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laptop replacement for most use cases
media consumption
color e-reader
notetaking
digital art
super portability
tablets may not be the end all-be all of computing but they fill their niches well
media consumption
color e-reader
notetaking
digital art
super portability
tablets may not be the end all-be all of computing but they fill their niches well
same, it's like a portable TV. Of course I use it to browse the web, so glad Safari is not mobile any longer. I'm using it now. I do some photography so it's real nice for picture viewing/proofing/editing (Pro)
I'm honestly pretty stoked for Windows 10 ARM to mature. My Surface Pro was previously my daily driver, but battery life was a huge pain in the ass. Just couldn't hold a candle to ARM-based devices.
I use an iPad now because it's thinner, fanless, and lasts forever, but the OS is still iffy, especially with multitasking.
Really hoping one day Windows ARM devices will be portable and power-efficient enough to be practical for me. But until the platform matures, iPad all the way.
Depends on what you're buying for, but I just got it. Screen is the perfect size for reading comics without needing to zoom in, handles Procreate just fine.
At the peril of taking the bait, the Apple Pencil is very much not a stylus in any classic sense, likely more to iOS's insistence on treating finger-based input as first class, and pencil input as something mostly separate. There's no trying to tap tiny targets that you need something more precise than a finger for input. Being forced to use a separate peripheral because the UI is impossible to use otherwise sucks.
Anyone trying to use an Apple Pencil as their primary input is almost certainly going to put it down in favor of just using their finger because it's faster and easier. That's what Steve Jobs was getting at when he said, "Nobody wants a stylus."
However, people DO want something to handwrite or draw with. and for that application, it's hard to beat the pencil.
Many people have already stated my use cases for an iPad (browsing the Internet, watching videos, reading books and comics, taking handwritten notes, doodling). When I'm at home, I don't even touch my phone because the iPad is just so much better for anything I'd want to do. I only go to the computer when I need to do something the iPad can't - like playing games or serious photo editing (which iPad can do, I just refuse to pay Adobe's ransom subscription and have an older perpetual Lightroom, plus even with full USB support now, storage space is still an issue).
When I first saw the iPad my gut response was, "That's really stupid. Who wants an oversized phone?" Once I got my hands on one though that all changed. Tablets are my preferred form factor.
So many good, cheap soft synths on iPad if you have a MIDI controller.
It's also good for comics, I guess.
It's also good for comics, I guess.
Personally, I have no use for tablets. I haven't owned an iPad but I've owned Android ones in the past and just really didn't use them. Going portable, phones are better. For a big screen, my desktop pc is better. They were inbetween devices that I just didn't really need or use.
I love the iPad. I'm still rocking a 2nd gen 10.5 inch Pro and it's basically my daily driver now. For what I do in my spare time, which is mainly web surfing and YouTube, it does everything I need.
I don't have one, but the iPad Air has a laminated (no air gap) screen, True Tone display (matches ambient lighting temperature), and a 2-generation newer processor (iPhone XS vs iPhone 7 era) processor, so it's likely to last a few years longer than the budget iPad. Both support the 1st gen Apple Pencil and have a keyboard cover available (as well as work with Bluetooth keyboards). Apple annoyingly dropped the 128GB storage size from the Air, but that's probably the minimum storage I'd recommend to avoid having to play storage Tetris. 64GB is viable though, 32GB is not IMO unless you're the most casual of users and plan to offload nearly all of your media (including photos) to the cloud.
I use my ipad pro as my main computer. It's super light, long as battery and does everything I need it to.
iPads are actually crap for Youtube because they don't support HDR or higher than 1080p on it. It's also a pain in the ass to get it to work with PiP.
Most of my internet browsing is done on my ipad. I also read books on it. When I am home, I rarely use my phone. I prefer the larger screen.
Nearly all of that lies at the feet of Google. It's not that the iPad isn't capable of any of that, Google just doesn't seem interest in doing more than the bare minimum for Apple support over the last few years. It took them like 2 years just to give the Youtube app split screen support. I quit using the app and just use YouTube in the browser most of the time now since iOS 13.
I'm trying to keep it under $400 so I have a choice between the 128GB 10.2inch iPad or 64GB 10.5inch iPad Air, think I might go for the 10.2 inch entry level one. Don't think I'm gonna do anything too intensive on it and I can't really afford to splurge on a bigger Air one at this time.
Doesn't matter whose fault it is, still means the iPad is a crappy YouTube experience. That said it's incredible for every other streaming app basically, it's just YT specifically that sucks. I don't see anything changing because Google is just going to keeping using VP9.
It's my main PC when I'm in bed, or when I'm watching something on TV. Otherwise, I use it for reading comics, watching YouTube on the can/in the shower, etc.
Since they announced the pencil, I've been waiting to get one, I've kinda forgotten how long I've waited now. At first the pencil was only available with the pro but it was too expensive, then the iPad Air, and then finally the basic iPad and I figured I'd wait until it also got KB support. Which it got this year! But they didn't upgrade the processor. SIGH! It's almost a 3 year old processor in the base iPad, so I guess I'll wait for them to upgrade that at least to an acceptable 1-2 year gap between the base and iPad Pro.
It's become my main computer at home - with my wife preferring traditional laptops and hogging my 2014 MacBook Pro all the time, I needed to get a secondary device for productivity (that wasn't my phone).
Apart from the office apps, I also dabble in graphic design and photography, so my 12.9 inch 2nd-gen iPad Pro is perfect for that, not to mention portable.
It's also become my notepad at work and a way to save on wasting paper for drawings and documents.
Apart from the office apps, I also dabble in graphic design and photography, so my 12.9 inch 2nd-gen iPad Pro is perfect for that, not to mention portable.
It's also become my notepad at work and a way to save on wasting paper for drawings and documents.
Tablets are by far the best way to play touch-screen music rhythm games; the bigger the better. I have an 18" Android tablet; it's great. I couldn't go back to playing Voez on my Switch even if it is a lot cheaper due to not being laden with microtransactions for unlocking songs.
I've gone full circle on this.
I bought a first-gen iPad when it was released, then replaced it with another one in about 2012, when the third-generation models came out with the foldable cover. Back then, my phone was small, my laptop was massive, and so I used the iPad for basically everything that wasn't full-blown work or making a phone call. After maybe a year of that, the iPad ended up languishing, unused, when I bought a MacBook Air and got a better phone. I wound up using the MacBook for everything I used to use the iPad for, and the iPad obviously wasn't capable enough to stand in for the laptop use cases.
Today, I haven't owned or used a tablet of any kind in a good five or six years, but I recently evaluated how capable iPad OS has become, and because I travel a lot more for work these days, I think I could leave my MacBook Pro at home and travel with just an iPad. Everything from photography to graphic design is now covered, and iPad OS has a genuine filesystem these days. I use Affinity Photo and Designer on my MacBook, and their iPad apps look terrific, plus the App Store has apps for everything else I use: Slack, Evernote, Airtable etc.
So now, despite having a big phone and a lightweight, portable laptop, I think I want an iPad again. The new Pros look like extremely capable devices.
To be honest, I think I might even be able to REPLACE my MacBook with an iPad if I thought it could reliably drive a 4K monitor as a secondary display via USB-C. I'd be worried about connectivity for presenting at conferences etc. though.
I bought a first-gen iPad when it was released, then replaced it with another one in about 2012, when the third-generation models came out with the foldable cover. Back then, my phone was small, my laptop was massive, and so I used the iPad for basically everything that wasn't full-blown work or making a phone call. After maybe a year of that, the iPad ended up languishing, unused, when I bought a MacBook Air and got a better phone. I wound up using the MacBook for everything I used to use the iPad for, and the iPad obviously wasn't capable enough to stand in for the laptop use cases.
Today, I haven't owned or used a tablet of any kind in a good five or six years, but I recently evaluated how capable iPad OS has become, and because I travel a lot more for work these days, I think I could leave my MacBook Pro at home and travel with just an iPad. Everything from photography to graphic design is now covered, and iPad OS has a genuine filesystem these days. I use Affinity Photo and Designer on my MacBook, and their iPad apps look terrific, plus the App Store has apps for everything else I use: Slack, Evernote, Airtable etc.
So now, despite having a big phone and a lightweight, portable laptop, I think I want an iPad again. The new Pros look like extremely capable devices.
To be honest, I think I might even be able to REPLACE my MacBook with an iPad if I thought it could reliably drive a 4K monitor as a secondary display via USB-C. I'd be worried about connectivity for presenting at conferences etc. though.
If you're willing to deal with some wonky issues, the iPad can pretty capably replace a laptop for the majority of use cases these days. iPad OS and the true file system made a world of difference for the ability to use it for work. Plus, it's a much smoother experience to just browse the internet while you're on the couch watching TV than a laptop.
Point is, the iPad can do almost anything, it's just a matter of if you care enough to actually use it for those things.
Point is, the iPad can do almost anything, it's just a matter of if you care enough to actually use it for those things.
This has already been covered, but I use it while watching TV (to browse, use apps, read comics/articles, play simple games), sometimes to watch TV/multitask when playing PS4 on the TV, (or when someone else is using the TV), and while traveling (always gets lots of use during holidays at home). Also recently got the pencil to do some sketching/drawing, after we upgraded our iPads a few months ago after several years of use.
I picked up an iPad Mini, the new one, recently. It fills the "casual browsing" hole pretty nicely so I'm more comfortable than on my phone but more casual than laptop. That said, it's buggy as fuck, as an Android user until now I can't believe this is the state iOS is in with all the talk of how stable it is, had apps literally open up squashed onto half the screen vertically and crash for example - happens every few hours in fact. Also, the number of apps that I want to use that don't have an iPad version and so are that awful scaled version is WAY higher than I expected.
As a casual device it's fantastic though, just wish they'd hurry up and fix the bugs and get proper app scaling to the display.
As a casual device it's fantastic though, just wish they'd hurry up and fix the bugs and get proper app scaling to the display.
i watch Netflix/Youtube in bed, download a bunch of tv-show episodes and movies off Netflix and Amazon Prime for long flights, battery lasts just about 10 hours. It has a great screen for the price. It´s also much better for just browsing the web than a phone.
An older iPad Air i use with a Traktor Z1 controller as a DJ, it´s just the screen and MP3 storage essentially
An older iPad Air i use with a Traktor Z1 controller as a DJ, it´s just the screen and MP3 storage essentially
I have the iPad Pro and I really wanted to enjoy it as a video editor. It's great for writing, art, reading, gaming, and even music creation. Video editing...I just haven't been able to get it to click for me. I wanted something lighter and more portable than a laptop for quick edits. Yesterday, I had a super quick thing where someone reached out to me to download/edit two small I video files and a .wav audio for clean sound. I just had to use the laptop because the ipad just isn't made for it. No version of Premiere...
I didn't have an Apple device for the longest time but got the 2019 Air recently. I wanted to try the Apple arcade stuff. Now the trial is over I use it a lot for remote play stuff on PC/PS4.
They are finally making a proper Photoshop so Premiere might be in the cards in the future
This. It's my light laptop. My laptop is more for data management, work when needed, light pc gaming, serious photo and video editing.
iPad is for facetime, phone calls when my phone is charging, watching movies, youtube, netflix. Browsing the web, podcasts to my smart speaking etc. It's just easy to use and super lightweight.
It's my media machine. Battery life is fantastic. Even when I use my laptop, I typically have my ipad next to it streaming youtube or the news.
that...is not normal for an iPad. Honestly I'd take it to an Apple store and show them that happening
There's a lot of cross-over with how you use your phone, but because it's bigger it enables consuming media in a better way for osme things. With an 18mos old, my iPad has basically become a Mickey Mouse streaming service for when I need to take a shit.
I think tablets in general, regardless of OS, are mostly terrible devices. I have an iPad Pro for work and the only use I get out of it for personal stuff is watching downloaded Netflix content on airplanes and showing me recipes while I cook. I would never buy one with my own money.
I would think most people are talking about with the apple pencil or have a keyboard.
