I just want an 11" Macbook air again. Even with the M2 it would fly. iPads with this horsepower just don't make sense. It's like a V8 Miata with 4 donuts for tires.
Overall I think the form factor of the 12” MacBook was superior to that of the 11” Air. Similar footprint, but better aspect ratio and much better pixel density.
An M-series 12” would be amazing. Or heck, with how powerful A-series SoCs are these days, even one of those would likely be sufficient and yet far more efficient and powerful than those awful Intel CPUs the original 12” was saddled with.
I „found“ a MacBook 12“ Retina from 2015 at home a few weeks ago. Size wise that's the sweet spot for me. Would totally buy such a device running on Apple silicon. In the end I sold it for 50 Euro after tinkering with Pop!_OS and ultimately realizing that the processor is way too slow for Java development nowadays.
I spend all my time either with my laptop docked in the office, or at home, but I sometimes I need to bring my device with me. Such a laptop would be perfect for me.
Were it not for constantly updated buying guides from tech news sites, Im not sure anyone even Apple employees themselves would know which iPad to recommend to anyone.
Studies have shown that when companies present an overwhelming number of choices, consumers often end up spending more. The psychology behind this is rooted in decision fatigue, where consumers are more likely to choose something familiar or assume that a more expensive product is the best choice.
I have always heard of different conclusions from too many choices. It was from a study known as the "Jam Experiment." [0] They found that in a grocery store that if customers had six choices, they bought more jam than if there were 14 choices.
Interesting. A while ago I looked at laptops and when I looked at Dell and Lenovo I couldn't figure out how to choose between all the models (dozens or probably hundreds). Ended up with a Framework laptop.
Pretty sure that worked on me. I waited for the iPhone SE 4 (now called the 16E), then when I saw the feature set for the price, just went for the vanilla 16. This was while I was knowing exactly how the 16E was acting as a price anchor to move me to the next tier.
This might apply to perishable consumer goods like soap and shampoo, which are cheap and have perfect substitutes. I don't think it would apply to expensive durable goods where more time and research goes into the purchase decision, and there are no perfect substitutes.
Do not be addicted to metrics. Steve Jobs would tell you that while you might help profits in the short term, you're undermining the long term product experience. Don't sound like an executive whose compensation is tied to profit metrics. That is not the only form of success just because it's the most measurable. Measurability does not necessarily equate to most impact.
Where you make the prices of a maxed out lower tier product be more expensive than a barebones higher tier, so it incentives you to "ladder up" your product choice.
'The paradox of choice' says the exact opposite. When presented with more jams to sample, more groceries shoppers stopped to try, but less actually bought. Reducing decisions is conversion 101.
People write comments like this often and I'm always wondering if they are just expressing that the device isn't for them or they don't think the device is for anybody.
There are so many devices out there that you can probably find the perfect thing for you. For some of us, the iPad Pro is a great choice.
The iPad and Surface are *everywhere* in education and healthcare. Just yesterday I donated blood on a mobile health unit entirely ran on iPads and verizon hotspots. Every k-12 and some high ed sysadmins can tell you about having to manage iPads and JAMF at some point.
Well, Apple employees can’t work remotely :) But if you do, and you like working outside your house, the cheapest 10+-inch M-series model you can get is the answer. With Sidecar, it’s at minimum a wireless external display everywhere you go.
At this new model’s cost, it’s hard to recommend. But it does make last year’s M2 models (and older M1 models) more sensible for this purpose.
It's not that complicated, there's basically 3 iPads. iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro. Good, Better and Best. The Mini is a niche product that you buy if you need a smaller iPad.
The famous "four quadrant" product matrix expanded to "Good, Better, Best" across most their product line towards the ends of Job's era. Airpods/Pro/Max. Apple Watch SE/10/Ultra. iPhone 16e/16/Pro (with some size variations).
I keep seeing people saying it's complicated but it's really not.
Even during the Jobs era there was a good/better/best inside of there. The first iMac had good/better/best configs. It's just that Apple became so big that the best sometimes became a completely different machine, with its own good/better/best!
if( price sensitive )
return iPad;
else
if( know what you're doing and you know it needs a Pro )
return iPad Pro;
else // I guess I'll be browsing and watching movies??
return iPad Air;
The most annoying thing for me about the iPad lineup is that Apple hasn't released an iPad compatible version of their Journal app. IMHO, it's the perfect device for Journal. I want to write by hand and doodle and do all the other things you do in a paper journal.
There's some reason they haven't done this and I'd love to know what it is. IMHO, it should have been iPad-first and then ported to the phone later.
It feels funny having to connect a keyboard and mouse to the iPhone or run the iPhone through the Mirroring Tool on a MacBook to properly write in the Journal app.
My guess is that not many people are using it on the iPhone (of which Apple is selling five times as many as iPads, hence they started with that), so they extrapolated that an iPad version isn’t worth it.
Or maybe it’s just general Apple dysfunction. It took them 14 years to port the Calculator app after all.
I love my iPad because of the pencil. I got rid of an office overflowing with paper, and I write everything in an app on the iPad. It then gets saved up into the cloud. That alone has made iPad worth it for me. Sometimes I watch movies on it.
For me the iPad has become one of my favorite ways to use applications like ZBrush, Procreate/Clip Studio, Photoshop/Affinity products.
Now I just need to find good texturing and basic modeling applications I can use on the iPad and I could do a lot more from the comfort of my couch or even outside in the spring.
ZBrush especially on the iPad is an impressive feat and is almost a 1:1 port. I don’t have years and years of ZBrush experience so I actually much prefer the iPad ZBrush GUI to the traditional one.
I've been using an iPad Air (with Paperlike) for the past 4 years for basically running my life at school, and I can't imagine going back to working with actual paper for daily note-taking and homework assignments. It's great for reading whitepapers and marking them up while laying on the couch.
That functionality by itself justifies its existence in my estimation.
Sounds like you have a great use case. I can see how it would have been useful for me as well back when I was at university. Unfortunately, I rarely do any writing on paper any more, although I probably should.
For the same reason I bought the cheapest 10" Android tablet with external memory slot. I don't know what it's like now, but in the past Apple tried very hard to offer entry level models cheap, but for anything usable in terms of storage you had to pay a big premium.
My main use is cooking. I keep the recipes in Obsidian, can enable timers hands free, and because it's a big slate of glass its easy to wipe down when it inevitably gets pasta dough on it.
It could be a great do-everything machine if they let you run macOS on it, but of course they don't want to sell one machine that does everything, they want to sell you an iPad and a MacBook even though they are basically the same hardware plus or minus an integrated keyboard.
I want that experience I seen on some other device at some point... Palm? I forget now.
In tablet mode, iPad OS. Touch being the primary operation. Basically just as we see it now.
In a pseudo desktop mode, macOS, where you get the power of a laptop in a smaller form factor. You can optionally try to use this in touch mode in a pinch but it's not necessarily designed for it.
The win would be seamless switching. Including apps... if I have photoshop open on iPad, dock, convert to Photoshop for Mac. I.e. you "dock" your iPad and it converts to a more Mac-like experience. Undock, you get the iPad experience.
To me, this would be ideal. I don't generally _need_ a laptop for personal use, so this would be a serious boon for me as I use my iPad all the time in the evening for simple consumption, but I also have a MacBook over here that gets used a few times a week, which is a costly device for how little it gets used.
You can kind of get that now with the 360-degree rotation laptops, which are available with Windows or Chrome OS. I haven't used a Windows one, but Chrome OS behaves pretty nicely as a tablet.
The trouble though is, once you get an acceptable laptop keyboard and a corresponding screen, the resulting device seems excessively heavy and bulky when flipped over into the tablet form factor. You probably won't want to hold it up for more than 10 minutes.
I like the idea of one all-in-one device, but it's hard to see a way around these things. The cheesy tiny portable "keyboards" they make for tablets are pretty lame for extended typing, but better keyboards are too heavy for tablets. Meanwhile, I expect a desktop device to have the compute horsepower and RAM that are tough to get in a proper tablet form factor.
I don't use one for work but I use my iPad Pro with keyboard more than I use my personal laptop for personal use. Web browsing, social media, communications, viewing and editing photos, shopping, planning trips, taking notes, and watching videos.
I had the same thought and bought it with the Magic Keyboard. I was surprised to find that the iPad Air with the keyboard weighs about the same as a MacBook Air. Now, I mainly use it as an extra display when traveling and for note-taking. The usage as a separate device is minimal since a lot of uses has intersections with a mobile phone.
Same. Maybe if I had drawing talent, it would be useful.
I have tried to incorporate it into my daily workflow (maybe use it to help with diagramming), but it ends up collecting dust. Or used to watch films in bed.
Using it as a glorified Kindle also doesn’t work well.
I have an old one that I use daily... to do crossword puzzles.
We also have a newer one, and my kid uses it for much of her free to draw in Procreate. I am not very artistic, but she is, and I am not sure if the difference here is age or artistry.
> I am not sure if the difference here is age or artistry.
It could be the period of life - there are times when we have more space for exploration, and at that time, if we come across art and it "clicks", we might spend hours doing that. At another period, that same activity might seem pointless/not interesting.
I use mine to browse the web a bit after work and consume RSS feeds using Feedly - always with the type cover. But for productivity, even with the Office apps, the information density on the screen is too low. Instead, I use my iPad as a thin client to RDP to my desktop computer, running Windows 11.
This is with an iPad Pro 2021.
In hindsight I should have purchased a Surface Pro tablet again, but I was so angry on the constant driver issues and similar problems.
I had been hoping that apple would one day produce an M-series chip powered version of the 12 inch retina macbook air. They discontinued those in 2017 and I have one of the last ones that were sold but the battery is very dead and it has stability issues now. I may consider this product if the keyboard is solid and the screen doesn't shake when typing.
I owned multiple iPads and never found a compelling use case for them. I don't know why I keep buying them but they have been great computers for my parents so it's not like I buy to shelf them.
Are there any use cases (apart from drawing maybe. I can't draw a stick figure if my life depended on it so that's not for me) for developers?
I see my colleagues using iPads at work when on Zoom calls as a whiteboard. It's pretty cool when done effectively. I'd like to practice that skill.
I bring my iPad to the coffee shop and leave my laptop at home when all I want to do is send emails and read. I don't think I could do "heavy" work on it, but it's great for quick stuff. The fact that it has 5g means I don't mess around with finding wifi. I wouldn't pay extra for the 5g (tethering works perfectly), but I got a few free unlimited data lines back when various US cell companies were fighting to churn customers.
I really started to enjoy my iPad Pro M1 messing around making music.
There are hundreds of fantastic apps out there from mixers, sequencers to excellent synthesizers, effects and samplers. For an idea of what this can look like, here's a video: https://youtu.be/ft8erjlzg4A?si=lCg77DZAUYNa1SEf
Add a midi controller and you can make pretty much any kind of music you want.
A great benefit over mac / pc computer based music making is that the apps are very affordable.
My iPad Mini is my primary travel computer. Fits (barely) in most of my front pockets. But the screen is big enough that I feel comfortable. Keep a bluetooth keyboard with an attachment slot in my bag. The slot holds the tablet firmly enough that I can use it as a laptop when wanted.
For my needs it's mostly perfect. Can have it with me at all times without requiring a bag. Much more portable than an actual laptop while the screen is more comfortable in size/ratio than the usual 6.8 inch phones.
iPadOS isn't my favorite but the form factor makes up for it.
They're a computer for things that your laptop sucks at. Draw directly on them, use them for reading, carry them to work sites and use them in situations where a laptop would be super-awkward, put them on sheet music stands, prop them up in the kitchen, hold them up and use their tilt sensors in games, all that kind of stuff.
They're basically never better than a laptop at things laptops are good at (though often serviceable enough that folks don't need both) but excel at other use cases where laptops aren't great.
Form factor, amazing. Long ago I had a mini and the new 7th gen is really nice to carry around. However I found the pen functionality to be frustrating. The Pencil Pro, when it works, is great. But I had issues with lagging input on some apps, the well-known screen heating problem (within minutes), lack of a good journaling solution, etc. It's annoying to have to go through 3-4 third party apps to do something that Apple should have released alongside the device, especially when most of them need subscriptions for nebulous benefits like cloud sync (I already pay for iCloud backup, so why?). FreeForm is OK, but isn't great for structured note-taking. There are enough of these niggling problems that I returned mine within the 14-day cool off period to do some more research.
I'd consider getting a used model when the prices have dropped a bit, but full-price for something that feels a little half-baked is tough. Especially because the hardware otherwise feels exceptional.
I'm looking at the Surface Pro, which does basically the same thing and also has conveniences like USB ports for peripherals. Or try out the iPad Pro, but that's getting into "BIG" territory.
> They're basically never better than a laptop at things laptops are good at (though often serviceable enough that folks don't need both)
I'm experimenting with replacing my personal laptop with an iPad Pro this year. I'm not a professional content creator, photo or video editor, etc. So far it's been great. I write a lot, creative writing, journaling, and lots of note taking. It's been wonderful for all of these tasks and it basically goes with me everywhere.
iPads are useless for developers. When working I just use mine as a 3rd monitor for Slack, Notion, Linear, Grafana, or whatever I want to keep an eye on.
iPads are amazing for other things though:
- they're the best platform to read comics or mangas
- they're great to learn/play piano with dynamic sheets
- they're great for games (Balatro on iPad is top tier), and basically anything where tactile is good as an input control (GarageBand is nice to use on iPad)
- they're great for travel
You can do many things with an iPad, developing is not one of them.
My biggest use case was as a recipe manager: I used the app Mela and placed the iPad in the kitchen, giving me a touchscreen with water resistance that would give me step-by-step instructions on cooking the family meal.
I was in the same boat but I've been able to use a friend's ipad with keyboard and have been very impressed. It totally changes the purpose of an ipad to me, especially how good they fit together.
They are good for music production with a Logic Pro subscription, the touch screen interface is great for virtual instruments, mixing sliders, etc. With powerful chips you can add more tracks and effects.
The form factor (in particular the aspect ratio) is unfortunately not ideal for that.
The original Surface RT might have had the best form factor I've used for plane movies - 16:9 screen with built-in kickstand. 16:9 is sub-par for basically everything other than tv/movies though.
Perhaps OP is referring to the idea that products are killed by apathy, not by hate. People who take the time to complain about something still want the thing, they just want it to be better. People who have stopped caring are lost.
Readit News
Maybe Apple moving into the modem space will get us there but it does feel like some sort of purposeful market segmentation
Or let us run Mac apps on the darn iPad.
An M-series 12” would be amazing. Or heck, with how powerful A-series SoCs are these days, even one of those would likely be sufficient and yet far more efficient and powerful than those awful Intel CPUs the original 12” was saddled with.
Pretty sure it would kill battery life, and play very poorly with their suspend-wake functionality.
They termed it decision paralysis.
[0] https://scottfenstermaker.com/too-much-choice-the-jam-experi...
Pretty sure that worked on me. I waited for the iPhone SE 4 (now called the 16E), then when I saw the feature set for the price, just went for the vanilla 16. This was while I was knowing exactly how the 16E was acting as a price anchor to move me to the next tier.
Where you make the prices of a maxed out lower tier product be more expensive than a barebones higher tier, so it incentives you to "ladder up" your product choice.
Best explained by MKBHD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiNYOZZLOyg
'The paradox of choice' says the exact opposite. When presented with more jams to sample, more groceries shoppers stopped to try, but less actually bought. Reducing decisions is conversion 101.
And for desktops, the Mac Mini, iMac and MacPro.
For phones, Apple was selling the 3G, 3GS, and iPhone 4.
For iPods, they were selling the Shuffle, Nano, regular iPod and the iPod Touch.
So selling three regular iPads and the Mini is nothing different now.
There are so many devices out there that you can probably find the perfect thing for you. For some of us, the iPad Pro is a great choice.
There's also people who work in Procreate with a million layers and need all the horsepower and RAM they can get.
At this new model’s cost, it’s hard to recommend. But it does make last year’s M2 models (and older M1 models) more sensible for this purpose.
The famous "four quadrant" product matrix expanded to "Good, Better, Best" across most their product line towards the ends of Job's era. Airpods/Pro/Max. Apple Watch SE/10/Ultra. iPhone 16e/16/Pro (with some size variations).
I keep seeing people saying it's complicated but it's really not.
There's some reason they haven't done this and I'd love to know what it is. IMHO, it should have been iPad-first and then ported to the phone later.
Or maybe it’s just general Apple dysfunction. It took them 14 years to port the Calculator app after all.
Now I just need to find good texturing and basic modeling applications I can use on the iPad and I could do a lot more from the comfort of my couch or even outside in the spring.
ZBrush especially on the iPad is an impressive feat and is almost a 1:1 port. I don’t have years and years of ZBrush experience so I actually much prefer the iPad ZBrush GUI to the traditional one.
edit: Shoutout to Paperlike screen covers.
It doesn’t come close to doing all of my computing but it helps me immerse in areas I struggle with on a laptop or desktop.
I realize I’m blessed to be able to split my computing across multiple nice devices.
I've been using an iPad Air (with Paperlike) for the past 4 years for basically running my life at school, and I can't imagine going back to working with actual paper for daily note-taking and homework assignments. It's great for reading whitepapers and marking them up while laying on the couch.
That functionality by itself justifies its existence in my estimation.
In tablet mode, iPad OS. Touch being the primary operation. Basically just as we see it now.
In a pseudo desktop mode, macOS, where you get the power of a laptop in a smaller form factor. You can optionally try to use this in touch mode in a pinch but it's not necessarily designed for it.
The win would be seamless switching. Including apps... if I have photoshop open on iPad, dock, convert to Photoshop for Mac. I.e. you "dock" your iPad and it converts to a more Mac-like experience. Undock, you get the iPad experience.
To me, this would be ideal. I don't generally _need_ a laptop for personal use, so this would be a serious boon for me as I use my iPad all the time in the evening for simple consumption, but I also have a MacBook over here that gets used a few times a week, which is a costly device for how little it gets used.
The trouble though is, once you get an acceptable laptop keyboard and a corresponding screen, the resulting device seems excessively heavy and bulky when flipped over into the tablet form factor. You probably won't want to hold it up for more than 10 minutes.
I like the idea of one all-in-one device, but it's hard to see a way around these things. The cheesy tiny portable "keyboards" they make for tablets are pretty lame for extended typing, but better keyboards are too heavy for tablets. Meanwhile, I expect a desktop device to have the compute horsepower and RAM that are tough to get in a proper tablet form factor.
It is a computer, just a little different.
I have tried to incorporate it into my daily workflow (maybe use it to help with diagramming), but it ends up collecting dust. Or used to watch films in bed.
Using it as a glorified Kindle also doesn’t work well.
Skip the neuro-"science" chapters and do the drawing exercises only. It really works!
We also have a newer one, and my kid uses it for much of her free to draw in Procreate. I am not very artistic, but she is, and I am not sure if the difference here is age or artistry.
It could be the period of life - there are times when we have more space for exploration, and at that time, if we come across art and it "clicks", we might spend hours doing that. At another period, that same activity might seem pointless/not interesting.
This is with an iPad Pro 2021.
In hindsight I should have purchased a Surface Pro tablet again, but I was so angry on the constant driver issues and similar problems.
the 12" Macbook was special
Went down a rabbit hole recently looking at some Chinese ones by Chuwi, nearly pulled the trigger too
Are there any use cases (apart from drawing maybe. I can't draw a stick figure if my life depended on it so that's not for me) for developers?
I bring my iPad to the coffee shop and leave my laptop at home when all I want to do is send emails and read. I don't think I could do "heavy" work on it, but it's great for quick stuff. The fact that it has 5g means I don't mess around with finding wifi. I wouldn't pay extra for the 5g (tethering works perfectly), but I got a few free unlimited data lines back when various US cell companies were fighting to churn customers.
There are hundreds of fantastic apps out there from mixers, sequencers to excellent synthesizers, effects and samplers. For an idea of what this can look like, here's a video: https://youtu.be/ft8erjlzg4A?si=lCg77DZAUYNa1SEf
Add a midi controller and you can make pretty much any kind of music you want.
A great benefit over mac / pc computer based music making is that the apps are very affordable.
For my needs it's mostly perfect. Can have it with me at all times without requiring a bag. Much more portable than an actual laptop while the screen is more comfortable in size/ratio than the usual 6.8 inch phones.
iPadOS isn't my favorite but the form factor makes up for it.
They're basically never better than a laptop at things laptops are good at (though often serviceable enough that folks don't need both) but excel at other use cases where laptops aren't great.
I'd consider getting a used model when the prices have dropped a bit, but full-price for something that feels a little half-baked is tough. Especially because the hardware otherwise feels exceptional.
I'm looking at the Surface Pro, which does basically the same thing and also has conveniences like USB ports for peripherals. Or try out the iPad Pro, but that's getting into "BIG" territory.
I'm experimenting with replacing my personal laptop with an iPad Pro this year. I'm not a professional content creator, photo or video editor, etc. So far it's been great. I write a lot, creative writing, journaling, and lots of note taking. It's been wonderful for all of these tasks and it basically goes with me everywhere.
iPads are amazing for other things though:
- they're the best platform to read comics or mangas
- they're great to learn/play piano with dynamic sheets
- they're great for games (Balatro on iPad is top tier), and basically anything where tactile is good as an input control (GarageBand is nice to use on iPad)
- they're great for travel
You can do many things with an iPad, developing is not one of them.
Plugged into my keyboard & monitor I can use one of several “codespaces” solutions and if I’m traveling it’s a better screen than a phone.
I can’t use it for work admittedly but that’s mostly about corporate control of my device, not capability.
That, and the normal consumption stuff - web, streaming TV/movies, magazines, news, etc.
Never bothered trying to build software with it - that's why I own a MBP.
I love the idea of an iPad, but they just don't really fit into my life I guess.
The original Surface RT might have had the best form factor I've used for plane movies - 16:9 screen with built-in kickstand. 16:9 is sub-par for basically everything other than tv/movies though.
Deleted Comment
You're absolutely right, when people stop caring -- that's when Apple should be concerned.