Interesting analysis of the tablet market by Neil Cybart.
A quick look at iPad and tablet shipment data would show that things have gotten bad in recent quarters. However, in reality, things are much worse than quarterly shipment data would suggest. The seasonality found in the tablet segment makes it difficult to see these long-term problems. A much better way at understanding what has been taking place is to look at the year-over-year change in shipments on a trailing 12-month (TTM) basis, highlighted in Exhibit 1. This smoothing effect highlights that the iPad and tablet have been on the decline for years and things continue to worsen with the overall tablet market hitting negative territory for the first time. All momentum has been lost.
It’s a pretty grim picture, but it’s not surprising. After modern tablets burst onto the scene – led by the iPad – we were pummelled by hyperbole after hyperbole about the post-PC revolution and how the tablet would destroy the PC; and indeed, for a short while, the staggering sales numbers of the iPad (later overtaken by Android tablets) seemed to lend credence to these hyperboles.
And then things kind of… Well, stagnated. Google has never really taken tablets seriously, and with hindsight we can now say that was probably a good idea. Apple, too, has completely ignored and squandered the potential it saw for the iPad. Little to no tablet-specific work has been done on the iPad side of iOS, and as such, the iPad has never managed to grow beyond its status as a consumption-only device.
Speaking of consumption, I found this sentiment in Sybart’s article quite puzzling.
Many didn’t see it, but tablets were quickly turning into content consumption devices where price was a leading purchase decision.
“Many didn’t see it”? “Turning into”? Really? I don’t know about you, but since the iPad’s introduction, there’ve been only two groups of people claiming that the iPad was not strictly a consumption device: Apple employees and Apple bloggers/reporters. Everybody else has been fully aware of the iPad’s (and other tablets’) main use case from day one.
Lukas Mathis has written a great reply to Sybart’s article, hitting the nail on the head so hard, the nail’s probably saying hello to New Horizons by now:
Better hardware would help, but I think it’s very important to acknowledge that the thing standing in the way of productive work on the iPad is not its hardware. It’s iOS.
iOS is a cumbersome system for even reasonably complex productive tasks. Apple has started fixing the window management problem, but there’s still the document management problem (most real-world tasks involve multiple documents from multiple sources – there’s pretty much no way to organize and manage document from different applications in iOS), and the workflow problem (many real-world tasks involve putting the same document through multiple apps, which iOS is still not great at, albeit getting better).
And then there’s the fact that few developers are willing to invest a lot of money into productive apps on the iPad. They are expensive to create, the market is small, and Apple’s handling of how apps are sold on its devices does not instill confidence.
The thing that’s preventing people from using the iPad productively is not the small screen, it’s the operating system.
All this is further made worse by how hard iPads are to deploy and manage in educational and corporate settings (compared to Windows laptops and Chromebooks).
The question now is this: will Apple ripping off Windows 8’s Metro environment be enough to regain the squandered potential? Do we need a larger iPad, as has been rumoured for so long now? Or do we just have to accept that no, tablets and touch just aren’t going to work for anything but simple, consumption-focused computing tasks?
I think I know the answer.
I hadn’t considered it before, but the expectation of low app prices,combined with the 30% apple cut doesn’t leave much for established companies like adobe to really invest in content creation to the same degree they have on more traditional desktop systems that don’t require app store integration.
Make that 30% negotiable, or dependent on app price and maybe they’d get more third party help.
I wonder if that was what drove Microsoft’s decision to move to a free model for mobile Office.
I think they are under pressure of Google Docs for lightweight work. Making the mobile and web versions free results in more people staying in the Office ecosystem, leading to more license and subscription sales.
After more thought, I wonder what the margins are in retail. Or if that is even significant anymore.
To produce software for a store shelf requires some raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, and then its sold at wholesale and marked up by the retailer.
I’m not sure if places like frys or best buy still sells photoshop or related productivity software for the media producing professional.
I’d think most people would just buy digitally direct from adobe,et all. So maybe in the past they sold things %30 less due to all of those costs, but don’t now and don’t want to get back to that model?
They do sell “some” productivity software for media. Adobe products though are only digital these days. They are now subscription based, and there is no media for current versions. Not that I have found anyway.
I think part of the problem is that people don’t value items created for the smartphone and tablet market. The race to the bottom has made it such that unless you sell 100,000+ copies of an app you are going to lose money developing it. Complex applications take time to build and develop. Charging $0.99 for them is too low. Now the expectation for people is that selling an item above $2-3 and it is too expensive.
I am not sure how to change this mindset, but it would help if larger companies, like Adobe, that develop complex apps charged more AND put more effort into these apps.
It’s not simply a matter of how much value people place in applications. A lot of people have invested money in applications for desktop computers, as well as the time to learn those applications. It would take a fairly dedicated person to want to spend the money and take the time to involved with a more comprehensive application.
On top of that, software does take time to develop and existing desktop applications often have decades of development history behind them. Even if one of those developers decides to port that software to a tablet, it is very probable that it will be feature incomplete for the initial releases. (Porting to a new API and designing around a new model for HCI is non-trivial.) This makes consumers leery
Then you have to return to the money thing. Tablets may be getting cheaper, but that is for a base unit. Anything that is workable for work will likely involve further investments that will push its cost beyond that of a low end laptop for less performance.
So why would anyone want to pay more than a pittance at this stage of the game? Maybe in a few years time, but that assumes that tablets ever get beyond the consumption stigma.
Yeah, it’s too bad for Apple…they ONLY sold 12.6 million iPads in the last quarter…
Any other company would be doing the chicken dance, if they had those numbers….it’s all about perspective, I guess…
Fully agree. Apple doesn’t have to do much with the iPad. Incremental upgrades. Throw in new eye candy here and there….reap rewards.
The device is there. People are really waiting for/wanting the app to utilize it.
Productivity DOES mean filesystem access, and the ability to freely associate any file type with any application capable of handling it. Notice how literally every productivity focused platform today has not just filesystem access but a half-decent CLI as well (grudgingly including newer versions of PowerShell in this)?
We used to have tablets in the house. Now we have chromebooks.
Edited 2015-08-15 02:10 UTC
Unfortunately Chromebooks are no longer sold in Australia. They were doomed to fail because we have slow ADSL at home and small data allowances for cellular networks.
It doesn’t matters to Apple if you buy an iPad, an IPad mini or an IPad nano ( aka iPhone plus ). It only matters if you stay in the Apple ecosystem.
By the way, Apple sold more iPads last quarter the dell sold pc’s so anyone who thinks we’re not in a post pc era is in denial.
As has been said many times before, PCs tend to be used for much longer (and there’s more than just Dell) that quarterly sales figures are no indication of their actual relevance to computing.
All available research – indeed this very article references some – points to the fact that the use of personal computers ( PC’s ) as computing devices is in decline while the use of mobile computing devices continues to increase.
The whole debate is one of semantics. Do we call it the post PC era because there are now more non PC computing devices in use or do we not because ( as Thom claims ) it’s just a meaningless marketing term.
Either way, whatever words you use, the fact remains we are in an era where mobile computing and Internet access is dominant, a change from a decade ago where desktops and laptops were most people’s primary computing devices, and that is pretty unlikelky to change anytime soon ( if ever ).
“All available research” still uses sales figures, which is what is being contested here. You can choose any sales figures you wish, but I’m saying sales figures are not a proxy measure for usage, given the different usage patterns of the machines. One type of machine is based on a frequent discard-buy new cycle whereas the other is used for much longer.
Is this really true though? I know a lot of people still using iPad 1 & 2 models. They didn’t instant upgrade. Further, many of those devices get handed down to children when people do upgrade. In the old days, this was a PC. Kids don’t want PCs now.
I think the prediction that tablets will replace PCs is nuts, but for some people who only used PCs for content consumption, a tablet and s set top box can replace it.
Prices for useful PCs have skyrocketed as of late. You can buy a slow ultrabook processor system for $1000 or less in the US but it’s slower than a two year old mid range. Intel 5th gen == slow and that means paying a premium for a quad core 4th gen “gaming” or “workstation” laptop to get speed now. The fact that Intel sees a market for slow CPUs like the broadwell indicates that most people have accepted the use of a PC as a secondary content consumption device. When Intel cares about battery life, they’re trying to compete with tablets.
Every new release, Apple stores around the world are blocking the streets with the lines of people waiting for the store to open. Many people also preorder. I think those people highly outnumber people you know.
Maybe, your universe tells you that it was on a post PC era, but the rest of the world is not living on a post PC era, for there is no such a thing as a Post-PC era.
More shoes were sold last quarter than cars, so anyone who thinks we’re not in a post-car era is in denial.
A more apt analogy would be, say, if more electric cars were sold them petrol cars.
In that sense we would be in a post petrol car era ( but at the same time not in a post car era ).
Actually, we’ve been in a post-electric era for around a century.
Electric cars were popular (in America) pre WWI, but the slow recharge and limited range allowed gas burners to win the fight against both electric and steam.
More manure was sold this spring than during the entirety of winter, so anyone that thinks we are in a post bull-shit era is clerly in denial.
LOL
edit:spelling misstake
Edited 2015-08-15 11:04 UTC
Interesting analysis? I don’t think so. Boring, uninformative, late, maybe, but not interesting.
Tablets were always what they were: tablets. Tools for easy and quick access to visual information with good interaction but limited input capabilities. That’s it. Sellers tried to show them off as the silver bullet solution of the idiotically – and wrongly – called “post-PC” era, but hey, every child grows up someday and stops believing in fairyrales.
I remember when tablets first came out many people were asking me which one I was going to buy…
Probably mostly because I dislike Apple and tend to avoid many mainstream products people probably thought I would mention some obscure product or a FOSS project.
I had already though about how I would use a tablet briefly and I had decided that a laptop better fit my usage case.
The only “tablet” I could imagine having is one that could transform back into a laptop in some way. I do a little content creation from time to time and I often enjoy chatting or commenting while online. These reasons alone were enough I could not see myself using, as other have noted, what is primarily a content consumption based device.
Edited 2015-08-15 09:25 UTC
The right tool for the job is a useful mantra, imho. My company-issued Dell ultrabook works well as a primary tool in our heavily regulated environment. However, just yesterday, I utilized one of my iPads to participate in a corporate WebEx work session (including shared data) and also corporate Outlook email via the secure and sandboxed Good For Enterprise app…..all using iOS 8.4.1…..not to mention viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents frequently….not exactly a consumption only tablet paradigm in my environment…YMMV.
Actually I wrote an article about iOS limitations over a year ago but so far no one has paid any attention to it. Apple fanboys simply ignore it, Android fans don’t care 😉
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-iphones-and-ipads-suck.html
It would be nice if Thom linked to it as well. Perhaps fewer people would rush to buy new shite from Apple. You cannot imagine the number of people around me who mourn the fact they purchased iPhones and iPads.
Downvotes! It’s great to know that Apple fanatics are even here on OSNews.
You just now figured this out? You’ve been here for a while. There are fanatics of every kind here. The nice thing about this over other sites though is that there seems to be a balance of fanatics of all types.
There certainly are, but don’t blame it on them. Your comment seemed a little offtopic, and didn’t say anything that OSnews haven”t previously covered. So while Apple bashing is always fun, downvoting is not unexpected in this case.
Edited 2015-08-16 21:30 UTC
Sounds like it was worth your time to write it out then.
You violated the vacuum rule.
Articles entitled “Why <X> Sucks”, by the vast majority, themselves suck, unless talking about vacuums, or gravity fields.
Primarily, because you’re starting off by insulting any potential readers who might be fans of X, and secondly, because it’s obvious you’re biased against X, so it’s difficult to believe you’re being objective.
So many tablets have been sold there’s no one else to sell them to, hence declining sales. The very definition of a failed product category!
No. Definition of market saturation.
For most tasks of media consumption the mid 2012 tablets are OK.
The term “post-PC” is neither a fantasy nor an obsolete concept. It’s just misunderstood, as has happened before. To get some perspective, consider the last big transition at the dawn of the PC era – or as we called it in the early 1980’s, the “post-Mainframe era”.
In those days, most enterprise computing was conducted by high priests in glass rooms with raised, cold air-forced floors, and green terminals. I did “home computing” in the 1970s with a TI Silent 700 thermal terminal and a 300 baud modem.
The PC changed who did computing because it change what work done by computers. Rather than batch jobs, we did spreadsheets and desktop publishing and charts and bulletin board communications. It was the democratization of computing across the developed world.
We also took bets on whether the last mainframe would be turned off by the next millennium – foolish in retrospect, because mainframes are still valuable. You don’t run payroll for a 100,000 person corporation on a PC!
The iPhone heralded the post-PC era, or as we’ll eventually call it, the mobile era. Again, it and it’s Android companion changed who did computing because they changed what work done by computers. Rather than spreadsheets and desktop publishing and charts, we did navigation and selfies and always-on communications and casual gaming in the privy.
And, we started discussing the death of the PC – equally foolish, because we still need to do spreadsheets and desktop publishing and charts, and as mainframe is better for payroll, PCs are better for those tasks.
Despite the best efforts of One Laptop Per Child and friends, PCs remain mostly the province of the developed world. Cheap Android smartphones have spread rapidly through the developing world, the democratization of computing for the rest of the planet.
The recent contraction of the tablet market has not been caused by peoples’ sudden realization that typing and spreadsheets are better suited to PCs, I would argue, but by the expansion of smartphone capabilities (and screens!) to subsume the small tablet market. Why buy a small smartphone and a big tablet if a large smartphone will suffice?
So the post-PC era isn’t about the death of PCs, any more than the post-mainframe era saw the death of mainframes – still a profitable business for IBM. Rather, it’s about the expansion of computing to a vast new user base doing new things in new ways.
While PCs (and mainframes) are no longer the center of computing, they’ll survive just fine.
The term post-PC is incorrect. What you are describing would be `post-desktop` if anything. I do agree that mobile computing expands convenience and connectivity, but I disagree where you said it opens a vast new user base doing new things in new ways. I’ve observed practically the opposite of that – the same users, doing the same things, in mostly the same way, just doing it from a more portable device vs. the desktop. Web searches, contacts, emails, entertainment, none of this is new or used in any new ways. Tablets, phablets, and smartphones are simply the sum of adding long-existing technologies to one device that fits in your pocket or your backpack.
Reducing the footprint of a basic desktop down to something that you can hold in your hand doesn’t impress me. What does is the rate at which these devices have made people inattentive, disconnected from their surroundings, socially awkward, and generally dumber. But hey, now you can get Facebook and Twitter updates while you’re driving rather than having to wait until you get home.
The term “Post PC” is misunderstood, and probably because it’s not a great description of what Steve Jobs meant when he first mentioned it.
When he talked about “Post PC” he gave the example of Pickup Trucks. A pickup truck is a type of vehicle that only certain people will need, based on a need to use the bed to haul items, weather work or enjoyment related. Not everyone needs a pickup truck in their day-to-day life. A regular vehicle will do.
In the past, even if the only need you had for a PC was to read email, surf the web, and view photos sent to you by friends, your only option to do all of that in an easy way (meaning something anyone could understand) and also an enjoyable way, was with a PC of some sort. For those tasks, a PC was a bit of an overkill. Plus, you had to deal with the maintenance and security updates of else possibly deal with viruses and malware. Once smart phones and tablets became a viable, usable option, a lot of people saw that this would fill every need they had. Add in the ability to sync a printer to print those documents, email and photos, and for a lot of people, this was the only device they needed.
I work in software development, application architect, for the past 20+ years. I need a PC, currently a 13 inch MBP Retina. For my day-to-day development work, this is what I need. I also own an Android tablet, which I use when sitting on the couch to read email, surf the web, Twitter and read e-books. So, I don’t live in the “Post PC” world. My mom, 3 sisters, and my grandmother, all switched from PCs to tablets (iPads and iPad Minis). They love them and find they only need them to do everything they need. They all have gotten rid of their PCs and have never had a reason to need it, through the past couple years. They live in the “Post PC” world.
I think it’s hard sometimes for people on OSNews to comprehend that the vast majority of the people that use technology do not need a full PC to get by in their day-to-day life. You tend to project your own uses for technology, and your own hatred for certain technology companies, on the average person, which causes you to not see the full picture.
it’s funny how experiences can vary.
in may family me and my brother are the only ones who own a tablet.
and we both came to the conclusion that we won’t replace them once they die.
“Post PC” is misunderstood but not for the reason you mentioned, it’s because people have a bad habit of not saying what they actually mean and assuming everyone should know what they’re talking about. People use “pc” and an interchangeable term for “desktop”. It would be no different if Steve Jobs had said “car” when he really meant “pickup truck”.
Your mom, 3 sisters, and grandmother are not living in a “Post PC” world because there’s no such thing. They may have transitioned from one type of primary computing device (desktop) to another (tablet), but the world they live in is filled with PCs of all types, used day in day out by the people who occupy that world.
I don’t think many people on OSNews have a problem comprehending that the Average Joe has minimal computing needs. Most people are Average Joe and most of what they do are basic tasks. Their frame-of-reference is limited. So, it’s not that people have difficulty comprehending more simplistic use cases, it’s that it can be hard for them to comprehend more involved and demanding use cases. Their nifty little tablet or phone `does it all` so why would you need anything else?
Tablets may satisfy your work and personal needs – simple needs tend to be satisfied by simple tools. But there are countless areas in which you need more than simple tools. Try using a tablet to design a tablet and see how that works out.
This is a bit of a simplistic argument. It also ignores the fact that for many people the PC is a consumption device.
Apple got into music early on for the iPad and there’s now an entire ecosystem of music production apps. Synths, effects, recording. It’s all there and getting better all the time. People have recorded entire albums on them.
That’s misleading. The `music production` apps you find are for little more than entertainment, or are basic `notepads` for jotting down ideas. It may be technically possible to record an album with an ipad but it’s a novelty. The only place you’re going to find an ipad `production setup` is in somebodies bedroom.
[quote]Or do we just have to accept that no, tablets and touch just aren’t going to work for anything but simple, consumption-focused computing tasks?[/quote]
wait, where did that and touch come from. The whole article and referenced articles were about operating system, documents and workflow…nothing about touch not being useful in there.
I use a Surface Pro 3 and a Lenovo Yoga 3 14 at home and very much enjoy having touch as an additional input and surely not only while browsing the web
Filesystem support is getting there…sort of. Through iCloud that is. In ios9 you can finally browse iCloud as with with Dropbox. They even started to support file revisions.
Well that explains why Android tablets have been such a raging success and have a bevy of productive apps on them! Oh wait.
Funny how they can claim something that flies in the face of all evidence with a straight face.
I think tablets had a purpose when laptops were big and phones were small. In the days of 19″ desktop monitors and 15″ laptops and 3″ phones, a 7-10″ lightweight reader made a lot of sense.
Today we’re using 27″ desktop monitors, 13″ ultrabooks, and 5.5″ phones. A 7-10″ tablet for reading and video is the last priority. And it’s not even desired at all by some people…
Nexus 7 2013 is excellent, but would I buy another if it broke?
I always felt tablets were just netbooks without keyboards. Utterly useless for productivity without paying laptop prices.
“Many didn’t see it, but tablets were quickly turning into content consumption devices where price was a leading purchase decision.”
Despite his knowledge of linguistics, I think this quote was very much misinterpreted by Thom. Given what was written before this sentence (i.e. how successful the cheaper the iPad mini had become), Neil Cybart emphasizes the price elasticity of tablet products and not the fact that they are primarily used for content consumption, which is just a detail in this context.
Given that I too was surprised by the fact that the iPad mini was outselling bigger iPads, I am one of the “many” Neil references.
The biggest use for tablest is probably in aviation community. Basically the iOS is the defacto platform for everything aviation related. All the flight planning and monitoring and flightbag and logging apps are there for iPad and they are specifically built for iPad as well. So in that sense, the aviation industry has put massive effort to make iPad productive tool that you want to take with you when you head to the airport to make a little sight-seeing tour with the old trusty Cessna waiting in the hangar.
It’s all about the right tool for the right job.
Anyone claiming that tablets are a full-on replacement for PC’s are, well, we’ll call them “misguided”. It’s nicer than “idiots”.
Similarly, you don’t want to mount a full-tower XT case in a plane, and load it up with 1000W redundant power supplies and RAID hardware arrays– But that doesn’t mean such a machine doesn’t have a place in the world.
“Post PC” implies there is no longer a use for the PC– We might be post-steam, or post-crossbow, or post-Clovis, we might even post horse-and-buggy, but we’re not post PC. Or post-tablet. Or post-laptop. We’re probably “post-netbook”, though.
However, I have found using a tablet as my only device to be too expensive a way to get and view data.
I have a Nook HD+ so your mileage may vary.
I do something very simple that I am sure many tablet users do some variation of.
I like going on cruises, and I like having the deck plans handily once I am on-board. If I use the ship server the deck plans are not as detailed as I would like and are often in bit-map format which limits how much I can zoom in for details.
Worse, the ship`s server does not have any maps of the islands we are visiting.
However, if I go to use the PDFs that are available on the web from my tablet I get charged for using the ship`s WIFI (and it very expensive to use) every time I access a different map or deck-plan. I also found it hard to save those PDFs onto my tablet, and then access them later while using just the tablet.
However, using my PC in either Windows 7 or Haiku-OS I find I can easily look at and save any PDF that I find interesting, and that they are easy to transfer to my tablet afterwards. This means while traveling I only need to touch the ship WIFI while sending or reading email.
Everything else is done on the PC that I use to setup the tablet.
What I have to wonder is how many people are using their tablets to do things that are easily done as stored files on a PC but on tablet you are constantly needing to download the same data over and over every time they need to look at it.
No wonder so many people are worried if their `Data Plans`are big enough.
On Android, saving PDFs from, say, Firefox is trivial and then when you combine that with a PDF viewer and a file manager, viewing previously downloaded PDFs (all without involving a PC!) is very easy and certainly no more difficult than a PC.
However, on my Nook I don’t think it is true free download. Because I am in Canada and have a Canadian address on my credit cards I find I can not use the online store.
Anyway whenever I try to get a ‘free’ apps it says it needs my credit card even then.
I think I have to pay 99 cents to get the FireFox app if I do get it to work.
All I know is if I don’t use my PC to load stuff onto the tablet that there always seems to be a charge involved. Not a large one, but not a zero one either.
Tablets seemed to be made/used to nickel and dime the users. At-least that has been my Nook experience.
You can put the packages on a SD card, too. Nook HD is a nice tablet. Not as nice as the early Galaxy tablets with GPS, but still a good kid friendly device. My kid didn’t retire the Nook until they received an iPad as a gift. Until then I was impressed how much functionality it had for $129.
This appears to point to a major usage distinction between smartphones and tablets on one side, and personal computers on the other side.
The small storage capacity of smartphones and tablets compared to a traditional personal computer forces an ephemeral data model – requiring it to be re-downloaded/re-streamed whenever one wishes to access it. Of course, this benefits the network providers (bandwidth consumed) and the data providers (advertisements pushed to you).
From this angle, a Chromebook applies the ephemeral data model to the personal computer platform.
The article mentions the challenges associated with text entry on a tablet yet does not discuss the hybrid device – a device useable as a personal computer (via a traditional keyboard) or as a tablet (via a touch screen).
Although one device such as the Surface, Transformer, or Yoga were manufactured as such, an iPad or Android tablet can be hybridized via the addition of a wireless keyboard.
In terms of sales statistics, are hybrids counted as personal computers or as tablets?
It would be interesting to know approximately the proportion of tablets which may have been hybridized by the user (sales of wireless keyboards in relation to total sales of tablets).
Also, would the 12.9 inch iPad suggested be one designed as a hybrid?
When we travel, my friend uses her ‘Surface’ like a laptop – always has the keyboard attached to enter URLs or answer emails.
When she visits family for the day, she only takes the tablet part to show off the photos she has taken.
I would say 75% Laptop 25% Tablet use.
The longer end-user hardware upgrade cycle for tablets compared to smartphones is mentioned as being a “bad” thing. This may be bad for the manufacturers yet good for the planet and all of us.
The longer upgrade cycle for tablets may reflect two factors:
i) tablets are also available as “WIFI” only units and thus not tied to a wireless service provider contract. One pays the full price up front and thus takes care of it!
ii) improvements in the hardware have generally become incremental rather than step-changes allowing a device to be useable even with the most recent version of the operating system.
1) Apple is not losing market share to like products but cheap $49 to $99 or free single use devices that only play videos or very low end games and not anything that could comparatively complete with the previous generation of console games. So how about someone splitting things out into two classes of tables. 1) iPads or similar 2) Limited user less than $100.
2) Apple made their original iPads, okay their 3rd and 4th generation of iPads so well that a LOT of people haven’t stopped using them and buying newer ones. Until they give us a compelling reason to do so, and with iOS 9 they just might have done that, we had zero reasons to upgrade unless you play games that required the newest versions of iPads to play. Note that MS Office works on my Gen 3 iPad just as well as the newest version iPads. I’m only that as a frame of reference as I have zero interest in MS products.
Since (unlike Android devices until lately and only the newest ones) Apple pushes out the current and three next major versions and all sub versions of iOS to the devices which keeps them up to date software wise with each of the next three iPads. So unless an application that you need requires a new version of an iPad you really don’t have a reason to update.
Now, iOS9 has a lot of software features that require the newest iPad or newer. This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about. This might cause a lot of people to upgrade their iPads, especially business users and we have a lot of people at the organization that I work at that use iPads and they haven’t upgrade for the reasons that I’ve given. I’m pretty sure that will change after iOS 9 comes out.
PS: 99.9 percent of companies would consider a HUGE deal if they sold 24 million devices in one year. I don’t think Apple has anything to worry about.
So tablets are doomed because sales are slowing down?
Real problem with tablets is that they did not manage to disolve trap 50years old called: separation on operating system, data in specific file type, applications that can handle data in specific file type.
This paradigma is old as Mac. NLS and Xerox systems could be role model for tablet but unfortunatly tablets looks more and more like 50years old desktops.
Data and information once was free and you could manipulate with them as you please until someone invented that role of OS is to host application that handle data.
They’re going to be nothing but dumb devices if they don’t change their Oses and let them actually do real computing.
Windows RT was a step in the right direction but it was crippled as a desktop.
If all the operating systems adopt something like windows 10 (desktop/tablet mode) and actually release a decent attachment keyboard AND mouse/trackpad, then I’d be ok with just using my tablet let’s say, on a trip.
The problem lies within the fact that they cripple their connectivity, storage management, peripherals, etc.
Considering that those CPUs/GPUs are approaching at least half the power of a current desktop, I don’t see why they don’t go this route.
If a tablet was designed for consumers it should have minimal response latency. As tablets get fancier they get slower. I loved when Pentium CPU debuted using win95. Compared to 386 and 486, which were quite common, the fast response was amazing. We don’t enjoy this any more. Schedulers put GUI response low on the priority list. With each Apple OS release the scheduler makes the older machines run worse. There really is a need to update hardware simply because it’s by design. The sad thing is the web looks the same on iPad Air 3 under OS9 as it does on iPad 1.0 under OS5. Sadly, OS5 generally seems more responsive. I’m sure it’s similar on Android devices.
Edited 2015-08-17 22:21 UTC