Apple says the majority of Mac users also own an iPad

Is it greed though? There are lots of people who _want_ a simple device like an iPad. Why force a more complicated device upon them?

Sounds like Steve Jobs was right about trucks.

Personally I find the iPad is my go-to "I don't need a keyboard for this" machine.

Kids (and adults) also like them as handheld gaming and streaming devices.

We shouldn’t assume who we know reflects everyone.

Apple might be counting people with broken iPads too!

Edit: clarity and warmth

I also know some people that also buy iPads for senior parents/grandparents and just use their iCloud account to make it easier to manage.

There are few companies that have the fandom Apple has, especially with hardware outside the iphone/blue bubbles that teens and moms need for social standing.

My brother's household has 4 Macs of various form factors (mini, studio, 2 laptops) and 5 iPads (two of which are iPad pros - one hand me down and one new that is used for drawing... and one is an iPad mini).

There are many situations where an iPad is a preferred device over a laptop (or the impracticality of taking a Mac mini to bed) and many where the Mac at a desk is a much better choice.

Given the finances and priorities that support two sets of devices ... it should not be surprising at all to have both.

We also have iPhones I'm not going to start counting those.

Now you do!

The elephant in the room w/ the expensive new iPad is that the consumer right now is experiencing a reset in their economic expectations (first of all because of the sugar rush of pandemic stimulus ending, secondly because of inflation, third from “polycrisis”). I think brands are catching on right about now.

Car companies for instance tried to quit making cars that cost less than $50k, especially if they are electric.

The new iPad strikes me as a little like the Apple Vision Pro. People might have spent their stimulus checks on them if they’d come out a few years back but now, no. Sure it does a better job of rending mobile apps in AR floating in your room than the MQ3 but it doesn’t have all the facilities for immersive worlds that the MQ3 does. They just can’t charge 7x what MQ3 costs for something that doesn’t do as much. The hardware is totally capable but Apple can’t or won’t add the software support.

Myself I quit carrying a desktop replacement laptop and I use an iPad as my “on the go” computer. As much as the industry tries to keep it a secret (so you’ll spend your money on an overpriced special keyboard) it “just works” to attach a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. If I want to do some serious work I RDP into a powerful Windows computer.

(Note one point of this way of working is that tablets are relatively cheap. I don’t feel all that bad if I smash a $40 Fire tablet or even a $300 iPad but I’d feel like I’d need to buy a case for a $2000 tablet, eliminating the sleekness advantage the tablet has.)

If Apple wasn’t NERFing the software you could have a great computing experience on an iPad Pro that would justify the cost.

Smartphones got established because they could justify a high price with corresponding value: if you add up the cost of all the gadgets an iPhone replaces it is much greater than the cost of the iPhone. Apple’s lost their way.

I know many people with both devices in my circles (including me). Typically the laptop is for work and the iPad is for travel or for kids.

What I do own and use often is a Surface Go 3 with 10.5" 3:2 aspect touch screen--though I rarely touch the screen. Drawing diagrams with the stylus is nice though. I once solved a math problem with the 'pencil' on it. It's just the smallest, lightest laptop-like thing that runs a real OS (even if that's Windows/WSL2).

Safari still works, it runs the games my wife downloads. It can print to our printer. Mission accomplished.

Appliance. Like the toaster oven.