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iPad Market Share Falls Below 25% as Tablet Market Continues to Decline
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Obviously your opinion. The Surface 3 is only 2.6mm thicker than the iPad Air 2. (and 1.2mm thicker than the Air 1) That makes it "bulky"? LOL
The cheese grater and the MacBook under my desk say "suck it"
They killed the netbook, and that's it.
Netbooks killed themselves. They were never really that useful. I remember using one once and being super frustrated by how slow it was. Even if the iPad was not released, netbooks probably would have died anyway. They might have lasted a bit longer.
Not really. If Apple don't sell enough iPads every year, it may at some point become an unprofitable effort to sustain regardless of how many are actually in circulation.
Let's pretend an iPad lasts 10 years before you'd think about replacing one. That would mean that Apple could theoretically be employing engineers to design new iPad hardware and write software for iPads for 10 years before those efforts lead to any direct return for the company. If people went that long before replacing their iPads, Apple would need to employ fewer engineers (or have them devote much less of their time to the iPad, resulting in fewer releases) or raise prices to maintain the level of improvement to the product.
We're not anywhere near that point, though. The iPad (and tablet market in general) is slowing, but it's still very profitable. Even if it weren't, Apple would be incredibly reluctant to drop it because those customers who do value them would then be unserved by the iOS ecosystem.
If Apple ressurected the Ipod from near death, we can be sure the Ipad is going to continue until its lower than the Ipod (because of its unique position in the enterprise market, that's even more likely). It is not even close right now. I'm talking more about IDC, the press and some people'S obsession with unit volume market sharw (not even segmented ones) as a determinant gauge of success. It is not.
A phone is a luxury in my world. I keep a regular old plain vanilla cell phone with a pre-paid plan and spend about $8 a month total ($100 a year renewable for 1000 minutes with rollover). Spending $70+ a month for something that is 100% unnecessary (i.e. you don't NEED to read email and surf the web while at McDonalds or at work and heaven forbid while driving). People that think they NEED to do that or even "text" (waste of time/money) are ADDICTED to that crap. I'm not someone who barely uses the Internet either. But it's not much fun doing it on a tiny touchscreen, IMO and I sure as hell don't need to get fired over it (or in an accident). It can damn well WAIT. Texting is the scourge of the 21st Century, IMO. A bunch of worthless talk about NOTHING. Worse yet, it's incredibly distracting and cars are weaving all over the road with people trying to text while driving (apparently people don't want to actually "talk" today, just ask each other what they're doing). But basically, I have better things I could do with $70 a month including buying a new Macbook Pro about every other year instead.
A laptop may or may not be a luxury depending on whether you need it for a job. If you just want it to surf while slurping lattes at Starbucks, I'd call it a luxury. Personally, I prefer surfing at home with a 27" monitor, full size keyboard and 5-button mouse with a scroll wheel over some tiny 15" screen and a miserable trackpad (they're HARD and cause finger/wrist pain over long periods of time IMO) and undersized keyboard.
I'd like a touchscreen on a desktop Mac for one reason...games. Things like flight simulators would be very handy to be able to manipulate cockpit controls directly on the screen rather than keyboard combos. It's more realistic. Otherwise, fingerprints would drive me nuts in short order, even if they are easy to clean off with a glass screen. I can see where a touchscreen could/would be useful for a notebook, however, particularly if it could run "iOS" Apps as an overlay kind of option and back to full OSX when desired. If the keyboard part could flip over and rotate smoothly so you don't need to separate it (say tuck in underneath when not in use and yet not be total junk), it might be kind of cool, really. Make something like the Launchpad button switch back and forth between modes. Desktops could then directly play iOS games as well (a plus in a few cases at least where an interesting game isn't available for OSX, although whether they play well without a touchscreen is another matter, but many would be fine with a trackpad or mouse).
That's the point.
Since the iPad was announced it felt like there was a push to eliminate the traditional personal computer (including macs) and replaced it with something new and shiny. There were articles all over the net about the impending death of the PC. How the PC is going the same way of the mainframe (never mind that mainframes still play a big role in our lives).
Just look at how the PC Manufacturers responded. We kept getting more and more "post-PC" devices while the traditional PC slowly disappeared from their shelves. As much as I like the Surface, I found most of the devices pushed by PC Manufacturers to be painful. Why the heck do I need a Touch Screen on my laptop whose keyboard cannot be detached? Am I suppose to reach all all the way across my desk to touch a screen?
Microsoft responded by essentially panicking and creating a horrible monstrosity called Windows 8 which effectively handicapped the traditional computer in favour of "Post-PC" devices. They started focusing their development work on Office for the iPad and neglected Office on both the PC and the Mac.
Even Apple neglected its Mac line up for years, while pushing iOS devices on to us. The Mac Pro didn't see an upgrade for years, the Mac Mini also languished for years. The iMac and Macbooks saw some upgrades but even they were be ignored in favour of Apple's new fancy iOS toy. We regularly had machines which ran on a year or two year old processors on the market. In the case of a MacPro there was a two year old CPU and a 4 year old graphics card in a device designed primary for performance. I would have hated to run a business requiring a high performance Mac during these years. I am still running a four year old Macbook Pro, because until recently it was pretty much as good as the other Macbook Pros on the market (despite the fact that AMD and NVDIA released many upgrades to their graphics chips).
5 years later, what more rational people said is coming true. The market has responded. The iPad is not a good content creation device. It is a horrible content creation device. The problem is we mostly use our computers for content creation. Why would I spend 800 dollars on an iPad when I will need a laptop which can do all that an iPad can do plus make content creation much better.
Aside from the Surface (and I guess the XBOX too), every "post-pc" product Microsoft pushed failed. The Surface succeeding because it was good at both content consumption and creation. Most people who got Windows 8 on their computers were frustrated, and many chose to stick to Windows 7. Apple was forced to play catch up on its Mac devices which were neglected for years.
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Yes, this is why I skipped the Air2.
Saw it, "ohh, beautiful".
Picked it up, "this is amazing".
Played a video, "nope, never, this is crap"
Hopefully they will make the Air3 a bit more solid.
It's even worse - not did he only convince Apple customers of the iPad being that "magical and revolutionary" device, but he also made the entire industry including Samsung, LG, Asus and many other OEM's follow suit. Too bad that they followed him blindly.
Complete gibberish. You percentages are made up and You have zero point here other than 'I have no use for it so it must be rubbish'
iOS and iPad, Used by millions, loved by millions. Loads of competitors.
Not narrow at all. Freaking massive. Millions of designers and artists would love one. Music too.
What people haven't really mentioned, is that the iPad isn't stalling because of the Surface. The Surface isn't stealing the tablet market. Samsung hasn't launched a Surface competitor. The Galaxy Tabs are like iPads.
Also, people look at products like the MacBook Air and the rumoured iPad Pro and think they can be one device. But they're not similar. Just the thinnest laptops and most powerful tablets are next to each other in a spectrum of power/portability. There is no way my 15" MacBook Pro is similar to an iPad, or an iPad mini (or, if you go far enough, a Kindle Fire!).
Steve Jobs said "Laptops and smartphones, is there room for a third-category of device in the middle?" Analysts and critics answered "No!" Now, they say "Apple *needs* a device between a tablet and a laptop"!
One thing, personally I think the Surface is just a Laptop without a pre-attached keyboard.
Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? Absolutely no "Truck Drivers" anywhere.
We have entered the era where "real" computers are only for professionals and tech nerds.
Do you have a job? Do you do work at school? Chances are you are gonna need a full sized computer.
There are a handful of people who will not need one, but most professions will require a full sized keyboard, mouse and display.
School/College equals future professional.
Job? like working at a fast food restaurant? don't need a computer for that...Or did you mean a professional job?
Thanks for reiterating exactly what I said with your second sentence.
80 percent of the jobs out there will still require a computer. 20 percent are a handful, I was thinking closer to people who worked with their hands.
And anyway if the sales are any indication, people still want the full computer.
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Consider me a "tech nerd" then. Given I'm nothing like your classical "nerd" I really don't know the fascination with that word to describe people that like high tech gadgets and computers, but use whatever bigoted term makes you feel the most self-important like most Millennials today that think because they have friends on Facebook they are somehow "important" and what other people do doesn't matter at all.
Problem with that is do you want an over price media consumption device, when a laptop costs nearly as much, and is a much better deal?
nearly as much? aren't most laptops over 700-1,000+? compared to the ipad £400-500.
I havn't needed to use my laptop for years..tablets is all i need generally for at home