Another old iPad is the dedicated darts scoring tablet.
Apple doesn’t say it out loud, but they can’t just decide to support the new iOS versions on the first few versions of hardware. There just isn’t enough processing power there to deliver a respectable user experience with the new software. Sure, it worked fine when new, but as processor cycles got more plentiful, they still all got used by programmers.
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* one site is showing 98% of users running iOS 12 or higher.
* just 0.1% are stuck at iOS 6.
* the site: http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/template_
My Macbook Air just went out of OS support, and apps have already started to bitrot. My iPhone just went out of iOS support, so it's just a matter of time before I start getting "bad" updates that wreck my stuff. My iPad and iPod touch went out of support years ago, and the only thing that still worked consistently was 2 magazine subscriptions on the iPad...which broke sometime in August 2019.
How much effort is it to keep the digital lifeline services still working, so that I can continue to use paid-for content and apps? I know it's greater than 0, but I went from being a dedicated Apple user to one who will never buy another Apple product. Every single previous purchase has resulted in pristine and perfectly functioning hardware being rendered useless by loss online support services. If I can't update on my schedule and my budget, I can't justify buying the hardware.
I mean, they have a platform, but the feedback loop seems kind of broken.
But mainly, just let me download whatever previous version I want.
One used to be able to back up apps directly to Mac or PC via iTunes but it seems like that ability was lost in 2018, now that I search for it.
For Macs, it’s still easy. Use time machine and if an app updates to a bad version you can just restore the earlier .app file from your time machine.
Everything Apple has done has had the effect of slowly bricking your iPad, bit by bit.
And these so called "upgrades" have only had the effect of removing features and slowing my device, and generally degrading the UX. This is not ok.
I never actually purchased my iPad, it was given to me to develop medical software. And even though it was used in a closed offline environment, this forced update still broke things and set back our development. I also know a teacher who was forced to shelve her lessons after she was tricked into updating her iPad 4 to iOS 11, which had so much latency when typing that it was rendered virtually useless.
In general terms, the PC world has been characterized for what I usually describe as an intense respect for the hardware and software investment made by users not to become unnecessarily (or unjustifiably) obsolete. Another example I have of this is the Adobe CS4 suite, which we purchased back in 2008 and is perfectly usable (and in use on a daily basis) 12 years later across many evolutions of the Windows hardware and software landscape.
We also have Apple products, Macs, iPads, etc. I still remember Apple pushing the reset button twice; once in transitioning to the PowerPC processors and then abandoning the platform; obsoleting all existing software in the process. Twice.
Not complaining, just a historical perspective and a difference in philosophy between two segments of the market. I never go into the Apple ecosystem assuming the solutions are going to survive the test of time. On the other hand, in the PC world, it is likely safe to assume you are in full control of when you might want to obsolete the hardware and software you purchase. From a business perspective this difference is important.
Services like Steam do a way better job of keeping games running than the typical app store does for games and apps.
1. How Apple has gone out of their way to prevent allowing other people from touching their devices, including influencing legislation. (It wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if they weren't trying to get guns pointed at anyone who wanted to fix their device themselves, but the act of lobbying to make the law bend to fit your desires is bad for just about everyone.)
2. How the iPad has (nearly) succeeded at ruining the best parts of hobbies he likes, like comics.
3. Apple design principles have moved from "Sane, intuitive," to making software targeting the stereotype of "My mother's a dumb old lady; she'd never understand this!"
4. They've made a joke out of non-vendor-locked software distribution.
5. People coming to their defense have disavowed basic market principles in doing so.
I don't even mind Apple's "walled garden," but Doctorow makes sound points, and I think the article is a fantastic read, especially when paired with the article it's referencing.
I have two Linux laptops that I can do anything I want on. Fit for hacking and having fun with.
I also value my Apple closed system devices: Apple Watch + AirPods, iPhone 11 pro camera (it makes phone calls also), MacBook, and a small iPad Pro. The Apple devices sort of fade into the background for reading books, listening to music and audiobooks, and writing.
I don’t see what is wrong having open devices and also locked down devices, for different use cases.
EDIT: also, I don’t install very many apps on iOS devices and when possible use web apps. More of my software development is also now done on leased VPS. Usually, I want my local devices to be secure and convenient.
But I do not at all understand the enmity some nerds have for non-replaceable batteries. Over the last 10 years it seems like Apple has run an experiment on whether batteries work better when they're tightly integrated and not replaceable, and that the results are demonstrably in. The performance I get from non-replaceable batteries has been so much better that I would automatically be suspicious of any device that had replaceable batteries. Meanwhile, if I really want to carry a spare battery with me, I still can; it just takes the form of a USB charger.
A lot of people replace their phones on a 2-3 year cycle. If you could get a new battery for $30 and install it yourself in 30 seconds, would people be throwing less phones out?
You'll note that Apple's warranty language (and probably everyone else's) specifically defines batteries as a "consumable part." Given that, it's a bit of a dick move to make them so difficult to replace.
Frankly it is ecological cancer to operate the way Apple does.
At least it's easy to drop by an Apple store to take advantage of the trade-in/recycle program.
There are no “complex cases” of battery repair. They are referring to cases where there is other damage they have to fix first (which they stated).
Thankfully Apple has recently made genuine iPhone batteries more available to repair shops, but that was just 4 months ago. They spent 13 years not doing that first.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/29/20838307/apple-iphone-rep...
Having had cell phones starting in 1994, when replaceable batteries were just how it was done, I can say people did replace their phones just as often as now.
My memory is that people replaced them every year back then, in part, because the batteries were so awful and new phones kept coming out with better battery life.
Today, many (most?) people keep their cell phones for at least two years, and on HN it seems to be even longer. I have an iPhone 5 from 2013 that I use for traveling, and it just keeps going. Using a seven-year-old phone would have been unheard of back in the days of replaceable batteries.
In the end it's still nothing very challenging to replace an iPhone or iPad battery.
For apple products specifically this isn’t a big issue. I got my iPhone battery replaced for $29 a few years ago. I’ll probably get it replaced again at the end of this year if there’s still no SE-sized phone released to replace it (I think it’s $49 now).
For anything that’s not an apple product, finding a store to replace the battery is going to be a lot harder or impossible. I definitely prefer the choice to use removable batteries or rechargeable AAs on stuff like game controllers.
A decade later, the [iPad] is ten years old and Apple has killed 20 state Right to Repair bills, in part to lock out third parties who might change you batteries for you.
How can you not understand that? Not allowing "plug'n'play" batteries that anyone with a screwdriver could do is at least hypothetically justifiable as a design decision, but Apple's batteries are replaceable and they go to great steps to prevent indie shops from doing so.
They demonstrate it pretty repeatedly by selling it as an extremely marked-up service in Apple's stores.
I'm pretty sure Apple isn't making gigantic bank off battery upgrades.
To be candid: I don't much care about "Right To Repair". I'm not animated by most nerd policy priorities, like "Net Neutrality" or "Copyright Reform" or whatever. Those aren't my political priorities and they're not the concerns Pinboard is surfacing when he talks about Microsoft and Google donations.
Agreed. Considering that getting an iPhone battery replaced directly by Apple costs about $49-$69 overall (as others have mentioned in the thread already), they almost definitely are not making bank off it.
While I don't mind the battery situation outside of the legislative issue, I do disagree on your claim that they're "better" in some way (but again, irrelevant to the original criticism).
Here's an anecdote to elaborate on why, since you asked:
I've had a few iPhones, varying degrees of battery quality, fairly well taken care of. I've also had a few other phones of various manufacturers and operating systems, mostly with replaceable batteries.
The ones with replaceable batteries had equivalent-to-better battery life than the iPhones I've had, including before replacing the battery, and especially after the battery on the iPhones had worn down a bit. Without iOS's battery management that throttles performance to save battery life, I've had iPhones that at 87% of max capacity (I just checked the one I'm currently using; it was probably higher when I tested this a few weeks ago) that can't outlast an HTC phone from eleven years ago that I've replaced the battery on a single time, when doing comparable tasks, and that's not even getting into the modern devices I have that beat both of them by a decent margin. This includes both with the screen on and the screen off.
Apple's battery life comes from software band-aids, not some magical benefit of soldering on batteries. Soldering just serves to make the device thinner, which is of dubious benefit.
I have a tablet from 2013. It works very well but the battery has worn out. I now have to throw it away because I can't replace the battery.
Devices exist on a repairability spectrum, from the industrial appliance which is delivered with full electric schematics and every part stamped with a replacement order number, to the black-box NUSPI ["no user serviceable parts inside"]. The enmity is not really about batteries, but having that one question stand in as a measurement to ensure the device meets a minimal standard for allowing third-party repair.
10 years later I only wish Google or Microsoft had a stronger competitor. Apple has dragged their feet in making it more useful.
Apple’s Pencil is great but user input could be enhanced with something like Soli, for example:
Slide a wireless keyboard and mouse next to a tablet and it should become my desktop computer.
Slide a wireless keyboard and mouse next to a tablet and it should become my desktop computer.
That's very close to what the iPad is now. I often sit in a coffee shop and read magazines on my iPad. Then when I'm ready to do some work, I just prop the iPad up on a table with its cover and turn on an old Bluetooth keyboard I keep in my bag.
E-mail on the left side of the screen. ssh on the right side with the Prompt app. Bang, it's 90% of what I use my desktop computer for.
I've heard that iPads support a Bluetooth mouse now, but I don't have any personal experience with it. I haven't heard anything about trackpads.
They do, but it's emulating a fingertip (for accessibility), not a proper mouse cursor. It was neat to play around with for a little while, but not something you'd want to do over a longer term.
iPads will also work with Apple's Magic Touchpads (the standalone units), but they must be connected via USB, and the same finger-emulating touchscreen caveat applies.
The Microsoft offering is inferior as a tablet and inferior as a desktop OS (again subjective opinion), but it lets you have both a tablet and a laptop form factor without needing to own two units of hardware.
In a lot of ways it feels kind of like when I first switched from Windows to Mac back in the early 2000s. I knew that for 98% of stuff I do with a computer, OS9 (and then OSX) was perfectly fine. But the hassle of doing any of the other 2% kept me locked in. Making the jump from OSX to iOS feels the same way. The apps all seem to be 90% of what I need without issue, another 8% okay enough for now, and then 2% just unworkable. (And then there is the nightmare of trying to use many regular old websites on mobile these days with all the unresponsive scripts and ad cruft they carry.)
I'd love it if Apple could figure out some kind of bridge for iOS workloads to meet this, similar to how Parallels or BootCamp can let you get by with those 1 or 2 Windows things you still needed to do after switching. Maybe just let the iPad remote into my Mac at home if it has internet or have it run some kind of stripped down, emulated version of OSX.
To me that sounds perfectly normal and reasonable. A tablet is not a desktop. A desktop is not a tablet.
People complain that they cannot use their tablets to do desktop work, but somehow never complain that their tower doesn't travel well to the coffee shop.
Honestly, I've found 90% of the time, even for consumption activities, I prefer to use a laptop with a keyboard. I've gone with a Pixelbook now as my main "entertainment device," which works well for surfing the web, document editing, reading, and watching Netflix in bed. The only activity of those I regularly use it in tablet mode is for reading ebooks, and it works quite well for that. Plus, I can use it as a Linux box reasonably well when I want to get work done. Like an iPad, it has pen support, a long battery life, and is very lightweight. I can use it in tablet mode and laptop mode.
Yeah, I have an iPad. An iPhone. An Apple Watch. No, I can't mod these things, take them apart, etc. No, I don't care. I still have a self-built PC running Linux and a bunch of services. I still have a Macbook I can install whatever I want, even Windows or Linux if I chose to. I still have all my own networking hardware that's substantially more hackable.
Going wider, I have a car and I have a bike. One is more hackable than the other. One of them has a service light you need to go to the dealer to clear (unless you're in the know and have special tools). Some of that is in my wheelhouse, some isn't. Sometimes I pick a battle, sometimes I let a tool be a tool.
I think the world of computing is too wide to bother with puritanical about the devices I use. It's just not worth the energy when those things that are heretically 'infantilizing' etc. are just useful and pleasureful to use.
I don’t need everything to be running hyper customized stuff. Sometimes simple and stable is all I need.
He complained about third party apps and then goes into a couple of nostalgia trips over the comic book store (I miss it and the music store, too) and taking apart much simpler electronics as a kid. Like, get your kid a regular PC case, then? What's there to even hack? The iPad, and almost every cell phone as well, is essentially a giant system on a chip with a screen and a battery. There's not much to hack. Also, most people keep thier iPads for more than two years unless it actually hard-fails. My last one was 5 years before I finally got a new one (though I also had the misfortune of buying the first one and the first retina one, which didn't hold up to the march of new models very well).
I don't need a hackable portable computer. I have a full time job and a toddler. I want to turn it on at the end of the day and look at stupid cat videos. Doctorow reminds me of the people that refused to get cell phones and then complained that their friends stopped contacting them.
Also, what the hell is a "CD-ROM programmer"? Does he just mean software that was distributed on CD-ROM?
Also, if he theoretically had "a lot" of AOL shares he'd have been "bailed out" by the merger with Time Warner and would have had "a lot" of shares in the successor companies (he wouldn't be laughing, but he'd have something), but the fact that he's still using AOL as a slur is showing just how much he hasn't moved on with the times, even in 2010.
The only real criticism I have of the ipad is its annoyingly bad background support. I still IRC and the clients disconnect very quickly if I switch apps. This makes SSH annoying as well.
Moreso, during those first initial 2 "supported years", you would be extremely lucky to get OS and security updates without an insane delay (unless you run a Pixel device or, maybe, a couple of others I am not aware of).
Just ask any current or former Galaxy device owner in the US regarding how long they have to wait for an update after Pixel devices have already received it. In my case (Galaxy S8+ a couple of years ago, purchased only a few months after the release), I had to wait about half a year for the OS update after it has already arrived on Pixel devices.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. today dominate the web and exercise at least the same level of gatekeeping over your visibility to customers as Apple does with their app store. Back in 2010 you could build a Facebook page for your business, and post messages that your fans would see. Can't do that anymore; buy some FB ads please. Google's search results quality continues to decline, and their ads continue to be harder and harder to distinguish. And if you anger them, you might just disappear from their service.
2010 was also before Snowden, before general awareness of the data collected by social apps, before Cambridge Analytica, before a thousand data breaches. Privacy is more important to people now, and one thing about walled gardens is that they are more private... that's why the original physical walled gardens were built.
It's not that walled gardens are ideal; it's that everything has a trade-off, and those trade-offs look different in 2020 than they did in 2010.
A lot of this is not specifically about the iPad, and in retrospect maybe the most obvious reaction to this piece is to laugh at the idea that the iPad was some important place to draw a line. Tablets are still great--and used by a lot of poeple--but they ended up being kind of a side story. The iPhone was the real turning point. Not just for Apple, but for many industries.
That's clearly an exaggeration. Apple's control over the app store is absolute and in combination with the side-loading ban so is their control over the apps users can install on their devices. These restrictions go far beyond protecting users against security or privacy threats if you think of porn for instance.
Google/Facebook/Twitter's dominance over the Web is not absolute. You can still publish anything that is legal in your jurisiction. It may not be easy to get found, but that's still a _lot_ more freedom than asking a gatekeeper for permission to publish in the first place. Google/Facebook/Twitter is not the only way to find things on the Web either, and they are not one single company.
The Chinese regime cannot simply tell Google or anyone else to take Wikipedia off the Web for showing Taiwan on a map or something. But they can order Apple to take down all secure VPN apps that users could use to read Wikipedia or hand over the iCloud keys of Chinese users, and that's what Apple will do.
And here in the U.S. the Google story today includes not just the services they provide for free, both also the personal data they collect and correlate.
My point here is not whether Google or Apple is better, my point is that since 2010, we have collectively learned that the web is not as open or resistant to surveillance and censorship as it once seemed it would be. Again: there are trade-offs, and some folks look at those trade-offs differently a decade later.
That's undeniably true, but it doesn't mean that anyone exercises "at least the same level of gatekeeping" on the Web as Apple does on Apple devices.
And Google operating or not operating in China is beside the point. I'm talking about the structure of the Web, not about Google specifically. That's why I said "or anyone else". No private company owns the Web like Apple owns the only iOS distribution channel.
And finally it‘s a pointlessly circular argument if we‘re talking about whether or not gatekeeping on the Web is stronger than on iOS.
You’ll have to hold my beer while I wipe away my tears about all of the money that they have to pay Apple.
Surprisingly enough, the whining only happens from geeks who probably don’t even have skin in the game.
If developers are so interested in getting from under the 30% tax, where are all of the indy developers who are making money on Android outside of the Google Play store outside of China?
Google doesn't make side-loading easy either. It comes with a ton of warnings, but some high profile apps and games have started using it anyway.
I didn't mean to start another debate about the obviously dysfunctional market that is mobile app stores though. My point was about the loss of freedom and privacy that results from the side-loading ban.
That didn’t work out too well for consumers.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu...
Also, if either were keeping developers from innovating, you should see a lot of successful, popular apps outside of Google Play.
The fact is, that 80% of phones out there can escape a walled garden and the 30% cut, but still anyone interested in getting visibility or making money chooses to be on Google Play.
How many people whining about the 30% cut on HN actually have a successful product that would be more successful if it weren’t for Apple’s fee?
My wife and mother are largely mystified by computers and have been brought to literal tears born of frustration when using them. One of these women is a PHD in English literature and has published over 20 books ranging from short stories for children to graduate-level textbooks. The other has a Doctorate of Dental Surgery and is clinical faculty at a respected School of Dentistry.
These women aren't dumb, but they don't give two flying fucks about a computer they lets them unscrew the casing or comes with the schematics of the circuitboards included! They're much more interested in exploring the human condition through language or practicing medicine. Between all of that they do need to check their email, shop, and keep up with their family on Facebook.
So Cory Doctorow won't buy an iPad. It's not for him/me/us/the nerds. We can buy raspberry pi's, Android devices, Linux desktops, etc... But there is a whole market of people who don't care about computers beyond what they can do for them in the most expeditious way possible. I'm not into toasters, but I use one almost every day and I don't care at all how/why it works. I've got bigger fish to fry.
This article is framed as a victory lap, but comes off more like a gear-head complaining about how shitty the Ford Escape is. Except that Ford doesn't care, because he wasn't on their radar when they made it. The people buying Escapes don't care, because they're busy with all the parts of their lives have literally nothing to do with cars.
I'm sure Doctorow's echo chamber will congratulate on sticking it to Apple (again!) with this trailblazing though-piece. And in 10 years we'll get another article about how he's still not buying iPads. It's all very boring to me.
The problem is nobody makes a tablet that works better than the iPad for the things I use the iPad for 90% of the time - which is reading, surfing, checking email, and editing photos.
I tried transitioning to a Linux laptop last year. That experiment lasted 3 months. It just didn't fit into a corporate computing environment that is really only set up to support Windows machines. The iPad does fit.
Back in the day, when asked about how Apple was going to deal with music piracy, Steve Jobs said they were going to out-compete it. And they did. And that's really the only way they could have succeeded. Jobs had it right. Similarly, if you want FOSS principles to rule in the mobile space, you have to come out with a product that works as well as or better than the non-open ones.
I bought a 2018 model and what a piece of crap. Warped like a Pringle chip, screen shattered and cracked if you looked at it wrong.
There's a perfectly adequate online guide for replacing the battery yourself: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+Air+Wi-Fi+Battery+Replacem... Or you can pay Apple or any competent repair shop to do it for you. I haven't yet needed to replace my battery, even after six years.
There's plenty of programming environments for the iPad, including a web browser to run all the awesome web software out there.
Did it come with a BASIC interpreter preinstalled? No, but I'm OK with that.
The duration stated is nonsense for two reasons:
Hardware support: The battery in an iOS device should last at least four years. My father's is going on seven years under light usage conditions. If the battery fails within a single year, it's defective and the included warranty covers replacement.
Software support: Apple has historically provided software support for old iPads for 5.5 to 6 years. That's longer than the support duration for many Android devices, or even some cheap Windows laptops.
never again.
It wasn't just the ipad, but the damage is already done by phones: entire generations have grown without knowning the real abilities of a computer. the internet has become a photo storage drive. people marvel at their babies knowing how to swipe, and are shocked when they are later baffled by the complexity of computer systems
You can say that the parent comment doesn't explain why his points are bad, but that has been already discussed to death elsewhere in the thread. So it doesn't seem necessary to copypaste all of that in here, just to make a point about his writing style issues alone.
I think the thing that he's "standing by" is that he wants to continue making waves by sounding controversial when he has in fact become irrelevant. I like and appreciate the viewpoints of those shared by BoingBoing, but perhaps something less cringeworthy? I understand folks like to build electronics, and there are systems people can build on for 30 dollars. The iPad was always meant to be a computer for someone that didn't care to screw with all of the guts of hardware or software. But yes, if you really want to use your iPad to learn about hardware and software, you can certainly do so.
And every company has the right to enforce their rules in replacement of defective parts, based upon what prior abuse or misuse you put on it. The average person who "opens" their iPad to fix it deserves to have warranties and guarantees invalidated, even if Apple is a touch predatory in the rates they change for repairs.
If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you.
Seems like this is garbage.
If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you.
This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? It seems like iOS is at least as close to this ideal if not better than any other platform.
I wish we lived in the world he would like us to live in, but he seems to be out of touch with reality.
> Seems like this is garbage.
They're called files.
> This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true?
The web. Desktop software.
In both cases you are dealing with search engines, and VCs distorting the landscape, not to mention Google Safe browsing, etc.
Reading his piece, it is easy to see that Apple hasn’t yet released an iPad Doctorow would like to buy, and I wouldn’t blame him for being who he is. He’s come to market looking for certain qualities in a tablet computer product, and found every iPad ever released to be lacking them. There’s no reason to spend money on something you’ll be unhappy with.
Principles that are not re-evaluated in context with a changing human society, are just dogma. I respect that, but I call it what it is.
Any computer I grew up with C64, Amiga, Atari, PC) was like this. My friends and I swapped floppy disks with stuff we made. Code, images, music. Then came dial-up mailboxes, then the web.
> It seems like iOS is at least as close to this ideal if not better than any other platform.
iOS is probably farthest away from this, actually.
Even on Android I can share some experiment with my friends and they can, after changing a single setting on their phone, install the APK I give them. Try this on iOS ...
Nobody has made a business that has succeeded by delivering APKs outside of a store, so that proves my point.