Apple unveils redesigned iPad | Hacker News Reader

Apple unveils redesigned iPad

apple.com

82 pointstodsacerdoti323 comments

> The stunning 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display extends to the edges

No it doesn't.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/ipad/standard/...

This is a new level of asking me to reject the evidence of my eyes and ears. I'm also not sure "completely redesigned" rings true. It looks more or less exactly like the iPad Air?

Yea, didn't the iPad Air already have the touch to unlock sensor on the power button? Are they claiming it is completely redesigned because they just "renamed" the iPad Air to iPad? Apple has always had misleading content if not outright lies in their marketing.

To me it's the same marketing speak when they say "It's the fastest x we've ever made" every year, when it might not be leaps and bounds faster.

Maybe they mean that there's no notch/punch hole?

Yeah, but then they would be redefining the "edge".

They mean there’s no home button.

The edges are getting so thin that there are even 3rd party products that allow you to properly grip an iPad while drawing: http://darkboard.com/

Well, that thing adds like five inches of bevel so it doesn’t seem like a response to shrinking bevel sizes. If it only added an inch, the observation would make more sense.

The previous iPad design with thinner bezels on two sides and larger bezels on the two other sides was arguably the better design.

*for some definition of "edges", specifically the edges of the display, hence the display extends to the edges, by definition

Ha, great catch. Also the title:

> unveils completely redesigned iPad

More: "unveils just slightly upgraded with nearly the same design"

"with almost the design of the iPad Air 5 introduced some time ago but nobody remembers"

Yeah, Apple has normalized misleading marketing speak.

Here's one from 2017 about the iPhone

> iPhone X: Apple's new 'edge-to-edge' screen includes strange notch at the top

> The screen doesn't actually go edge-to-edge, despite descriptions that refer to it that way. Or rather, it goes to three of the edges – leaving a little cut-out at the top, where the screen can't quite reach to the top of the display.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/iphone-x-apple-screen-dis...

In the Steve Jobs era, their marketing was extremely clever. In those times, Apple did not claim something objectively false, like in this case; they only oh-so-subtly suggested that their technology was superior to everything else.

Apple's copy since Jobs left has become wordy and unfocused. I can't stand it.

Nice to see this on HN ( Which is rare ). Understanding the small and subtle differences between Jobs era and now.

Yeah, I mean I know what they mean (no more larger bezel on two sides like before, bezels on all sides are all now smaller/equal) -- but that's not the right way to describe it.

Yeah there’s a huge black bezel around the whole thing.

Why would I even want it to? The bezel is functional. It allows me to hold the screen or prop it up without obscuring the display or GUI. I wish bezels would come back.

You’re right, you wouldn’t want it to. The iPad needs bezels. On the other hand, it’s weird that they claim it does, when it clearly does not.

It extends to the edges of the display!

The screen extends completely to the edges of the screen. It’s tautologically correct.

So they only support Apple Pencil Gen 1, but remove the Lightning port which it requires for charging, so they sell you a dongle, but the environment is important to Apple. Okay.

What's the point of the flat edges if you're not going to support the Apple Pencil Gen 2? I get that a company like Apple deals in massive scale, but this seems so off-putting as a consumer. Just merge the iPad Air and iPad lines already, they're doing some sad technical gymnastics trying to differentiate the lines.

> but the environment is important to Apple

Nobody even themselves believe that, it's 100% marketing, they wouldn't be shitting ten new devices with welded batteries per year if they cared

Its a very 1980s Soviet Union vibe. Sure, we have to say we believe all this stuff that nobody believes anymore, yeah.

In a way it is, but capitalism has been way more successful than the soviet's Pravda could have dreamed of

in terms of "true believers" or propaganda?

In terms of being a functional system which allows for political dissent, unlike the Soviet Union and every other communist country

The difference between capitalism and communism is that communism requires everyone to believe in it and participate in it or corruption takes over, but capitalism works whether you believe in it or not.

There's still corruption in capitalist societies, but sometimes the ability to have political dissent keeps the corruption from completely destroying the system. In communist countries the control of the Party is more like a feature than a bug..

You know you can criticize the monstrosity capitalism became without begin a communist right ?

There are a lot of alternatives between full blown consumerism and eating potatoes in a sad looking brutalist apartment complex.

Are you ignoring the effort to clear their supply chain and own engineering of all sorts of chemicals known to be toxic during manufacture, use, and recycling/disposal?

It's been completed over 10 years ago easily.

The process is inherently a waste of resource, you can make it as efficient as you want, selling airpods with glued batteries, 200 millions phones per year, pushing people to continuously upgrade, &c. is an unsustainable waste

This is like the aviation industry, rolls royce making their engine 5% more efficient over a decade is nice, if in the meantime we multiplied the number of flights by 30 we're still fucked

So yes apple removed some plastic wraps and uses a bit of recycled aluminum, its all marketing, carbon neutrality isn't a thing, green capitalism isn't a thing, it's a feel good marketing slogan for 30 years old techbros buying a new apple watch every 9 months

Have you looked at the typical AirPod and how much of is actually the battery?

Well you're making my point... when the tiny ass battery inevitably fails after being cycled 1-3 times per day every day you have to get rid of the whole otherwise perfectly fine working product because no one can swap the battery in an economically viable way

How efficient is that ? You could have a screw in battery taking the same amount of space and allowing a basically unlimited life, but I guess I'm not a "genius™"

Just so you know this is how e waste is "recycled":

https://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electronic-was...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...

https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/t...

And the alternative is a larger battery and a heavier headphone for something that goes directly in your ear.

The horror... "why did you destroy your home planet ?" "convenience"

Yes I’m sure a 1 pound set of headphones would have been comfortable hanging on your ears and out of all of the things that are “destroying the planet”, I’m sure that AirPods are a bigger culprit than anything - including all of the Android phones that get thrown away because they never see an update.

If only Apple offered a service to replace just the battery…

You know it bullshit when the page is a mile long

https://www.apple.com/environment/

This is an overly negative comment for what is a positive move. Supporting USB-C instead of lightning is good, and it is a reasonable cost to have older accessories face backwards compatibility issues.

They could have support Pencil 2, which is being sold quite some time now... the point is that is doesn't make much sense to only support Pencil 1.

The Pencil 2 uses a different technology, with different hardware costs. According to your logic, they should have either not switched to USB-C because a niche accessory has not switched yet, or alternatively, incurred the higher costs and raise price for the consumers (again, for that niche accessory).

Why does it seem so weird that they chose to switch to USB-C while using the adapter as a non-ideal stop-gap solution for that niche use case? It seems like a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

My guess is:

- They want to standardize on the flat-edge design for aesthetic/consistency/synergy/slightly-more-usable-volume reasons. The entry-level iPad was the last remaining iPhone/iPad with non-flat edges.

- Pencil 2 charging conflicts with a landscape camera. (This also explains why the new iPad Pros have kept the portrait camera.) They chose the landscape camera, and the missing Pencil 2 support provides an additional differentiator for the iPad Air.

- They have to migrate to USB-C before the end of 2023 due to EU regulations, and the next update of the entry-level iPad may not happen before 18 months from now.

It probably all makes sense from Apple’s perspective, even though the result is confusing and irritating for consumers.

> Testing was conducted by Apple in September 2022 using preproduction iPad (10th generation) systems with the Apple A14 Bionic chip, as well as production MediaTek MT8768N-based Android tablet systems with the latest version of Android 11 available at the time of testing.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Mediatek-MT8768-Processor-Benc...

> The MediatekMT8768 is an entry level ARM SoC for smartphones (mainly Android based) and tablets that was introduced in early 2020.

Hahah, I can’t believe they actually made this comparison.

Similar price. Fair comparison.

Here's an Android Tablet with that chip for £99 ($88 at current exchange rate). https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/tcl-tab-10s-32gb-10.2-inch-w...

Minor correction: 99 GBP = 111 USD, think you used the exchange rate the wrong way round.

The pound has fallen a lot of late, but it's not quite at parity with the dollar

Gah.

No it is not. A Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 for example is still cheaper than the newly announced iPad (US$399) and uses a much more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 CPU.

A14 is still 1.5~2x[1] faster than this CPU, but using a really low budget CPU for comparison is really unfair here.

[1]: https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-86...

Taking the footnote out of context makes it look sillier than it is. Here is the actual quote where the footnote was used:

> This makes the new iPad up to 5x faster than the best-selling Android tablet, and for users looking to upgrade from a device like iPad (7th generation), they will see up to 3x improvement in overall performance with the new iPad.

The footnote also mentions this immediately after your quote ends, which you presumably left out because it would have made the theme of the above quote more obvious and less confusing:

> Best-selling systems are based on publicly available sales data over the last 12 months.

If Apple clearly states they are comparing to "the best-selling Android tablet", and they do, then I don't see what the problem is. They didn't say "compared to the fastest Android tablet" and then whip out the old MT8768 or some nonsense like that. The reader is welcome to disregard the comparison, but the comparison isn't misleading.

The basic iPad has surely been Apple's best selling iPad for a long time, so that is Apple's point of comparison for this one. If they wanted to compare absolute performance against the best the Android tablet market has to offer, they would use the iPad Pro with the M2 chip, not the basic iPad.

I would also point out that anecdotally, I don't know a single person with an Android tablet that cost $200 or more. I know plenty of people with Android tablets that cost way less than $200. Most people reading Apple's comparison who have an Android tablet will be trying to understand why they should pay the premium for an iPad instead of buying another $100 tablet, and being 5x faster is a logical hook. People with a $400+ Android tablet are unlikely to be considering a basic iPad, since they've clearly already made up their mind.

> Most people reading Apple's comparison who have an Android tablet will be trying to understand why they should pay the premium for an iPad instead of buying another $100 tablet, and being 5x faster is a logical hook. People with a $400+ Android tablet are unlikely to be considering a basic iPad, since they've clearly already made up their mind.

No, most people reading Apple's comparison will think that it is 5 times faster than fastest Android tablet and this is exactly what they're aiming for. How many non-developers or non-hardware enthusiasts do you expect to actually read what is best selling Android table CPU? None, they'll think that iPad is 5x faster than Galaxy tablet.

> most people reading Apple's comparison will think that it is 5 times faster than fastest Android tablet and this is exactly what they're aiming for

That is such a wild conclusion. Apple clearly says "best-selling" right in the claim. They didn't hide it in a footnote. I believe that "best-selling" is not a difficult concept to understand for most people, and I struggle to think of a better way for Apple to have worded things there. If BMW compared one of their new vehicles to the best-selling car in America, who is going think BMW is intending for the reader to compare against a Bugatti Chiron? That is not what anyone would conclude, and it's the same here.. no one should immediately conclude that Apple is comparing to the fastest Android tablet when they clearly say "best-selling".

Since you apparently believe most people can't read (or at least, can't understand the words "best-selling"), there's probably nothing Apple could have written that would have worked for you here. The comparison against the class of android tablet that the reader is most likely to have is an extremely valid one.

> If BMW compared one of their new vehicles to the best-selling car in America, who is going think BMW is intending for the reader to compare against a Bugatti Chiron? That is not what anyone would conclude, and it's the same here.

You just said it right here. If BMW is Apple, and the Best Selling Car is the Tata or a Chinese Brand ( because that is where they made the volume ), which reader would have made that conclusion?

It is a misleading comparison. And it doesn't look good on Apple.

You’re setting up a strawman which is easy for you to knock over. I specifically said “best-selling car in America”, which would not be from a Chinese brand. It appears to be the Toyota Camry, but whatever it is, it is certainly going to be similar to other well-selling, similarly-priced vehicles the average US reader would be familiar with, whether that is a Honda Civic or Subaru Impreza or whatever.

Without seeing Apple’s market research data, which you also haven’t seen, they likely concluded that the best selling Android tablet in America is a cheap tablet sold at Walmart or Amazon. Do you really think the new iPad isn’t up to 5x faster than the best-selling Fire tablet on Amazon? As someone else pointed out, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite uses the exact chip mentioned in the comparison, and it has 10k reviews on the Amazon storefront. This is not some no-name tablet only sold in China.

If Apple were comparing against tablets only sold in China in a US press release, and if those tablets were significantly weaker than the best selling Android tablet in America, then yes, it would be misleading, but I have seen no evidence to indicate that, and I don’t believe that’s what happened here.

The upvotes I’ve gotten are enough to indicate this isn’t likely to be a bad look for Apple. Plus, even if you consider it misleading, this is only in a press release, it isn’t even on the product page that people will actually see. But no evidence has been presented that Apple chose to be misleading. This comparison seems perfectly fine.

It is not a US Press Release. But a "World Wide" press release. Hence "best-selling car in America" is the wrong analogy.

And they never stated it was "best selling Android tablet in America ".

You’re completely ignoring points which don’t agree with you.

The Galaxy Tab A7 Lite uses the exact chip in the comparison and is an extremely well-selling tablet in America, and likely worldwide. The new iPad is definitely 5x faster in some benchmarks I checked compared to one of the Amazon fire tablets I saw on sale, which is also extremely popular. That’s two of the most popular tablets I’m aware of, and other tablets in these price ranges don’t appear any more powerful.

This indicates that their comparison is not misleading, full stop. We don’t really need more data to prove their comparison seems adequate. Apple didn’t set up a strawman.

You’re not providing any evidence to your claim that it is misleading. Just because you don’t like a comparison doesn’t make it misleading.

The press release also states Cupertino, California, but I don’t see where it says it is worldwide as you claim. It is reasonable to assume that a press release by a U.S. company being released from a U.S. office is intended for a U.S. audience. I don’t see any mention of euros or other non-U.S. currencies in the press release, but they do mention dollars and they specifically refer to the U.S. several times. If it is targeting the U.S., then the comparison should be against the U.S., and it appears to be perfectly relevant against some of the best selling Android tablets here. There is no need to stretch for some brand only sold in China, as you did in your analogy. (I don’t have the market research they have in order to determine which one is the best selling, but the A7 Lite seems like a solid bet as the one Apple concluded.)

What evidence do you have that the best-selling Android tablet in America is significantly faster than the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite? That’s the only question that is relevant to this discussion. Apple’s claims appear to be spot-on for the U.S. market based on my own quick research. Baseless claims of a company intentionally being misleading are pointless to debate, so I’m done here. I’m happy to criticize Apple for all sorts of things, including their tendency to hamstring PWAs to promote their App Store monopoly, but this tablet performance comparison appears perfectly fine.

>but I don’t see where it says it is worldwide as you claim.

An example that is not hard to find. A PR from Singapore

https://www.apple.com/sg/newsroom/2022/10/apple-unveils-comp...

Once again, you ignore the only question that matters in this thread. You also prove my own point: the press release under discussion was targeted at the U.S., as the default Newsroom is the one used for U.S. press releases. Unless you care to link to Apple's U.S. Newsroom? The one you linked is targeted at Singapore, as can be seen clearly. Apple customizes it to each region where there is a need to customize it. For the comparison to be misleading, we would need evidence that it is misleading at least in one country where they released this press release, and it isn't misleading in the US based on the evidence previously shown so far, as best I can tell. I had welcomed you to show some evidence as well, but you haven't.

This whole discussion has been pointless.

I didn't actually ignore anything until the first point is clear. You clearly have little understanding of how PR works. And the Apple US press release is exactly the same as everywhere else, inclusive but not limited to English speaking countries.

The press release was world wide. And not a single word in there suggest anything being US specific, except you assume it was a US specific press release. And if this wasn't clear, in lot of countries, you are required by law to state it clearly if it was best selling Android Tablet in "US".

>This whole discussion has been pointless.

Yes. I do agree with this one thing.

The galaxy tablet isn't the best selling android tablet? then what is, is it the kindle?

Probably the Galaxy line, but not the top model. The A7 lite has that Mediatek processor instead of the Snapdragon in the non lite version:

https://www.samsung.com/us/tablets/tab-a7/compare/?device-1=...

Is Android even still the competition? The android tablet market has been dead for a while. Arguably makes more sense to compare to Windows tablets at this point.

I have 2 perfectly working iPads except that they stopped getting OS updates, so are now basically electronic trash. I find myself becoming reluctant to support an ecosystem that generates such waste. I stopped purchasing MacBooks when they started gluing the battery.

Very interested to know what your solution is for a longer-supported good tablet, as I’m unaware of one.

There isn't one. iPads are the longest supported tablets out there. So I guess they are saying that they are so upset about this that they will stop using tablets altogether, which I suppose is a valid, if weird choice.

If you want to be pedantic, the Microsoft Surface will have Linux Kernel support long after the iPad has become a derelict memory in the minds of Generation Z.

But that's not official support. That's like saying that my 10 year old Nexus 7 can still be flashed with latest versions of custom ROMs so it's the longest supported tablet out there.

Hey, works for me. I flash a lot of my devices with custom ROMs after EOL, and they work great.

It's a computational device, it's normal to be able to install whatever OS you want on it. Apple is the outlier here.

I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just pointing out that when it comes to official support, Apple provides the longest out of all manufacturers.

Mine can't. The first generation entry-level Nexus 7 used a cheap storage chip that wore out within two or three years; it's completely unusable.

I was actually thinking that would probably apply to Windows support as well!

not fully: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/which-surface-de...

Windows 10 will be supported until 2025 though. (And to be honest, I'll be surprised if Microsoft doesn't extend that given Windows 11's system requirements.)

Well, standardizing or documenting the hardware ? Making the boot loader unlockable ?

In other worlds, doing what PCs managed to do during more than three decades ?

I don’t care that Apple stops to support my iPad after X years. We can’t blame them for stopping to support old enough hardware.

But we can blame them for making this hardware locked in such a way that you cannot run what you want on a device you fully own and that they unilaterally decided isn’t worth using anymore.

You’re using a PC from 1992?

Some people do.

I seriously doubt it.

With a 486 processor?

I don't think so.

The only way they're using it is the same way they're using a Commodore 64, as an antique.

Yes, they use it for retro gaming, and people write new software like web browsers for the C64. It would be nice to be able to repurpose old tablets in a similar fashion.

I do.

A 486 running Windows 3.1 with Cubase 1.0 exclusively for MIDI running in Standard Mode is far superior to any modern machine with respect to timing. Also, MIDI software hasn't evolved that much over the past couple decades.

Perhaps it even rivals an Atari ST

How is Cubase better on a 486 than a modern computer like most people use?

Timing. Midi jitter and latency.

DOS/Windows 3.1 is still good for timing sensitive applications.

Nowadays MIDI interfaces are usually USB. But an ISA card or a parallel port will yield better results.

On modern computers, MIDI generally feels slightly off, and not as musical, but for the most part 'good enough' for the vast majority.

And you’re running an outdated unsupported operating system. You could buy an old Mac that wasn’t supported to run a PPC version of Photoshop.

But the oldest iPad from 2010 will still be able to get the “last supported version” of apps from the App Store, still works with old versions of iWork, streaming video apps, Spotify (at least it did a couple of years ago), you can send video from it to any device that supports AirPlay and print to any AirPrint printer.

I don't understand the point you are making, but my point is that MIDI on old hardware works BETTER than on modern hardware. Whether or not the operating system is unsupported is irrelevant. The old hardware is not "outdated" in the sense that it WORKS BETTER.

But to respond to your second point, I believe that Apple has REMOVED apps from the App Store that were previously available to download. For example, I was not able to download on my old iPhone 4 the latest working GarageBand for that device, because it was deleted. This is not the only app that I have not been able to download, because it was REMOVED FROM THE APP STORE.

But I think the point you are missing is that if Apple decides that these devices are obsolete and they will not support them, they should be willing to at least release documentation that allows people to write/install whatever software they want on those devices.

No. But you just distort what I am saying.

I'm not using a PC from 1992 because I consider them to be too old, not because some company unilaterally decided that it's now to old and that it is now junk.

My PC have parts from 2012 and is still working fine (I'm using Linux but tbh, even under windows, it works pretty well). Good luck running up to date apps on a 2012 iPad. My 2012 PC is up to date.

Most 10 to 20 years old PCs can run some light (and up to date !) linux distrib and can serve many purposes ranging from lightweight terminals to educational material in third world countries. Heck, with the right software setup, most are still really decent office computers. We are not in the 90-2000s anymore where every year your new computer was vastly faster than the previous one.

An out of date iPad is just electronic junk. Not because it is not fast (it's even as fast as when you bought it) but because it's not yours anymore.

What do you mean “good luck” doing so? You go to the App store and download the “last compatible version”. The last time I checked a couple of years ago, you could do that for Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, Crackle, all of Apple’s software and Google Drive.

The original Surface Pro is still getting updates.

I think you forgot to put an asterisk there. Microsoft doesn't fully support such old devices anymore: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/which-surface-de...

It might still be getting some updates, for now, but it can't be updated to the latest version of Windows. I guess you could install Linux on it.

Last I checked (admittedly about a year ago) there was very poor Linux support for Surface tablets. Basic things like the camera and wifi, on some devices, simply don't work in Linux.

My Surface Go can't upgrade to Windows 11 but is still getting Windows 10 updates. By the tine those stop, it will pretty much be trash. As it stands today, using it is painfully slow and it's portability is really about the only thing going for it. 4GB of RAM and a grossly underclocked CPU will do that.

It’s still glued but they are at least using stretch release adhesive now - https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+14-Inch+2021+Batter...

I have a 2011 iPad that I still bring with me to the gym to watch tv episodes on on the treadmill.

It doesn't get OS updates though, does it? Awesome tablet if it wasn't for that, battery like new on mine after 10 years.

You can still use it for Netflix and a few other video apps and you can download the “last compatible version”

Yeah a lot of the video apps really seem to go out of their way to support old iOS versions in a way that other apps don't.

Presumably precisely because a lot of people keep using 10-year-old iPads as a dedicated video player.

It was 2019 the last time I tried. But I remember Netflix, Plex, Hulu and Crackle were all able to be installed from a reset iPad 1st gen.

I could also download Apple’s iWork suite and download purchased iTunes music and movies and play them.

It’s true that the use cases for that tablet has shrunk as it has stopped receiving updates and access to the newest apps.

And while the interface has become quite sluggish once you open a book or play a video it runs great and the screen is still absolutely amazing.

I don’t think a decade old iPad is necessarily trash, but I will concede that a decade old Linux desktop loses fewer of its use cases.

What did you switch into? Apple has a record time of support for their devices.

As for the battery glued in - again, what did you switch into, and how did it go? Aside from a few mishaps, Apple has the most long lasting laptops on the market.

My Windows laptops still get OS and software upgrades even when they are ten years old. Why does a laptop or a tablet have to be obsolete?

I agree that the iPads are the best of the breed out there, and Apple does support their hardware longer than most. But once the support stops, the hardware is locked and there's no alternative.

So to answer some of the other questions that my post generated, I basically stopped using tablets. The kitchen tablet was replaced with a cheap Chromebook. My travel tablet was replaced with a MacBook Air 11 2015 that I got on eBay, and installed Linux Mint on it. I believe the 2015 MacBook Air model is one of the last MacBooks with a replaceable battery, and it is still one of the best 11" laptops ever made.

My other laptops are a bunch of Dell Latitude 7000 series and Dell Precision series laptops, running Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint. All of those have replaceable battery, upgradable RAM slots, and replaceable SSD or NVMe slots. I cannot bring myself to buy a laptop with a glued-in battery.

What do you mean the hardware is locked once Apple cuts support? Did the iPad stop working? Are you referring to Apple services no longer working?

The last time I checked a couple of years ago. All Apple services still worked on an old first gen iPad from 2010.

> The kitchen tablet was replaced with a cheap Chromebook.

Chromebooks get eight years of security updates from Google, similar to iPads. Is the attraction that you can install a Linux distro on it after support ends?

I just checked, and since a year ago Apple uses pull tabs instead of glue - so the batteries are relatively easily replaceable.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/27/macbook-pro-battery-pul...

As a side note though - how often do you replace batteries in notebooks? I think the only one time I ever did it was in 2008. I think most of my Macbooks survived over seven years each, and were passed on to my family - the batteries were never an issue - neither for me not for others who got my laptops.

Thanks for the info, that's good to know. I'll definitely consider going back to the MacBooks when Linux on the Apple Silicon chips becomes a reasonable option after Apple drops support for these new laptops.

I get almost all my laptops from eBay, so I often replace the batteries soon after purchase, then maybe every 3-5 years (?) after that. I replaced the battery on my 2014 MBA in 2020. I get the impression that I use my laptops longer than average. My Windows 10 laptop is a 2011 model with an Intel i7-2620M processor whose batteries have been replaced twice.

> Apple has the most long lasting laptops on the market.

I am not sure about this. I have a ThinkPad from ten years ago that still runs up-to-date Linux.

I have a bunch of iPads in the house including the 4th generation one from 2012 that is still get used randomly to watch content. It' 10 years old and still works without any issues. It's the oldest piece of tech that I have in the house.

You can always recycle them with Apple if you are worried about the waste footprint.

Strange. I have that exact iPad and it's pretty much useless now. All apps my kids want to run on it want an upgrade to a version of iOS that is not available for that model.

It still works with most streaming apps that were available then and it can still be used for the web.

I have an iPad mini 2 (released 2013) that I still use every night for watching YouTube videos in bed. It also got a security update like a week or 2 ago.

It doesn't perform great, but it gets the job done for watching videos.

This happened with my six year old MacBook. I’m so mad.

It works great and still has plenty of power but I can’t seem to upgrade the OS. And one by one the apps I use stop supporting my OS.

Really feels like such a waste and makes me wonder if I really own it at all.

Which MacBook?

According to Wikipedia, macOS Monterey has support for everything that dates back to 2016. The only exception I see would be if you bought the 2015 model of MacBook in 2016?

In any case, it still runs Big Sur. What apps don't run on Big Sur...? Desktop software often (usually?) supports a few years' worth of previous macOS versions.

If you're just running into an installation bug for Big Sur, you can always just install it clean rather than upgrading.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_Monterey#Supported_hardw...

I’ll have to check but when I went to updates it didn’t offer any upgrade options. Maybe there’s still a way to do it?

How is “trash”? Apple is still providing security updates for devices back to 2013 and even without iOS updates, you can still use third party apps that either support your OS or you can download the “last compatible version” as of a couple of years ago, I was able to redownload Netflix and a few other apps on my original 2010 iPad.

Which ipads are you referring to? I have an ipad air 2 from 2014. It just got 15.7, most recent update. That is eight years of top line support.

It won’t get ios 16, but apple has started supporting older devices with security updates. Ios 12.5.6 supports devices from 2013 that can’t use ios 15.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201222

Apple makes some of the longest supported hardware in the business, and they’ve been lengthening their support. Their incentive is to get more services revenue so they want the largest userbase possible. I expect new devices will have at least ten years support.

8yrs is better than 4yrs but worse than 12, 20, 30yrs.

I get that in some ways tech is different (my rice cookers still going, 60yrs) but in other ways it's not. My 2014 MBP really has zero reason to become obsolete (they stopped supporting it a year ago). It still functions just fine. It's still plenty fast. There are no features of the 2021 MBP missing from them 2014 MBP except at most USB-C ports.

If you want your MBP from 2014 to run the latest OS release, check out: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

Honestly hoping for 12/20/30+ years of patches sounds super nice but unreasonable.

My MacPlus from 1986 works fine, but I don't expect Apple to provide MacOS7 patches.

Why not? Automakers recall cars and 'patch' them years later.

What automaker is recalling and patching a 36 year old vehicle? Heck, show me one that is patching a 10 year old vehicle.

Their OS7 team would be larger than the number of OS7 users. It would be cheaper for Apple to send free Macs to all the users than support the code anymore.

So you expect Apple to support the 2010 era iPad 1st generation that had 256MB RAM and 400Mhz A4 in 2022?

Or do you expect Apple to support a 20 year old Mac?

Or do you expect Apple to support a 1992 era Mac LCII with a 68030-16Mhz processor that came with at most a 10MB RAM and a 80MB hard drive?

My 2010 (and below) x86 tablets all run fine. Linux has mitigated most of the security issues. They all run completely current browsers.

Personally I think all of these examples should either legally have to be supported, or companies should be obligated to give away all source code & systems required for the user community/world to continue ongoing support & fixes.

I’m sure it run very fast, is light and has great battery life compared to a $300 low end iPad. At some point using old hardware becomes silly and becomes a point of nerd pride.

The 2013 Dell Venue 11 Pro is remarkably good a contender. It's been $300 for half a decade, has 8-9 hours battery life with the keyboard, isn't super light nor thin but is pretty good & very compact, has a decent front shooter & so so back shooter. Has a 4G option.

I have moved on to a great 2-in-1 from 2017 that is quite similar, newer specs, much lighter at 7.4mm and 1.6lbs, OLED screen... this isn't geek pride. This is a fantastic brilliant light machine that until very recently would knock the socks off any iPad or Android Tablet, and has been available New Old Stock for under $400 for years now. It's far more machine than the flagship tablets until very recently.

The low end iPad is definitely an enviable marvel but it's also far less of an advance than I think we really understand. Part of why it looks so good though is because so many machines are poorly built, are compromised heavily. The whole 2-in-1 thing has gotten segmented into expensive fancy Surface competitors & ultra-low-end machines (which honestly with slightly better builds and much much better screens would be stunning devices), with unreasonable uncompromising top or bottom of market positioning. It's been sad. But some places out there are some really great 2-in-1 pc competitors, that have long put to shame Android & iPad offerings (until Apples very recent speedy but oh-so-limited oh-so-walled-garden oh-so-controlled shorter-lifed iPads).

There's absolutely a lot of people who just swear by Lenovo T420's forever & seemingly always will. I'm not at all of that ilk.

> The 2013 Dell Venue 11 Pro is remarkably good a contender. It's been $300 for half a decade, has 8-9 hours battery life with the keyboard, isn't super light nor thin but is pretty good & very compact, has a decent front shooter & so so back shooter. Has a 4G option.

The Dell is slower than 2012 era iPhone 5

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/PhoneTablet14/937

> The whole 2-in-1 thing has gotten segmented into expensive fancy Surface competitors & ultra-low-end machines (which honestly with slightly better builds and much much better screens would be stunning devices)

“Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?”

> until Apples very recent speedy but oh-so-limited oh-so-walled-garden oh-so-controlled shorter-lifed iPads).

As of right now, the iPad Air 2 from 2014 supports the latest OS. Apple just released a security patch for the iPhone 5s from 2013 in June.

> The Dell is slower than 2012 era iPhone 5

The Venue 11 Pro is not on any of these benchmarks. You are comparing the lowest power Atom to mobile cores, not the Venue 11 Pro's Haswell. Try again.

Generally I'd like it if you'd tone down the snark. I'm trying to have some conversation/discourse here, & it feels indecorous to take my 2-in-1 market segmentation woes into such ungraceful territory.

> As of right now, the iPad Air 2 from 2014 supports the latest OS.

In the United States and Turkey and nowhere else. Regarded as a Vintage model. iPad 5 from March 2017 is the last "current" model with international support. Still not bad, beats Android by far. But my (previous 2013 era) device is significantly faster[1], about twice as old, and continues to run regular, well supported OSes with good security status.

[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/16785932?baseli...

If Apple didn’t exist you’d be praying for a company that offered 8 years of support. Android’s history is littered with devices that got one major update and then nothing. It’s a huge part of Google’s running story: a complete lack of what any other company would call engineering discipline.

I’m sure they have discipline, they’ve just maximized for certain dimensions that don’t matter very much to consumers. Like novelty over longevity. Profit over longevity.

For that reason for every ios/ipados device I buy, I automatically download all purchased apps and then delete the ones I don't use. Apple keeps the older version most of the time without charging me for storage. I think this is what I pay for when I give them 30% for every app I buy.

Its very frustrating that I have a stack of iPhones that I can't do much with even if they are still perfectly good hardware. They are either updated to some version where I can't jailbreak it and turn it into the worlds best raspberry pi, or I've forgotten my old passcode and its basically bricked as a result. If only I could run them as a small arm cluster or something useful like that.

Which iPhones would that be? The 5s is still getting security updates and carriers are cutting off 3G compatibility which means nothing older than the 5 will work today anyway.

I don't need 3g for my would be iphone cluster, wifi is sufficient. These would be a 5, a 5s, and the first SE, all in a nice stack because they share the same chassis. I would basically use this cluster of hardware how people currently use home servers, not as a phone anymore. It should be plenty of power to run plex, backup other devices, self host a website, among other things, since these are overpowered arm devices after all. I'm not sure how many cores it would be with this stack off the top of my head, but it would be a nice amount to play with for sure.

> I've forgotten my old passcode and its basically bricked as a result.

You can use recovery mode to reset them: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212787

Or if that doesn’t work, you can factory-reset them using DFU Restore (google for it). If you don’t have a Mac but a PC, you can use iMazing.

I'm still using my Macbook Pro from 2014 without issue and its on the latest OS.

I don't feel the need to buy an iPad.

I “like” how Apple makes a better keyboard/trackpad case for the cheap iPad than for the Pro.

The new Magic Keyboard Folio:

  - has a trackpad
  - has media keys
  - can lie flat on a table without having to remove the case

The Magic Keyboard (the floaty one):

  - has a trackpad
  - does not have media keys
  - cannot lie flat

The Smart Keyboard Folio:

  - does not have a trackpad
  - does not have media keys
  - can lie flat

So if you have a Pro you have to pick between being able to easily write on the thing and having a trackpad available.

I recently got a logitech combo case. it works great with pro.

What do you mean "lie flat on a table"? You want to use the iPad with the screen flat on the table in line with the keyboard? Do you realize how bad that is for you, ergonomically? Your neck will have a really hard time over time.

It's no good for a table. But you should be able to fold the case back and carry the tablet as a tablet without leaving parts behind. It's a tablet, at the end of the day, not a laptop.

I hate this about the galaxy s tablet cases. They expect you to take the whole keyboard off. It should always fold back flat.

No, I want to be able to switch between using it like a laptop and using it like a tablet (and writing on it with the pencil).

They finally killed the headphone jack in the plain-jane iPad, what a shame. I'm not exactly a tablet person -- my ereader suits me just fine for reading, which is all I'd want to do on a tablet, anyway -- but why do people put up with this? I understand that phones are small, and thus "hard" to fit the jack into... but why remove it from tablets?

Apple sells a lot of wireless headphones.

So which wireless headphones do I get for $19 like the EarPods?

Those wired headphones used to be cheap enough to include in the box.

Now you're upsold $169 airpods from apple, or $79 power beats (also from apple). The experience is better, sure, but they also left nothing to chance here by closing the door on your existing cheap wired headphones.

Or you can buy literally any BT or USB C headphones.

https://www.scarbir.com/truewireless : This guy has done a ton of reviews on cheap TWS. I've picked a few 25$ ones off his recommendations and they work fine.

“No. You don’t want or need that headphone jack”.

…… anonymous Apple designer.

They had to because it's impossible to water proof the iPad with a headphone jack, or because there's not enough space inside the device, I forgot what was the official reason they used for the iPhone. The unofficial reason is that no headphone port means more AirPod sales.

Lots of waterproof android phones on the market had a 3.5mm jack before their brand of wireless headphones was ready to upsell, which I think points pretty conclusively to the "unofficial" reason being the real reason.

The iPad is not waterproof anyway, and I'm currently holding a smaller, waterproof Android phone with a headphone jack (Samsung Galaxy S10e), so whoever gives that as an excuse doesn't know what they're talking about.

At this point all my headphones are bluetooth anyways. One less port water and stuff can get into (although I agree they probably should have kept it here).

OTOH my earpods have gone though the wash several times, I don't think the bluetooth headphones will cooperate with a rainstorm much less the laundry machine.

At this point I’m over wired headphones. I carry a couple of pairs in my backpack for use on airplane seat back entertainment systems, but otherwise I prefer Bluetooth earbuds.

I prefer the bluetooth ones for convenience, but the option to go wired would be nice. Especially since some VOIP and conference software does weird stuff with latency compensation when you're on bluetooth.

Yeah! And why can't don't they have ports for SD cards, USB sticks, and floppy disks!

At some point, things change. We're at that point with wired headphones. You can already share Bluetooth headphones across a Mac/iPhone/Tablet with extreme ease. And if you really want, you can adapt regular wired headphones to bluetooth.

And on iPads specifically, it's not like people are carrying them around in their pocket to listen to music.

Hilarious. SD card support in phones and tablets is another requirement for me, and yet another reason why I won't buy Apple products in those categories. Built-in storage is expensive and anemic. SD cards are especially appropriate for photo and music storage, since they're read-heavy workloads and convenient to transfer between devices when you want to move the data around.

I don't care what anybody says: bluetooth is still trash:

- I routinely block bluetooth signals with just my body, for instance when I exercise with my phone in my pocket.

- Bluetooth headphones live on borrowed time since batteries are not repairable in most over-ear models, much less buds.

- I don't want to manage another set of batteries.

- Bluetooth audio suffers from an order of magnitude greater latency than wired audio.

- Bluetooth audio is noticeably worse quality, and codec compatibility is a mess between devices.

- Using bluetooth for audio input and output simultaneously inevitably results in garbage quality for both. Just ask any of my coworkers in an audio call where they use AirPods.

Obviously floppy discs are not needed anymore, especially in mobile form factors.

By "USB sticks," I assume you're referring to USB-A ports, and guess what: I still have a ton of USB-A devices, and I'm not about to generate pounds of ewaste by throwing out the devices and/or cables. That port is going to be useful for years still. But you bring up a good point: why can't we at least have two USB-C ports on the iPad Pro? Wouldn't it be useful to charge and use a peripheral sometimes?

People play games and watch videos all the time on iPads. The aux jack is useful. There's almost certainly enough free space in the chassis to fit the port. It's great that you're utterly in love with bluetooth and you can't imagine using anything else, but it really sucks for everyone else that we don't even have an option any more.

Huh? Android phones support SD cards and USB sticks.

The main use case for my current iPad is to connect the audio-jack to my guitar amp and use GarageBand - which currently works great because I can charge the iPad at the same time. I guess in the future one can only use the audio out OR charge - which is a shame.

Edit: No, I can't really use bluetooth here since a) 99% of guitar amps have no BT support and b) the latency is noticeable.

If you search Belkin Rockstar there is a dual port lightning adaptor and also a lightning+3.5mm adaptor.

Can still be done with a dongle at least.

Thank you.

>> Rockstar -> ...looks like Belkin still does user research ;-)

Having to buy more stuff. Mission accomplished.

One can always keep using the old iPad. By the time you decide to upgrade devices, yeah, you probably will need to "buy more stuff". This has been true, along varying timelines, for all computers at least since USB was released.

I believe this iPad has USB-C instead of lightning, but there's a "Belkin Rockstar" for that too: https://www.belkin.com/us/adapters/audio-charge/rockstar-3-5... (as well as several other brands)

At least generic USB-C/Aux splitters are much cheaper than Apple's Lightning/Aux splitters were. The product in my first search result was only $15.

Professionals and audiophiles (not the audience of the base iPad) use an external DAC, etc.

Regular people these days use Bluetooth audio.

That leaves people who just want wired headphones. Plenty of cheap USB-C to 3.5mm adapters out there.

All the Apple devices I've used have notoriously buggy Bluetooth implementations. Maybe their implementation for communicating with Apple headphones is less buggy, but even when I have working Bluetooth, I'd much rather charge fewer devices and not have to deal with dongles when switching devices.

K-12 schools will have to replace their existing headphones with USB-C models, but that's not too bad, the headphones take a lot of abuse in that environment. EOLing the lightning charging infrastructure they have is going to be more impactful.

Note that Apple still sells the Lightning iPad with 3.5mm jack, so this is only a concern post 2024 (the EU mandate comes into force at the end of 2024).

> K-12 schools will have to replace their existing headphones with USB-C models

No, they just need adapters. These are fairly cheap, especially when purchased in bulk (which is what a school would do).

I agree re charging, and personally I wish things stayed on Lightning for a while longer. But USB-C charging cables are also fairly cheap, thankfully.

There is always a transition cost. I don't personally believe there is much benefit going from Lightning to USB-C except for transferring large files (videos), but it arguably means we need to carry fewer cables when traveling.

> but why do people put up with this?

What is the alternative? Android tablets are no drop-in replacement. Ipads are great for music production. Many great apps only exist on iOS. Bluetooth audio introduces a delay which makes playing software instruments live impractical. So dongles until Apple comes to reason.

Apple wants you to buy AirPods.

Why hasn't the first-gen Apple Pencil died yet? This would be very compelling if it supported the second-gen Apple Pencil.

Dang I completely missed that. I assumed this was USB-C and pencil 2 and planned to order one for my wife once I figured out which color/model to buy, but I guess I’ll hold off a bit more :(

I think it'd be too compelling for a lot of use cases. They want to nudge you up the product lineup.

This seems like just a renamed iPad Air, but the iPad Air supports the second-generation pencil.

The charging mechanism for the second-gen pencil probably conflicts with the landscape camera. Also, they don’t have enough differentiators to the iPad Air.

I think the biggest part of this announcement is the fact that for the first time an apple Magic Keyboard for iPad now comes with an ESC key.

Could indicate future plans to support coding/sysadmin on an iPad

FWIW, you can pair a regular Magic keyboard & Bluetooth mouse to most iPads. The folio keyboard didn't have ESC (never owned that, can't comment), but it didn't mean it wasn't physically doable

I have ESC mapped to the folio keyboard 'world' key in the bottom left corner. It's a complete non-issue, pinky down instead of pinky up.

As someone who hops between Ubuntu and macOS I can say without a doubt that these subtle differences in key locations are at least a minor issue!

Add that to the brain plasticity test list:

Lenovo laptops FN, CTRL

Dell laptops CTRL, FN

Select business Lenovo laptops: CTRL, FN

Logitech dual OS keyboards

Using the mac keyboard via Universal Control …

Yeah, I map caps lock to Esc in all my keyboards so I just did the same in the folio.

>go find your bluetooth keyboard, make sure it’s charged, and think about putting it in my bag

At which point I usually just grab my PC instead

I wonder if Apple is trying to go after the educational market to have iPad purchased instead of Chromebook's.

My kids school pays a bit under $200 each for their chromebooks...

Great point.

Chromebook's cost less than some of the keyboards Apple sells for their iPad.

https://www.apple.com/shop/select-ipad-keyboards

That's been a huge market for them forever. They routinely mention education, do education events, and have large educational discounts. Prior to today's announcement, 9th gen iPad in a 10 pack is $294 ($329 retail), with larger volume discounts available. I suspect this list will be updated and the price will go down further.

Having briefly worked in a school district's IT department, cheap plastic laptops in kids hands break frequently. Accorind to this price sheet it's $429 for for 4 years of AppleCare+ (no service fee, covers accidental damage) and comes with a ruggidized logitech case + keyboard.

One buddy that runs an extremely large school district IT department (can't remember if it's shy of 200,000 students + staff, or over 200k) had to hire an entire fulltime staff to do repairs and keep tons of replacement parts on hand (bits of plastic on the palm wrest, hinges, trackpads, keyboards, screens, charging ports they replace/ solder in house, chargers, etc). He did the math and with the 4 years of no-cost replacements the purchase will have paid for itself by year 2 and in year 3 and 4 have millions in budget surplus. Parents/ tax payers revolted and couldn't see why kids need iPads.

To your main point though, from the earliest days of the Mac (1984), Apple actually used to subsidize/ take a loss on Macs for k-12 with the theory that if you get kids on Macs young, they become lifelong customers.

https://www.apple.com/education/pricelists/pdfs/Apple_US_Edu...

Many uses use an iPad as their version of a laptop.

Apple's own promotional materials show folks doing that.

I think this is all but certain.

That’s a pretty massive price increase isn’t it? Worse for europoors: 350 EUR to ~550 EUR - 60 % (430 and 580 at Apple directly, 35 %)

I would be OK with it if the Wi Fi only non cellular version came with GPS but once again GPS is limited to cellular only.

Is there any reason to do this besides price discrimination?

It's probably using A-GPS.

A-GPS aka A-GNSS still uses GPS signal. The only difference is that metadata is downloaded via fast link (cellular or wifi) instead of slow satellite link. IIRC all mobile devices with A-GPS can download that over satellite link if needed, just takes longer.

The real issue here is that it's integrated into a cellular modem, not that it's A-GPS.

GPS is integrated into the cellular system, the GPS is handled by the Intel PMB9960 P10PSV modem,

Can someone explain what the “completely redesigned” references? It doesn’t look different than any ipads before to me.

They designed it from scratch: rounded corners, black bezels, glossy screen, side buttons. It's pure coincidence that it looks exactly like the previous design

The old 9th gen iPad still had a home button, fun colors, and a totally square screen. This update removes the home button, brings rounded display corners and colors and a new processor. And brings the non-Mini, non-Pro iPad into the same design language as the iPhone and the Mini/Pro iPads.

There might still be a fingerprint sensor in the lock button, though.

Yes, they moved the fingerprint sensor to the lock bottom on top

These small changes are "big news" because the iPad is not (yet) a fashion statement, unlike the iPhone, who suffers enough small changes each iteration so your peers can guess what model you have and how cool you are.

I don't know if it's common, but I associate iPads with small kids, and maybe Apple wants to change that perception.

The 9th generation iPad comes in two colors, Silver and Space Gray.

oof, sorry -- I meant to say "not fun colors" and somehow chopped off the "not".

Apple: "Every iPad now has USB-C"

Us: "Great, so we don't have to deal with that awful 1st-Gen Apple Pencil charging anymore?"

Apple: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQLU3AM/A/usb-c-to-apple-...

Yeah, insane choice. Here’s a visual from Twitter:

https://twitter.com/_alexguyot/status/1582405085484953601

To be fair, both are pretty bad solutions.

Yes, that's... exactly the point being made. The solution that every single iPad with USB-C used before today isn't pictured in that tweet, and it is far better. Apple made a really annoying choice here.

Right. The Apple Pencil 2 (used on more expensive iPads) connects to the side of the iPad magnetically and charges that way. It looks nice and works fine.

The original way (stick straight out of the port) worked but was always weird. They had a chance to fix it and… compromised?

The “fixed” the iPad by going USB-C, which is good. They don’t have to redesign the first Pencil which is fine (it’s cheaper than v2) but that left them with… this.

Very un-Apple. More than the original.

The whole Apple Pencil situation is pretty annoying. The 1st Gen charging style is ridiculous and should never have been designed that way. The 2nd Gen, however, has another problem entirely: it drains the iPad's battery even when fully charged. Leaving it snapped to the side of the iPad overnight will destroy the standby time in order to keep the pencil at 100%. This is dumb! After a few days the iPad will be completely dead but the pencil will be 100%. Thanks, Apple!

I wish they'd license the battery-free stylus technology from Wacom. Charging the pencil all the time is so annoying that I hate using it.

My iPad mini (6th generation) drains in a few days without a Pencil attached to it, and nothing I've been able to do manages to improve standby time noticeably. I think your blame is misplaced on the Apple Pencil. Apple needs to fix standby time on iPadOS across the board.

There may be something else draining yours. Battery life is an Anna Karenina principle [1] problem. There are many possible causes of battery drain. There is only one way to have long-lasting battery: the absence of all those sources.

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

Yes, but all of that applies to you as well. At least two people have reported no battery drain with the Pencil attached: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33250550

How certain are you that you've controlled all the variables? If the Pencil was the cause of a widespread issue, then I have to imagine lots of articles would be being written about this and Apple would be taking it seriously.

As it is, I think that iPadOS just has a variety of things that can trigger bad battery life, and that's much harder for Apple to tackle than a single, easily-defined issue like the Apple Pencil affecting battery life would be.

People who write articles about battery life generally lack the skills or experience to actually diagnose such things correctly.

iPad standby time can be quite long, assuming you're keeping track of all the things it's doing while in standby. If not, well, the device has plenty of stuff that it likes to spin up and keep running in the background.

Are you sure it's the pencil? My M1 iPad Pro discharges to 0 within 3-4 days whether I have the pencil attached or not.

and my M1 iPad Pro does not. Might be worth checking the battery usage after a day of standby to see what is using significant amount of power while backgrounded.

Pretty sure. My standby time extends by a few days if I leave the pencil off instead of attached.

I have my doubts - my iPad Pro 11 M1 does not discharge at all with the pencil attached, standby time is easily two weeks.

Same

omg I had no idea what was draining my battery. This explains so much. Holy crap.

Until you test it for yourself, I wouldn't get so excited. I disagreed with their conclusion entirely in another comment already, as did several other people.

I wonder how many kids have swallowed the pencil cap.

Bad apple for not coating it in the nasty-tasting stuff used for Nintendo Switch game cards.

USB-C on this is not the big news. The USB-C on Apple TV remote controller is the sign you're looking for. Apple is end of life-ing Lightning connector after all

I imagine AirPods and the iPhone will be next year, considering the EU USB-C deadline is approaching and it doesn't really make sense for the AirPods and the iPhone to have different charging cables.

> the EU USB-C deadline is approaching

It's only arriving in the end of 2024, so in theory even the 2024 iPhones could still use Lightning.

I'd imagine the Pro iPhones would ditch Lightning first, hopefully for Thunderbolt/USB4 for fast transfer speeds for video files.

The non-Pro iPhones would probably move over to USB-C the year after the Pro phones do.

This appears to be mostly a rebranded 2020 iPad Air, now available in multiple colors at $150 cheaper price point than when the Air was launched.

https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-air-4th-g...

The camera is now side mounted and for some reason the new basic iPad only has 1st gen pencil support with an asinine $9 adapter to charge it. Oh and a non-laminated display on the basic iPad still.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQLU3AM/A/usb-c-to-apple-...

Maybe Apple still has a surplus of first gen pencils to get rid off?

The previous gen iPad is still available so it likely is to reduce confusion and having an extra sku

Yeah, I've seen several people trying to say this is related to the iPad Air, but... other than some similar design aesthetics, this device does not appear to be related to the iPad Air at all. The exterior dimensions are all different, and this new iPad is missing several important features from the iPad Air. The screen doesn't even support the P3 gamut that the 2020 iPad Air supported.

The pencil comes with that adapter.

Is the non-laminated display really an issue when 90+ % of users are going to slap a screen protector on this Day 1.

I am disappointed in the lack of 2nd gen pencil support though.

Most surprising for me was the landscape-friendly selfie camera. That will be very helpful for video calls. Also, they added USB-C but I don't think it was mentioned explicitly in the intro video (just noted in the final slide).

I love my iPad. The best TV I ever owned.

Finally! One of my biggest disappointments during the last announcement cycle was that they didn't update the looks of the base model iPad. The old design was iconic, but looked very dated, which was frustrating since you would have to buy at least an Air to get a tablet from Apple that looked like it was modern. It also made recommending the base iPad hard, because while the ecosystem is the best ecosystem for a tablet, the tablet looked and felt so dated. A welcome refresh in my opinion!

The price spread on this versus the Air is questionable.

Stock price on this for 256GB is $600, the Air with 256GB is $750.

But the Air 256GB is $660 on Amazon right now.

$60 for the M1 and a few other advantages seem worth it.

There are a few other nice things that you get with the new 10th Gen iPad... Namely, a landscape front-facing camera and newer Magic Keyboard Folio.

https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1582392074275819520

So far 2022 has been a great year to buy 2021 Apple products for me. I got an iPhone 13 Mini slightly discounted from the old price, an iPad Mini, again with a ~10% discount, and a Series 7 Watch, discounted. The current generations of all of these products are rather disappointing and significantly more expensive here in Europe. (The plain iPad was my alternative to the Mini, so I'm mentioning it)

From the pricing section:

> Wi-Fi models of the new iPad are available with a starting price of $449 (US), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $599 (US). The new iPad, in 64GB and 256GB configurations, comes in blue, pink, yellow, and silver.

> iPad (9th generation) will remain in the iPad lineup. Wi-Fi models of iPad (9th generation) are available with a starting price of $329 (US), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $459 (US), in silver and space gray finishes.

They're keeping the older model and making this sort of a price hike, which I'm not a fan of, but at least I can stop recommending the $600 iPad Air just to avoid the old iPad design ecosystem.

Also, funnily enough: the new iPad comes with A14 Bionic and the new Apple TV 4K comes with A15 Bionic. I get that it's due to binning and such but it's still a bit funny.

Really weird they kept the A14 for the new iPads. The iPad mini already uses A15 as well as the Apple TV.

The iPad mini is $50 more but it has A15 and Pencil 2.

This is a big change for K-12, as it instantly EOLs all the mass charging equipment they have. Certainly doable, but with the increased price and the necessary charging equipment that now all needs to be replaced, it's a pretty big price hit.

£369 to £499. Ouch

Looks like price increased to $449 USD? Still a good value, but a noticeable increase.

Came here to notice that. This price hike will somehow put cheap Android tablets on the map, again. Previously there was hardly a justification to get any of them if iPad was $299 — and frequently could be had for even less than that.

They continue to sell the old cheaper one. Is it still better than a current model Android tablet?

Oh, I thought they phased it out. Yeah, AFIK it still kicks Android tablet's ass.

any android table entering the fray now will need at least a decade of existence before it can hope to challenge the ipad as a tablet. As much as i dislike apple, the ipad is synonymous with tablets.

This process involves eating losses for several years and only the likes of google or samsung are capable of doing so. Samsung have so many models of tablets available with such poor software support that it is a complete non-starter.

This is still only compatible with the 1st gen Apple Pencil which charges with a male lightning connector. Since this new iPad no longer has a lightning port you now need an adaptor which, at least, they include in the box.

nope it doesn't include the adapter, its a $9 extra purchased on top of the pencil, also the adapter is female on both sides so the dongle doesn't plug in directly to the ipad, it requires a cable

The adapter comes with the pencil now and the cable you need comes with the iPad.

I have an old iPad pro (2017)

I like the fact that the base models are getting better, so in future I'll likely just replace with the lower end iPad and still get an upgrade, although the price seems to be slowly creeping up.

Funny thing is that the new iPad might actually be a downgrade for you, because it has a cheaper screen with a lower refresh rate (60hz instead of 120hz).

What on earth is a ‘liquid retina’ display?

Liquid (LCD) retina (high resolution)

Liquid refers to it being an LCD (Liquid-crystal display), so not OLED.

Retina is Apple's name for a high pixel density display, in this case it's 2360x1640 pixels at 10" so 264 PPI?

Have other retina displays been marketed as 'organic retina'? Have previous LCD retina displays been marketed using this term?

Yes, since Apple started selling devices with OLED screens, they have called new products with LCD screens Liquid Retina. See iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPad Mini 6, etc.

They seem to be using "Super Retina" for all their OLED screens.

(I agree with artimaeis the marketing is confusing and they should publish a glossary page with definitions for these terms).

The "liquid" in liquid retina refers to the corners of the display being rounded to match the bezels. Retina is a now longstanding Apple term for high enough resolution to not see pixels at normal viewing distances. Hope that clarifies things, they should keep a glossary page up for things like this, hah.

Eeesh, I dunno.

With an iPad costing about 50% more than a decent (e.g. Lenovo or Samsung) Android tablet, then I would absolutely go for the Apple product. My $450 8th gen iPad is a fantastic device.

But if an iPad now costs 100%+ more than a decent Android tablet, then I think I'm being squeezed out here. A tablet is a not a laptop-replacement for me. It's a thing that I use to read books and watch movies laying in bed. $600+ for that is starting to get silly, when there are plenty of serviceable options in the $300 range.

You can still get the 9th gen iPad at $329.

Even better would have been to get one of those last month when Costco was liquidating their stock for $270.

Almost nobody carries the "old model" in stock, always a good idea to pay attention when they lower the price to get rid of it ;)

It wasn't just Costco! I was hearing tell of people getting them for roughly that price all through October. I think they were discounted even in Walmart/BestBuy.

Android tablets are universally terrible. A poor product isn't worth half the price – better to avoid it altogether.

Eh, I get where you're coming from, because most Android tablets are indeed terrible. However, I finally got myself one of the higher-end Samsung ones (Tab S7) and it's ...fine. Not earth-shatteringly good, but I'm happy with it.

It's completely replaced my iPad usage except for one game that isn't available on Android (FTL) - I still break out the iPad to play that occasionally.

No tablet is going to replace my laptop for my primary task of coding, but for video calls, email, note taking, slack, checking my calendar, web browsing, movies, and occasional gaming, the Samsung tablet is great.

Two things I particularly like about the Samsung tablet are the microSD slot for expandable storage, and the fact that I can unlock the bootloader and install a community ROM whenever Samsung stops supporting it.

The lack of a headphone jack is disappointing, but I think Apple is partially to blame for that.

Xiaomi My Pad 5 is a great device for 400$.

Hi res, great battery life. Improved user experience, and spied all at once by Xiaomi, Google, Uncle Sam and Uncle Xi.

The real magic with android devices is you can (could?) obtain easily superuser privilege just by 'dd' the system partition, install in it supersu binaries with proper privileges and ownership by mounting the said partition on a linux system, and fastboot it back in the tablet.

You could also back up your whole data partition in the same way and upload the resulting .img file to mega cloud drive automatically with a script if you had a sd slot in the tablet as a temporary directory...

And until KitKat, you could also install and run a full debian system with debootstrap side by side with android with DebianKit on the android kernel (no chroot nonsense). It was a marvel of its kind at time impossible now.

That being said, I'm writing this on an iPad.

Does the Apple Pencil still have the bug where if you store it near an iPad the battery drains and can even die permanently? All because form over function and there's no off switch.

I have three dead Apple Pencils that, I guess, died because I let them sit in a drawer for a year or so. Use them or lose them?

I suppose there's no reason at this point not to try opening one up and have a go at replacing the battery.

I misplaced an apple pencil recently. The $30 amazon "replacement" was perfectly serviceable and I no longer had to worry about losing it... (The original turned up a few weeks later - down the wife's side of the sofa :-)

You could try building a "faraday pencil case": https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8231431

> USB-C

Nice! Please, the iPhone next. Ditch the legacy and outdated lightning jack.

This isn't anything new. My old iPad Air has a USB-C jack.

I hate this idea. I am not going to throw out my keyboard, earbuds, touchpad, iphone, etc just so that they will all have USB-C connections.

Given that, it will take me at least 5 years to replace everything so I only need to use USB-C cables. 5 years where I will have to use two different sets of cables.

Unfortunately you're in the minority. The rest of the world uses usb-c.

This is incorrect. As recently as 2019, just under 70% of phones from samsung, huawei etc used USB C. Phones using micro usb are still on the market or still being used. The dominant connector on phones is still micro USB.

Last I checked, 30% does not constitute a majority.

The rest of the non-apple world may, but why should that matter to Apple users.

The branding has gotten so confusing

As far as I can tell this is the exact same design the iPad Air has had for a couple years now, but "iPad" (no descriptor) is a separate product, which until now still used the old-school form factor with the physical home button, etc. So this design isn't new at all for "iPad the line of devices", but it is new for "iPad the budget-tier iPad"

...but even with that information- is this model still worse than the Air somehow even though its design has been updated? In what ways? Is it just slightly less powerful or something? Or did their positions flip? Why didn't they just drop this model, making the Air/Pro duality consistent with the MacBooks? Are they going to drop the Air instead? And most importantly for folks who haven't/can't research the technical details: "the iPad and iPad Air look identical [and have names that don't tell me how they're different]; which one should I buy??"

> is this model still worse than the Air somehow even though its design has been updated?

Yes, in a myriad of ways! This iPad doesn’t have a laminated touchscreen, and it still uses the Gen. 1 Apple Pencil weirdly so no magnets and you need a type c to lightning adapter to charge it up.

Lol wow, I thought that was a typo but you're right:

> Apple Pencil (1st generation) is compatible with the new iPad. A new USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter is required for pairing and charging and is included in the box with a new version of Apple Pencil (1st generation) for $99 (US).

I didn't think they even still made the first-gen Apple Pencil

So now we get to explain to grandma why this will work with some Apple Pencils but not others

Yes, I am surprised to see it flying under the radar here. But it not having the gen 2 pencil support is egregious especially given the hike in prices

That's been the case for a long time. The "basic" iPad line has always only ever supported first-gen, it's never supported second-gen. You've had to explain this to grandma for years now.

They really would have done better to brand them "Pencil" and "Pencil Pro", rather than 1st/2nd gen.

There's a good reason for it though -- when schools etc. have all invested in buying tons of Pencils, they don't want to have to toss them for a new iPad. At $99 they ain't cheap.

I'm not familiar with the internals and what goes into supporting Gen1 vs Gen2 but is it not possible they could have allowed this new iPad to support both?

Gen1 for those who have already invested in one and Gen2 for new customers they hope to attract or those who already own a Pro device and want a secondary tablet as well.

None of the iPads that support Gen2 have ever supported Gen1 (and vice-versa).

I've never found any public details as to why. Obviously the charging and pairing mechanism is entirely different, but Gen1 can be charged with any USB charger, and Apple now sells a USB-C <-> Lightning adapter for pairing as well.

I have no idea if there's anything about how the pencil interfaces with the screen that has changed between them. It almost makes me suspect there might be, for example since the new iPad Pro supports a new "hover" feature for Gen2.

Lol, good catch. I was waiting for the upgrade specifically for the upgraded pencil support.

This thing is a mess. The new design, but using the OLD Pencil (requiring a USB-C to Lightning adapter), and it's $120 more expensive

A marginally updated iPad for the masses to buy, good I guess? Hard to get excited, but I’m sure some will appreciate USBC.

This certainly tightens up the iPad -> iPad Air -> iPad Pro line, The Air -> Pro gap was already small(it widens a bit today with the M2 Pro, but not by much), but the iPad -> Air decision was between dated budget tablet or more full featured modern tablet, but now it's a little less clear.

The Gen 1 pencil has a tiny battery and is a chore to charge. Mine is usually dead and I just write on paper. Not being able to charge it wirelessly from the iPad was a huge UX mistake that they quickly fixed with Gen 2. Can't believe they are still holding on to Gen 1.

This iPad has the flat sides from the Air and Pro, but it's not compatible with the 2nd gen iPad pencil. Instead, they're releasing a USB-C adapter so you can charge it directly from the iPad (1st gen plugged directly into the iPad's lightning port).

The Pencil is one of the more irritating product choices Apple has made. Plugging the first gen directly into a Lightning port end-first was a stupid idea from the get go. Version 2 got that right. But why did they need to make them incompatible otherwise? Other than to make a few extra bucks, of course. Forcing people to upgrade for no particular reason, and on top of that continuing to sell both versions for different devices. It's ridiculous.

truly baffling

A $120 price increase for the base model? Unbelievable. Couldn’t keep the 5 year old $330 price forever but that’s ridiculous at the volumes Apple moves. All while we’re going into recession and consumer tech spend goes down…

I’d have to agree. Just bought a used 7th-gen iPad for that price difference.

The price in euros are even more ridiculous: 200€ more the base one and 100€ more for the air because why not.

I'm holding out for when they make one with a translucent case.

At first I thought it was a cheeky reference to Star Trek IV, but transparent aluminum is somewhat real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

Nothing so extravagant, just highlighting the "Vibrant colors!" part of the press release and remembering the days when colored (and transparent!) cases were popular. Aka the late 90s / early 2000s.

I really like iPads but I haven’t used mine for years now. It’s sitting in a box somewhere. There doesn’t seem to be a need for it, for me.

Mine sat around too, until I began using it as an extended display on a stand. The recent Mac OS auxiliary display features are pretty good (brilliant in some ways, maddening in others).

You should probably sell it or give it to a family member or something like that.

It has speakers on either side. That probably kills the adequate microphone quality for free speaking on the previous iPads. The closer the microphone is to the speakers, the harder it is for loopback canceling to work good.

So, back to the headset. Oh, I forgot: can’t use the headphone jack for that. So how am I supposed to do calls the whole day without recharging?

Also, I prefer to plug in a LAN adapter to improve latency (Lightning to USB Adapter to LAN). No, I won’t go for a Bluetooth headset with even worse latency.

This doesn't use Lightning. I'm positive there's some USB-C dongle that splits off power, aux, and ethernet.

Is it me or innovation at apple is going down?

The last time they released a "new type" of device is the apple watch or TV and all they are doing these days is "improving" existing devices. Don't get me wrong, I prefer apple's eco-system over others but I feel that the Apple most people love is no more.

I understand from a business perspective that they want to milk the cash cows but I am afraid they are slowly becoming more like Microsoft. Probably time for new player.

The M* series chips are an absolutely wild innovation. Changed the whole productline and imo, represtents a "new type" of devive. Plus the VR headset is coming, and the AR glasses are going to knock everyones socks off when they see how clever they are compared to every other AR waveguide approach

It looks like the finally moved the camera to be on "top" when the device is in landscape orientation.

Looks the same, boring product from the last decade that represents a less than functional Microsoft Surface

Supports Apple Pencil first gen but needs adapter to charge because it doesn't have lightning port

The touch ID power button seems interesting: has that been in other iOS devices or is that new?

I'm surprised they didn't also discontinue the iPad Air.

the ipad air is still there for people like me who appreciate the performance from the m1 and dont want to use the old apple pencil with a dongle

They significantly raised its price. It’s better for them. Why simplify when you can just price gouge your customers. It’s Apple we are talking about.

would really like an iPad like the Surface with squared screen corners and a built in stand.

USB-C?? Is hell freezing over or good regulations making their magic?

My iPad Mini (or is it an Air?) from last Xmas has USB-C

They're seriously trying to replace laptops.

Apple has been moving towards USB-C for a long time. It's not like this is their first USB-C device. I think it's the last iPad that needed to move.

iPads have had USB-C for years now, which just makes the iPhone situation even more silly

Oh, since it was posted as a highlight and seeing that iPhones still have the proprietary connector, I naively thought it was a novelty. Glad I was wrong, let's see when they fix this in iPhones as well.

It's a very confusing announcement because "iPad" here means "the budget-model iPad", which has had the old design with lightning and a physical home button until now, while the other models (Air and Pro) haven't had either of those in years

My iPad Pro from years ago has USB-C. Apple has been moving that way for a while. My guess is they're saving iPhone for last because they know more people will complain about having to buy new cables than are complaining now about continuing to use 10 year old Lightning cables.

my 2018 ipad pro has USB-C. It's great. I can use standard usb-c hubs and whatnot with it. this has been slowly happening but its been happening.

still a rectangle with rounded corners.

Please merge with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248210

That one doesn't seem to talk about the colors? Also, it's about the Pro and this isn't.

That is about the pro, this is just regular iPad.

That would actually be a bit confusing since the iPad and iPad Pro have different features, and comments in dedicated threads don't distinguish which one is being described. Would have been nice to have an omnibus thread from the beginning, but the way Apple does their press releases resulted in two threads.

iPad Pro and iPad are distinct models, so these two different discussions are not redundant.

Apple unveils the ... Microsoft Surface? I'm not seeing a "complete redesigned" iPad, if anything, it's a desperate gasp at the Surface and Chromebook markets.

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