I have an iPhone and an iPad and the iPad is the device that gets used more, by far. iPads are great for media consumption, iPhones not so much.
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Apple Reports All-Time or March Quarter Revenue Records Across All Categories Except iPad
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I have an iPhone and an iPad and the iPad is the device that gets used more, by far. iPads are great for media consumption, iPhones not so much.
The iPad is not designed for techies, it is designed for all others. Unit sales would be interesting to see. IPads 2x of Macs?
I think one aspect that gets hardly any mention is how since 2018 there has been no significant improvement to any iPad line except the mini - which is a niche in itself. People just buy a new iPhone every two years because they are on some contract that just gives them a new one bi-annually. People don't have that for iPads.
You can own a 2018 iPad Pro and you would be hard pressed to spot the difference to the 2021 model. Yes, the device got incrementally better, and you can make the argument that Mini-LED is a killer feature for some (for others its more of a deterrent), but if you have your 2018 iPad Pro today you feel no pressure to upgrade.
I think we'll see a similar development with Macs in 2-3 years when the market is saturated with Apple Silicon Macs - assuming there is no new killer feature that would warrant a purchase - and then see it return to more normal levels.
I really don't see supply constraints being a big part of this. The iPad has been in a kinda stale place for quite some time, and adding to that: now that Macs are actually no longer loud and hot furnaces that turn off after 3 hours of use I think a lot of people are migrating back to the Mac.
That being said: I believe the iPad still perfectly caters to exactly that crowd that just want a bigger screen iPhone to do all their stuff on. It's just not the tablet-first future St. Jobs so vividly imagined.
You can own a 2018 iPad Pro and you would be hard pressed to spot the difference to the 2021 model. Yes, the device got incrementally better, and you can make the argument that Mini-LED is a killer feature for some (for others its more of a deterrent), but if you have your 2018 iPad Pro today you feel no pressure to upgrade.
I think we'll see a similar development with Macs in 2-3 years when the market is saturated with Apple Silicon Macs - assuming there is no new killer feature that would warrant a purchase - and then see it return to more normal levels.
I really don't see supply constraints being a big part of this. The iPad has been in a kinda stale place for quite some time, and adding to that: now that Macs are actually no longer loud and hot furnaces that turn off after 3 hours of use I think a lot of people are migrating back to the Mac.
That being said: I believe the iPad still perfectly caters to exactly that crowd that just want a bigger screen iPhone to do all their stuff on. It's just not the tablet-first future St. Jobs so vividly imagined.
I remember going to the Apple store somewhere earlier this year and being told there was no stock of iPad Pros, and the iPad mini was delayed for more than a month.
There’s nothing wrong with share buybacks the way Apple does it. It’s actually a pretty good way of getting rid of excess cash on the balance sheet and returning cash to shareholders in the form of higher share prices (can be better than simply issuing a higher dividend).
Right?
It will never cease to amaze me how Apple, or any tech company for that matter, can say point blank "We are going to have serious supply constraints again in the near future so it will probably translate to lower sales in the next couple quarters" or something to that affect, and like clockwork, 10 trolls are here posting nonsense about how it's because iPad sucks and blah blah blah.
Yeah, I'm sure the world collectively decided last quarter.....FINALLY.....that the iPad is "crippled" and I'm sure it's because they all came here, to this forum, and read all the nonsense posts about how lower sales ALWAYS equals nobody likes iPads anymore, and then they put two and two together.
Stock price and market value are nonsense. It's a rigged game run by the richest people. You're being played if you think iPadOS has anything to do with Apple's stock price or how Wall Street behaves. I would really love it if people would think before they post this stuff. You can't be a publicly traded company and lie about financials. People go to jail over things like that. Apple might creatively dodge questions sometimes, but the ones they feel they can answer, they answer honestly. Wall Street can do what they want with that info. Like I said before, best just to ignore it unless you have your retirement funds wrapped up mostly in Apple stock, which I highly advise against.
The stock market does what the stock market does. It has nothing to do with nerds on MacRumors thinking "IPADOS SUX!!!!" or whatever. Jeepers, people.
It's the whole reason I ended up with a Starlight iPad mini 6 with 5G and max storage. It was the only model/color/storage tier available of all 4 Apple stores within driving distance of my house. When Apple says something is supply constrained, it's probably supply constrained.
It seems like Apple's strategy is to offer products at as many price points as they can (see: rumors of refreshed 13" MBP and M# Pro Mac mini despite overlap). If they dropped the iPad Air then it's a sizable jump in price between the base iPad and the Pro. If they dropped the base iPad in favor of the Air then it's harder to hit that introductory price point (while preserving Apple's all-important profit margins) unless they stepped the Air back down to a current-generation iPhone chip.
Do you realize how much it costs Apple to run and maintain the iCloud data centers scattered across the globe? The 30% cut is quite generous.
iPad is also doing well. Only issue for Apple is that people hold on to their iPads longer.
I've been using my 2018 Pro as my only machine for a couple years now and been loving it. iPad OS does need some more features though. Coding on an ipad isn't quite there yet.
That's pretty much the long and short of it. Yet, I don't see you screaming into the void about the stock price, because you're probably a rational human. haha
Anyone else wondering when Apple shares will split? Not necessarily a long different lines of business, but just overall?
Why pay a ridiculous price for an iPad, especially an iPad Pro, when they have a sucky, impotent, no real file system iPadOS? The hardware is great, but it is limited significantly by iPadOS. Fix iPadOS and they will buy iPads again.
Unpopular opinion: iPadOS is fine. It just sucks for what people want to use it for - which would be Touch-MacOS.
No it's not.
Some nerds like us here are just not happy that we can't run full pro apps on it or MacOS
But what it really needs are more devs creating pro software for it as well as Apple creating their pro apps as iPad Pro versions.
iPad.... the next iPod.... if we had a convertible MacBook Air type device then that would be the nail in the coffin.
My spouse who uses the ipad m1 pro with magic keyboard for 99% of her business related activities will disagree with you. But everybody has their own view life.
The iPad isn't bad, but after you buy one and the novelty wears off, you realize it can't really do your job better than other tools, particularly your MacBook for writing/programming, your iPhone for photography, or your Cintiq/Wacom + desktop Photoshop for asset creation. Problem is, the marketing is so good that you don't realize until you own one how unnecessary it is. It may be a nice-to-have, but it isn't a daily driver. I am reminded daily when I reach for the iPad to do a quick calculation or check for upcoming rainfall what its shortcomings are, and I promise to myself never to buy another one.
I use my 2018 11 pro ipad to make money from it, 95% of time it´s either on procreate or clip studio, normally it would make perfectly reason to want to upgrade a profitable work tool like that since they launched the newest models with the M1 and everything, and this one is almost 5 years old already, must be slow, crippled etc.. etc... , but iPadOS is just so bad that I don't see myself pushing even this 5 year old model to it's limits 99% of the time, I don't see any software that can take full advantage of the M1/8gb orf ram of the newer models yet, and usability is basically monotasking with extra steps, so the 2018 pro is just as good as it was when launched, zero reasons to upgrade until iPadOS get's WAY better than what it is today, it doens't matter if you have the most powerfull hardware in the word if the software that it runs cripples it down so bad.
LOL which magically didn't affect the other categories. No, its because a tablet is not the most important mobile device, nor the most important work machines. Its an in between, and always will be.
Doesn't seem very limiting to me, but then again I'm using a Surface Pro.
At these revenue numbers, the unit sales numbers is more likely 3x Macs. The iPad has outsold the Mac in every year of it’s existence.