> Since the iPad's initial introduction back in January, many of us still wonder why we should drop hundreds of dollars for what is termed as a large iPod.
There were also a significant number of jokes about the name, relating it to a feminine hygiene product.
I bought one day 1 and pretty much everyone thought I was nuts and just an Apple zealot. However, as I took it places and used it, people saw it and became much more interested and took it more seriously as a product.
I was definitely in the former camp, and eventually bought one because other people seemed to like it, and so took it more seriously as a product. But.. it was after buying it that I realized the emperor didn't really have any clothes, and it was either mostly an expensive status symbol for people who couldn't care less about the money, or a device with just a few specific and very useful purposes. My grandpa uses it for Planespotting, which seems perfectly appropriate to me. Now it's been 10 years, and I've never really thought about buying another one, because it's just not a general computing device that I've been able to make useful for a breadth of things I use devices for. It's only ever been effective for reading reference books, playing YouTube videos (before the app and browser support went away), reading pocket articles, browsing the web, and maybe a few games. Everything else just didn't prove effective, for me anyway. Even trying to watch regular videos on it is a total pain.
I can agree with a lot of this, depending on the user. I’m pretty similar to you. I got it and used it, because it was new and novel, but over time the usage faded. I tried going back to the iPad mini, since I liked that form factor best, but it’s sitting a few feet from me, powered off, and hasn’t been used in months.
My dad on the other hand, who is one of the people who bought and iPad after seeing mine, uses it all the time. He actually has 2 of them, a 10” and a 12.9”, and he uses both of them regularly enough that he feels they are both justified for his use cases. He still does use his Mac as well, but his iPads get a ton of use for reading the news, email, photography related things, and maybe some other stuff. He’s retired now, so that might be part of it.
Maybe if didn’t work in IT and simply consumed whatever the apps allowed me to consume, I could get by with an iPad as my computer, but I want to do stuff an iPad can’t do. I also pretty much always want a keyboard and mouse, and when that’s always bolted on to an iPad, it might as well be a MacBook. I never found the appeal of touch screen laptops.
Ya I'd agree with those points. People who put iPad pros to good use either don't have any other significant general requirements, or the few things they use it for are either consumption or illustration, where touch, a big screen, and no complexity are the selling factors.
I'm not personally producing intricate illustrations, but I know a tiny number of people who do, and I don't think it's occures to them they'd need anything but that and their phone.
"iPad? Why did they name it after a tampon hahahaha never getting one of those. Similarly priced laptops are more powerful and have a keyboard." TBF the early models weren't as good and didn't have the keyboard and Apple Pencil of today.
They also ran iOS without really much adaptation for the form factor. Now it's called "iPadOS" and has functionality that differentiates it from an iPhone. You can even dual screen the thing if you're a weirdo.
I love using it as a second screen when I’m out at a coffee shop. It works so seamlessly and I can throw Slack on there while I code, without looking like a complete weirdo
If you want, it's possible to wire it up too! I use the included USB-C cable to connect it directly to my MacBook. It's much more reliable that way, especially if you're on a flaky WiFi connection.
Isn't that the rub, though? The majority of iPad users don't use the keyboards or Pencils. They're just using the iPad. That's exactly why the original was so successful.
To a first approximation, that's what it still is all these years later. The software might be called iPadOS now but it's not fooling anyone that it's much different to iOS.
There are some specific use cases like creating digital artwork and certain gaming/video where the difference between an iPhone and and an iPad really is arguably a difference in kind. But, yeah, especially with larger iPhones (even sub-Max) I've come to see an iPad as increasingly optional for most purposes.
Yes, I would agree. I use an iPad Pro for 3D modeling as well as drawing and graphic design. For those applications (especially 3D modeling) the M1 and large screen make a massive difference.
Yeah, but just like I said back then, that's like saying that a bathtub and a swimming pool are the same because they're both masses of contained water. The difference is explicitly in the size.
> ‘I recall lots of people dismissing the iPad as "just a big iPod Touch".’
The interesting point here is that Apple’s competitors at the time didn’t even have a product that could come close to the iPod touch, and yet Apple was already taking the product into a completely new direction.
The iPod touch doesn’t exist anymore. Turns out the paper-like size combined with the simple UI made all the difference. And nobody scaling down from $2k Windows tablets could have figured that out. That’s how Apple created a beautifully designed tablet for only $499 and everybody else was left scrambling.
With the Vision Pro, Apple doesn’t seem to have that kind of advantage. But I’d be very happy if it exceeds my expectations and is also successful in the market. I’ve been waiting for VR all my life. The Quest has come tantalizingly close but still misses the applications that would make it a part of my daily routine.
I'm not sure it's a dismissal, as in "an iPod Touch with a big screen" is quite a good pitch. Like even now, if we ever get 16" iPads it's just an iPad with a massive screen, but I'd be all over it.
I have an older version of one of the big iPads. The thing is that I never got into using it for digital animation/art that I envisioned doing at one point. And for routine travel content consumption stuff it was just bigger and heavier--but otherwise not a better experience.
I use mine (12" M1 Pro) as a portable music studio - touch screen is fantastic for this so I vastly prefer Logic on the iPad to the Mac, but it's mighty cramped even on the 12".
It was a dismissal from people who didn't see the utility of a parallel product that was just bigger. Just because someone sees the utility of a small SUV doesn't mean they will automatically want to also buy an F-150.
There were tear downs showing this tiny little iPod shaped SoC shoved into the case and connected to a massive battery. The SoC was underpowered considering it was running a 1024x768 screen and support was dropped almost immediately.
The iPad 2 teardown showed an SoC which seemed a lot more custom designed for the iPad, and the "big iPod" criticism died around that point.
this is exactly as I remember it as well... it was quite mem'ed on that dimension alone, as to why would you need a giant one of the thing they already had.
They did, but before it was released it was predicted to cost over $1000, often confidently assumed to be well over a kilobuck. Instead it was $499. It was also much thinner and with better battery life than the experts had predicted.
It was more of a shock than the M1 was in recent times.
Not defending Apple here: I do believe the Vision Pro will be a resounding "meh".
I remember history a bit differently.
I recall lots of people dismissing the iPad as "just a big iPod Touch".