I bought two ipads over the years and I'll be honest I've not used them in well over two years. I have no use for them. I pretty much use my PC and my iPhone XS Max for just about everything.
computer | kəmˈpyo͞odər | noun an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program. • a person who makes calculations, especially with a calculating machine.
There's no need to be obtuse. The common meaning of the word "computer" is not a phone or tablet, even though those devices literally fit within the dictionary meaning. A microwave fits the definition as well.
No, because the primary use case (job to be done) of a microwave is to heat food, not store and process data. Try again.
I bought a launch day iPad. Can't believe that was so long ago. Thanks for the memories.
I use my iPad all the time, but don't envision it replacing my MacBook. It isn't that it isn't a capable device, but the way I use my macbook is different. And I have both. I can remove a bolt with a pair of pliers, and this doesn't mean I don't have a use for a set of box wrenches.
I bought two ipads over the years and I'll be honest I've not used them in well over two years. I have no use for them. I pretty much use my PC and my iPhone XS Max for just about everything.
Reading and writing on the sofa on an iphone sounds dreadful.
no argument here, nothing comes close to the iPad in the tablet market. I could flip back and forth between Apple and Samsung for a phone but nothing beats an iPad. Admittedly, I didn't warm up to the new Pro right away (I've been rocking the first Pro since the day it came out) but, the new one is pretty damn nice - I don't think I've picked up my Mac book since I upgraded my iPad.
Jobs needed you to buy into the idea of the iPad being a media consumption device until the hardware and software could make it what it is *becoming* today. Every popular personal computing device has been limited in the same way at launch. Microsoft made a significant error with Windows RT because developers were not interested in rewriting their software just for ARM, and now Microsoft is stuck with Surface because they don't need to rewrite for a touch-first interface, so they're not doing it: the result Surface is a pricy, underpowered Windows PC with limited bolted-on touch functionality.
The iPad has higher demands, it requires that developers remake their software with a touch-first interface, this isn't a small task, and yes it's been 10 years and we're only now really getting it. As time churns on, you're going to find more and more industries are able to exist solely on iPad.
People could probably argue for months around the iPhone vs android but nothing IMHO comes close to the iPad - even as I moved back and forth from iOS to Android I always had an iPad. I tried some of the other tablets but just weren't the iPad - I don't think I ever had a single device as long as I had the first iPad Pro and I only moved on from that to the new 12in iPad Pro because of the extra screen space. Any decline in sales would be from being a victim of their own success. I think iPads are one of the few devices that you can wait a couple of versions before upgrading. so I can see where some years might not have the same volume of sales as others.
Thank almighty God that Apple doesn’t listen to the drivel being spewed in this thread. I almost inhaled my coffee at some of the bullshit tripe I’ve been reading.
The article misses the point of the current state of iPad all together. Who really cares if Apple got iPad right? The market they were going after has already been conquered, saturated, and now declining. We are at 4 years of declining sales in this category that "Apple got right". It's time for the iPad to branch out and target other markets such as by adding mouse support and going after new productivity markets where it is not reaching at present.
Even if it were true that iPad revenue were declining, that in no way implies that Apple did not get tablets right. They surely did, and generate very large revenue from it. There's not a tablet market, there's an iPad market. They nailed it and it resonated with users in a big way. Will it sustain growth forever? I'm not sure that anything does.
Great post. The iPad got so many things so right that it created no incentive for the cloners to get any meaningful (profitable) market share. There's only so much you can do to dress up a slab of glass, so the functionality has to be near perfect. The many clones and cheap knock-offs may look like an iPad but they have no way to hide the fact that they are far inferior in most every way. All of the cloners have access to R&D labs and can read all of the opinioneering happening in online forums. They could easily add a mouse pointer, overlapping windows, full file system , and many of the so-called "missing features" that are supposedly crippling the iPad to their clones and eat Apple's lunch - can't they? Why haven't they?
Maybe Steve Jobs and the iPad team at Apple got it very right when they decided what functionally should be in the iPad - and what functionality should not be in the iPad. Steve knew how to say "no" even when many others were trying to convince him to say "yes." That's a good quality in a leader, and look what came of it.
In a lot of ways, perhaps Jobs vision or market segmentation for the iPad, a device that sits in between a smartphone and laptop, became more of a ball and chain than a computer for everyone. Hard to explain why they limited the functionality of iPads for so long, and still are going a snails pace.
They should have sprinted head long into having iPads do everything a computer do. instead of it being an iOS device for a 10” display, it should have been iPadOS, capable of doing everything a computer can do. Mind that I’m all in with using an iPad flat on a table like a piece paper. Hardware keyboard support is nice, but it shouldn’t be advertised with it.
Having had a couple of IPads over the years I have to agree with a lot that you have said. Personally though I see a slot where iPad could sit between a cellphone and a desktop. The problem as you point out here isn’t the concept but rather Apples feet dragging and excess lock down of the device.
Feet dragging by the way involves hardware as much as it does iPadOS. For years IPads biggest issue was the lack of RAM and I can argue that it is still a problem. In the early years it was easy to see how hamstrung the iPad was due to the included RAM. Why Apple didn’t rapidly resolve the RAM issue on new models is beyond me as to could see the issues with Apple publicly available tools.
Then you have the issue of Apples ripoff pricing of secondary storage. The price they charge for a tiny bit of extra SSD space is asinine. And NO online storage isn’t an issue.
Beyond all of that it isn’t clear that they have come to grasp with OS issues. IPadOS is too new to say if they have finally gotten it. However a couple of key design elements must be considered. For one iPadOS must operate in conjunction with my preferred desktop or laptop and not be hostile to that need. Second get rid of MiFi and the obstructions it puts into place to apply the device to unique applications.
As glowing as this article has been I don’t see iPad as still on the road to success. For many of us it is now a dead end. I honestly hope that iPadOS takes iPad in the right direct ion but sadly they constantly repeat the same poor design choices again and again. File handling is perhaps the biggest obstacle to wide spread adoption and the prime example of Apple not meeting user needs on the tablet. Every time they try to address this one simple problem they simply repeat the errors previously made. There are lots of other issues that need to be addressed to put the platform back on the road to success.
In a lot of ways, perhaps Jobs vision or market segmentation for the iPad, a device that sits in between a smartphone and laptop, became more of a ball and chain than a computer for everyone. Hard to explain why they limited the functionality of iPads for so long, and still are going a snails pace.
They should have sprinted head long into having iPads do everything a computer do. instead of it being an iOS device for a 10” display, it should have been iPadOS, capable of doing everything a computer can do. Mind that I’m all in with using an iPad flat on a table like a piece paper. Hardware keyboard support is nice, but it shouldn’t be advertised with it.
So basically you want macOS on an iPad...that doesn't work and Apple has explained this many times. Seems like people just don't want to listen. Just look at the Surface Tablet. Yeah Microsoft is selling some and sales to go up sometimes, but as @Soli said, they don't have anywhere near the marketshare of iPad and that trend continues. So I think the market has decided what works best.
Actually sliding sales kinda indicate that Apple hasn’t gotten iPad right. I wouldn’t be surprised if many iPad users never upgrade.
In any event the problem with your point of view is that you can’t imagine an iPad doing more, with much of the capability of MacOS, without the loss of its usability. I see this as a huge mistake! There is much that can be done to make iPad much more usable but at the same time retain its iPad feel.
The Geeks never give up they want Windows on a tablet, well buy a Surface and move on....
There is a difference between wanting greater capabilities on an iPad vs wanting Windows on a tablet. The capabilities most people want to see on the iPad would make it a far more powerful device for people with the intelligence to actually use the capability. That doesn’t mean giving up on the IOS interface. In some cases it simply means giving up on some of the artificial restrictions Apple places on the iPad.
Frankly I suspect that the reason these comments are constantly thrown about is that the users of iPads are not power users and don’t have the chops to ever become such. They literally fear having to grasp any detail that hasn’t already sunk into their brain. It is simply an issue of using ones imagination to see the massive untapped potential in iPad.
On this argument about iPads being able to do everything a PC can do, it’s right there in the article:
In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They're going to have to be far better at doing some really important things. Better than the laptop. Better than the smartphone."
Jobs’ vision was that it would be better at some key tasks. Same, but different. Leading to better. Personally, the iPad Pro is my main portable device, because it is better at portability. I just wish it had a great file management system that plays well with MS servers. Then it would be perfect.
This issue with file handling is why I don’t understand people that do t want to see iPadOS improved. Yes improvement means more desktop OS like features. The problem is Apple could clean up this issue of file handling in one OS release, instead they have literally made things worse. In any OS app I should be able to grab files from local store, the cloud or a local box with a shared directory. Frankly we need the same freedom in saving stuff. Instead iPadOS has an incredibly difficult interface for what should be simple tasks.
Is a jailbroken 1st gen iPad usable as a weekend device(1 to 2 days a week)?
My iPad 2 has gotten to the point where it's not really usable anymore. I don't know if the hardware has decayed or the software has just gotten more demanding or both, but even with older apps it seems a lot slower than it used to. Sometimes I wonder if I should've stayed on an older version of iOS instead of upgrading.
That iPad2 needs to be taken to the range and put out of its misery!!!!!
if anybody tries to tell you that it is a viable machine in 2020 they are out of their mind. The biggest issue is the lack of RAM on these old models which leads to all sorts of issues including data loss. There is very little if any modern software that will run on these devices well.
The best use for this old hardware is as a special purpose terminal if you will. Jail break it and build an interface app to a weather station, CNC machine or something similar. I just see zero possibility for using it as a daily driver interactive device, it has literally been left in the dust.
Once Apple started to put enough RAM in IPads the capability and reliability of software increased dramatically. I lived through the frustrations seen on these old machines and frankly see no reason to buy a low memory iPad even at used rates. If Apple ever fixes iPadOS to address the usability issues I might actually buy another iPad but that iPad will have at least 6GB of RAM and maybe even more depending upon when they fix iPadOS.
The iPad was revolutionary because it created entirely new markets. Most of the comments here want the iPad to add more functions to make it more like a notebook computer. That totally misses the point.
At one end, you have users like my mom and my aunt. Neither of them had ever figured out a mouse and keyboard-based interface, so they didn't use PCs at all. At the time that the iPad came out, they still used flip phones as well. They knew that networked devices were increasingly the only to do a lot of household functions, but it wasn't until the iPad came along that they had a device that could perform those functions AND do it in a way that was inherently intuitive for them. Jobs argued many times that making a device simple and intuitive is inherently more difficult than adding complexity just to check off a longer feature list or cover every conceivable use case.
I almost viewed the iPad as a miracle worker. My mom and my aunt had never surfed the web, never viewed online videos, never used smartphone apps (or computer applications for that matter). I originally talked my mom into buying an iPad so she could do video chatting with her grandchild who lived 400 miles away and had just started talking. We also set her up with an Apple TV and our Netflix login, and she began using the iPad for much of her TV viewing. There's nothing simpler than a touchscreen and swiping through programming choices, and having that iPad was really the only way that she could have ever gotten into the computing world.
People like my mom and aunt are not going to upgrade their devices very often (she doesn't even bother to update her apps that much either). It was only when some of her favorite apps were no longer supported on iOS 9 that she upgraded from an iPad 2 to a new iPad last year. The iPad was also the gateway to buying and knowing how to use an iPhone. The ease of transition on the iOS platform cannot be overstated, especially for a senior. Using the automatic backup from iCloud, both the iPhone and iPad were quickly setup with no changes to any of the settings or where the apps appear onscreen.Because of her eyesight, my mom much prefers to use the iPad over the iPhone.
The tablet market is where it is precisely because its most common use patterns do not drive rapid upgrade cycles, and you don't have the carriers dangling upgrade offers with tablets like they do with phones. The iPad is fundamentally a lean back device, and the concerns for those users differ from people who want more of the lean forward functionality built into a laptop. In much the same way that people complain about the iPad being less than optimal for certain types of content creation, the same standard applies to laptops that are less than optimal for content consumption.
“I don't think that the market has decided from a content creation perspective...the majority of iPads are content consumption devices. I'd love to switch to an iPad Pro but I would need a mouse and a keyboard...and Xcode.”
I mean, it sounds like not even a laptop would be ideal for your use case. With the rise of crazy powerful smart phones I’ve started to see laptops as basically a first attempt at making the traditional desktop PC concept into something portable. I have a couple of iPads, but basically because of my job (edu tech support/media stuff). I really only need a badass desktop at work and home (video editing, Photoshop stuff), and the iPhone does everything I need when I’m on the go. If I did need a portable solution I’d probably go with an iPad Pro because with Lightroom Mobile syncing back to my always on and awake MacPro (2012) it’s actually *better* than a MacBook Pro for that initial import/review/maybe process a few shots, and then do the real processing on the desktop at home (with multiple ginourmo displays). In short, (too late, I know) I feel like for the tasks *most* people need to do while on the go can probably be handled better by an iPad than a laptop. Of course that’s not the case for app developers and quite a few other folks, but for a lot of those folks even a laptop is a bit of a kludge.
The iPad was revolutionary because it created entirely new markets. Most of the comments here want the iPad to add more functions to make it more like a notebook computer. That totally misses the point.
At one end, you have users like my mom and my aunt. Neither of them had ever figured out a mouse and keyboard-based interface, so they didn't use PCs at all. At the time that the iPad came out, they still used flip phones as well. They knew that networked devices were increasingly the only to do a lot of household functions, but it wasn't until the iPad came along that they had a device that could perform those functions AND do it in a way that was inherently intuitive for them. Jobs argued many times that making a device simple and intuitive is inherently more difficult than adding complexity just to check off a longer feature list or cover every conceivable use case.
I almost viewed the iPad as a miracle worker. My mom and my aunt had never surfed the web, never viewed online videos, never used smartphone apps (or computer applications for that matter). I originally talked my mom into buying an iPad so she could do video chatting with her grandchild who lived 400 miles away and had just started talking. We also set her up with an Apple TV and our Netflix login, and she began using the iPad for much of her TV viewing. There's nothing simpler than a touchscreen and swiping through programming choices, and having that iPad was really the only way that she could have ever gotten into the computing world.
People like my mom and aunt are not going to upgrade their devices very often (she doesn't even bother to update her apps that much either). It was only when some of her favorite apps were no longer supported on iOS 9 that she upgraded from an iPad 2 to a new iPad last year. The iPad was also the gateway to buying and knowing how to use an iPhone. The ease of transition on the iOS platform cannot be overstated, especially for a senior. Using the automatic backup from iCloud, both the iPhone and iPad were quickly setup with no changes to any of the settings or where the apps appear onscreen.Because of her eyesight, my mom much prefers to use the iPad over the iPhone.
The tablet market is where it is precisely because its most common use patterns do not drive rapid upgrade cycles, and you don't have the carriers dangling upgrade offers with tablets like they do with phones. The iPad is fundamentally a lean back device, and the concerns for those users differ from people who want more of the lean forward functionality built into a laptop. In much the same way that people complain about the iPad being less than optimal for certain types of content creation, the same standard applies to laptops that are less than optimal for content consumption.
Yup. My parental tech support calls basically ceased once my Mom got a 9.7” iPad Pro with the pretty great Logitech keyboard case. I say basically because Pops still uses their 2014 iMac.
I doubt Microsoft actually get it when they created Surface to compete with iPad. iPad simplicity is the main point, bypassing all the knowledge required to operate a full OS. It is such a delight for people who don't bother to learn about File Explorer and Start menu. Adding a touch gesture to the full OS defeat that purpose entirely since people still need to learn about File Explorer and Start menu, but instead of mouse using a finger.
On this argument about iPads being able to do everything a PC can do, it’s right there in the article:
In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They're going to have to be far better at doing some really important things. Better than the laptop. Better than the smartphone."
Jobs’ vision was that it would be better at some key tasks. Same, but different. Leading to better. Personally, the iPad Pro is my main portable device, because it is better at portability. I just wish it had a great file management system that plays well with MS servers. Then it would be perfect.
This issue with file handling is why I don’t understand people that do t want to see iPadOS improved. Yes improvement means more desktop OS like features. The problem is Apple could clean up this issue of file handling in one OS release, instead they have literally made things worse. In any OS app I should be able to grab files from local store, the cloud or a local box with a shared directory. Frankly we need the same freedom in saving stuff. Instead iPadOS has an incredibly difficult interface for what should be simple tasks.
Quite so. It seems someone at Apple has a real hate for a simple, straight forward file directory and is always forcing these convoluted ways of managing files in ipadOS, to the extent it is hard to manage them. Fixing this would make iPad a proper standalone device.
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I use my iPad all the time, but don't envision it replacing my MacBook. It isn't that it isn't a capable device, but the way I use my macbook is different. And I have both. I can remove a bolt with a pair of pliers, and this doesn't mean I don't have a use for a set of box wrenches.
The iPad has higher demands, it requires that developers remake their software with a touch-first interface, this isn't a small task, and yes it's been 10 years and we're only now really getting it. As time churns on, you're going to find more and more industries are able to exist solely on iPad.
ion but sadly they constantly repeat the same poor design choices again and again. File handling is perhaps the biggest obstacle to wide spread adoption and the prime example of Apple not meeting user needs on the tablet. Every time they try to address this one simple problem they simply repeat the errors previously made. There are lots of other issues that need to be addressed to put the platform back on the road to success.
if anybody tries to tell you that it is a viable machine in 2020 they are out of their mind. The biggest issue is the lack of RAM on these old models which leads to all sorts of issues including data loss. There is very little if any modern software that will run on these devices well.