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Actually I think this is a pretty nice offering for households (like mine). Kids and a lot of people don't care about color precision and lamination. We use a 9th gen, daughter uses procreate on it which works totally fine. Storage increase makes the thing a lot more attractive, in fact the larger storage of my ipad pro m1 is for me the biggest differentiator; not the lamination, speakers, 120hz or thinness. RAM is another thing, if it really has 6gb then the thing is near perfect for us.
 
Yes but couldn’t AI be locked down by schools before being distributed?
Unless school administrators have changed drastically since we were playing Quake 3 in “locked-down” computer labs, I’d say that’s highly doubtful.
 
I mainly use my iPad for watching my own selection of content while traveling and minor remote tasks so this works out well for me. Apple offered $45 for a useless iPad 5 trade-in so getting this at 128GB for $305. If I need more power I have a Macbook Pro and the A15 in my iPhone 13 still does everything I need mobility wise. I have no interest in AI.
 
I was going to upgrade my mom’s iPad. Should I buy the 10th generation for $280 or this M3 for $350?

Is there a lot of difference?

You should consider whether your mom needs the extra storage and whether the two extra years of updates (a14 vs a16) down the line is worth the $70 + tax. The experience out of the box today should be more or less identical.
 
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I mainly use my iPad for watching my own selection of content while traveling and minor remote tasks so this works out well for me. Apple offered $45 for a useless iPad 5 trade-in so getting this at 128GB for $305. If I need more power I have a Macbook Pro and the A15 in my iPhone 13 still does everything I need mobility wise. I have no interest in AI.
And even if you did want AI there are no AI features on iOS that can’t be replicated by other apps, except for notification summary (and we all know how that’s going) and the better Siri is nowhere in sight yet.
 
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how many more iPadOS updates is the A16 chip going to get?
Going by historical precedent, probably as much as M3 in the iPad Air. Apple offers iPadOS updates based mainly upon date of iPad release, not SoC, with occasional exceptions.

To put it another way, don’t count on the iPad Air getting more OS updates than the iPad 11.

You should consider whether your mom needs the extra storage and whether the two extra years of updates (a14 vs a16) down the line is worth the $70 + tax. The experience out of the box today should be more or less identical.
Don’t forget about the probable 50% increase in RAM.
 
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Should I get iPad A16 (£296) or the refurbed iPad Air M1 (£364). Parents use. Mainly for watching lot of YouTube videos, video streaming apps, online reading. Worth spending £68 extra for the Air?

You get anti reflective coating, P3 display, M1 chip, Apple Intelligence (they don’t care about AI features), laminated display and I believe it has better speakers and slightly thinner bezels. Our current iPad is iPad 9th Gen 2021.
 
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So A14 vs A16 has less CPU?
A16 in the iPad has one less CPU core (5-core) than A14 (6-core) in the previous iPad. However, judging by existing benchmarks, for multi-core A16 (5-core) will still be a bit faster than A14 (6-core), but for single-core, A16, will be much, much faster. Also, the GPU on A16 will be faster. Also, perceived speed tends to be affected by single-core more than multi-core.

Overall, at worst, iPad 11 will perform similarly to iPad 10, but in many workloads, iPad 11 will be significantly faster.
 
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But it still runs that rubbish iPad OS which is severely neutered. Apple needs to support OS X on the iPad.
 
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I think it's okay, for a iPad, and at this price point. For people who don't care about a non-laminated display, they also won't care about A18, 8GB RAM, and Apple Intelligence.
 
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It’s 3 generations newer than the previous chip, so people will absolutely notice a difference. I’m just surprised they didn’t put the A17 in it though so it could have Apple Intelligence.
Me too, I thought Apple have this strategy for All-in AI
 
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Apple Intelligence is so garbage that the bean counters at Apple were like "yeah we wasted money in the 16e giving them 8GB RAM for free, let's not make that mistake again, coming up on 3 year old chip and 6gb it is"
I think they’re meant to be a totally different class of devices. The 16e is a more expensive device, part of the iPhone 16 family. While the iPad is supposed to be entry-level. Even in Europe where Apple devices are on the more expensive side it’s 399 EUR so it’s quite affordable and it’s easily a good deal. The same can’t exactly be said about the 16e.
 
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They need to add the headphone jack back if they want to keep education customers. We are not going to hand dongles to five year olds, and asking for Bluetooth headphones to be provided by parents is not going to happen. Nor are we going to provide them. Just becomes a logistical nightmare. We will transition to touch screen Chromebooks if we have to with iPads only for Special Education instances that a Chromebook can not fulfill. AI is less of a concern at this point, especially with the students that would be getting these devices.
You can buy USB-C headphones that don't use a dongle at all. A former state educator myself though, I know how easily kids can damage these things and so being able to buy in bulk at a low price is important.
 
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when it comes to future proofing, they'll definitely care about the 8GB RAM
It's 6GB RAM. Not that bad as 4GB before. I have Safari keep freezing and crashing when watching YouTube live stream on iPad Air 4. 4GB iPad is not future proofing.
 
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Not terrible and not surprised that it has a low costs A16 chip. I'll probably pick one up around black friday for $250. Should work well for watching movies and surfing.
Same. I have a 5G iPad that can't be upgraded and has lost close to 40% of its battery life. Once the 11G/A16 iPad goes on sale I'll get one.
This reads like they do actually pay attention to the complaints about pathetic starting specs

Good to see 👏


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Right --that's nice to see. I also think it helps people who are buying a replacement iPad for a parent or grandparent so they can let them know it will be faster and have better performance than their old iPad.
No one who buys a base model iPad upgrades in a single generation though. That’s not Apple’s goal. If it happens I’m sure they love it, but they don’t expect it. My guess is they’re targeting 8th gen and earlier iPads, especially those with 32GB of storage.
Correct. I will be replacing my 5G iPad with the new base iPad. And I will keep that one until it can no longer be upgraded and/or it start having technical issues like decreased battery life.
 
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