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Figuring Out the iPad's Place
An anonymous reader writes "One of the most interesting notes from Apple's recent quarterly report was that iPad sales are down. Pundits were quick to jump on that as evidence that the iPad was just a fad, but there were still more than 16 million units sold. iPads, and the tablet market as a whole, clearly aren't a fad, but it's also unclear where they're going. They're not convincingly replacing PCs on one end or phones on the other. Meanwhile, PCs and phones are both morphing into things that are more like tablets. New form factors often succeed (or fail) based on what they can do better than old form factors, and the iPad hasn't done enough to make itself distinct, yet. Ben Thompson had an insightful take on people demanding desktop functionality from the iPad: 'This sounds suspiciously like the recommendation that the only thing holding the Macintosh back was its inability to run Apple II programs. It's also of a piece with the vast majority of geek commentary on the iPad: multiple windows, access to the file system, so on and so forth. I also think it's misplaced. The future of the iPad is not to be a better Mac. That may happen by accident, just as the Mac eventually superseded the Apple II, but to pursue that explicitly would be to sacrifice what the iPad might become, and, more importantly, what it already is.'"
It exists already in the niche that exists between the full computer experience, and the phone experience. Why the hell would it have an infinite growth and replace computers and phones?
Perhaps sales are slowing down because of market saturation. The iPad was the first of its kind (that people actually bought, used, and liked). Almost everyone who wants one has probably bought one and the slowing rate reflects market saturation. A diminishing pool of new buyers and a steady pool of people replacing older models would help to explain the "dwindling" sales.
I thought the iPad was Blizzard's new Hearthstone console.
Sales are down because we already have one and don't need two. The things are not nearly as disposable as people seem to think.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
"This sounds suspiciously like the recommendation that the only thing holding the Macintosh back was its inability to run Apple II programs"
To me, the iPad situation seems more like Apple II being unable to run Macintosh programs.
Ezekiel 23:20
I [...] still believe what I wrote back in 2011 when I said that all the general-purpose devices we use for computing and communications–desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets and maybe even a do-everything console like the Xbox One–are PCs. They just happen to come in a variety of form factors, with different capabilities.
To me, it's not a personal computer unless the person who owns it controls what computing is done on it. Nintendo has rejected games such as The Binding of Isaac, and Apple has rejected applications such as WiFi-Where. This makes these platforms not general-purpose. Thus there's no "do-everything console" unless you count set-top Android devices such as OUYA or set-top PCs such as the forthcoming Steam Machines.
I would like it if different pass codes unlocked to different layouts. This way I can have a more restricted layout and app for my son.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
Agreed. If only there were an OS that had the same user experience for phones, tablets and PCs...
The tablet market gas gone through the early adopters and is maturing. It also appears to have a longer replacement cycle time than say cell phones, probably do to cost and newer models do not necessarily offer must have features, unlike phones which go from 2G-3G-4G LTE. Cost also figure into replacement time.
Right know, iPads and other tablets are good enough, even several generations old ones, for the uses that do better on a tablet than a cell phone but don't need a PC to be acceptable. For example, reading eBooks, browsing the web, light office suite use, etc. Despite speed increases and better screens, a Gen 1 iPad is still pretty good at that so there in no compelling reason to shell out $500 or more for a new one.
That said, tablets need to migrate beyond the "it's a mobile PC" mentality to becoming an information appliance that is used to get desired information in a variety of settings. In short, a mobile gateway to information that is now accessed in other ways and where a PC is to cumbersome and a phone too small.A good example is Synology's video viewer app. You can access videos from the NAS on an iPad (or phone) and use airplay to put it to a TV; bypassing a separate PC server for playback. If you leave the room you can continue to watch on the iPad or send it to another TV in the room you go to. In short, the iPad is the common connector for a better viewing experience; not a replacement viewer.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Stupid-ass designers are forcing that shit down our throats without our willful participation.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
As for iPads, Cook still believes tablets will quickly replace PCs
That's not what Tim Cook's predecessor thought. Steve Jobs always used to claim that iPhone and iPad are to the Mac as cars are to trucks. The iPad is not a truck. Case in point: I'd be surprised if tablets replaced Apple's own PCs for running Xcode.
It's not about the "user experience". It's about how much control you can exert over the system. The form factor really doesn't matter. What can you do with it? What roadblocks are the OS/hardware vendor going to put in your way?
A tablet doesn't need a "full desktop experience" to run an SSH server or a proper copy of CUPS.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I can write on my tablet like I write on a paper pad. I didn't use paper pad in meeting anymore.
My Note Case have a bt keyboard, when I need more formal word done
I don't have one office suite for my Note, I have a lot of them to choose from, each having better fonction and read/write standard office format
My Note is a smaller computer (but more powefull for business work) than any laptop outthere
So, the IPad problem, is maybe, Apple when it didn't want to eat itself let other eat it !
>> by accident, just as the Mac eventually superseded the Apple II
Um...do you realize that the Mac was the benefit of one of the largest and most expensive marketing efforts aimed at personal computer (lower case) consumers of all time (at the time)? And that the marketing hype culminated in a famous 1984 Superbowl commercial? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I)
That was no accident, my friend.
A tablet doesn't need a "full desktop experience" to run an SSH server or a proper copy of CUPS.
Guess what? In terms of sales, the ability to run SSH or CUPS is somewhat less important than the ability to run knitting pattern apps.
Politically it's another story. The incumbent carriers and device manufacturers don't know how to market a phone that can become a PC.
I saw one yesterday. I had a guy in his 60s come over to me in the pub. Working class, non-geek. He saw I was using the internet on my laptop and asked how he could get his iPad on the WiFi. So I told him the AP and how to create an free account. It didn't work, I think because he pressed the wrong button on the web sign-up page. And then he wondered if it was because his old iPad was already registered.
These iPads are mass market.
well it's not DOA for people who spend time away from a traditional computer. i have an ipad 2 and 4
my kids play games on it
remote control for apple TV, roku, xbox and other devices
i stream live TV via the time warner cable app and netflix and HBO Go. I can watch Got in the kitchen away from my kids. i can sit with my wife while she watches american idol on the TV, i'll watch a game on the ipad
i can read a book on it
Google docs and Pages i can finally finish that novel i started writing. anywhere
i can order airline tickets and check into my flight on the couch
dozen other uses that have nothing to do with file systems or geeky stuff
That makes as much sense as controlling a motorbike with the cockpit of a 747.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not surprised. Face it, Ipads are EXPENSIVE toys for most people buying them. Yea, it runs IOS like a lot of phones, but at what price?
Amazon has been selling their Kindle devices for a LOT less, given what you get for for the money. I'm not a Kindle zealot (I hate that they are totally locked down) but Apple needs to face the fact that there are now other options out there that do just about everything that IPad can and they are cheaper. Add to that the large scale adoption of Android in both the handset and tablet market (including the Kindle, under the covers) and it is clear that Apple's dominance of this market is over. What can apple do? Add memory, processor speed, flash and battery life? Maybe higher resolution display hardware but what's that worth if you cannot really see a difference? Apple is about done with the tablet, unless they can innovate into something else, but what? Their run is over.
Who is surprised by this? Apple is getting its clock cleaned by Android, which is a trend I don't see changing. Not to mention that Microsoft is pushing pretty hard to stay relevant in the market. This is the problem with being in first place, everybody is gunning for you and it takes serious innovation to keep ahead of the pack. It may not be time to be short selling apple, but if I owned this stock, I would certainly have standing stop orders in place around any major scheduled press conferences.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
it's not DOA for people who spend time away from a traditional computer.
The problem comes when people buy only an iPhone and/or iPad and then delude themselves into thinking they wouldn't benefit from also buying a traditional computer.
my kids play games on it
How are games for iPad controlled? I'm aware of two kinds of games that work well on a touch screen: single- or two- button games like Canabalt and point-and-click games like Plants vs. Zombies. What control method would work well for a game like Mega Man or Castlevania? I tried playing the demo of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure on a tablet, and control was so imprecise that I couldn't make jumps until I switched to a Bluetooth keyboard. So I still think keyboards and gamepads still have their place.
Sales are down because we already have one and don't need two. The things are not nearly as disposable as people seem to think.
I'd have bought an iPad Air or new Mini if it had TouchID. We already have two iPads, but putting the v1 out to pasture would have been worth it to no deal with password entry. Also iOS7 isn't nearly as appealing for an iPad as it was for the iPhone (control center is a must for phones).
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Maybe in a couple of year's I'll replace mine.
I wonder whether part of the problem is that after having one of these devices, people aren't so keen to replace them. Our third gen iPad is about two years old, and already we have problems with app upgrades breaking things, and of course Apple themselves pushing us to upgrade to a new version of iOS that gets terrible reviews. Plus the general closed ecosystem isn't an obvious downer for most people when you buy the first time, but after finding all the little frustrating things it can't do, I can see that at least some significant proportion of users might be put off.
Tablets as a format seem to be useful for a certain niche: basically, they're good for receiving information and some basic interaction, but not serious interaction/content creation. But there are more tablets than just Apple's, and Android tablets seem to be increasing their market share at Apple's expense. So it might be a market saturation issue with the tablet format, but I suspect there's more to it than just that in the specific case of iPads.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"Figuring Out the iPad's Place" ?
The bathroom. So you can browse while you download.
For years we've had snobbish hipster tech journalists gleefully informing us that we are now in the "Post-PC era", that our watt-hungry desktop dinosaurs are on the way out, that they are being replaced by a constellation of sexy, small gadgets like smartphones and tablets.
Except it isn't happening.
Every one of those goddamned articles was written on a laptop or desktop computer. You, fair reader, do your job or schoolwork on a laptop or desktop PC. The many limitations of tablets makes the idea of performing any meaningful work on them downright laughable.
I have an iPad Air and Zagg keyboard case for it. Toys. Both of them, toys. Poor keyboard experience meets poor word processing experience (unless having Lou Ferrigno sized deltoids from constant arm extension is your thing) meets horrendously poor multitasking meets a giant bucket of buyers remorse.
If I didn't really enjoy playing Hearthstone on my iPad Air, I would have eBayed it weeks ago. I rarely use it for anything else.
With factory refurb'd Macbook Airs popping up on Apple's "Special Deals" page now at $599 (when in stock), the argument for buying a $500 iPad Toy to play Angry Birds on the toilet and watch "Sherlock" on that flight to Denver to visit your in-laws just.. doesn't make good sense anymore, when for $100 more you can get a real computer.
So my operating theory is - Not only are people holding on to the tablets they already own, softening sales of new models, but they have also already discovered they're horrible to type on, make overweight poor quality e-readers, have games that you tire of after 1 hour and you feel no urgent need to run out and drop $500 on a new one that will only continue to do all those things poorly, but is a tiny bit thinner.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
No, it's like the only thing holding back the Apple II is the inability to run Macintosh programs. The thing that does more still does more.
Tablets are great for leisure, but horrible for work. Touch screens are better for some activities, but are ridiculous for typing, and don't give the fine control of a mouse.
These moronic pundits need to stop pretending that every new thing is going to replace every old thing. Sometimes the new thing is really the old thing, and sometimes they just keep existing, side by side.
Apple specifically addressed this during their conference call. Sales are not down; if you look at two quarters combined, sales are flat or slightly up. Sales only appear to be down year-over-year because they had supply issues five quarters ago, which pushed sales from that quarter (which was low) into the start of the next quarter (which was high).
iPad sales are down because it's been quite a while since the last revision, and people tend to hold off their purchases if they think a new model's on the way.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is why I got the Surface 2 (not pro). It has a real file system. I can mount network drives. I can go to the command prompt (or powershell). Sure it's locked down as far as what apps you can run, but you can compile things yourself using the free version of Visual Studio. Personally I think it's a lot less locked down than Android or iPad. And the hardware is quite expandable. It has USB3, so you can plug in all kinds of external peripherals. It's not as open as a Linux tablet would be, but I don't think I've seen anything like that out in the wild that actually worked well. I think the only thing more open is the Surface Pro, but that's a little outside my price range.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Maybe you don't see them where you are, but they're out there. Have you not flown on a plane lately? Lots of people use them to entertain their kids with dumb movies. I had the misfortune of sitting next to some kid not too long ago while he was watching some stupid kids' movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. What really sucked is that his mom was kinda hot, but for some reason she stuck her kid between us. I would have much preferred to sit next to her, and also not have his iPad and dumb movie directly in my field-of-view.
The iPad for us is a perfect "mobile TV". In the kitchen, even on the dining table (for particularly tough nights for the kids), in the car - it's the equivalent of what would have cost us thousands of $$ in separate equipment even 5 years ago.
Problem is, the iPad1 is doing such a great job for this, that it's still around. If Apple were to innovate in this space - there are many features that could be improved - weight, TouchID, connectivity to iCloud for video, etc, we'd happily be buying a newer one. For now, the v1 is still here and works just as well as our iPad mini (bigger screen = better for video).
This is an area that's ripe for expansion - maybe a larger screen unit? Remote control (like Remote.app) to control the iPad? The possibilities are manifold.
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Strange... I control what computing is done on my iPad.
Not if a particular computing is among the classes of computing that the App Store Review Guidelines forbid. Then you have to buy a second computer (a Mac) and pay a recurring iOS Developer Program fee to take control of your device. By then, you own the hardware but lease the privilege to use it.
By your definition, a modern, high-spec Windows box isn't a 'personal computer' because I can't choose to run AS400 software on it.
You can choose to recompile your AS400 software for it, or you can run an emulator. Apple, on the other hand, forbids emulators that allow users to add their own software.
(Someone other than me made a decision which prevents me from doing so.)
It's not just "someone other than [you]". I'm referring to restrictions put in place by the manufacturer of the device on which you want to run applications, not restrictions put in place by the publisher of an application. If a particular application is proprietary, binary-only software available only for System i, it's not the PC maker that put this restriction in place but the application publisher.
We have a couple iPads in our house, and I find myself resentful of the price to upgrade, so we haven't. The competitors are nearly as good, and cost half as much. The price points for more memory in particular outrages me. Why is anyone shipping a premium tablet starting at 16 GB of non-upgradeable storage these days!? How can you justify another $100 just to get to 32 GB?! 64 GB should be the starting point for tablets in Apple's target premium price range.
Earlier on I could understand the premium price, as the competition was simply nowhere near the polish and functionality. But the extra bells and whistles Apple has added just are not keeping pace compared to the premium they are still charging.
I long ago realized I was not in their target demographic for phone and PC sales, and now I think my next tablet is not likely to be an Apple one. Somehow they feel they are exempt from following the steady march downwards of electronics prices.
Heck I'd even be interested in shelling out extra for an iMac, but every time I check they are still not upgradeable, and come with rather underwhelming processors/memory/GPU considering the extreme markup.
Oh well.
Claiming that something has sold a lot doesn't say anything about whether or not it's a fad. Sudden, extreme popularity is a hallmark of fads. That's not to make a claim either way, but it certainly seems that the 'Post-PC era' is not quite as Tim Cook claimed it would be.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
you literally named nothing a laptop wouldn't do better.
If you're doing something that doesn't involve typing, a tablet is easier to use while standing up and holding the device. That's the biggest advantage of tablets: they don't need to be set on a desk or lap.
Always connected mobility and apps: smartphone.
For which the carrier will want you to subscribe to yet another voice and data plan. Otherwise, it's just a 4" tablet like the iPod touch.
GPS: Garmin. eReader: Kindle.
Additional devices to carry and keep charged.
ugh...TFA asks a potentially interesting question but they use all the wrong language and context to frame the question
the "iPad" is a touch-screen computer...so is the iPhone...same with Android touch screen phones and tablets
it's all small, thin computers of various dimensions with *touch screen interface* not a keyboard
another difference is **connectivity**
they can connect to WiFi, Bluetooth, "3g" cellular, "4g" cellular...some can do all...some a combination of
Kindle is another type...it has different specs and a special network (whispernet)...but it's *all the same*
so the difference is **connectivity**...not size or marketing function
that's where we have to start...now...what was the fsking question? how to sell more widgets? the "future" of a particular brand?
prediction: people will use computers and want then to be more portable and more capable
any questions?
Thank you Dave Raggett
i'm not going to put a laptop on the kitchen counter or my wife's legs to watch TV while i load the dish washer or make some food or sit with her on the couch
if i want a break i can have my kids play the xbox or stream netflix on the TV and i'll watch HBO Go or baseball on the ipad in the kitchen.
If life didn't have room for toys, that spot where the flatscreen is hanging would look pretty bare. So would the marina. Toys are awesome, and the main motivation for working.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I owned an iPad 2 since its launch, about three months ago someone broke into my house and stole it (among other things.) I decided it was time to go shopping, and finally settled on a first generation Surface Pro.
After using it for three months, I can say I prefer it over my laptop *and* my iPad. When I want to develop software, I switch to the desktop and plug in an external monitor (which means I get a second 10-inch screen to load documentation or whatever.) When I want to browse casually, I just unplug it from the extra monitor and go mobile. I don't like the screen aspect ratio (too tall and skinny in portrait) and the battery life needs work. It's also a bit heavy, and the app store isn't as rich.
Still, it has been incredibly nice to have access to my desktop and tablet all in one package. As a desktop, it's actually pretty solid. I don't do heavy media editing (most of my software development involves financial accounts) so it hasn't so much as hiccuped with what I've thrown at it. Now, I don't feel like the Surface Pro is better than an iPad as a tablet, though it's a solid desktop and a decent tablet. Still, having my desktop in such a small form factor has been a dream.
It feels like the natural progression if technology. When someone gets the hybrid-OS to work right, I could see desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets all becoming the same product in a way.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
In its current form and functionality, there's not a heck of a lot more that can be done with it. Frankly, it's kind of a limited device. Tablet apps are nice, except that you need 40 of them to take the functional place of a web browser. Web browsing on a tablet is good, but the typing interface is so hokey and prone to mispellings that the best you can hope for is to use it for basic browsing. So, yeah, I think it has peaked and personally I don't think Apple is creative enough without Steve Jobs to take the device to the next level.
Speaking of which, is Apple ever going to come out with anything that's not an interation of Jobs' creativity? Doubtful. I'm looking forward to open source tablets so that I can take Debian with me everywhere.
I'll volunteer the term "Casual Computing".
Tablets serve one particular market exceedingly well, better than any other device produced: Casual consumption.
Flipping through email. Browsing boredpanda.com. Reading documentation. Any task where the primary interaction is absorbing content, is excellent for tablets. Especially when you are doing so in a place other than your desk. I don't need a tablet when I'm at my desk. My tablet is utterly fantastic when I'm on the bus, the train, or when I'm in bed and I really really wanna show my spouse that new Hamsters Eating Burritos video.
Trying to shoehorn tablets into being a desktop replacement is just stupid. Sure, you can approach that level by buying a bluetooth keyboard and maybe a mouse if your tablet supports such things, but why would you do such a thing when using an honest to god computer is so much better for the task?
Turning them into a phone-replacement is a possibility, but only within a very limited range of use-cases.
Having a drop in sales was inevitable. Most people who really wanted one have now got one.
What really sucked is that his mom was kinda hot, but for some reason she stuck her kid between us.
Wow.
I develop amateur radio hardware (shameless plug: http://www.mobilinkd.com/) and iOS devices are so locked down that my products do not work with them. Apple will not permit SPP/RFCOMM Bluetooth connections. All of my customers that use iOS also have an Android device. Many of them will stick with Android devices once they experience the features they have over Apple.
iPads may be experiencing a market decline, but tablets in general are not. Both my wife and I spend a lot of time on our tablets these days. They just happen to be Google Nexus 10s.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I'm not a Kindle zealot (I hate that they are totally locked down)
How exactly is a Kindle Fire tablet "totally locked down"? The one I tried had the same checkbox to allow sideloading of APKs from unknown sources that the vast majority of OHA Android devices have. Or did this change in the HD and HDX models?
I take it it has a really small Shift key?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At least 80% of the iPads I see are being used for one simple, incredibly important purpose.
If you give an iPad to a child, the child behaves better.
The other 20% are being used by bored adults to entertain themselves with some content, for instance while travelling.
So what? The whole point of IOS it to make it ridiculously simple for untrained end-users. These people you speak of chose the wrong platform, and now want it to be something other than it is, so the failure is entirely theirs. If they want a phone/tablet that's like a desktop there are Windows 8, and Ubuntu phones available.
The Win 8 experience is excellent on tablets out of the box, and excellent on the desktop with the addition of the freeware Classic Shell. You have a strange idea of a shitty experience.
I think it's direction is that of a consumer computer; a toy. A computer version of Swiss Army Knife but for consumers.. with all the blades made safe (dull) and it has a spork.
Most people don't need desktop computers and don't know how to even use them or care. They just have narrow tasks to perform and don't want to think about anything else or other ways to do things etc. These people when they have serious work to do will want a larger smart phone. The ability to hook a keyboard and larger screen at work might be a big need when businesses eliminate their PCs and most IT by using a set of apps on their staff's smart phones (and make IT issues be the employee's responsibility. Think of how email today has largely moved away from IT and people are expected to deal with it on their own.. that transition is still ongoing, but could foreshadow the other software used.)
But a REAL computer... with powerful open-ended software? Most won't need it. A hybrid seems a good idea today if you want both worlds but if you have little need for a tablet... and face it, almost nobody actually needs a tablet... you will stick with a nicer lighter laptop for the money. Yes, I have no tablet. It was cool to play with but I can't see it being much use to justify the expense and another device to contend with (theft, software, etc.) I don't have much need for the smart phone either, but it does offer a couple unique things... like being a phone.
I think the hybrid approach will be fairly successful. The downside is that the OS will make serious desktop software suck more while trying to find a forced hybrid of two things that probably never can meld properly. The power users will not be happy and have to seek out systems that haven't tried to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator. Something like hollywood movies...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
For people like myself, who have excessive numbers of textbooks on various science, computer science, and mathematics topics, which I always seem to be referencing regularly, devices like the iPad are ideal... almost all of the books I could hope for at my fingertips, and yet small and light enough to carry comfortably in one hand.
Obviously, they are no replacement for people who like the tactile sensation of reading, but speaking for myself, I use books primarily for their functionality and information within. This is not lost when moving to an ebook format.
The larger form factor of a device like an ipad means that I can look at a full page of information quickly and easily, without having to zoom in or pan around the page for the information I want.
About the only way they could make the ipad any better for what I like to use it for, IMO, is if they had a passive color display, so that it didn't drain the battery so quickly. Fast refresh speed is still mandatory for me, however, so current color eink displays would be a killer for me... I do not want to see any flicker as I'm quickly flipping pages looking for a specific diagram that i can't remember the exact page of, but still know generally where to find it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you buy it off the lunch menu, it's only $94
PCs that are as powerful as the most powerful phones are so damn cheap that - since you're probably syncing everything on your phone out to clout storage anyway - you may as well just have a cheap PC permanently bolted to whatever workstation you have your monitor and keyboard on.
Perhaps my idea of a phone doubling as a PC when docked might not be ideal. But cloud storage isn't exactly "so damn cheap" when both the cloud storage provider and the Internet connection provider bill by the gigabyte. There's still a place for portable physical storage media.
Parker Lewis and I hashed this out a few months ago. We found two general kinds of games that work on mobile: A. point-and-click games, and B. games where the player moves automatically and steers to avoid obstacles. In category B, the steering can be done with taps, swipes, or tilting. Are all games using the move/jump/attack paradigm "console crap" to you?
"They're not convincingly replacing PCs on one end or phones on the other."
I really don't get this line of reasoning.
I don't think the tablet was ever entirely meant to replace the PC. Apple has said so themselves. There are people (like a lot of people here at Slashdot) who will always need a PC. Apple hasn't said that the PC is going away, rather that for a lot of customers that previously had no choice, tablets may cannibalize a lot of PC sales. People who just need to check email and shop online no longer have to buy a PC.
On the other end... tablets replacing phones? Do I even need to deal with that one? That's just... if a tablet can be carried around in my pocket it's probably not a tablet anymore. Do I need to go any further with that?
I think the way Apple sees the future, all three categories will continue to exist, and Apple, at least for now, will continue to sell to all three categories. Individual users may choose to only buy from one or two of those categories, or maybe all three.
On the original topic: iPad sales could be down because Apple is about to release a new iPad, and consumers are waiting. There usually is a similar drop in phone sales (and indeed, this quarters sales data has shown a sudden spike in Android's share of sales for the quarter, indicating iPhone users aren't upgrading as they usually are, probably because the iPhone 6 is almost here.)
Pundits like to read way way too much into quarter by quarter data. Android's quarterly marketshare in tablets spiked this quarter as well, which again, may point to iOS users holding off tablet purchases for the quarter, as opposed to consumers abandoning tablets. It could possibly point to the iPad losing popularity, but again, that's way too much to read into over a single quarter's worth of data right before a revision. I myself am holding out on buying a new iPad (I'm several revs behind) until the new one ships. Otherwise I'd buy today.
Hopefully in the future the world has increasingly little tolerance for closed platforms where a single vendor reigns over all execution.
Your reasoning is just plain incorrect. Obsolescence on Android is far worse than it is on iOS. With Android you might see one, maybe two OS upgrades before the vendor stops supporting the device. App support is even worse... every device has device-specific quirks which many app vendors on Android have NEVER bothered fix.
Developer support on iOS is far better, for far longer. Apple supports their devices far better, and for far longer.
I have an ipad 1, and an ipad 2 (and many other devices). The ipad 1 is too old, period. The cpu is too slow and it only has 256MB of ram. I still see regular developer app updates for my ipad 1 but it just can't run all the apps out there due to the tiny amount of ram it has. It can barely load some web pages. It isn't the OS's fault. The OS version has nothing whatsoever to do with it (other than developers keying off the OS version when making assumptions about RAM use). Even my second-generation ipod touch still runs Pandora, which is all it is really good for with its tiny amount of ram and slow cpu.
And frankly, Apple supported my ipad 1 for far longer than any Android vendor supported my Android devices from that era. My ipad 1 is still usable. My Android devices from that era are not. They are all dead or worthless.
My ipad 2 with 512MB of ram only has trouble with the more bloated games, and its plenty fast enough for me. It is still my go-to device when I travel. If I can only bring one thing (other than my phone), it's the ipad-2 and not the chromebook and not the nexus-7.
More importantly, Apple devices are under Apple's control, not other vendors. In particular not the phone vendors. I've had to remove most of the apps from both my android phone and my nexus 7 because so many of them access *all* my personal data and accounts these days. The telcos install all sorts of crap onto Android phones that I don't want and can't remove.
On Apple you don't have to worry about that. The App has no control over what resources it's allowed to access, the user does. My next phone is going to be an iphone-6 (my current phone is a Motorola Razr M which is great except I can't run any major apps on it any more due to security issues). And, no, running an android app that forces permissions off doesn't work either... that crashes the target app more often than not (when it works at all).
So if your complaint is that Apple is not supporting their customers, it falls flat on its face. Apple is doing a far better job than anyone else.
-Matt
I don't see anything stopping you from loading SlideME or F-Droid on a Kindle Fire tablet and using it. On Android, an "app store" is just an app that displays a list of other apps, downloads an APK, and fires an intent to install it. When you turn on "unknown sources", you change the installer's response to such an intent from "Block" to "Confirm first". The reason you can't install Google Play Store on a Kindle Fire tablet is that Google refuses to provide it other than preloaded on OHA Android devices. That's Google's doing, not Amazon's.
This is not correct. First of all, all devices have a life cycle. They wear out, they break, the screen cracks from a fall... with Apple's astronomical customer retention numbers pretty much everyone who owns an Apple device is going to replace it with a new Apple device. If you consider the life cycle extending to around 4 years (up from 2 years). Apple fully expected the life cycle to increase and has planned for it meticulously. The trade-in program, the frequent iOS upgrades, and the longer iOS sustain on older devices are a direct response to the phenomena.
The second problem with your assertion is that I think something like 40% of Apple device buyers are newcomers.
Apple is sitting in a very sweet spot.
p.s. Android vendors are completely screwed from the lengthening device life cycles. Every single android vendor depends on their customers buying a new device on a 2-year cycle or less, so as consumers hold onto their devices longer the Android vendors lose serious sales momentum and then when the customer replaces the device Android vendors lose market share to Apple. Android vendors have not planned for the lengthening cycle and frankly they are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they will lose even MORE sales if they keep Android more up-to-date on their devices.
-Matt
This is not correct. First of all, all devices have a life cycle. They wear out, they break, the screen cracks from a fall... with Apple's astronomical customer retention numbers pretty much everyone who owns an Apple device is going to replace it with a new Apple device.
Actually, you can choose to replace a broken iPad with an identical refurbished iPad for a lot less than a new one.
Trying to shoehorn tablets into being a desktop replacement is just stupid. Sure, you can approach that level by buying a bluetooth keyboard and maybe a mouse if your tablet supports such things, but why would you do such a thing when using an honest to god computer is so much better for the task?
I can think of three reasons, from most technical to most ideological:
When you've sold millions and millions of iPads, you've reached market saturation. I don't see why people act like it's such a big mystery where the devices will fit in or what purpose they'll serve moving forward? You can tell where they've fit in quite well by looking at how the 15 million+ iPad owners use the things today!
IMO, they're generally a portable computer device that serves as a complement to a standard PC or Mac (desktop or laptop). Their touch-screen and physical design makes them optimal for use in a few situations where notebook or desktop computers aren't (standing up and walking around, or lying down in bed, for example). The relative lack of internal storage capacity and lack of a physical keyboard make them inferior for many tasks you'd use a standard computer for, by contrast. Not everyone will get any use out of an iPad, but others will find it so useful for their particular needs, they can forego a laptop they used to use.
I think we'll see iPads fall into a nice, steady purchasing cycle where people get a replacement one every 3 or 4 years or so -- as the batteries quit holding a good charge on the old one, or when they drop one and damage it -- and can't justify the repair cost vs. just considering it an upgrade opportunity.
Apple makes the same amount of money either way. Doesn't matter to Apple which way you go. But for very old devices no consumer is going to replace e.g. an ipad-1 with another ipad-1.
It comes down to statistics. Apple offers deals for cost conscious consumers but a large percentage of Apple customers are either going to want a newer device or are not so price sensitive that they aren't willing to spend $200 more for a new device. In fact, a lot of customers don't use the trade-in at all and keep the old device.
So even though Apple offers these deals, garnering very high customer loyalty in the process, it doesn't actually impact their bottom line a whole lot.
-Matt
I agree. Tablets are almost entirely without practical use. With one exception: reading PDFs.
I bought mine for reading role playing game PDFs as I am running out of shelf space. It is *great* for that. What I find rather stunning is how useless it is for anything else. I had thought tablets were toys, but after the success of the iPad I figured I was probably wrong. Apparently not.
(Mine is an Xperia Tablet Z. With its 16:10 screen and 224 ppi it's perhaps not as good as an iPad for PDFs, but it's not as locked down, it's light, and on sale with its SD card slot it was 33% cheaper. At least until !@#$ing Google neutered the SD card with Android 4.4, but that's another story.)
You can choose to recompile your AS400 software for it, or you can run an emulator. Apple, on the other hand, forbids emulators that allow users to add their own software.
This claim is outdated and meanwhile wrong/ no longer true.
However being able to program directly on the iPad is still very limited and the main reason I won't buy another one any time (for surfing the web my iPad 2 is good enough)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I remember well in the 1970s that every man had his electric drill, and a series of attachments [for various tasks]. But now there is no need for that. You can buy dedicated tools for all those things, at cheap prices. All thanks to Chinese manufacturing.
Which means that if you have an idea for a new rotating tool, you can't just ship it as a drill attachment and expect a wide audience. You have to find your own Chinese company to manufacture a whole new dedicated product for you. Likewise with iOS: there are apps that just can't be made for it.
And that's the trajectory for computers. Starting as a general purpose computing device for all tasks. Then broadening out into many computing devices, each of which is better than the general purpose computer for a subset of tasks.
Say you were to ship video games as individual computing devices that each have their own screen, controller, and battery. After the introduction of the Game Boy, which could play programs that come on Game Paks, I can only think of one company that seriously tried building a business around that: Tiger.
It won't replace the general purpose PC
Thank you.
Most of the guys, and it is mostly guys who own trucks, use them as penis compensators driving to their cubicle jobs. "Commercial" trucks owned by businesses are a different story.
I'll admit the car/iPad analogy is a bit strained. You have recurring fees to register, insure, and park each vehicle that you don't have to quite the same extent with a computing device, which discourages people from owning both a truck and a car. Because they occasionally use a truck to haul or tow, they use the truck to commute because it's cheaper than owning a second vehicle for commuting. Otherwise, I guess people who occasionally need a truck can rent a truck. But can people who occasionally need a PC rent a PC?
Most people are content consumers.
And artificial lockdown only reinforces this by discouraging people from even trying to create something. The car analogy here is that people get discouraged from shopping for furniture because they know they don't own a vehicle that can haul it home.
Apple, on the other hand, forbids emulators that allow users to add their own software.
This claim is outdated
This brings me to another ideological point about the iPad with which I disagree. Google and Microsoft publish the guidelines of their respective app stores. Apple, on the other hand, treats its App Store Review Guidelines as a trade secret and locks them behind a $99 per year paywall. Is there a public log of important changes to the Guidelines that I should be reading?
and meanwhile wrong/ no longer true.
Several years ago, Apple pulled a Commodore 64 game from the App Store just because the user could reset the emulated C64 into BASIC and key in programs. I'm aware that Apple has loosened up since then to the point where Codea and Python exist. But I thought emulators on the iPad were shipped with a handful of ROM or disk images and locked down to run only those images because of restrictions in the Guidelines against downloading executable code. When did this change? Which emulators that run on the iPad let the user add his own images?
So, the decision on whether a particular *store* will sell a particular piece of software controls whether the *hardware* is a 'personal computer' or not?
Only if the hardware includes a mechanism to prevent users from adding software from outside the store. All iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad devices come with this mechanism, which Apple charges a recurring fee to disable.
The only thing that keeps me on my Lennovo convertible ultrabook (Yoga) is the fact that when I unfolded it it has a REAL keyboard. So I can use it in my lap on the couch, inverted on a bed, wherever and whenever without needing a flat surface to put it on. Whoever at Microsoft thought this horrible surface non-keyboard was a good idea should be let go. It is the whole reason the platform suffers sales wise... everyone who sees it dismisses it, and rightfully so because it is so limited.
" Obsolescence on Android is far worse than it is on iOS"
Android has people like cyanogenmod.com what does Apple customers have????
To prevent my android tablet from falling out of date I just flashed it wyt cyanogenmod and now it has the latest version of Andoid on it (and it runs fine).
Go ask those macpro / macmini users who were arbitrarily cut off from Mavericks if they are happy.
Don't be stupid. Cyanogenmod is for programmers and hackers, which is exactly 0.00001% of the customers who buy these devices.
Try to at least be realistic.
-Matt
First, what is with the name calling and insinuation? Unable to carry a conversation without it?
How am i not realistic? I'm not a programmer and i would guess a lot of people who use it are not either. How hard is it to load an app and install it? I guess in your locked in apple world you are not able to "sideload" apps?
It is a way to get a "clean" version of android (no google apps even). I take it you cant just flash your ipad to whatever version you want? Wonder what will happen when Apple stops supporting the Ipad (1/2/3)? I will just flash my tab when it is time....
PS. while cyanogenmod does sell devices now, but they make software for a lot of android devices (there is no relationship between samsung and cynaogenmod for example.).
Funny, this. I don't have anything Apple as I take the 'personal' in personal computing rather serious. My brother, on the other hand, has no such compunctions and has swallowed the cool-aid. Everything Apple, nothing 'less'. He got the iPad. At more or less the same time I got a Chinese Android tablet, a rather eclectic thing riddled with buttons and a trackball, sporting an 8" 1280x768 screen and running Android 2.2 ('Froyo'). The iPad cost about 4 times as much as that Chinese tablet. The Chinese tablet had twice the amount of working storage ('RAM') but for the rest the specs were comparable. Both were capable of playing 3D games quite well, both handled multi-touch input. The screen on the iPad had better viewing angles, the one on my Chinese tablet sported a higher resolution. The iPad had better battery performance (10 hours of video on the iPad, 6 hours on the Chinese tablet). The Chinese tablet has a camera, the iPad did not.
Fast-forward to here and now. That iPad, being a first-generation device, is gathering dust. It is 'obsolete', overtaken by more modern devices. The Chinese tablet now runs Android 4.1.2. I have not taken the time yet to see whether I could get 4.4 running on it because I have not felt the need yet. Of course this Android release did not come from the manufacturer, but that was never my intention anyway. It came from my PC (as in 'personal' computer, a non-descript hunk of plastic running Linux at acceptable speed) and contains those bits I want, leaving out what I don't want.
Who do you think has more control over what their device does, you or me?
--frank[at]unternet.org
Is there a public log of important changes to the Guidelines that I should be reading?
[Link to PDF]
From the last page of the linked document: "Copyright 2010 Apple". I was aware of the leaked 2010 edition of the Guidelines, but I just wondered if someone had been publicly keeping track of the changes between then and May 2014. Some Slashdot users have given me a hard time for not having updated my analysis of the 2010 Guidelines to track changes to Apple's policy since then.
Agreed, iPad prices are too high. But with cloud storage as cheap as it is, who cares? Why would you want to store a ton of stuff on a device the size of a paperback that can easily be lost, destroyed, or stolen? I'm not being snarky, it's a real question. I'm not a pack rat and don't really care about movies or music, so my devices are essentially empty. But honestly, how much media do you have to carry on a device that's almost always connected to the cloud?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
You can write anything you like in HTML5 and run it.
Only if Safari for iOS supports the particular object that you're using. There are a lot of device features that have an object in HTML5 but which Apple refuses to implement. For example, Safari for iOS doesn't support WebGL (3D graphics), getUserMedia (camera and microphone access), or even uploads of any content-type other than photos or videos.
In fact many "real" apps are just wrappers for a webkit widget running an HTML5 application.
And sometimes wrappers such as PhoneGap have to implement support for device features that Apple refuses to make available in Safari. Anything made with such a wrapper still has to go through the official developer program.
What those of us outside the USA find befuddling is that Americans truly seem to believe that the Democrats and Republicans represent a profound left wing - right wing split,when in the broader spectrum, both parties are profoundly right wing, with a heavy emphasis on capitalism and authoritarianism. Just because the current president is pushing the notion of socialized medicare doesn't mean that the country is teetering on the brink of a Marxist revolution.
You are talking as though joe consumer can actually run something like that when joe consumer cannot. With Android, joe consumer downloads an app from the app store and runs it, and the app happily slurps all of his data. With Apple joe consumer does the same thing and iOS pops up windows asking him if he wants to allow the app to access his contacts, or his GPS position, etc.
Similarly, Apple at least encrypts everything by default. Android requires you to use an option. Apple closes jailbreaks. Android... not.
VPN? You'd better hope Google store does a better job vetting those apps because the little requestor they put up is generated by the app, not by android. Apple puts VPN apps in its store through a sieve.
Joe consumer... you know, 99.9999% of the customers of these devices, can't program a single line of code and thinks linux is some sort of marsupial.
Guess which one is more secure? I'll give you a hint: People who give a shit about the security of their data and the integrity of their device don't choose android.
Google knows this is a problem. They just don't know how to fix it. But they had better pretty damn fast because fewer and fewer people are interesting in giving away all their personal data to every little app they download.
-Matt
when growth finally levels off some marketing jackass declares it dead.
Android also asks about permissions.
jailbreak, isn't that a nice way to say your OS has a SERIOUS security issue which allows "hackers" full access to the device (root)?
Do you remember how secure it was when you could jailbreak it just by going to a website? Man, that is SUPER safe right?
Android doesn't need to fix "jailbreaks" as you don't need to jailbreak the device to make it useful, it comes that way. If Apple devices were so awsome, why is the jailbreak community so large? One of the first things i did when i got my apple TV's was jailbreak them so they can run XBMC and not be tied to itunes.
"Guess which one is more secure? " - BSD, you know the "opensource" unix IOS and OSX are heavily based on? People might think Linux is a marsupial because Apple does a better job marketing. They don't call OS-X "Darwin plus our fancy GUI" do they? Go to your mac and check the version of XNU (Carnegie Mellon University MACH kernel) and FreeBSD you are using.
if you want to talk security, people dont use apple or android but the old standard blackberry which has government approvals.
You are right, when you own the app store you can put anything you want "through a sieve" and filter out anything which :
Competes with you
Could compete with you
somethign you want to steal later
The simple truth: Always worth modding down from the left.
Most comments here are likely copies from posts made in the "Apple introduces iPad" discussion. Including the same wrong claims like the inability to use a real keyboard. With the same dumb people doing the same dumb moderations.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I have an Apple ID and have completed the free developer registration on this Apple ID. But I still got the "unauthorized" error when I tried to view the Guidelines while logged in with my Apple ID. Perhaps having paid for the iOS Developer Program in the past is enough to let you keep access to the revision of the Guidelines that was in effect when your iOS Developer Program subscription expired.
[The Lightning connector's] licensing is controlled with an iron fist, compared to a lot of 1980s PCs that used standard (or at least unpatented) external interfaces [such as] RS-232 (serial ports), IEEE 1284 (parallel ports), IEEE 488 (Commodore disk interface), and NTSC (low- and standard-definition color monitors).
So you have to go back to things that haven't been used for years if no decades
Nor have 1980s PCs "been used for years if no decades". My point is that in the time of the 1980s PCs that I was talking about, these open interfaces were used.
what does having the "open" USB as a "standard" interface gain Android devices?
Open interfaces such as USB and Bluetooth allow low-volume manufacturers to produce peripherals for particular vertical markets. Sure, each single niche peripheral is used by a possibly insignificant fraction of device owners, but the sum of all niche peripherals is probably a more significant fraction.
" Obsolescence on Android is far worse than it is on iOS" Android has people like cyanogenmod.com what does Apple customers have????
They have Apple, which doesn't concentrate their efforts on just a few dozen out of over thousand of devices.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.