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Apple iPad is a Faster, Cheaper iPad Air 2 (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the good-stuff dept.

Say good-bye to the iPad Air, it's just the iPad now. From a report on CNET: Apple announced on Tuesday morning that it will be dropping the price of the 9.7-inch iPad by $70. The tablet's A8X processor will be getting an upgrade too, jumping over to the A9 chip used in the iPad Pro. The upgrade will replace the iPad Air 2, but the iPad Mini 4 will live on, starting at $399. The updated pricing will start on Friday, at $329 for the 32GB model and $459 for the 32GB WiFi with cellular service model. It's Apple's cheapest iPad, after the company decided to replace the iPad Mini 2, which started at $269. Although Apple's iPad is leading the tablet market, it's still a tumbling one as demand takes a decline thanks to people holding onto their tablets longer.

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Much cheaper than the iPhone by fred6666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It amazes me that they can offer the iPad for so cheap compared to the iPhone. Most components are the same, but the display and battery (probably the two most expensive components) must be much more expensive on the tablet, because of the size.

    We can thank carrier subsidies. A lot of people buy phones they can't afford because of that. I doubt they would be going to the bank to get a loan if it wasn't offered by the carrier.

    1. Re:Much cheaper than the iPhone by MachineShedFred · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's because Apple has been ignoring the iPad Mini for like 3+ years now. Seriously, what have they done with it since putting the Retina display in it? Add the TouchID that all other iOS devices have, and throw us a bone with storage. It's the red-headed stepchild of tablets. If you really want to make it look like shit, compare it to the Nvidia Shield K1 that is now like 14 months old, and better in every way at practically half the price.

      I really like the form factor of the iPad Mini, but Apple seems hell bent on not making products I want, and in fact killing off the line of products that are even close.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    2. Re:Much cheaper than the iPhone by radarskiy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It amazes me that people have already forgotten that Apple is why tablet prices are so low. Just before the iPad came out, people were seriously anticipating $899 or $999 starting prices from Apple and figuring they could sell an Android competitor at $699. The actual $499 base price for an original iPad shocked the tablet industry.

  2. Re:Honest question: what is the best... by ledow · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Go cheap.

    I bought my gf a tablet from Amazon that was the cheapest Windows 10 tablet I could find.

    It came with a one-year's Office 365 subscription and cost 100 GBP (that's about $124). It had a removable keyboard, just like the Surface, it functions well as a tablet, runs "full" Windows (she uses it for her Steam games, Skype, etc.).

    There's no need to pay $300+ for an iPad when you can have a Windows laptop for that, or three Windows tablets of a similar size

    The "brand" was something like Linc or similar. Who cares? It's in the "throwaway when it goes wrong" category, after the first year of warrantied use. She's had it now for over 2 and still uses it every day.